Imager

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  I didn’t feel like saying anything to respond to the implied threat. “I’m sure things will settle out if you give them time.”

  “I’m not very patient, Rhenn.”

  “Most of us aren’t. I’m not, either, but I’ve learned that sometimes rushing things creates more problems than it solves.”

  “Don’t threaten me.”

  “I’m not threatening anyone,” I said, managing to smile. “It’s not wise, and it’s not polite. I hope you feel better later.” I nodded courteously and turned toward the dining hall.

  I could still feel his eyes on my back, and I still didn’t understand why he was so angry. Was it just that he was angry and needed a target? I certainly hadn’t told anyone about what he thought or his nastiness to me, except telling Shannyr once that Johanyr didn’t seem happy.

  I took a chair between Gherard and Whaltar and across from Shannyr.

  Whaltar was speaking to Gherard. “… got Naquin Samedi night … warned him about the Nord quarter, but he said that was where the girls were …”

  “Did someone get hurt?” I asked.

  “Naquin. He was a third. They found his body on the street yesterday morning.” Whaltar shook his head. “Have to be twice as careful if you’re a graycoat.”

  I didn’t quite know what to add. I hadn’t known Naquin.

  “How is Master Dichartyn treating you?” asked Gherard, clearly wanting to change the subject. “Some of those assignments looked difficult.”

  “The reading isn’t too bad,” I admitted, “but the questions he asks about what I’ve read make the reading seem easy.”

  “Most of the thirds haven’t made it as far as you have,” Gherard said.

  “I’m sure that they’re doing better elsewhere.” I decided on tea, filled my mug, and took a long sip. “That’s why they’re thirds.” The longer I’d been at the Collegium, the more I wondered why Gherard was still a secondus. “If you don’t mind …”

  Gherard laughed. “I don’t. You’ve waited longer than most to ask. I have trouble reading. The letters don’t make sense to me, and I’ll never be a great imager. I can remember anything anyone tells me word for word, and Master Dichartyn tells me that I have a good feel for incoming imagers.”

  Put that way, his position made sense. “Is Petryn still helping there?”

  “No. He’s a second now, and another junior prime took his place—Beleart. You know … you scared the Namer out of Petryn.”

  “I did? I was the one who felt scared.”

  All three of them laughed, and Shannyr just shook his head.

  They all thought it was funny that I’d felt scared? Did I really project that much confidence? I didn’t think so. I certainly hadn’t known that much about imaging when I’d arrived at the Collegium.

  After lunch, when I went to the workshops, Grandisyn escorted me to another workroom, one also with barrels, and showed me a small bar of metal no bigger around than the body of a pen and no more than a digit in length.

  “If you’re really good, you ought to be able to do four of these, but if you get really tired after two, stop. We are not certain of the concentration in the ore.” He paused. “Do you understand?”

  I understood. I remembered what had happened to Mhykal.

  After he left, I fingered the silvery metal, which seemed as heavy as gold. Platinum?

  In the end, I managed three small bars, and decided against trying for a fourth. That took less than a glass, and Grandisyn said I was free to go. When I returned to my room, I took a short nap—and I’d never taken naps since I’d been small, not until I came to the Collegium.

  At dinner, Johanyr and Diazt sat at the end of the table, with two other seconds I’d barely met. Johanyr never looked in my direction, but Diazt did, and did so more than a few times.

  “What did you do to Diazt?” asked Clenard, one of the older seconds who was a friend of Shannyr.

  “I asked Johanyr how he was doing. He wasn’t happy that I spoke to him.” My words came out a shade ironic.

  “That’s because he likes to ask the questions,” Shannyr added dryly.

  “What do you work at?” I asked Clenard.

  “I help the machinists. It’s easier to image blanks than to cast them, and then they machine them down. Don’t have to have a furnace, either, but it works best for small parts. …”

  Every time I thought I’d learned most of what happened at the Collegium, I found out something more. But at least I had a good conversation at dinner.

  Afterward, I talked a bit with Shannyr, then walked through the deepening twilight across the quadrangle back to the quarters building—one of two, I’d also learned. Again, I had the feeling of being watched, but I didn’t see anyone. I wasn’t imagining things, and that suggested that whoever was watching and following was a very good imager.

  When I got inside, I hurried up the stairs. No more had I stepped off the landing on the second level and into the corridor leading to my room than I heard heavy steps coming up the stairs behind me. I moved away from the staircase, but looked back.

  “If it isn’t the painter boy.” Diazt stepped out of the staircase landing and stopped. He carried a metal bar.

  Walking down the hallway in the other direction was Johanyr. He held some sort of blade, a sabre perhaps. He didn’t say anything. I moved toward him, because I didn’t want to be that close to Diazt. My fingers brushed my trousers. I still had the bag of caustic, but I couldn’t very well attack first. Master Dichartyn had made that very clear. Were the two of them trying to provoke me into attacking? That way, I’d be totally at fault—if I even survived whatever defenses and retaliation they had in mind.

  I could hear several low sounds—door bolts snicking closed. Did Johanyr and Diazt have all the seconds cowed? At that point, I realized that most of the wall lamps in the corridor had been wicked off—or imaged out.

