A bad sign, the magister told himself. Always a bad sign. And she possessed such a promising mind…
“If it is the text you are presently studying, we could rearrange your schedule,” he offered.
“You mean give me yet another book on interpreting the movement of the stars,” she said, her hazel eyes seeming to spark with frustration.
“You are in your third year of study, Student Alucar, and interpreting the movement of the stars is the prescribed course. Without it, how could you go on in your fourth year to study interpreting the movement of the planets?”
Jenrosa picked up the book she had been reading and waved it at the magister. “But the summaries of interpretations included here directly contradict many of the summaries in the book we had to read last term.”
The magister shrugged. “That, regrettably, is one of the great conundrums of our art. We hope, through constant observation and analysis, to explain away those very contradictions. And yet, without being aware of those contradictions, how would we know where to direct our efforts?”
Jenrosa nodded wearily. “I know the argument, Magister. I just do not see the sense in it. We have been observing and analyzing now for hundreds of years but have managed to do no more than collate even more contradictions. We now have more contradictions than there are stars in the sky. Why don’t they have these problems in any of the other theurgia?”
“Dealing with the vagaries of the soil and of metals, even of rain and the sea, are straightforward compared to the vastness of the Continuum. If it takes a magicker in the Theurgia of Fire, for example, a decade to discover that certain chants and routines produce a harder steel, then how much more time is needed to discover the secrets of those bodies that traverse the night sky and their influence on our lives?”
“But I don’t…” Jenrosa bit off the sentence.
“But you don’t have centuries in which to make great discoveries?” the magister guessed.
Jenrosa blushed, making her freckles stand out more brightly. “I am sorry. I know that reveals abominable pride on my part.”
The magister sighed deeply. “Perhaps it is the heat as much as your frustration that irks you so. But the frustration is something you will have to learn to deal with. As for the heat, even those in the Theurgia of Air have little control over it in summer. You may go. Take the rest of the day off. Do not read any more summaries. Clear your head and come back tomorrow, refreshed.” The other students now looked up eagerly. “Jenrosa alone,” he continued. “The rest of you, obviously less befuddled by contradiction, may continue with your study.”
Jenrosa left the school and found herself on an almost empty street. A woman carrying a basket of bread on her head walked by, the sun’s heat adding to her burden. A dozen steps away a street vendor, sweating and swearing at the lack of customers, was packing away his stall. Air shimmered above buildings and stone pavings, and the harbor was aflame with reflected light.
Jenrosa put her hand in her tunic pocket and jingled a few loose farthings. She decided to make for a local tavern that promised shade and a beer, but when she got there, she discovered the tavern was filled with other refugees from the summer sun. After buying her drink, she ended up sitting on the street under the shade of the tavern’s eaves.
She had intended not to dwell on the incident at the school and instead think about the cooling swim she would have in the local baths west of the docks once the sun was down, but her frustration at having lost her temper thwarted her intentions. She knew the magister had let her off easily this time, but another outburst could see her brought before the maleficum, and that could result in her dismissal from the Theurgia of Stars. And where would she be then? The theurgia gave her a place to sleep at night, fed her twice a day, trained her for a lucrative career, and paid her a modest stipend that allowed her to buy the occasional beer and go out with her friends every few days.
She took a swig of her drink and promised to do better. She would work harder at study, work harder at trying to comprehend the conflicting paradigms nesting within the Theurgia. She must not lose her position. The theurgia was home… and more. She never regretted the time and effort spent actually learning as opposed to simply memorizing. She yearned to discover new ways of doing things, to find links between the magic of the different theurgia. But the magic guilds were increasingly stratified and stultified, increasingly separated from each other.
She dribbled some of the beer from her mug onto the ground and concentrated. The puddle divided into droplets that started moving around one another. She saw a tuft of grass growing out of a crack in the tavern’s wall, pulled out some of its shoots, and carefully placed them vertically in the droplets. They whirled around like skinny dancers. She muttered a few words and the tips of the shoots changed color.
Jenrosa laughed at the absurd spectacle. No, she told herself, not absurd. No one else could perform magic so easily from different disciplines and make it work together, and only as a student within the theurgia would she have the opportunity to learn all that she wanted.
And, she reminded herself again, she had no other home. She had been six when the magicker with his entourage of students and guards had come to her village. She had been outside the house she shared with four siblings and a mother who cared more about getting her next flagon of wine than looking after her children, when she had noticed the procession of strangers. She was feeding scraps to the pig—her family’s only asset—when she saw the man who led the way was wearing the stiff-collared tunic of a magicker. As Jenrosa watched, he made his way through the village, looking neither right nor left, but walking with determined precision as if he was following someone else’s footsteps. When he finally came abreast of Jenrosa he stopped and turned to stare at her with eyes as blue as the sky.
“What is your name?” he asked gently.
Jenrosa was not used to being spoken to by adults, and she hesitated. The magicker smiled at her and made a sign in the air. A white mist seemed to follow his finger, forming a sign that raised goosebumps on her skin. Without knowing how or why she did it, she copied the sign, and the mist disappeared. The magicker was watching her keenly now, and came closer. He bent over and drew a second sign, this time on the ground. There was no mist or magic this time, except that again she was compelled to copy him. As soon as she had finished it, a small whirl of air formed above them, spraying dust into her eyes. She blinked the dust away and saw that both signs had gone. The magicker pulled a bracelet off his wrist and said something in a language she did not understand. The bracelet seemed to melt and reform before her eyes, taking on the shape of a silvery snake. She touched it and the snake immediately reformed into the bracelet. The members of the magicker’s entourage started talking excitedly among themselves. One of them came forward and handed the magicker a simple wooden drinking bowl, poured water into it from a flask, and stepped back. The magicker made a sign again, tracing it in the water. Before Jenrosa’s eyes, the water seemed to change, become greener and deeper somehow. She thought she saw fish swimming in it, and other creatures she did not recognize; it seemed to her she was looking down into an ocean from a great height. She placed her palm over the bowl, closed her eyes, then took her palm away. The bowl held just normal well water again, clear and untroubled. The magicker stood up. He looked ready to laugh out loud.
“One more test,” he told her in his gentle voice, and pointed above his head. Without any control over her own actions she looked up, and even though it was a clear day she saw a group of stars set against the blue sky. She stared at them for a long time before anything happened, but then they started to whirl about a central point, like dancers around a spring tree. Some of the entourage clapped at the performance. Jenrosa pointed at the stars and they blazed briefly in a glorious light and then disappeared.