Estiane leaned in, and Silverdun could detect the faintest trace of brandy on his breath. "I will not allow that to happen."
Silverdun stood and pulled his sword down from the shelf above the bed. He unsheathed it and flicked it back and forth in frustration. "And what if I refuse? What if I just want to be a monk?"
Estiane stood and smoothed his robes. "You never wanted to be a monk, Perrin. You just needed a place to hide for a while. Your hiding time is over-I'm kicking you out."
"You can't do that!"
"I'm the abbot. I can do whatever I want."
Silverdun swung the sword harder in the air, striking at an intangible foe.
"Fine," said Silverdun. "Kick me out. I'll go back to Oarsbridge and live out my days as an eccentric country gentleman. Find a pretty, dumb daughter of a nearby baron to marry to keep me warm at night. How's that?"
Estiane smiled. He walked to the door. "It's not that simple, Perrin. Life never is."
"It can be."
"Here," said Estiane, holding out the envelope. "This was delivered just after Everess left. There were two notes inside. One was addressed to me, the other to you. My note simply asked me to pass yours along to you before I allowed you to leave here.
Silverdun took the envelope, again noting the chamberlain's seal. Inside was a single sheet, printed in a flowing, beautiful hand. It was not the script of Chamberlain Marcuse. Silverdun knew whose script it was, though. He knew it without needing to be told.
Perrin Alt. Lord Silverdun:
When last we met, I warned you that there would come a time when I would call on you by name. That time has come. Consider well what has been asked of you. You are one who, like a prize racehorse, thrives only when placed upon the track. Go where you will thrive.
The note was not signed, but it didn't need to be. It had been penned by the queen herself.
"Shit," said Silverdun. "Shit! Shit! Shit!"
He reached up to the shelf and pulled down his boots.
The difficulty, which has yet to be resolved, is as follows. For an Elemental unbinding at a distance, the standard formulation requires the spoken trigger (i.e., the unbinding word) to interact physically with the binding. Given a distance, d, and the speed of sound, r, the effects of an unbinding word should require time t, where t = d/r. It has been demonstrated in controlled circumstances, however, that the unbinding occurs simultaneously with the trigger.Thaumaturges have debated this question for centuries, but no satisfactory explanation has ever been offered. Since reitic force decreases exponentially over distance, this is rarely a problem in practice. Students are encouraged to use the standard release-chain formulation in most circumstances.
-Dynamics, Chapter 7: ''Indirect Mechanisms of Release in Distributed Systems'
The readings came in from across the site, and Ironfoot meticulously added them as points of data, using a ruler to draw perfectly straight lines of radiance from one point to the next. A pattern was beginning to emerge, but it still wasn't enough.
He slammed the table with his fist. Years as a scholar had never tempered the wild part of his nature. He knew it and it infuriated him.
He rubbed his eyes and took a long sip of coffee. His mug had been holding down the lower left corner of the map, and now it tried to roll up a bit. He absently smoothed it with his hands. He reached for the next slip of paper and there were none left.
He stood, feeling the ache in his shoulders and back, feeling the fatigue that flowed through him. He could have himself spellrested by the on-site medic, but that false rest affected only the body and not the mind. He needed sleep. Real sleep.
He opened the flap of the tent and was assaulted by the dusty wind that assailed the site day and night. The dust got into everything: clothes, boots, instruments. Some of it was blown south from the Unseelie steppes, but some of it-and this he tried carefully not to think about-was the incinerated remains of Fae men, women, and children. The descendants of the founders of the oldest Elvish city.
"Armin," he called out to his assistant, who stood at the edge of the crater, sipping water from a metal cup. Armin was young, still a student, but already teaching classes of his own at the university and almost certain to be made full professor once they returned to the City Emerald.
"Over here, Master Falores," Armin said, still looking down into the crater. Ironfoot joined him.
"I wish you'd call me Ironfoot like everyone else does."
"I'm sorry; my mother wouldn't approve," said Armin. He was a careful, dutiful student. It was fine if he wanted to be a bit old-fashioned.
Below, the team of students walked the remaining sections of the site, testing each bit of rubble, bone, and metal. Each student carried an intensity gauge, and every few moments would lean down and carefully take a reading, noting the result on a slip of paper that would go to feed Ironfoot's map. The students had caviled at the assignment at first, having not really understood what it was they were volunteering for, but they quickly got over their reser vations. The promise of free food and even the smallest of stipends would, Ironfoot was sure, convince any common student to freely give up a limb.
"Shall we have a look?" asked Armin. "See how things are progressing?"
Ironfoot nodded. "It won't be long now. Another day or two and we'll have all we can get."
They had both unconsciously begun breathing through their mouths; they started down into the crater that had, a year ago, been the Seelie city of Selafae.
There was a peculiar smell down in the crater, one that nobody could quite recognize, though it had components upon which everyone could agree. There was a hint of cinnamon to it, a bit of roasted pork, almost pleasant but undercut with an ugly ratlike stink that lingered in the nose. They'd been here for six weeks and no one had yet gotten used to it. Some of the students wore cloths tied around their faces, but these didn't seem to help much. A visiting professor of Elements had offered to remove the odor with a simple transmutation, but Ironfoot had refused, not wanting to contaminate the site.
The students and researchers knew better. At Ironfoot's insistence, not a single breath of re was to be expended at the site. No little luck charms, no cantrips to sing the pain out of aching muscles.
Walking among the ruins, the smell crept into Ironfoot's senses and he flinched away from it. There was something about it that he couldn't quite put his finger on, something that might be important. It was a memory, an experience from long ago; he could sense it in the way that any unique smell might recall a memory of younger days, but he couldn't place it and it was driving him crazy.
"How goes it, Mister Beman?" Armin said to one of the students, a tall pale boy who looked as if he hadn't had a decent meal since his schooling had begun, and was only now beginning to fill out under Ironfoot's auspices.
"Coming along, Professor. I hope to have my section finished by lunchtime." He beamed, patting his intensity gauge.