Staring, Candlemas sputtered, "What a barrel of blather! What superstitious claptrap! Elk aren't reborn to be shot again. Elk calves come from mother elk-bull elk know what to do with randy cows, at least! They make little elk. You can have as many elk as you like. They're free for the taking, and so is magic!"
Put out, the steward stamped to another table. Propped against a cracked urn was a painting of a boy teaching his dog to jump for a snack. But a giant flea's claw had punctured the boy's face. Furiously, Candlemas kited the ruined painting at a window. It rebounded off the shield spell and clattered on the floor.
He whirled. "Why can't you just believe me when I tell you something? The knowledge I offer is the sum total of eons of study by the most learned mages of all time. Men and women so wise they transcend humanity to challenge the gods themselves! But if you question every little thing I tell you-"
"I don't believe anything I don't witness myself." Sunbright cut in. "I don't believe half of what I witness anyway. The eyes can be deceived just as easily as the mind, which you would know if you ever hunted elk in a spring fog near the ocean at sunrise. You'd loose a quiver full of arrows into wisps of fog and come home with nothing on your shoulders. And where would you be then? Hungry!"
"I don't need to go hunting!" Candlemas shouted back. He was unsure when the shouting had begun. "If I want venison, I ring a bell and tell the cook's boy. Hunting is for peasants! It requires no more knowledge than a cat pawing a mouse. It's instinctive. Any fool-"
"Fool? The hunters of my tribe are the smartest, fastest, toughest men and women on the tundra! The tribe counts on them-"
"Will you stop nattering about that misbegotten clot of lunatics who hunker on the prairie and gnaw knucklebones by moonlight? I'm sick of hearing about them! Forget them! That's in the past. You've been blessed by the gods, can't you see that? You're in Castle Delia, on the threshold of the entire Netherese Empire, with a chance to advance up the ranks of true nobility-"
"Nobles who hunt men for sport?" the barbarian sneered. "Nobles who starve entire cities without conscience? Nobles who dump garbage on sacred groves-"
"If you don't care to associate with nobles, why the blazes did you come here in the first place?"
"You invited me!" Sunbright jabbed a finger like a fireplace poker. "But I'll admit I need help. I scoured the empire for any sign of Greenwillow and failed to trace her! I was despairing of what to do when you came along-"
"I invited you here because I thought you showed promise! You've exhibited a natural flair for magic-or call it shamanism if you please-and I thought you could think! Instead you rant like a crack-brained child about birds and flowers, and clouds shaped like oysters!"
"Oysters?"
"Can't you get this straight? Can't you see your opportunity? The Neth are the greatest, most enchanted race ever to inhabit this sphere! We've learned all there is to know about magic, mostly. We've sweated and slaved to learn the rules of dweomer, to bend magic to one's will! Based on that-"
"But at what price! To lose your souls? To be heartless fiends, insensitive to suffering, like vampires come up from the ice holes?"
"Damn your ice hole! Vampires come from dark caves, not underwater! How will you ever learn clinging to these foolish beliefs? Can nothing I say penetrate that stony barbarian skull? Open your mind and think!"
"I'll not bargain a bear for his teeth! I know what magic costs! I've seen the old ones with their bent backs, their very hearts and livers shrunk beyond endurance from practicing the ways of the shaman, from healing the sick and tasting the wind, warning of storms and tracking the seals under the ice. No one twists magic to his will. Magic twists the twister until it ties you in knots. No one takes up magic unless he's willing to sacrifice their all for the good of the tribe. Yet you would have me believe that a wizard can reach out a finger and turn magic on and off like a spit-gut!"
"Like a what?" Then the arcanist sighed. "Never mind. We're getting nowhere. I had hoped this would be your first lesson, and we'd get through the elementary principles quickly. Instead I'm arguing the origins of magic!
"The question has been asked before, you know," Candlemas continued. "Wizards have sought the source of magic for centuries. Though the goddess Mystryl is certainly in control of a great deal of what comprises the weave, no one believes she controls it all. Certainly she didn't create the weave…"
"Why not just say so, then?" retorted Sunbright. "I'd have accepted that answer!"
"What?" Candlemas was suddenly tired, as if he'd conjured an elephant from the far southern deserts. He wished he had. A mad mammoth might prove less truculent than this hammerheaded barbarian. "What would you accept?"
"That no one knows the source of magic!"
"Oh, very well. Here, let me say, 'No one knows what the source of magic is.' How's that?"
Sunbright folded his arms again. "Go on. I'm listening."
"Good, good." Candlemas dragged out a stool and sat down. But a leg was cracked, and he almost spilled onto the floor. "Uh, that's all for today. I'm exhausted. Come back tomorrow morning."
"Very well." The barbarian padded out of the workshop, sure and silent as a panther.
Candlemas watched him go. "Ye gods. What a bargain I've struck… what else can go wrong?"
A page, a young boy in a black-and-white tabard, scurried around a screen. "Master Candlemas? Lady Polaris wants you."
The pudgy mage stifled a groan. "That's what can go wrong."
Threading his tables and stacks, Candlemas came to a black palantir mounted on an eagle's claw stand. In the globe floated the shining head of Lady Polaris, his liege lord. Even Candlemas, who had lust for women but no love, felt a pang when he beheld her. Polaris had snow-white hair cascading around her face and shoulders. Her face was calm as a queen's, only far more lovely. She was the most beautiful woman in the empire, and grew more beautiful every year, a beauty that bespoke enchantment, though no one knew her secret. Her mysteries were manifold and unfathomable. Her stunning beauty made her master of any scene, and rendered men all but dumb, even filtered by the smoky glass of the palantir. Even the page boy was awestruck.
"Candlemas," she said without preamble. "How goes the solution to the blight?"
"Uh, well, milady." Polaris disliked negative news. "We're making progress-"
"Good." She dismissed the problem. "I need something."
Always, thought Candlemas. How many hands did she think he possessed?
"You must fashion a device to move bones without my moving or blinking or having to chant. In the shape of a brooch, perhaps, but nothing that will attract attention. I need it by the new moon. Have you got that?"
"Yes, milady. I'll get-" But the palantir had gone blank.
"Bones!" Candlemas swore. "What kind of fool does she take me for? The only bones she ever touches are dice! And while she's gambling and demanding my help, whole villages will wither and die! Where will she get money then, eh? Where?"
But Candlemas was ranting to himself while a wide-eyed page stared. "Get busy, boy." The boy scooted away. Candlemas chided himself, "And me too."
Sunbright didn't go far. There was something he had to do, and he'd been dreading it, putting it off. Now was the time to face it.
He stood in a stone-lined hallway cut by windows down one side. As with Candlemas's airy tower, nothing showed outside but the purple slopes of the Barren Mountains. Tightening his gut, Sunbright stepped to the window, braced both hands against the window frame, and leaned out to look.