  “How are you doing this fine evening?” Johanyr’s voice was sarcastic. “It’s dark out now, and that’s the best time for rodents.”

  “I’m no rodent. You’re just looking for excuses.”

  “All rodies say that they’re innocent.”

  “So do all innocents.” I moved slowly toward Johanyr in order to avoid the metal bar Diazt carried, although I couldn’t move too far before I’d be in range of the sabre.

  “You’re no innocent. We didn’t have any trouble before you showed up.”

  “You mean that no one complained,” I suggested.

  He stiffened.

  Then I staggered back as something slammed into my shields. Before I could recover my balance another blast struck me from behind, and I staggered in the other direction.

  I couldn’t see what they’d imaged at me—but it was something that was designed not to leave any traces, because nothing had dropped to the stone floor. I would have heard it, even if I couldn’t see it in the low light.

  “Rodie’s got shields … how sweet.” That was Diazt. “That will just make it so much easier.”

  I didn’t know what he meant until the iron bar slammed against my shields, and I ricocheted off the wall. By beating on my shields, they could wear me down and still punish me, and leave few if any bruises.

  Johanyr struck with the flat edge of the sabre. That rocked me, but not enough to unbalance me.

  “You’d better stop,” I said.

  “We’d better stop? You have a strange view of things, rodie.”

  The iron bar hit my shields again, and I had to take several steps toward Johanyr to keep my balance. He struck with the sabre, and I was forced back toward Diazt. They weren’t going to stop. That was all too clear.

  I managed to square my feet and look straight at Johanyr. I concentrated on imaging caustic, just like that in the bag, behind his shields, right in his eyes.

  There was a moment of resistance—that was what it felt like—and then he blinked. “Kill him! Diazt! Ohh …” He collapsed on the corridor floor.

  The iron bar struck
the back of my shields with such force that I stumbled and had to take three or four steps and could barely stand before I whirled to face Diazt—imaging even more caustic into his eyes.

  The bar flew toward me, and I ducked, and then Diazt was screaming, but only for a moment before he went limp.

  Master Dichartyn and Master Ghaend both appeared from somewhere.

  Ghaend looked to Dichartyn and nodded. Two obdurates in black hurried down the hallway toward us.

  “What happened? What did you do?” demanded Master Dichartyn. “Spare me any niceties about accidents and the like.”

  “They cornered me, and everyone on the floor locked their doors. I could hear the bolts snick shut. Then they claimed that I was some sort of spy and that the Collegium had no use for rodents like me. They began to image things at me—”

  “What did you do?” Master Dichartyn’s question was hard and urgent.

  “I imaged lye—caustic—into their eyes.”

  “Through their shields?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Ghaend! Get them to the infirmary and start washing their eyes out with clear water. Have the staff keep doing it for at least half a glass. Get some water and a little of the basic elixir in them.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Each of the hulking obdurates hoisted one of the two fallen imagers, and before I could say anything, Master Dichartyn and I stood alone in the corridor.

  “You come with me, Rhennthyl.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  I followed him back to his study, hoping that his coolness didn’t presage even more trouble, but fearing that it did. I didn’t understand why Johanyr and Diazt had collapsed. I could understand burning or pain in their eyes, but they’d barely uttered anything before they fell.

  Master Dichartyn said nothing until he had closed the door to his study behind us and offhandedly imaged the wall lamp into burning brightly. “Go ahead and sit down. You probably need to get off your feet.”

  I sat. My legs were shaking. I didn’t want him to start in with more questions. So I spoke on what had been bothering me on the walk from the quarters. “I don’t understand why they collapsed. I was only trying to blind them so that they couldn’t attack.”

  “Think about it, Rhenn. Where were you?”

  “In the corridor.”

  “You said all the doors were shut. What’s behind—”

  “Oh, shit …”

  “Exactly. Where do you think that caustic came from? You pulled some of it out of their own bodies. If they’re lucky, they’ll live, but they’ll never see well enough to image again.”

  “What will happen to them?”

  “They be sent to Mont D’Image. It’s a pleasant place, if isolated, and if they recover, they can take duties there. If not, they can live on a stipend in the village adjoining the Collegium. Master Ghaend and I both thought that this would happen. Neither of those two has been exactly a model imager, and you threatened them both.”

  “I threatened them, sir?”

  “Whether you know it or not, and you’d better learn to accept and train it, not only do you image, but you have a talent for projecting whatever you feel—or want to feel. That talent means that, given time, you can be very effective in managing people. Let me ask you this. When you want to be alone, does anyone ever bother you? When you feel friendly, does anyone not respond?”

  I hadn’t thought about that, but I was still thinking about Johanyr and Diazt. Why had Master Dichartyn let them go so far? I almost blurted that question. Almost. Instead, I asked, “Was it a test of sorts? Or will I face a hearing?”

  “Self-defense is always allowed, and you did attempt not to kill them. There will be no hearing. You will be restricted to Imagisle for the next few weeks, not as punishment, but as protection, of a sort, and you will spend one glass every evening practicing with shields and imaging against one master or another. That’s another form of protection, both for you and for others.” He smiled sadly. “You need to learn a few less lethal ways to use your abilities.”

