Arram wavered, then offered a hand. There was a dent in the palm from his clutch on the saddle horn. Yadeen dismounted and walked over to Arram’s horse. Drawing a small dagger from his belt, he slashed his palm and pressed it against the dent in Arram’s.
The youth jumped. “Sir, you didn’t have to do that! I trust you! I—”
Yadeen sighed. “This part is necessary for the spell. I am perfectly fine, see?” He held up the palm he had pressed against Arram’s hand. A number of little scars marked his skin, including the most recent one, rapidly healing before their eyes. Arram looked at his own palm. He, too, had a mark.
“Don’t tell the other masters,” Yadeen says. “Only a few of us still work with tribal magic here, and Sebo would scold me for using it on a student. But I began with tribal magic. It is how my Gift speaks for me with the bigger magics.”
Arram nodded. He felt like he was glowing even more brightly than the torches. Did the master feel it, too?
“Let’s get started,” Yadeen said. He picked up the reins for the two horses and walked toward the tunnel.
A woman in a coarse linen tunic, her feet bare, met them at the opening to take charge of the mounts. The moment they saw her, the horses surged forward more willingly than they had for Yadeen and Arram. They thrust their heads against her chest, whickering anxiously.
“Don’t be rude,” she chided them softly. “I’d guess they wasn’t no happier’n you, out so late in slop for footin’. Can you dismount?” she asked Arram. “They’s big babies and snobs to boot, knowin’ when folk aren’t easy. They’ll act proper if you want to get down yerse’f.”
Arram froze. Yadeen rescued him, unwinding his hands from the horn and drawing him from the saddle. The youth looked away from the woman, knowing that he blushed.
Yadeen handed both workbags to him and stripped off his own coat as the woman led the horses away. Arram could hear her scolding them gently as they vied with each other for the chance to lip her hair and shift.
“She’s very unusual,” he commented, taking the master’s coat and trotting to keep up as he headed for the tunnel.
“She’s like the Banjiku people from the Far South, bonded to a certain kind of animal,” Yadeen said. “It is a kind of magic that is not taught at the university, because we are either born with it or no.”
“But shouldn’t we study it anyway?” Arram inquired.
Yadeen glanced at him, his mouth forming a crooked line. “Not everyone wants to learn everything, boy,” he said.
Arram sighed. “That’s what Ozorne always says.”
Najau walked over to them, gesturing to a six-foot-tall, six-foot-wide block of white stone with tiny marks of black and gray stone inside. “Unicorn white marble,” he said, with as much pride as if he had given birth to it. “Brought by sea around the tip of the Roof of the World. Anyone caught with it without an imperial writ of sale is sold himself. Beautiful, isn’t it?”
Yadeen walked up to the stone and leaned his head against the rough side. Najau and Arram watched him for a long moment before the stonemason turned and saw the boy. He stared at Arram briefly, then said, “Go on, you. Touch it.”
Arram hesitated. “I…I couldn’t….I…”
Najau snorted. “I stammered, too, when I was a lad and got worked up. I don’t any longer—some of us lose such things as we get older, more confident. If I say you can put your hands on it, you can.” He flapped his hand, ushering Arram over to the great stone.
Arram obeyed, carrying the workbags. Standing near Yadeen, he reached out and touched the marble slab. Nothing happened. He was wondering what he was expected to do when a voice very like Yadeen’s, loaded with amusement, boomed through the stone, up his arms, and into his skull.
Open your Gift to the stone, boy!
Oh, Arram thought, of course! He closed his eyes and let his power flow into the unicorn white marble.
It was cooler than it looked from the outside.
He was caught up in threads of stone, black, white, clear crystal, all of different sizes. The white ones were dominant. They hummed to him, rattling his teeth agreeably. They sang of the embrace of the deepest earth as it pressed and turned each tiny bit of them to shaped edges and points. Then black chunks, small ones that had collected in different pockets, found them, and clear ones. All twining together to become immense, proud stone.
