“Bachelors marry. The world must be peopled, after all. Why don’t you people it yourself? I’m surprised you don’t already have an ‘understanding’ with some sprig of the nobility. What was your mother thinking of?”
“Very possibly she was thinking of her own ‘understanding.’ She didn’t have a very high opinion of marriage.”
“No doubt she had her reasons. I don’t have a very high opinion of it myself.”
“And how is it that you feel exempt from the necessity?”
“Brothers, Faris, brothers. They are good for something, you know. The Brailsford name can go sailing on down the centuries without my help. Come on. Tell All. Haven’t you ever even considered it?”
“Have you?”
“Oh, I left that notion in the nursery. I remember the moment distinctly. I was four years old. The guest of honor at a birthday party I had been lured into attending took a fancy to me. The little blighter tried to kiss me. I bit him on the nose. By the time all the fuss was over with, I’d made up my mind it was just an expense of spirit in a waste of shame.”
“Precocious, weren’t you?”
“Weren’t you?”
Faris sighed. “Quite the contrary. I’ve never been the sort, somehow.”
“What, never?” Jane demanded, then answered herself merrily, “No, never!”
“Never,” Faris insisted.
“What, never? Hardly ever!”
Faris blushed. “Well. I spent a few summers away from home when I was younger. There was a boy my age there.”
Jane hooted. “I knew it.”
Beguiled by her memories, Faris ignored the interruption. “The summer we were eleven, when we went fishing, he taught me to take my catch off the hook, but then he did it for me so I wouldn’t have to. The summer we were twelve, he let me shoot his rifle sometimes. He stole a cigar from his father’s humidor once, and when he’d turned quite green, he let me have a puff. We were sick side by side in the ornamental border. I liked him. I think he liked me, because at the end of the summer we were thirteen, he gave me his pocketknife.”
“He sounds quite perfect.”
“He’d been given a much better knife for his fourteenth birthday, a few days before.”
“Still.”
“I never saw him again.” After a thoughtful pause, Faris added, “I wonder if that was why they never sent me back. Just shows, doesn’t it? One should never tell adults anything. Even mothers.”
“Particularly mothers.” After another lengthy silence, Jane added, “Perhaps you’ll meet again someday.”
Faris shook her head.
“You’re right. It’s better this way. Whenever you see a humidor, you’ll think of him. Unfortunately, whenever he sees one, he’ll probably think of you.”
“I must admit, I’ve never cared for ornamental borders.”
Faris thought she knew all about Greenlaw. But during the long days she spent at Jane Brailsford’s heels, she learned Greenlaw from the marks of low tide below the seawall to the spire that crowned the college like a sword held up to heaven. The seawall ramparts were Jane’s favorite retreat in sunny weather. The crooked streets of the village, they visited occasionally. Most of the rest of their time was spent in exploring the heights, the secret heart of Greenlaw.
Within the outcrop of granite that provided Greenlaw’s foundation, under the piles of dressed stone, piers, and vaulting, lay the first chapel built at Greenlaw. Long buried by the ambition that had balanced a college atop a pinnacle of granite, the chapel was a single room, a simple barrel-vaulted space containing an altar and nothing more. In the heat of the summer, in the chill of winter, the chapel held a constant coolness, a balance of the seasons.
Standing beside Jane, just inside the door of the chapel, Faris felt the silence, as tangible as the temperature. In the dimness, relieved only by the lamp at the altar, Faris could sense the weight of time pressing in on her, just as her imagination told her she could sense the weight of masonry pressing on the barrel vault above.
“When this place was dedicated to St. Margaret, slayer of dragons,” Jane murmured, “it was already old. It was old when the wardens of the world held court in splendor. It was old before that, when they walked abroad in the world, as free as minstrels. Time sings in the stones here.”
“How very poetic.”
