Terisa remembered the downward stair; but she quickly became lost among the doors and turnings that followed. She had no idea where she was when he opened another of the stout, ironbound doors which characterized the dungeon, and a glare of light and heat burst out at her.
This must have been the former guardroom: it looked large enough to sleep a hundred people. Now, however, it contained no beds. Instead, it was crowded with two large furnaces built and roaring like kilns; firewood stacked in cords; piles of finely graded sand; sacks of lime and potash; stone conduits and molds in many shapes polished to a metallic smoothness; worktables supplied with scales, pots, small fires, retorts; iron plates and rollers of arcane function; and shelf after shelf affixed to the walls and laden with any number of stoneware jars in a plethora of sizes and colors.
Working about the room were several young men dressed like Geraden: they tended the furnaces, polished pieces of stone, measured and remeasured tiny quantities of powders from the jars, cleaned up the messes they created, and generally sweated in the heat. One of them saw him and waved. He waved back, then closed the door, sealing the noise and fire of the hall out of the corridor.
“You don’t want to go in there,” he said. “You’ll ruin your gown. But that’s where we make the glass for our mirrors. The Apts do most of their work there. If a boy wants to be an Imager, but he just doesn’t have the power for it in his blood, his inability usually shows up here, before the Masters teach him any of their real secrets. Beginners do the menial chores, like keeping the furnaces at a steady temperature. The more advanced ones learn to mix tinct and prepare molds.”
“Is that what you do when you aren’t disobeying the King?”
He grimaced, then fell into a wry grin. “It was. The one advantage of being older than all the other Apts is that I already know everything they’re being taught. I just can’t seem to do it right. So now I’m sort of a formal servant for the Masters. I normally attend all the meetings, not because they care what I think, but so I can run errands, take messages, things like that. They don’t trust me to carry glass” – Terisa heard a tone of sadness behind his smile – “so they do that themselves.”
He didn’t let himself brood, however, on the consequences of his awkward instinct for mishap. “Come on,” he said in a brighter voice. “I want to show you some mirrors.”
He touched her arm; and again she wanted to take hold of his, for encouragement and support. The excitement he seemed to feel at the prospect of mirrors affected her strangely: it made her want to hang back – made her reluctant to face a risk that might be more dangerous than either of them knew.
“What do the Masters do?” she asked wanly.
“Research, mostly.” His eyes watched the way ahead and sparkled. “They’re supposed to be finding proof that Images really do or really don’t have an independent reality. But some of them would rather figure out how to predict what Image a particular configuration and color of glass will show. Most research is just done by trial and error. Unfortunately, the Congery hasn’t been any better at predicting than at proof. As a more attainable goal, Imagers like Master Barsonage are trying to determine how much one mirror has to vary from another before it shows an entirely unconnected Image.
“But the Congery does practical research, too. That’s also King Joyse’s idea. He wants Imagery to be useful for something besides war and ruin. Not so long ago, some important progress was made—” Geraden swallowed, frowned to himself, and admitted, “Actually, Master Eremis did it. He shaped a glass that shows an Image where nothing seems to happen except rain. Nothing at all. The Congery checked the water, and it’s fresh. So now we have a good local solution for drought. That mirror can be taken anywhere crops are dying and provide water.” Being fair to a man he didn’t like, the Apt pronounced, “It’s quite a discovery.
“More recently, of course,” he added with even less enthusiasm, “we’ve spent most of our time worrying about King Joyse’s collapse.”
Perhaps to shake off uncomfortable thoughts, he guided Terisa forward with a quickening stride.
Down the corridor, along an intersecting passage, they soon came to a heavy door like the door of a cell. Her step faltered: the door was guarded. But he gave her a reassuring smile, saluted the guards casually; and one of them bowed appreciatively to the lady in the scarlet gown while the other opened the door, ushering her and Geraden into a small, well-lit room like an antechamber, with entryways in the massive walls leading to other rooms.
“These used to be cells,” he explained, “but the Masters had them rebuilt to make a place where mirrors could be displayed – as well as protected.”
When the guards had closed the door behind him, she whispered, “Why didn’t they stop us?”
He grinned. “As a matter of protocol, the laborium is under the command of the Congery. Master Barsonage didn’t give orders to keep us out because it never occurred to him I might bring you here.
“Come on.”
His excitement was growing. Turning to lead her through the nearest entryway, he caught his toe in the long hem of her gown and fell toward the wall as though he meant to dash his brains out against the stone.
At the last instant, however, he contrived to tuck his dive into a roll. He hit the wall with an audible thud; but the impact wasn’t enough to keep him from bouncing back to his feet at once – or from apologizing profusely.
“Don’t worry about me,” she said quickly, expressing concern to keep herself from laughing. “Are you all right?”
He stopped himself with an effort. “My lady, if I got hurt every time I did something stupid, I would have died by the time I was five. That’s the worst part about being such a disaster,” he went on ruefully. “I do any amount of damage to everybody and everything around me, but I never really hurt myself. It doesn’t seem fair.”
For a moment, she did laugh. Then she swallowed it. “Well, you didn’t hurt me. I’m glad you didn’t hurt yourself.”
He gazed at her as if the sight made him forget why they were here. “Thank you, my lady,” he said softly, earnestly.
But he recollected himself almost at once. “Let’s try this again.” With elaborate care, he turned away and walked through the nearest entry into the chamber beyond.
Following him, she found herself in a room which had been enlarged by joining it with three or four other cells. The light came from plentiful oil lamps, which didn’t smoke. Aside from the lamps, however, and the slim pedestals that held them, the room contained nothing – no decorations on the walls, no rugs on the floors – except three tall objects hidden under rich satin coverings.
Happily, Geraden pulled off the nearest cover, revealing a glass.
Like the only other mirror she had seen in Orison – the one that had brought her here – this one was nearly as tall as she was; the glass wasn’t quite flat or quite clear, and it wasn’t perfectly rectangular; it was held in a beautifully polished wooden frame which gave it a secure base on the floor and still allowed it to be tilted from side to side as well as from top to bottom.
In addition, the glass reflected nothing of the stone or the lamps in front of it. It didn’t even show Geraden.
What it did show was a fathomless seascape under a bright sun. For an instant, she could have believed that the Image was simply a painting brilliantly contrived to create the illusion of three dimensions. But the waves of the sea were moving. They rolled toward her out of the distance until they came too close to be seen. Small caps of froth broke from their crests and dissolved away before her eyes.
The Image was so real that it made her stomach watery.
“Master Barsonage shaped that one several years ago,” Geraden explained. “It’s the kind of mirror King Joyse wants the Congery to concentrate on. Something useful, practical. Master Barsonage was searching for a world of water – an Image Mordant could use in case of drought. Or fire. The story is that he extrapolated this glass from a small mirror Adept Havelock once had. If that’s true, it’s an amazing achievement – to reproduce exactly every inflection of curve and color and shape on such a different scale.” With his fingers, he ran a stroke of admiration down the side of the frame. As he re-covered the glass, he added, “Unfortunately, the water is too bitter for our soil and crops.”