A massive hand gently thrust him backward. Enough for now, Yadeen said. You don’t want to spend forever holding up the emperors of Carthak, do you? Back to yourself.
Arram awoke inside his normal body, gasping for air. He was flat on his back, staring up at the marble. “That was wonderful!” he cried. “When can I do it again?”
Najau crouched beside him and held a leather flask to his mouth. “Drink,” he ordered. “Slowly.”
Arram drank as cautiously as he was bid. It was not some strange beverage, but water so cold it made his teeth hurt, flavored with mint and lemon. “That’s so good!” he exclaimed when he returned the bottle to Najau. The beverage was the opposite of the stone, moving where the stone had only exact places to go, water and leaves and fruit where the stone was only stone. He felt himself, human.
The stonemason was looking him over more carefully than he had before. “I see why Yadeen brought you,” he remarked at last. “You’ll do all right—better than those jumping crickets he’s fetched to my place before.”
“I told you he would be fine.” Yadeen stepped away from the marble, rubbing his hands together. “This is a sound block. I won’t have any trouble doing the work.”
“Did you think I would choose flawed stone?” demanded Najau, indignant. “I, the finest stonemason on the Northern coast of the empire? Possibly even the Western coast?”
Yadeen took the bottle from Najau and tipped it up, drinking as he poured.
“I said nothing of the kind, you silly old hen,” he retorted. “The boy needs a blanket. I’ll let you know when I have pieces finished. How many slabs will you need?”
Najau tapped his teeth with his thumbnail, then said, “Six for safety, I think. Once this noise over the ambassador is done, I’ll be testing the others in the stand to see if more stones are ready to drop.”
Yadeen nodded. “With Arram’s help I’ll craft six, if you have the raw stone.”
Najau pointed back into the tunnel, where more chunks of marble waited.
“Very good.” Yadeen looked at Arram. “Are you ready?”
Arram nodded vigorously.
“Until I tell you otherwise, follow only,” the master commanded him. “Do not try to use your Gift. You don’t know the spells to make the cuts straight and smooth along the entire face of the stone. I will teach them to you one day, but it’s too complex now.” They walked to the first stone. Yadeen drew his hand over the surface, bringing it away covered with marble dust. He rubbed his palms together and raised them to his face, smelling them. Arram, hesitant, did the same. The dust had its own dry scent, pleasing to his sensitive nostrils. It lingered as he sat cross-legged next to Yadeen.
“Relax and wait,” Yadeen told him. “Meditate. I will come to you when I need you.” He closed his eyes and was gone, his power flowing into the stone. Arram watched with his Gift as the master’s green-and-brown streaked fire rolled into the stone and spread, forming a thin sheet inside the marble face.
As Yadeen moved on and on, Arram withdrew. He knew he’d be seeing enough of the stone’s insides in time. Instead he let his Gift spread over the sands, cringing from the touch of old blood and bits of bone. But there were also faded pieces of flowers and ribbons that the arena keepers hadn’t cleaned up, bird droppings—he didn’t want to think about why birds might come to the arena grounds—and bits of fur. He roamed up to the seats, wondering why people came to such a sad place. Among the rows he found reasons: greed, lust, fury, excitement, all the feelings of people who forgot everything but the combats, including their struggling daily lives.
Yadeen was calling. R
elieved, Arram let himself fly back to the master. He was no sooner returned to his body than he felt the gentle tug on his power. He let it mingle with Yadeen’s, until they formed a cord between them that was one magic. Then they returned to the marble. The stone traveled inner paths that showed as white-hot fire crystals. Turning, they fit themselves into walls that lined up as the magic demanded, perfectly.
Then Yadeen drew Arram out, away from the stone. In the sudden cold outside the marble, he released his student.
Arram cried out and covered his ears from an assault of noise: voices, things banging, the crunch of footwear on sand, wind in the tunnel, and…the mumble of elephants? He forced his eyes open against the torchlight. At the front of the tunnel, elephants peered in curiously. The closest one had its trunk extended. Many-petaled flowers were painted on its forehead. A very large black man, as dark as Yadeen, with scars and a shaved head, petted the elephant as he cooed to it. Arram squinted, blinking rapidly to rid himself of the water spilling from his eyes.
