Brightly Burning v(-10

by Mercedes Lackey

  It was earlier than Lan was usually about, but there were plenty of people on the street, most walking in the direction of the manufacturing and trade quarters. There was a general buzz of noise in the background that never stopped until well after sundown. It was one of the many things Lan hated about the city, and after several weeks he still wasn't used to it. The cool, still air had nothing in the way of what Lan would have called a scent; most of the autumn flowers growing in and around the houses were scentless, purely decorative. Fallen leaves got swept up immediately by servants, and there wasn't so much as a single weed or blade of grass to be seen. So there weren't any of the aromas that Lan associated with fall.

  The street was paved with cobblestones; the doorsteps were slabs of stone, and the cobbles went right up to the bases of the houses, for even the fenced front yards were, for the most part, paved over. The town houses themselves were statements of the inhabitants' wealth, with a great deal of attention paid to the street facade. Some were of stone, like a great manor in the country, roofed with slate and ornamented with fantastical animal-shaped spouts at the corner of each gutter. Others were brick, with the brick laid in ornamental patterns, and the roof laid in an imitation of thatch. There were no thatched roofs in this quarter; with the houses so close together, thatch would have been a terrible fire hazard. There were homes with huge, heavy black beams and white plaster between, the plaster painted with fanciful designs. There were wooden manses roofed with tile, and there was even one wooden house completely covered in lacy carvings.

  This was nothing at all like Alderscroft, where most of the houses were modest thatched cottages, where there was plenty of room between each house, where everyone had flowers growing at the foundations and little gravel paths led from each cottage, through patchwork gardens, to the fences and gates letting onto the dirt street.

  The houses back home were warm and welcoming, giving glimpses of the personality of the people inside. These houses gave away nothing, offering a blank-eyed stare to the passersby, aloof and proud as a wealthy matron.

  It's as much as if they're all saying, "I'm rich. Don't you wish you were?" and nothing else.

  The occasional horse or donkey and cart came along the street—more merchants, who had farther to go than just a few streets, and preferred not to walk. And once or twice a Guardsman patrolling the neighborhood on horseback paced past them. Lan stared longingly after them, wishing that he could be wearing that uniform, not plodding along beside his father.

  They left the street that dead-ended on their own court and traveled eastward, away from the center of town but toward more of the same sort of houses. There were occasional stores here, or rather, "discreet business establishments," mostly dressmakers, milliners, and the like. From the street, except for a gown or a hat prominently on display in a window, it wouldn't be possible to tell these places from an ordinary house.

  Archer wasn't disposed to conversation, but finally he made an effort. "You'll be getting in with some lads your age, then," he said heavily. "More like back at the village."

  Lan couldn't imagine a situation less like home, but he murmured, "That would be good."

  "Aye." That sentence seemed to exhaust Archer's store of conversation, and the rest of the walk continued in silence.

  There was a much larger building on the right side of the street they were on, one that towered over its already impressive neighbors and was enclosed by a high wall. Where the town houses were two and three stories tall, this was six; and it occupied a lot that was easily five or six times the size of any of that of the magnificent homes around it. Lan had never been this far on any of his reluctant walks.

  "That'll be the school," Archer said with satisfaction as he surveyed the exterior, his expression as pleased as if he owned it himself. "You'll be coming here every morning about this time; lessons start early, but we're going to meet the Master first."

  Lan still couldn't comprehend what sort of "lessons" could be taught here, and thought for certain that his father must be mistaken. But the nearer they came to the building, the less certain he became.

  His father showed no evidence of hesitation. He led Lan along the high wall—easily a story tall itself—until they came to the wooden gate. It must not have been locked, for Archer pushed it partly open, and motioned Lan to precede him.

  Lan moved hesitantly past his father, and into a mathematically precise courtyard. Most of it was paved. Along the base of the building were pruned evergreen bushes, cone-shaped ones alternating with bushes of three spheres, one atop another. Defining a pathway toward the door were long flower boxes containing neat stands of greenery. Ivy planted in similar boxes climbed the inside of the fence.

  "Come along, then. Master's waiting," Archer said, pulling the gate closed behind him. He led Lan to the front door of the building, a surprisingly small door for such an edifice. It appeared no larger than the door of their own home.

  Archer pulled open that door without knocking, revealing a long corridor with more wooden doors on either side of it, a corridor far plainer, with ordinary wooden floors and plastered walls, than Lan had expected. There was a hum of voices, a murmur that drifted along the corridor like the murmur inside a major temple during a festival.

  Archer immediately turned to the first door on the right and rapped on it. A muffled voice invited them in.

  Lan found himself in a small, plain room, furnished only with a brace of chairs and a large desk that faced the door. An older man sat at the desk, a man with close-dropped gray hair and a stern face, all sharp angles, a face made by a mathematician rather than an artist. This gentleman looked up at their entrance, and gave Archer a thin smile.

