The master laid Raistlin down upon a couch. He drove the other boys back to the classroom with threats, not the willow branch, Raistlin noted, peering through a slit in his closed eyelids. Theobald shouted for one of the servants.
Raistlin allowed his eyes to flicker open. He kept them deliberately unfocused for a moment, then permitted his eyes to find Master Theobald.
"What… what happened?" Raistlin asked weakly. He glanced vaguely around, tried to lift himself. "Where am I?"
The exertion proved too much. He fell back upon the couch, gasping for breath.
Master Theobald hovered over him. "You. urn. had a bad fall/' he said, not looking directly at Raistlin, but darting nervous glances at him from the corner of his eyes. "You fell off your stool."
Raistlin glanced down at his arm, where an ugly red welt was visible against his pale skin. He looked back at Master Theobald. "My arm stings," he said softly.
The master lowered his gaze, sought the floor, looked up gladly when the servant, a middle-aged woman who did the cooking and cleaning and took care of the boys, entered the room. She was extremely ugly, with a scarred face, missing the hair on one side of her head. It had been burned off, purportedly because she'd been struck by lightning. This perhaps accounted for the fact that she was quite slow mentally.
Marm, as she was known, kept the place clean, and she'd never yet poisoned anyone with her cooking. That was about all that could be said of her. The boys whispered that she was the result of one of Master Theobald's spells gone awry, and that he kept her in his household out of guilt.
"The boy had a bad fall, Marm," said Master Theobald. "See to him, will you? I must return to my class."
He cast a final anxious glance backward at Raistlin, then swept out of the room, inflating himself with what was left of his pride.
Marm brought a cold, wet cloth that she slapped over Raistlin's forehead and a cookie. The cloth was too wet and dripped greasy water into Raistlin's eyes, the cookie was burnt on the bottom and tasted like charcoal. Grunting, Marm left him to recover on his own and went back to whatever it was she had been doing. Judging from the greasy water, she was washing dishes.
When she was gone, Raistlin removed the cloth and cast it aside in disgust. He threw the cookie into the fireplace with its ever-present fire. Then he lay back comfortably on the couch, snuggled into the soft cushions, and listened to the master's voice, which could be heard droning, in a somewhat subdued tone, through the open door.
"The letter u is pronounced 'uh.' Repeat after me."
" 'Uh,' " said Raistlin complacently to himself. He watched the flames consume the log and he smiled.
Master Theobald would never strike him again.
Chapter 7
The lesson another day was penmanship. Not only did a mage have to be able to pronounce the words of magic correctly, but the mage must also be able to write them down, form each letter into its proper shape. Words of the arcane must be penned with precision, exactness, neatness, and care on the scroll, else they would not work. Write the spell word shirak, for example, with a wobble in the a and a scrunch in the k, and the mage who wants light will be left in the dark.
Most of Master Theobald's students, true to the naturally clumsy characteristics of small boys, were fumble-fisted. Their quill pens, on which they had to carve the points themselves, either split or sputtered, bent or broke or leapt out of their clutching fingers. The boys invariably ended up with more ink on themselves than on the scrolls, unless they happened to upset the ink bottle, which accident occurred on a regular basis.
Any visitor entering the school on the afternoon of penmanship classes to find himself confronted by the inky faces and hands of innumerable small demons, might well have imagined that he'd wandered into the Abyss by mistake.
This thought crossed the mind of Antimodes the moment he walked through the door. This and a sudden swift memory of his own days in the schoolroom, a memory brought on mostly by the smell -small bodies overly warmed by the fire, the cabbage soup they'd choked down for lunch, ink and warm sheepskins-caused him to smile.
"The Archmagus Antimodes," announced the servant, or something approximating that, for she completely mangled his name.
Antimodes paused in the doorway. The flushed, inky, frustrated faces of twelve boys lifted from their work to stare at him with hope in their eyes. A savior, perhaps. One who would free them from their toil. A thirteenth face looked up, but not as quickly as the others. That face appeared to have been intent upon its work, and only when that work was completed did it lift to stare at the visitor.
Antimodes was pleased-quite pleased-to see that this face was almost completely devoid of ink, with the exception of a smudge along the left eyebrow, and that there was not an expression of relief on the face, but rather one of irritation, as if it resented being interrupted in its work.
The irritation passed swiftly, however, once the face recognized Antimodes, as Antimodes had recognized the face.
Master Theobald rose hastily from his chair, officious and ponderous, jealous and insecure. He did not like Antimodes, because the master suspected-and rightly so-that Antimodes had been opposed to Theobald's appointment as schoolmaster and had voted against him in the conclave. Antimodes had been outvoted, Par-Salian himself having presented very strong arguments in Theobald's favor: He was the only candidate. What else were they to do with the man?
Even his friends agreed that Theobald would never make more than a mediocre mage. There were some, Antimodes among them, who questioned how he had managed to pass the Test in the first place. Par-Salian was always evasive whenever Antimodes brought up the subject, and Antimodes was left to believe that Theobald had been passed on the condition that he accept a teaching assignment, a job no one else wanted.
Antimodes could offer no better suggestion. He himself, given the choice, would have preferred going to Mount Nevermind to instruct the gnomes in pyrotechnics to teaching snot-faced human children magic. He had grudgingly gone along with the majority.
Antimodes was forced to admit that Par-Salian and the others had been right. Theobald was not a particularly good teacher, but he saw to it that his boys-the girls had their own school in Palanthas, taught by a slightly more competent wizardess-learned the basics, and that was all that was necessary. He would never light any fires in the average student, but where the fire of greatness already burned, Master Theobald would stoke it.
The two mages met with a show of amicability in front of the children.
"How do you do, sir?"
"How do you do, my dear sir?"
Antimodes was gracious in his greeting and lavish in his praise of the classroom, which to himself he thought was unbearably hot, stuffy, and dirty.
Master Theobald was profuse in his welcome, all the time certain that Antimodes had been sent by Par-Salian to check up on him and bitterly resenting the fact that the archmage was carelessly wearing a luxuriant cape made of fine lamb's wool that would have cost the teacher a year's salary.
"Well, well, Archmagus. Are the roads still snow-covered?"
"No, no, Master. Quite passable. Even up north."
"Ah, you've come from the north, have you, Archmagus?"
"Lemish," Antimodes said smoothly. He'd actually been much farther north than that quaint and woodsy little town, but he had no intention of discussing his travels with Theobald.
Theobald had no use for travel of any sort. He raised his eyebrows in an expression of disapproval, manifested his disapproval by turning away and ending their conversation. "Boys, it is my great honor to introduce to you Archmagus Antimodes, a wizard of the White Robes."