“Mu-Musenda?” he croaked.
Yadeen was getting up. Arram remembered his duty to his teacher and struggled to stand until Yadeen gripped his wrist and lifted him to his feet. “You know Musenda?” he asked as he waited for Arram to get his balance.
The gladiator advanced, frowning. “You look familiar…,” he said, puzzled. “We’ve met, haven’t we?”
As if impatient with the slowness of human introductions, the orchid-blossomed elephant thrust her way into the tunnel, wrapped her trunk around Arram, and lifted him up so she could peruse him, first with one eye, then the other. He laughed and leaned against her forehead. “Ua, I hoped I would see you!” he cried. “How are you, you gorgeous thing?” He looked down at the staring workers and told Yadeen, “Musenda and Ua saved my life when I was younger!”
“Now I remember!” Musenda boomed. “The boy who fell into the arena! You’ve grown so much I didn’t know you! What brings you here?”
He and Yadeen talked briefly while Arram plucked straw from Ua’s stiff forehead hair and whispered how beautiful she was. Finally Najau shouted, “This is sweet as spring flowers, but we have work, all of us! Get down here, boy!”
Arram coaxed Ua to release him; the elephant reluctantly obeyed. “We’re here to cart the marble slabs to the stand,” Musenda explained. Four more heavy-muscled gladiators of mixed color and nationality came forward with large flatbeds of wood attached to wheels. As Arram watched—Yadeen waved him away from this part of the task—Yadeen produced his Gift in waves. It wrapped around the first slab they had finished and lifted it as smoothly into the air as if it were a feather. Arram was shocked to see the flat edges and sharp corners on the slab, as well as the brightly polished front and rear faces. He barely remembered anything that might have been working the marble in that shape.
“We did all that?” he asked Yadeen when the master had settled the piece onto the wagon. Musenda was leading Ua and another elephant to the front, where workers fashioned their harnesses to the flatbed. Someone cried out, the elephants groaned, and the wagon began to move forward.
“We did all that,” Yadeen said, his eyes on the marble. “We drew it in to be flat and smoothed it sharp, all from the inside. It’s tricky work—you did better than I thought. You’ll have to tell me how you met Musenda and Ua, but later. We must do three more, and then there’s putting the slabs in place.”
“I thought we had to do…six,” Arram said, his voice faltering. Two more perfect slabs lay where the first boulder of marble had been. Yadeen was already using his Gift to raise one of them onto the newest wagon.
“It’s easy to get caught up,” Yadeen said. “And one plane inside the stone—one area we smooth out—looks much the same as the next after a while. We made three slabs from the first stone.”
When the last of the finished slabs from the first block were gone, they moved to the next stone. They got only two finished pieces from it. Yadeen decided they could do two more out of the next, using all the boulders in the tunnel.
“There’s a relief!” Musenda commented. He had just come in for the slabs from the second boulder. “Otherwise we’d have had to cart them away after all the trouble it took to bring them in. It makes a fellow cross.”
Arram frowned. “It’s not right, you having to fight and push boulders around, too.”
Musenda touched a forefinger to his mouth. “We’re at the emperor’s service,” he told Arram. “Us second- and third-rankers do whatever is required when we aren’t fighting. It builds us up.” Lowering his voice, he said, “And the master of gladiators reaps a pretty thaki or three from jobs outside the games.”
“That’s wrong!” Arram protested angrily.
“That’s the world,” Musenda replied.
“Learn it now or learn it later,” Yadeen murmured. “But a wise man does learn it.”
Musenda saluted Yadeen and went to see the finished pieces taken to the stand. Arram and Yadeen made themselves comfortable beside the last piece of unfinished stone and went to work, Yadeen leading Arram inside the many lines and tracks of stone. Twice he had to call Arram’s attention back to work: Arram hadn’t realized he was drifting away. When he finally returned to himself in the tunnel, it took him several tries to get to his feet. His head was spinning. When he did stand, he was greeted by a foggy shape in a gaudy orange overgarment, topped in black.