“Don’t even attempt to patronize me. I am a witch of Greenlaw, you lowly undergraduate, and I shall be as lyrical as I please. Now, pay attention. The ward that balances Greenlaw has two anchors. We’re very near the lower anchor here. Because there is a difference between the balance within Greenlaw’s bounds and the balance beyond. there’s a silent spot near the anchors. That’s what you don’t hear.”
“Then we’re near Greenlaw’s south pole.”
“If you care to think of it that way. I prefer to think of Greenlaw and its wards as a bubble in a glass of champagne.”
“Where is the other anchor?”
Jane looked pleased. “Follow me.”
Faris followed Jane out of the chapel, across the nave of the new chapel, so called since it was a mere two hundred years old, and into the south transept. There, through a low-linteled door, Jane led Faris up a spiral staircase. And up. Swiftly at first, but slowly after three hundred steps, they climbed the dimly-lit stair.
Too stubborn to protest, Faris followed Jane in silence. As she climbed with her left hand on the central pillar of the stair, the spiral was so tight that Faris’s right sleeve brushed the outer wall. There were narrow windows every hundred steps, just wide enough to shoot an arrow through, which gave them enough light to guess at the degree of wear of the stair wedges.
When Jane stopped, it took Faris a moment to realize they weren’t merely resting. Jane stood on the top step, her hand on the latch of another low-linteled door. She lifted the latch and led the way through the door.
As she followed Jane out onto the roof, sunlight assailed Faris. She reeled as the world wheeled around her. She put out a hand to catch at the door and stood, eyes wide, panting and gaping at the view flung out before her.
To the east and far below, the sea made a silver skin across the bay to the blue hills of Normandy. Here and there, the shifting sands were visible beneath the shallow tide, like winding rivers running under the sea. From the perfect flatness of the bay, the seawalls of Greenlaw rose like a child’s sand castle.
As she looked down, Faris admired the tidy stack of gardens, dovetailed with slate roofs, that marked the village wreathed around Greenlaw’s base. At her back was the neat pepper-pot tower that sheltered the stair. At her right was Jane, squinting against the sunlight as she gazed into the depths of the sky. At her left was the sheer face of the spire, spangled gold and silver with patches of lichen on gray stone.
Faris looked up at the faceted heights of the spire. At the tip, foreshortened into a tangle of wings and swords, she knew St. Margaret stood back to back with St. Michael, trampling the dragon tirelessly into a lump of green bronze. As she looked, the drift of clouds across the sky behind the spire made Faris dizzy.
“Welcome to the north pole. We can’t stay long. Just standing here we upset the balance of the wards. But I thought you would like to see.”
“Oh, yes,” said Faris softly, eyes on the horizon, “I would like to see.”
After twenty minutes of silence, Jane sighed sharply. “We must go.”
“So soon? My heart is still pounding from climbing the steps.”
“Shameful. I must see to it that you take healthful exercise this summer.”
“Climbing steps?”
“Climbing trees. Come along.”
“Must I?”
“Don’t whine. Follow me.”
“You English.” Faris cast a last wistful look at the view and followed Jane back to the spiral stair. “You’re so strict.”
Obedient to Jane’s orders—or the Dean’s—Faris spent the rest of the summer enjoying Greenlaw out of season. With help from Ja
ne’s purse, she was able to experience the joys of the patisserie. Though she climbed the more convenient trees of the Dean’s garden, Jane spent just as much time slumbering in their shadow as she did in healthful exercise. Faris learned what it was like to watch the pattern of shadow cast by tree leaves until the random scatter of sun and shade made her sleepy.
Most days, the weather was good, and walks along the causeway or at the foot of the seawall were inviting. When the weather was not, there was refuge from the rain to be found in the library. There, on one of the last days of the summer term, Faris actually found herself reading Greek for pleasure, an illuminated manuscript of Works and Days. She put the book down hastily the instant she realized her transgression but it was too late. The season had turned. Summer gave way to autumn.
At Michaelmas, the other students returned. Faris found herself sharing number five study with Charlotte and Nathalie, but all three of them were so intent upon their studies that they scarcely spoke to one another.
