Despite the sudden knife-like headache that has shivered through his skull, Lorn lowers the truncheon and turns towardthe woman in shimmering blue, his voice filled with concern. “Are you all right?”
“Ah … I think so. Yes.” She does not quite shiver, as she bends toward the fallen man.
Through slightly blurred vision, Lorn sees that she is a redhead, and lightly freckled, with creamy skin, and a full figure under the shimmering blue tunic.
“What did you do?” she asks. “He … just turned away and left.”
“Just offered an opinion ….” Lorn’s laugh sounds easy. “He won’t be bothering anyone soon.” The warm and friendly smile appears as he also steps toward the fallen junior trader. “We need to attend to your friend.”
The male trader squints, rolls to his knees, glances up at the redhead, then at Lorn. “What did you do to Halthor? He’d like as kill you, student magus or not.” He slowly rises to his feet, but he shivers and staggers.
Lorn extends a hand. “As I told your lady friend, I offered my opinion to the fellow, that he take himself elsewhere.”
“He’s never heeded anyone’s advice before.” The trader groans as he straightens up. “Cracked in my skull.”
“This … young man,” says the woman, “offered it rather persuasively. Halthor was almost doubled over. He has a cracked rib or two, perhaps.”
The male trader lowers his head and holds it in both hands. “My head’s splitting.”
“I’m sure it only feels that way,” says the woman.
Lorn’s fingers brush the man’s skull.
“That’s better,” admits the wounded trader.
Somehow the slight healing Lorn can offer the trader also lessens his own headache, if marginally.
“Are you a healer, young ser?” asks the woman.
“Me?” Lorn shakes his head ingenuously. “I’ve picked up some from my older sister, who is, but I’m afraid I’m poor in comparison to her.” He looks eastward, along the white stones of the road, past two couples who are strolling in a leisurely fashion down the cross-street toward the pavilions that wait on the beach front park. “I think you do need tolie down before long. Are your … quarters far from here?”
“No. Just two streets up.” The trader takes a step and pales, then takes another.
“Are you sure you’re all right, Alyet?” asks the woman.
“For two streets … yes.”
Lorn takes the man’s arm once more. “Just lean on me.”
“And me.” The woman takes his other arm, and the three walk slowly eastward until they reach an archway on the uphill side of the way.
“There …” mumbles Alyet. “There.”
The woman and Lorn guide the trader up three steps and toward a darkened doorway to the left. She fumbles a shining brass key from Alyet’s belt wallet and unlocks the door.
Once inside, they cross a small sitting room that holds but a small table with two chairs, and a low settee under the high window. A sleeping chamber barely big enough for the bed and a chest lies through a narrow archway.
They help Alyet lower himself onto the bed that is draped with a dark blue coverlet.
“Are you sure he’ll be all right?” asks the woman.
“He has some bad bruises, and a lump on his skull, but nothing’s broken, I think,” Lorn ventures, “and his head will ache for days.”
“Ryalth … be careful … sorry … don’t think I can see you home,” Alyet apologizes.
“I’ll make sure she’s safe,” Lorn promises. “Don’t you worry.”
Ryalth raises her well-formed but narrow eyebrows. She does not protest as they leave Alyet’s quarters.
Once they are back on the Road of Eternal Light, standing beneath the arch of curved white stone-merely alabaster, and not sunstone-Lorn turns to Ryalth, “We should decide what we should do tonight.”
Her eyebrows arch. “I do not know you, ser, and you appear to be a student.”
“I am indeed a student, but that’s all the more reason for you not to worry. Besides, you scarcely need to end the evening on such an upsetting note.” Lorn takes the young woman’s hand and smiles winningly.
V
COOL WINTER SUNLIGHT angles through the high windows and strikes the age- and chaos-whitened granite walls well above the heads of the five figures in the discussion room, illuminating the space with an indirectly intense light. Four student Magi’i sit on straight-backed chairs facing the Lector who stands before them in shimmering white tunic, trousers, belt, and boots.
Lorn wonders, not for the first time, whether the Lector’s smallclothes shimmer as well, even though he knows his father’s do not-but somehow, a Lector who monitors his studies is more forbidding.
Ciesrt’elth shifts his weight in his chair, and it creaks. Lector Abram’elth ignores the sound and looks across the group of four with eyes that glow golden, as do the eyes of many of the senior Magi’i. “The time has come for you to once again observe a chaos tower, this time in light of the knowledge that you have acquired and with all your senses, and not just your eyes. You will be escorted in pairs. Ciesrt’elth and Rustyl’elth will be first. Tyrsal’elth and Lorn’elth will be the second group. You two in the second group will wait here.”
After the other three leave and the golden oak door closes, Tyrsal glances at Lorn. “Why would it look different now? The tower, I mean?”
“We’ve seen one before, and we’ve seen the drawings. It probably looks the same, just like the drawings, except it would have to glow with chaos. It is a chaos tower. That’s probably what the Lector wants to know-whether we can sense the chaos.” Lorn smiles and laughs gently.
“Maybe it doesn’t look like that at all with chaos senses. Maybe we just thought we saw a tower before.”
“What would be the point of deceiving us about that? It would just be a waste of time.”
“They say that none of the halls in the Palace of Eternal Light are actually the way people draw them,” Tyrsal counters. “And that they change them all the time.”
“That’s different. Anyone can request an audience with the Emperor or his Voice or his Advisors. They don’t know who might be coming in, and I suppose the Emperor cannot trust anyone. Except the Hand, and that’s because no one knows who he is. The senior and more talented Magi’i could use a chaos glass to scree the Palace. That’s why they have lancers and firelances behind the screens throughout the Palace. Here … the only ones who see the towers are the Magi’i, and the older students.”
“Have you … a chaos glass?” Tyrsal stumbles over his words.
“Hardly. If my father didn’t discipline me for that, the Lectors certainly would, and I’m not sure father wouldn’t be worse.”
“Ah …” Tyrsal swallows, then quickly asks, “What about the workings of the fireships and the firewagons? They’re all sealed, and anyone besides a magus who opens them gets chaos-fried.”
“Exactly,” suggests Lorn.
“I suppose you’re right,” Tyrsal concedes.
“Maybe I’m not, but we’ll find out soon enough.”
“Do you know if we’re going to see the same tower or another tower for the Magi’i?”
“The same, I’d imagine.”
“They all have to be close, don’t they?”
Lorn shrugs. “They could be anywhere in the Quarter. They do have to be surrounded by the heavy granite and sunstone, but everything in the Quarter of the Magi’i is built that way.”
“That’s true.” Tyrsal lapses into silence.
In time, the door to the discussion room opens, and Lector Abram’elth follows the other two students back inside. He does not’ close the wooden door to the corridor.
“Not a word,” the Lector says to Ciesrt and Rustyl, “not until we depart the room.” He beckons to Lorn and Tyrsal.
The remaining two students rise, and Ciesrt and Rustyl reseat themselves in the cool mid-day winter light that the very stones of the building have amplified in some indefinable fashion.
Without speaking, the Lector leads Lorn and Tyrsal out of the discussion room and along the corridor toward the private study rooms of the Magi’i of the school, then through a gleaming cupridium door, and along a narrower corridor which ends in another cupridium door that has neither latches nor handles nor knobs.