  Why hadn’t he taught me those before?

  “Because, unless you could protect yourself in some way or another, or talk your way out of it, doing so would have been a waste of everyone’s time, because you’d have been crippled or died in the first confrontation. Tonight, we would have stepped in, if you’d managed to hold them off, or even if you’d reacted well, but not had the skill. You moved so quickly that all we could do was help them.”

  “You knew they were planning something?”

  “It was obvious. You knew, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, sir. I didn’t know when, but I had the feeling that it wouldn’t be long.”

  “We have a shade more experience, Rhenn. Now, gather all your gear. You’re moving over to the wing with the other thirds.”

  “The other thirds?”

  “What do you think distinguishes a second from a third? Or one factor, anyway.”

  “The ability to use shields?”

  “Let’s make it more general. Seconds don’t become thirds at your age unless they have very useful skills. Some seconds will never develop their skills beyond a certain point, but they will often become thirds later on when they have more life experience.”

  “Seconds like Shannyr or thirds like Grandisyn?”

  Master Dichartyn nodded. “And others. Experience in the Collegium is also valued, and sometimes it is more valuable than imaging skills alone.” He smiled, briefly. “Another matter which I’m sure you’ll appreciate is an increase in your weekly stipend to a half gold.”

  Five silvers a week? That was more than all but the best master portaiturists made, and certainly more than journeymen made.

  “You will more than earn it.” He rose, and his words were a promise close to a threat.

  I got up more slowly than he had.

  Tertius

  31

  The more exalted the position, the heavier and yet less obvious the burden of responsibility and the greater the expectations of others.

  One thing I noticed immediately about my new quarters. They were larger and actually consisted of two rooms—one that was both parlor and study and a second smaller sleeping chamber that held a much larger armoire as well as a separate chest of drawers. The other thing was that I was totally exhausted. I could barely put away clothing and books before I collapsed onto the unmade bed beside the clean linens I was too tired to use.

  The next morning I was up early, arranging my new quarters. They were not only much more spacious, but the bed also had a larger headboard of golden oak with simple carving. In the sitting room were an armchair for reading and a desk chair in front of a writing desk.

  Once I washed, shaved, and dressed, I stepped out into the corridor and started toward the stairs down to the main level.

  An older third came out of the next doorway and smiled. “You’re Rhenn, aren’t you?”

  “Ah, yes.” I was surprised by the friendliness in his voice, because everyone in the other quarters section had been far cooler.

  “Claustyn. I heard that you took care of Johanyr and Diazt.”

  “I was just trying to disable them. I didn’t do a very good job of it.”

  Claustyn laughed heartily. “The way I heard, you did a very good job of it, and the masters were most relieved.”

  “Because Johanyr was disabled when he was attempting to injure someone badly?”

  “And because you’re the son of a noted factorius.”

  Unhappily, that made sense. In the past, I suspected, most of Johanyr’s victims had parents of little status, and Johanyr had assumed that my inability to remain as a portraiturist had meant that my family had effectively abandoned me. That assumption had doubtless been strengthened by the fact that I had nothing of value with me, no golds, no pillows or bedding or anything that I could have brought. I had no doubt that as the son of High Holder Ryel, he had brought everything permitted. Because his assumption was incorrect, the masters co
uld simply report to his father that his son had broken the rules of the Collegium and attacked another imager, one who was the son of a noted factor, and had been injured by my attempts to defend myself against an unprovoked attack.

  I also realized something else. Master Dichartyn had known exactly what was likely to happen, and he and Master Ghaend had waited just long enough to make sure that neither Johanyr nor Diazt would be able to image again. “Has he been a problem for a while?”

  Claustyn shrugged. “For long enough. High Holder Ryel is not on the Council, but a number of those on the Council are beholden to him. The factors on the Council are not.”

  That would make my personal situation more difficult in the future, although I could not have explained why. So I just replied, “They attacked me, and I really didn’t have much choice.”

  “That’s all the better.”

  Claustyn and I walked to the dining hall together and sat with several other thirds—Reynol, Menyard, and Kahlasa.

  Kahlasa was plump with bright light brown eyes and curly sandy-blond hair, and she was the first to speak after we sat down near the foot of the table and Claustyn introduced me. “You really were a portraiturist?”

  “A journeyman, not a master.”

  “Could you paint my portrait?” Her lips and face conveyed an expression that was half grin, half smile.

  “I could … if I had paints, brushes, supplies, canvas, and the like, but I couldn’t take coins for it. If I did, the guilds would bring it before the Council, and I doubt that’s something the Collegium would look favorably upon.”

  Reynol laughed. “The Council doesn’t look favorably upon much.”

  “They favor more golds in the treasury,” suggested Meynard.

  “But not those taken in taxes from their guilds or peers …”

  All in all, it was one of the more enjoyable meals I’d had at the Collegium. After eating, I made my way to Master Dichartyn’s study, where the door was open.

  “Come on in, Rhenn. How are you feeling?”

  “Fine, mostly. I was so tired I collapsed last night.” I closed the door and slipped into the chair across the desk from him.