  "Ah, Master Chitward," the man said, his voice no warmer than his coolly pleasant expression. "I have been expecting you."

  "This is the boy," Archer said, putting his hand squarely in the middle of Lan's back and pushing him forward, so that he was between Archer and the desk.

  "Lavan, isn't it?" the man said, making a note on a piece of paper in front of him. "Lavan Chitward. Very good; as soon as I know where to place him, we'll have him settled in no time."

  "Aye. I'll be going, then, Master Keileth, I've work to do." Lan turned to look at his father, inarticulate protests freezing on his lips; Archer did not look at him at all. He was perfectly satisfied that he had done his duty, and Master Keileth dismissed him with a nod of thanks.

  "Very good, and thank you, Master Chitward. I hope that we will be able to please you with Lavan's accomplishments." Obviously that was what counted with Master Keileth—pleasing Archer Chitward, not his son.

  Archer opened the door and left without a backward glance at Lan; Master Keileth motioned impatiently to Lan to take a seat. "Sit down, young man," the Master ordered when Lan did not immediately obey. "I'm not minded to put a crick in my neck looking up at you."

  Lan obeyed him, gingerly perching on one of the hard wooden seats, and positioning himself nervously on the very edge of the chair.

  Master Keileth gave all his attention to the paper in front of him for a time, then looked up abruptly. His smile was gone, and his eyes held a calculating expression.

  "Your father is paying a great deal of money for this opportunity you are enjoying," Master Keileth said abruptly. "I trust that you intend to make his expenditure worth his sacrifice." His mud-colored eyes narrowed a trifle as he waited for a response.

  Lan immediately felt a surge of guilt; why hadn't his father told him this? He flushed a little, and Master Keileth's eyes showed that he had noted the flush and found it satisfactory.

  Lan dropped his eyes, and Master Keileth did not see the flush of anger that had followed the guilt. Why was Father willing to pay for this, but not to let me go home and live there? Why did he give up the house in Alderscroft where I was happy?

  He only raised his eyes again when he had his feelings under control. Master Keileth was watching him as carefully as a cat at a mouse hole.

  "I'm go
ing to ask you some questions, Lavan, so that we know where to place you." Another thin smile that did not reach the cool gray eyes. "You are fortunate in that your family chose to move when they did. Our school term is just beginning; we will not have to place you in a special class and give you extra tutoring to force you to catch up."

  Without waiting for Lan to answer, the Master began asking, not a few questions, but a great many. Lan was forced to dredge up everything he had learned at the hands of the village priest and quite a bit he thought he had forgotten.

  By the time Master Keileth was done with him, he was sweating, and quite sure that the Master had decided he was a complete ignoramus. He sat slumped over slightly, feeling completely drained.

  Master Keileth gave no indication how he felt about Lan. He simply made more notes, ignoring Lan altogether. After what seemed like an eternity, the Master finally looked up again.

  "Satisfactory, given your limited education," he said. "I believe we can place you in the Third Form."

  Lan had no notion what that was supposed to mean, but when Master Keileth beckoned peremptorily, Lan rose and followed him out of the office and into the hall.

  They climbed to the third floor, the murmur of voices all around him. Master Keileth brought him into a corridor identical to the one below. This time, they went as far as the middle of the corridor—far enough to see that there were others branching from it—before Master Keileth stopped at a door and opened it without knocking.

  The sounds from within the room stopped immediately, and with a scrape of chairs, everyone in the room stood up.

  When Lan entered, he saw that there were eight adolescents, six males and two females, at small desks facing a larger one, at which an adult teacher presided. They were all younger than he, about fourteen to his sixteen.

  "Herewan, this is a new student, Lavan Chitward," Master Keileth said in his brusque manner. "I have assigned him to the Third Form. Choose someone in this section to take him through his classes."

  That said, the Master left as abruptly as he had arrived, leaving Lan to face nine strangers alone.

  *

  OWYN, the boy assigned to show him around, was a serious, studious youngster with huge brown eyes, untidy dark brown hair, and an unfinished air like a young owl, who performed his duty with utmost solemnity. As Lan had expected, if he had been ranked with his age group, he should have been in Fourth or Fifth Form, and being ranked with the students his junior was a mark against him. His own classmates regarded him with a certain veiled scorn for his lack of what they considered common knowledge.

  Their lives were marked by bells which rang to signify the changing of classes and mealtimes. Pupils remained in their seats; it was the teachers who moved from room to room to impart their specialized knowledge. Lan's set began with Geography, which meant trade routes; routes whose particulars they were expected to have by rote. This knowledge was not only that of finding the way on an unmarked map, but of climate, conditions in each season, dangers on the way, and so forth. They were drilled mercilessly until every person in the class had the current route down perfectly, and only then did the class as a whole move on to the next route. This fascinated Lan; in his mind, he saw the conditions the teacher described, and he had no difficulty in memorizing the route, though he wondered if he might start to get routes mixed up when he had to recall more than one.