By November, Faris had almost grown accustomed to hearing her friend referred to as Dame Brailsford.
There’s a message for you,” Nathalie said, when Faris came into number five study one night in late November. “Jane—that is, Dame Brailsford—left it. She was on her way to the Common Room.”
Faris put her books down and picked up the folded page. The crisp paper, the elegantly illegible slant of the Dean’s handwriting, told her the contents before she read it. Jane had received an identical message. On their vigil nights, Eve-Marie and Odile and every qualified third-year student had received just such a summons. Faris unfolded the sheet of paper.
The Dean of Greenlaw College invites
Faris Nallaneen to keep vigil tonight, the
twenty-eighth of November, until the
rising of the sun on the twenty-ninth.
“It’s my vigil.” Faris folded the sheet of paper in half again, then into quarters, and so on, without thinking, until she could fold it no more. She put the resulting untidy wedge of paper down on the table without realizing she did so.
“I thought it might be.” Nathalie didn’t look up from her book. “Is it cold out?”
“Of course. May I borrow your goose feather comforter, the one Eve-Marie used, just for luck?”
“What about your double bind, then?”
Faris laughed. “May I?”
Nathalie closed her book. From behind her chair she produced a shapeless armful of folded comforter. “I thought you’d ask.”
Wearing Nathalie’s comforter over her shoulders like a cloak, Faris left the dormitory and stepped out into the night. The evening air was chill but Faris was too excited to be cold. She had spent most of her time at Greenlaw being skeptical about magic. In the past few months, she had set aside skepticism, but no conviction had replaced it.
Now, although she could not find words to describe the feeling, even to herself, Faris found herself possessed of a peculiar restlessness. Since the arrival of the message from the Dean, she had known that something had changed for her. She was certain of the change, though nothing else was clear. At any other time, such irrational certainty would have worried her. On this night, it delighted her. She was a student of Greenlaw, this was her vigil, and on this night, of all nights, magic was afoot.
In planning for her vigil, back before she really believed she’d have one, Faris had determined that on a cold night the best place to be was the Dean’s garden, in the shelter of its walls.
Once she made her way there, Faris found it hard to stand still beneath the oaks. It soon became plain she would find no peace in the garden. She turned away, with a sudden vivid memory of Eve-Marie’s vigil. No wonder she had fidgeted her way almost all across Greenlaw. The vigil made its own demands, independent of the weather.
Faris reached the garden gate and halted, startled, as Menary Paganell stepped into her path. Menary carried a small lantern, its candle sheltered from the wind by panes of thick glass that gave the light a greenish cast. She lifted the lantern high and peered into Faris’s face.
“Where are you going?” Menary asked. “Better yet, where are you coming from?” In the odd light, her face seemed to hold more than ordinary interest.
“I don’t know,” said Faris uneasily. “I’ll know it when I reach the right place.”
“It’s your vigil too, isn’t it? Stay with me. We’ll watch together.”
Faris drew back, disconcerted by Menary’s unexpected friendliness. At her expression Menary smiled widely. The night wind lifted her hair into a mane that caught uncanny light from the lantern and stirred her academic robes around her like great wings. Though she wore no cloak, no hood, she seemed untroubled by the cold.
“This is a good place to keep vigil.” Menary lifted her lantern and glanced around at the empty garden.
“Not for me.” Faris moved forward.
As she brushed past, Menary caught her wrist. “I meant it. I want you to stay with me.”
Menary’s fingers on her wrist were so cold they stung. With a sharply drawn breath, Faris pulled free. “I can’t stay.”
“You will.” Menary reached out again.
Faris stepped backward and bumped into someone. Her first thought, strangled before she spoke aloud, was the Dean!, then she heard Tyrian’s voice, reassuringly calm, in her ear.
“Is this young person troubling you, your grace?” His level tone hinted at boredom.