“Yadeen,” snapped the newcomer, “why are you dawdling? I can’t dry things and harden the setting material until you have put the pieces where they belong!”
Arram wished he were at home and in bed. It was Ozorne’s master, Chioké. He squinted at the green-and-brown fire that was Yadeen. He didn’t even really need to see the master’s body at this point. Yadeen could have walked down the road outside while Arram was still inside the marble and Arram would have pinpointed his location. “Master, why is he here?” he asked. “I didn’t invite him. Did you?”
Yadeen clapped a large hand over Arram’s mouth and pulled him into the shelter of his arm. “The boy has been assisting me, Chioké,” he said, his voice flat. “Plainly I have overworked him. Najau!” he bellowed. To Chioké he said, “I will join you at the stand as soon as I send the boy on his way.”
“I know him,” Chioké said. “That’s the Draper boy who tags along after His Highness.” He said the word “draper” as if he emphasized poverty, as if Arram were a commoner who did no more than weave and spin. Arram stiffened. He was proud of his family’s craft. Chioké continued, “Don’t tell me he contributed much.”
“We have worked the stone together,” Yadeen said. “I will see you shortly.” It was a plain dismissal.
Chioké whirled around, splattering both of them with the water from his wide coat, and walked rapidly out into the rain.
“Who stepped on his toes?” Arram asked. He rubbed the drops over his face: they were nice and cold.
“No doubt both of us. We aren’t nearly wellborn enough for the likes of him.”
A short, broad, fuzzy shape joined them as Arram remembered what Yadeen had said. “I don’t want to go. You said I was helping.”
“You were helping. Now you’re exhausted.”
“I am?”
“You’re barely on your feet, lad,” Najau said. “I’ll get him back to school.” He rested a hand on Arram’s shoulder. “I’ve got a courier that’s going to the city. He’ll see to it you get home.”
Arram frowned, swaying on his feet. He’d let Yadeen down. “I’m sorry I wasn’t good enough.”
Yadeen squeezed his shoulder. “You did far better than I had expected. Now go. Tell Irafa I said you were to sleep as much as you like.”
“Come along, boy,” Najau ordered.
As Najau led him down the tunnel to a waiting horse and rider, Arram asked, “Can Musenda go with me?”
“You’re drunk on marble. Musenda’s a slave, boy,” Najau reminded him. “He doesn’t go anywhere outside without chains on. Now, next time you come to the aren
a, we’ll make sure he gives you a special salute, to thank you for this night’s work.”
Arram said nothing, even as the rider took him up behind him. He remained silent except to thank the man once they reached Arram’s dormitory. He would much rather have had Musenda walking freely beside him, telling Arram about his life.
THE IMPERIAL UNIVERSITY OF CARTHAK
The School for Mages
The Upper Academy
SCHEDULE OF STUDY, SUMMER TERM, 437 H.E.
Student: Arram Draper
Learning Level: Semi-Independent
Second Morning Bell
Stones and Magic—Yadeen
Breakfast—Third Morning Bell
Morning Classes
Basic Medicines—Second-year student
Human Beings: Anatomy—Third-year healing student
Language: Yamani—Second-year student
Lunch—Noon Bell
Afternoon Classes
Fire Magic—Cosmas
Illusions: Small Animals—Dagani
Water Magic—Sebo
Plant Magic—Hulak
Supper—Seventh Afternoon Bell
Extra Study at Need
Without fuss, Ozorne, Varice, and Arram were moved from their former quarters in the Lower Academy to new ones in the Upper Academy. Arram and Ozorne were once more sharing a place, with the understanding that two more students would move in with them at the end of the summer term. Varice was placed with three other girls, all of whom treated her “very decently,” she told the boys. Then she added with a giggle, “Of course, I did tell them that you and I have been friends for years, Ozorne.”