That got a sympathetic nod . . . of sorts. “We usually get together for a while in the evening, a half glass before the eighth glass, down in the common room. You might try it.”
“I didn’t even know . . . I mean, I’ve seen the common room, but only in the day . . .”
His laugh at my confusion was genuine, and when we parted, I felt that I’d managed to avoid, for the moment, another pitfall. But I was going to have to be very careful until I could figure out how to develop protections of the sort that Master Dichartyn had mentioned.
I still also had to figure out and then write up the proof for Master Dichartyn.
When I got back to my room, it took me more than a glass, and several drafts to write what I did. At lunch I made a point of sitting across from Johanyr and Diazt and making a special effort to be friendly. I felt that they were warmer, but I didn’t know, not for certain.
After I left the table, Master Dichartyn was already in the hallway outside the dining hall.
“We’re headed to the materials section of the workshops. You’ve already figured out some aspects of substitution. Now you’ll get a chance to learn another and put it to work.” He turned and strode quickly down the corridor and out through the doors, moving as quickly as I’d ever seen him.
As we walked, he said, “The materials for the workshops come over the Bridge of Stones. That’s where the name comes from. All the workshops have outside and inside entrances, and each workroom is lead-lined. That is so that no imager can affect the work of another. That is particularly important for some . . . efforts.”
I was beginning to sweat by the time we reached the large gray structure a hundred yards north of the quadrangle. The building held the various workshops, not that I’d been in more than a handful of them. The door where we entered was on the main level on the west side of the building, beside a raised loading dock, behind which was a set of sliding warehouse doors. They were closed.
As we stepped into the workshop, a space not much larger than ten yards by fifteen, I could see that the length of the room was filled with barrels, four lines of them, stacked on top of each other three deep. Four small topless wooden crates were set on a workbench a yard or so from the nearest line of barrels. That was it-except for the older imager in somewhat dingy gray who hurried through the door at the other side of the workshop.
“Grandisyn, this is Rhennthyl. He’s the new imager second I told you about.” Master Dichartyn turned to me. “This is Grandisyn. He’s a senior imager tertius. He knows more about imaging materials than most masters. I will leave you in his hands.” With that, he hurried away.
“You’re fortunate to have him as a preceptor,” Grandisyn said. “Fortunate, but he’ll make you work and think and then some.”
“I have noticed that, sir.”
“Just Grandisyn, Rhennthyl.”
“Rhenn, please. When people use my full name, I always wonder just what I did wrong.”
He laughed. “I can see that. My papa did the same.” After a moment, he began to explain. “Your task will not be easy at first, but it is simple. All you have to do is image some of these aluminum bars.” Grandisyn lifted a bar of a silvery metal out of the wooden crate on the right end, which had three of the small ingots in it, the only crate that did, then pointed to the barrels lined up along the wall. “It should be easier if you concentrate on imaging from the barrels. They’re filled with high-grade bauxite. Master Dichartyn said you might have to work at figuring it out, but that you could do it. Take your time.” He gave me a smile, then hastened off.
I was still holding the small aluminum bar, possibly worth several hundred gold crowns, and I was supposed to image more of them? In a way, from what I’d read, it made sense. Refining it was costly, and that made it very valuable, but why weren’t we refining gold? Or platinum?
I wasn’t quite sure what I was doing, but I concentrated on the image of the bar, the shining light metal, right on the workbench, and tried to visualize a vague link between the barrels and the bar I was attempting to image into existence.
A series of dull clanks followed.
Not only did I have a bar, somewhat larger than the one I’d been shown, but there was a line of aluminum fragments on the stone floor running spiderweb-fashion toward the barrels.
Obviously, my vague link needed to be far less direct.
I kept trying, and by the end of the fourth glass, I was exhausted, and my head was pounding. But there was a wooden box filled with the metal ingots, some of which had been refashioned from all the loose fragments I’d created before I’d figured out how to image without creating patterns of aluminum running from the barrels. Yet, in the end, refashioning from the fragments had been far easier.
I finally just sat down on the stool that had been tucked away under the bench. I was just too tired to do more. When I’d first imaged that small part of the Factorius Masgayl’s portrait, I had had no idea how exhausting imaging would turn out to be.
Before long, Grandisyn walked in and crossed the floor to the wooden crate. He looked at the crate, and then at me. “Hmmmm. We may have to find other things for you. I’ll be talking to Master Dichartyn. You look done in. Go get some rest.”
I didn’t need any more encouragement.
Back in my room, I slept for more than a glass and then had to hurry to the dining hall for dinner, where I ended up at the bottom of the table among several thirds I didn’t know, but I did my best to be cheerful.
After dinner I went back to my room and read some more, but I was careful to make my way down to the common room about a half glass before eight. The common room was in the lower level on the north end of the building, little more than a narrow space some fifteen yards long and seven wide with tables and benches spaced irregularly. The wall lamps were infrequent and wicked down to minimal light, so that the impression was of gloom. I found Johanyr and several others in a corner, with chairs pulled around a newishlooking table of a design centuries old. It should have been battered, but wasn’t. It took me several moments to realize why.
“Rhenn . . . pull up a chair.” That was Diazt. “We were talking about what’s got the masters all stirred up.”
I lifted a chair and set it between Johanyr and Shannyr, then sat down. My feet hurt, and I still had a trace of a headache.
“Only half the masters were at dinner, and neither Master Dichartyn nor Master Poincaryt was there,” said a short muscular secondus.
“They usually aren’t,” Shannyr said. No one looked in his direction.
“The newsheets said a Caenenan shore battery fired on one of our merchanters.”
“Why would they do that?” asked Shannyr. “Merchanters don’t carry cannon.”
“What would that have to do with the Collegium?” I inquired.
Diazt laughed. “The Collegium has something to do with everything in Solidar.”
“Master Dichartyn’s your preceptor, isn’t he?” asked Johanyr.
“Yes, but he didn’t say anything, except he cut my session short this morning, and then let Grandisyn tell me what to do in the workrooms. He left in a hurry.”
“They were all like that today.”
“Did he let anything slip, even indirectly?” pressed Johanyr.
“The only thing he said was that both Ferrum and Jariola had nasty habits in making snoopy strangers disappear.”
“I told you it couldn’t be just Caenen!” declared Shannyr.
“Does the Council have any problems with the Oligarch there?” I asked.
“There’s not a country in the world that doesn’t have problems with the Oligarch,” someone else said. I couldn’t tell who with the quietness of the words and the dimness.
“There’s not a country in all of Terahnar that doesn’t have problems with Solidar,” replied Johanyr.
“Because of imaging?” I suggested. “We don’t have that many imagers.”
“No one else has anywhere near as many.”
“You can’t have many imagers if you kill most of them as children,” added Shannyr.