Dragonspell: The Southern Sea. Katharine Kerr

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      ‘You don’t dare give this up, you know. Or do you want to go slowly but inevitably mad?’

      ‘Of course I don’t! And I’ll follow orders, just like I always followed orders when Da was teaching me sword craft. I just don’t understand why these blasted pictures are so important. I mean, with Da, I always could figure it out – this exercise strengthens your arm, or that one worked on your grip, but this is all too peculiar.’

      ‘Ah. Well, what you’re doing is indeed like your Da’s exercises; you’re just strengthening mental muscles. Here, when the bards sing about dweomer, they always talk about strange powers, don’t they? Where do you think those powers come from? The gods?’

      ‘Not the gods, truly. Well, I suppose, you just get them. I mean, it’s dweomer, isn’t it? That’s what makes it magical.’ She suddenly realized that she was sounding inane. ‘I mean, magical things just happen.’

      ‘They don’t, at that, although that’s what everyone thinks. All those puissant powers and strange spells come out of the mind, human or elven as the case may be. Dweomer is a matter of mental faculties. Know what they are?’

      ‘I don’t.’

      ‘When you learn to read – and I think me we’d best start lessons in that, too – I’ll find you a book written by one of our Rhodry’s illustrious ancestors, Mael the Seer himself, called On the Rational Categories. In it he defines the normal mental faculties for humans, and most of them apply to elves, too, such as seeing, hearing, and all the other physical senses, as well as logical thinking, intuition, and a great many more, including, indeed, the very ability to make categories and generalizations, which is not a skill to be taken lightly or for granted, my petite partridge. These are, as he calls them, the rational faculties, open and well known among elves and men, although the elves have a few faculties that humans don’t, such as the ability to see the Wildfolk. Every child should develop them as he grows; if someone’s blind, say, or simply can’t remember things, we pity them and feel they’ve been robbed of part of their birth-right.

      ‘Then there are the buried, hidden, or occult faculties that exist in the mind like chicks in a new-laid egg. While every elf and human possesses a selection of them in potential, very few are born with them already developed. You can call these faculties “powers” if you wish, though it sounds perhaps too grand for perfectly natural phenomena. Do you understand the idea of a category of the natural? As opposed to the supernatural?’

      ‘Uh, what? Well, uh …’

      ‘The Maelwaedd’s book becomes a necessity, I see.’

      ‘Very well, but what do these rotten picture exercises have to do with all this grand-sounding stuff?’

      ‘Oh. Truly, I did ramble a bit. Well, if you want to awaken these sleeping powers, you use pictures, mostly, and names and sometimes music to go with them. Once you’ve awakened them, you can use them over and over. Perpend – once you’ve learned how to be logical, can’t you re-awaken that faculty whenever you’ve got a problem to solve? Of course. Just so, after you develop the scrying faculty, say, you can open it with the right images and words any time you want. A great master like Nevyn doesn’t even need the names and images any more, for that matter. For him the occult faculties have become manifest.’

      Although his small lecture was so difficult to understand that Jill felt like a halfwit (as the organizing faculties go, Salamander’s were far from being the best in Annwn), everything he said resonated in her soul, with a hint more than a promise that here was a key to open a treasure-chest.

      ‘But I’ll tell you what, my robin of sweet song, you can try a new exercise if you’d like. Instead of using the scroll, make up your own image and try to realize it clearly in your mind. I don’t mean draw it or suchlike – we don’t have any ink, anyway – just decide on some simple thing and try to see it, like an inn you once stayed in, or your horse Sunrise, he who now eats the king’s bountiful oats – somewhat like that.’

      ‘Well and good, then, I will. As long as it’s all right to jump around like this.’

      ‘Oh, by the gods! This prentice-work isn’t truly even dweomer. You’re just learning some useful tools. I can’t imagine that the least harm could come of it.’

      On his final night in Wylinth, Pommaeo and Alaena quarrelled. Since he was waiting on table, Rhodry heard all of it; they seemed as indifferent to his presence as they were to that of the furniture. As soon as he’d laid out the meal and poured the wine, he retreated to the kitchen, where he found Disna and Vinsima listening at the door to the distant sound of lifted voices.

      ‘It looks good,’ Rhodry blurted out. ‘She’s refusing to give him a promise of any kind whatsoever, and he’s accusing her of having other suitors. Does she?’

      ‘Only one and he’s seventy-odd years old,’ Disna said. ‘So it looks very good indeed.’

      ‘I’m not breathing easy yet,’ Vinsima said. ‘What if they make things up with lots of kisses? Well, the dessert needs serving, boy, so you’ve got a good excuse to go back in.’

      When Rhodry brought in the gilded plate of small sugared cakes, they were the only sweet thing in the room. Straight and stiff on their cushions, Alaena and Pommaeo glared at each other from opposite sides of the small table.

      ‘Take those cakes away!’ Alaena snapped.

      ‘Yes mistress.’

      ‘They happen to be my favourite kind,’ Pommaeo said with ice in his voice. ‘Bring them here.’

      Rhodry hesitated.

      ‘I said go!’

      ‘Yes mistress.’

      He hurried out just as Alaena was informing her guest that he had no business giving any orders at all to one of her slaves. Some half an hour later the doorkeeper came rushing into the kitchen to announce that Pommaeo had left in a violent temper. Yet first thing in the morning Miko appeared with a long letter from his master, one that was full of sweet apologies, or so Disna said, because the mistress had read it aloud while her hair was being combed. Much to Disna’s disgust, Alaena had written a conciliatory note in return.

      ‘And now I’m to hurry to his beastly inn and deliver it before he leaves. Oh well, at least he’ll be gone all winter. He’s not the type to travel in the rain.’

      ‘Our mistress can read and write?’ Rhodry was honestly amazed.

      ‘Of course she can.’ Disna wrinkled her nose at him. ‘That barbarian kingdom of yours must have been awfully primitive, that’s all I can say. You’re surprised by the strangest things.’

      ‘Well, so I am. I hope you don’t think too badly of me.’

      Disna merely gave him a slow smile, hinting of many answers, then hurried off on her errand.

      That afternoon Alaena summoned Rhodry to her side. Dressed in a simple white tunic, she was sitting cross-legged on a cushion at the low table and frowning at her fortune-telling tiles when he came in. A pair of warty-brown gnomes materialized at his entrance and grinned at him.

      ‘There you are. Now that I’ll have the time, we’re going to start educating you.’ She swept the tiles to one side, СКАЧАТЬ