“Yes, Archmage,” the younger man mumbled.
Planir sighed heavily. “As for Otrick, well, I’m not prepared to give up on the old pirate just yet.”
“It’s been seven seasons out of the eight,” Shiv pointed out, face sorrowful.
“While he is still breathing, as long as we can tend his bodily needs,” Planir’s voice tailed off. “If nothing comes of ’Sar’s trip, then yes, I will take the matter to Council, but even then I will be advising against any hasty decision. Otrick is not suffering, after all.”
Glum silence hung heavily in the air.
“I know you couldn’t sanction Council involvement, but can I go?” Shiv looked up eagerly. “If this Gilmarten’s element is air, with my water talents and Usara holding the earth we’d only need a fire mage to have a nexus.”
“Where would you find this fire mage?” Planir smiled at Shiv’s expression. “I’ll make a deal with you; if you square the circle before ’Sar does, I’ll send you to give him the answer.”
He opened the door and ushered the younger man out, Shiv’s brow now knotted in thought. Planir swung the heavy black oak shut and leaned his forehead against it for an instant. Forcing a smile, he crossed the room and opened a second door, skillfully made to remain unnoticed in the lines and folds of the carved paneling. The Archmage entered a small room dominated by an elegant bedstead whose curtains of yellow silk were embroidered with bright vines and flowers. Larissa sat in a chair upholstered in the same style, hands folded neatly in her lap and ankles crossed. She stared out of the window at the sunset, face set like the snowy stone of the marble washstand beside her. A gown of azure satin overlaid with gauze expertly flattered her figure while her chestnut hair was caught up in combs and curls, discreet cosmetics enhancing eyes, cheeks and lips.
“And now you are, what, angry or upset?” Planir sat on the edge of the bed and took off his boots. “Or both?”
Larissa glared at him. “You tell Shiv I’m simply here to serve as a means of spreading your own particular rumors? After all, everyone’s going to believe what I tell them, aren’t they? If you can’t trust a woman to spread pillow talk, who can you trust!” Rising color clashed with the softer blush of her rouge.
“You’ve always been fully in my confidence when it comes to seasoning the gossip with a few judicious tidbits, my dearest.” Planir dropped his shirt on the floor. “As I recall, you’ve played the game willingly and with considerable skill.” He grinned at her.
“What if I did?” she said crossly. “Doesn’t it bother you, what everyone is saying? And now I hear I can expect sniggers and innuendo anywhere from Col to the Cape of Winds! My role is just to reassure all and sundry that you are a man with manly appetites?”
“I don’t deny people thinking that is something I can turn to my advantage, but I can’t do anything about gossip. I’m very sorry if you find it humiliating; frankly, I could do without it myself,” Planir shrugged. “The office of Archmage has many and varied powers, but stopping people thinking what they want is beyond me.”
“But you use the prattle, turn it against the tattlers.” Larissa’s voice was losing the certainty of affront in the face of Planir’s calm.
“True enough,” he agreed. “I use all and every means to discharge my duties; I told you that from the outset. But I haven’t done anything to create gossip. I have neither flaunted you nor hidden you away as if we had anything to be ashamed of. That’s the other side of the coin after all, if I were to let myself be influenced by the whispers and snide remarks.” Planir unlaced his plain broadcloth breeches, stepping out of them and crossing to a wardrobe where he found a clean shirt of soft silk. “I told you from the start that there would be talk and that it would be for you to judge if it ever weighed too heavily in the scales against me.”
Larissa looked down at her hands and the room was silent but for the rustle of silk as the Archmage dressed.
“All I ask, my dearest, is that you weigh my words before anyone else’s,” Planir said gently. “Have I ever lied to you? Have I ever deceived you? Do you believe me when I tell you that your wit and your company, your charm and your passion, are the greatest gifts ever bestowed on me? With you at my side, I would count myself the most fortunate man in the world, were I the meanest miner in Gidesta, never mind the Archmage of Hadrumal.”
“But you are the Archmage of Hadrumal,” said Larissa with a catch in her voice.
“I am,” Planir nodded. “And I have to bear all that comes with it. You do not, unless you choose to, my darling. You know that.”
Another silence threatened to lengthen interminably until bells all over the many-towered city began to strike their chimes. Planir looked at a small timepiece on the night-stand beside the bed. “For the moment, we have to decide if we are going to the dance at the Seaward Hall. There will be grist for the rumor mill in every set we dance together, but then again if we do not go that will spark a whole new round of speculation and rumor. Has his eye lighted on some other maiden? Has she got the advancement she sought, whatever that might be? Is he moving on now he’s got another notch on his bedpost, or has she tired of being an old man’s folly?” His voice was gently teasing. “But that won’t alter the fact that if you prefer not to go, that is good enough for me. If we go, that’s of no significance beyond the fact that I like to dance, that I particularly love to dance with you, and that I feel like shedding the cares of my office for an evening and reveling with the most beautiful girl in Hadrumal.” He moved to the door, an elegant figure in understated black silk, tailoring impeccable.
Larissa stood up, twitching aside the skirts of her gown. “Find your dancing slippers, O revered Archmage.” She was smiling with a combative light in her eye. “Let them talk. Though, as for reveling,” she linked her arm through his as they departed, “that will depend on whether or not you tire yourself out on the dance floor, won’t it?”
The Great Forest,
6th of Aft-Summer
While Usara was fussing around with his mirror and a spill from the fire, I followed one of the healers out of the hollow and down a farther slope in the forest floor to a long narrow lakelet. Trickles of water ran down the fern-draped face of rock laid in layers of gray and ocher pierced with damp blackness here and there. Cool struck up from the slowly rippling water; groups of men and women were bathing, washing clothing and picking their way carefully along a slippery green ledge to fill pans from the clean water of the spring. I washed thoroughly, gasping at the chill on my hot body but relishing being clean again. Draping my jerkin around me, I went in search of what passed for clean linen.
The man Harile was busy with bowls of steeping herbs in the mouth of the cave and nodded at me as I rummaged in my bag. “You are of the Folk?” He sounded doubtful.
“No,” I shook my head. “My father was, but I am an out-dweller.” I had that much clear by now. My parents’ past was theirs and my future was my own. I lifted the precious book out of the bottom of my satchel and checked that the wrappings were intact. I looked at Harile. “That song you were singing earlier, it was ‘Mazir’s Healing Hands,’ wasn’t it?”
He glanced up from his work. “What of it?”
“Did you know there is power in the song, in the jalquezan?” I smiled at him.
Polite mystification creased Harile’s forehead. “What kind of power?”