Faris turned. In the wan light of the lantern, Tyrian stood at the gate of the Dean’s garden, somberly dressed, exuding competence. Faris let out a breath of relief, started to speak, and glanced back at Menary.
Menary, her hair a wild pale aureole, her eyes wide, stared hungrily at Tyrian. “Is that where you came from?” she whispered to Faris.
Faris glanced apologetically at Tyrian. “I must go.”
“Of course,” Tyrian agreed. “Go on.”
Faris left them. This time Menary made no attempt to stay her. She regarded Tyrian with rapt delight.
Faris let the restless feeling drive her, first to the foot of the Cordelion Tower, then to the cloister garden. She paused there, but the restlessness persisted. From the cloister she crossed the parvis to the new chapel. Then, more sure of herself, she hurried to the spiral stair.
All the way up, Faris hurried, though she had to feel her way up the steps by touch in the darkness. With each step, the restlessness built within her. It drove her toward something, a moment or a place or a moment that belonged to a place. The urgency was so great that Faris climbed the last steps as furiously as the first and burst, gasping, at last out through the low-linteled door of the pepper-pot tower.
After the stair, the roof was cold, raked with the night wind. Faris staggered, dizzy from the spiral stair, and caught herself at the wall. There was nothing before her but wind and darkness.
Faris stood quietly, hands braced on the low wall, and listened to the sound of her laboring breath. All urgency gone, Faris let her heart find its accustomed pace. She could hear every nuance of the wind in the pinnacles and towers around her. She could see nothing. Finally the cold conquered her stillness. With Nathalie’s comforter huddled around her, Faris tucked her skirts close and crouched at the foot of the wall, taking what shelter she could from the wind. At last, her vigil had begun.
The hours were long. In the darkness, Faris waited. The cold became a part of her. She became as still as the stones beneath her. She felt the college and the village far below grow quiet as the peace of the night held them close. She sat at the heart of the world. Silent and serene, she balanced in the void.
During the last hour before dawn, the wind raked the clouds away and Faris saw the stars. She craned her neck to gauge their progress against the spire overhead. Above her, St. Michael and St. Margaret guarded one another’s backs. She could not see them. Only the bulk of the spire, black against the sky’s blackness, was visible against the stars. She did not have to see them. They were there. All was right with Gre
enlaw, she could feel that was so. Arms around her knees, chin nestled in the softness of the feather comforter, Faris felt sure of every stone in Greenlaw. All was well.
Out of the north, faint and far off, came the call of a skein of geese. Faris sat up straight. The call came closer, like a high wild song, like hounds hunting. Faris saw nothing of their passage against the stars. Only her heart could see them. Her memory showed her wild geese over Galazon. Faris swallowed hard. It was not that they were leaving winter behind. It was not that they were going somewhere Faris wished to be. It was the very fact of their passage that stirred her, the fact that something drove them across vast distance.
The wild geese did not merely heed the call that moved them. They answered it with a call of their own. The wildness of that call met the wildness of her longing for Galazon.
Vigil forgotten, Faris hid her face in her folded arms until the last faint notes of the call had faded. When the sky was empty, she looked up. Eastward, over the dark line that marked the hills of Normandy, the sun was rising. Faris looked up. The spire was still a featureless bulk against the sky. The stars had faded completely. In the rising light, the world was merely quiet. The utter silence of the night was gone. Faris shivered suddenly. She got stiffly to her feet, teeth chattering with the cold she had all but forgotten during the vigil.
When the long shadows of dawn had moved into place, when the sun was full up, free of the horizon, Faris made her way slowly down the spiral stair. She knew she did not display Eve-Marie’s joyous expression. She wondered about Jane’s grave response after her vigil. She had seen nothing but stars, heard nothing but the geese going over. But if Jane’s vigil had been as uneventful as her own, it had done nothing to impair her skill at magic. Faris resolved to keep a calm countenance and say nothing.
Good policy in any circumstance, Faris told herself, and yawned convulsively.
A College of Magics Page 9