  At the end of the class, the pupils stood up as their teacher left the room—Owyn poking him in the back when he wasn't quick enough—and a new teacher entered.

  The next three classes were in language: Hardornen, Rethwellan, and Border dialects. Lan's head was stuffed full before the break came for lunch, and he wondered how he was ever going to keep the languages from running together.

  At the sound of the noon bell, the other students jumped up and stampeded for the door. Owyn solemnly took Lan in charge and led him down to the first floor, down a staircase packed full of strange people. Owyn didn't really have to show Lan the refectory where they all took their lunch. Every pupil in the school was headed in that direction, all of them chattering at the tops of their lungs. The two boys just went along, carried on the stream.

  When they got to the door of the refectory, though, Owyn deserted him, squirming past students who were younger than either of them, and vanishing.

  Lan got out of the traffic to have a look around. This was an enormous room, high-ceilinged and echoing, with the dark timbers of the support beams showing starkly against the white plaster of the ceiling itself. Up above the wainscoting were windows surrounded by handsome carved wood, but from head height on down there were only plain oak panels. There were four long plain oak tables running the length of the room, with chairs, plates, and silverware marking each place. That seemed a little odd to Lan; he would have expected benches, until he saw how that even with the spacing between each student enforced by the seating they managed to poke and elbow each other. There seemed to be no particular order in which people were seated, although there were obviously seats that were preferred. Those Lan's age and older had taken over the seats at the ends of the tables nearest the kitchen doors; it was obvious why, as they were already being served beef and bread and new peas while the rest were still getting seated. The seats least in favor were farthest from the kitchen, and those near the fireplaces, where stray breezes sent random puffs of smoke out into the room from the fire burning there.

  Friends sat together, forming little cliques; sideways glances and whispered comments discouraged approach. Owyn was in one of those, though his group was in a set of the less-favored seats. Lan hesitated, then took an unoccupied chair at the end of one of the tables. By the time he got started on his lukewarm meal, the students at the head of the table were already devouring their second and third portions.

  Across from Lan sat a very plain, lumpish girl who kept her head down and didn't look up from her plate. Next to him was a nervous boy much younger than Lan, eleven or twelve, perhaps, who bolted his food so quickly Lan was afraid he was going to choke, and vanished from the table, casting backward glances over his shoulder as he scuttled away.

  Shortly Lan found out why he had been in such a hurry to leave. One of the oldest boys, a square-jawed, stereotypically handsome specimen of about eighteen with crisply cut dark-blond hair and indolent dark-blue eyes, strolled down from his exalted seat and surveyed the lesser beings at the lowest end of the table with his hands clasped behind his back, looking for all the world as if he was surveying the offerings at a horse fair.

  He took his time about it. Lan decided that discretion was the proper tactic to pursue, and quietly continued to eat, ignoring the young man's arrogant gaze. He could feel eyes burning a hole between his shoulder blades, though, and he didn't like the feeling in the least.

  The chattering at this end of the table quieted, and now Lan sensed that there were a great many more eyes on him.

  "So, this is the new one." A hand fell on Lan's shoulder, and he restrained the impulse to slap it away. "I hear they put you with the babies, boy. What do you have to say for yourself?"

  Lan kept silent, but the arrogant one was joined by three or four of his peers, lesser copies out of the same mold, who rose from their seats and gathered around him. The biggest of them grabbed Lan's chin and wrenched his head around.

  "Speak when you're spoken to, country boy," his harasser said in a deceptively pleasant voice. "Sixth Formers are the masters here; the rest of you are scum. The sooner you get that into your head, the better it will be for you."

  "Don't argue with him!" the homely girl whispered harshly, and the older boy suddenly turned on her.

  "Did you speak out of turn, Froggy?" he asked, with a savage, joyful smile.

  The girl shrank down, looking very like a frightened frog. Her olive skin went pale, and she hid her over-large eyes under the thick, coarse fringe of her dark hair. "He's new, sir," she whispered miserably. "No one's told him the rules, sir. He can't know what to do if he doesn't kno
w the rules, sir."

  Lan's first attacker took pity on her. "Quite right, Froggy. We won't have our ladies paint you today. Must tell the new one the rules, then we can flog him if he disobeys."

  The second one pulled Lan up out of his seat by his collar, then knocked his feet out from under him with a sweep of his leg. The rest of the oldest students had gathered around by then, and they howled with laughter as Lan went to his hands and knees. Lan bit back a yelp of pain, but his eyes watered. Another grabbed a handful of Lan's hair and yanked, forcing his face up so that he looked the leader full in the face.

  "Scrawny, undersized," said the leader meditatively. "We've already got one Rabbit, so that's out of the question. But you—you're decidedly scrubby. I believe I will call you Scrub. Now listen well, Scrub."