Slowly, with shaking hands and the greatest of care, he lifted it from his face. It scolded in the softest of squeaks. That and the wings told him that his visitor was a bat. Gently he rose and placed it on his bed, leaving it to flutter there. He’d already noticed that one of the wings wasn’t working. Groping in the dim light of the half moon, he found his candle and flint. Within seconds, he had light enough to see clearly.
His two-inch visitor had broken a wing. This was beyond his skills. He found a basket and placed an old shirt in the bottom, then eased the bat inside as it continued to scold him. It settled somewhat after he took his hands away, quivering as it glared up at him.
“You’ll be all right,” Arram assured it as he covered the basket with the shirtsleeves. “I’m sure there’s someone who can patch you up. Just be patient.” Arram dressed quickly and pulled on his sandals.
“What are you doing over there?” Ozorne complained sleepily. “Don’t tell me you talk in your sleep now.”
“Oh, good, you’re awake,” Arram replied. He carried the basket over to Ozorne’s cubicle, nearly tripping on a stack of books. He yelped. “Someday you’re going to break a bone this way.”
“Why? I know where I left them.” In the dim light from Ozorne’s open window, Arram saw his friend make a twisted hand gesture. The candles on his desk lit.
“We’re not allowed to do that,” Arram said wistfully. He in particular was forbidden to do anything of the kind without supervision.
“Why? Do you think you’ll make your room explode?” Ozorne looked at Arram, who was tidying the cloth on top of the bat. “Mithros save us, you do think you’ll destroy your room.”
“It was a shed,” Arram mumbled. “And then a pile of old crates. And then they wouldn’t let me work any basic fire spells without a certified mage being present.” He gulped. “They say I’ll grow out of it.”
“Horse eggs,” Ozorne retorted. “You just need the right teacher.”
“They say I need to meditate more and control my Gift,” Arram explained. “But never mind me. This little thing is hurt. Can you help?”
“ ‘Little thing’? What have you got? It had better not be a snake.” Ozorne carefully raised the shirtsleeves covering Arram’s discovery. “A bat!” He lifted the small animal and inspected her belly. “A girl bat, see? You really ought to release her.”
“No, look—her left wing is broken. It has to be splinted, and she has to be kept quiet. Put her back, please? I’ll get in trouble if she’s in our room—”
Ozorne raised a finger. At last he said, “Shoo for a moment. Let me get dressed. We’ll take her to Master Lindhall.”
Arram returned to his mattress, murmuring reassurances to his bat. She had a long muzzle tipped with a pair of nostrils that pointed in different directions. Before he covered her again, he saw that her fur was a dark cinnamon in color. Her long ears pointed straight up.
She was the first animal who had come his way in a long time. He wanted so badly to keep her! In his first year he had smuggled in a tortoise and several lizards to live under his bed, only to get caught by the proctors. Away went his pets, and he was assigned extra schoolwork for punishment.
“Won’t we get in trouble?” he asked his friend softly.
“Nonsense,” Ozorne said cheerfully. “We’re doing a merciful deed. No one can fault us for rescuing a wounded creature. How did she come to you?”
“She landed on my face.”
Ozorne was grinning when he joined Arram. “I don’t know if your luck is good or bad,” he whispered as he opened the door. “It’s certainly interesting.” He gestured for quiet, and they tiptoed out of the building.
He led Arram past the dormitories used by the Upper Academy students, who were studying for their mages’ certificates, and the mastery students, who had certificates and now worked on specializations. Torches lit the way. There were always people in the libraries and workrooms, whatever the hour.
Beyond the student dormitories lay buildings for instructors and those masters who were teachers. One of these lay on the southernmost road within university property. Ozorne led him inside, up to the top floor, and down a softly lit hall.
Arram sniffed. The corridor smelled like…plants. And animals. Like the aviary, or an enclosed wing at the menagerie.
Ozorne knocked on a door. “I hope I can wake him,” he told Arram over his shoulder. “If he’s been away he’s hard to rouse. Otherwise we’ll have to try his student, and he’s a pain….”
The door opened abruptly; Ozorne nearly fell in. A light, breathy voice said, “It’s the young fellow who’s good with birds. What is so urgent that you must deny me my sleep, Prince Ozorne?”
Ozorne waved Arram forward. “My friend has a hurt bat, Master Lindhall.”
“A bat, is it?”
Arram looked up at Master Lindhall. He’d really thought they’d find one of the master’s student helpers, not the man himself—the man who had said Arram was much too young to study with him. Lindhall inspected him with bright blue eyes. “Come in, come in. Quietly—my assistant is asleep.” He took Arram’s basket and retreated into his rooms.
“Come along,” Ozorne whispered when Arram hesitated. “Don’t you want to see where he lives?”
They followed the master through a sitting room that doubled as a library. Shelves heavy with books seemed to lean from the walls, ready to collapse on the thick carpets and cushions at any moment. Arram craned to look at the titles, until Ozorne grabbed his arm and towed him down a corridor, passing closed doors. The scent of animal droppings and urine thickened.
The tall man entered a room and left the door open. He set the basket on a long counter and snapped his fingers. Light filled the lamps hanging overhead. When he lowered his hand they dimmed. Arram guessed that this was so they would be easier on the bat’s eyes. He sighed with envy. Would he ever be as effortless in working magic as Ozorne and Master Lindhall?
Lindhall uncovered the bat. “Hello, sweetheart,” he murmured. “You’ve had a bad night. You were lucky to find someone kind….Don’t mind my big old hands.” Gently he lifted the bat from the basket. “You, my love, are a common pippistrelle. Your kindred are found along Carthak’s northern shores, along the Inland Sea, on Tortall’s shores, and inland as far north as the Great Road East. You should be thinking about hibernation, but it’s been a warm autumn.” He carefully placed the bat on her back on Arram’s cloth, spreading the left wing wide. “Lovely, my dear. A perfect wing. You tried to feed as often as you could before the rains. It’s worth the risk of a wetting, isn’t it?”
The pippistrelle, who had struggled at first, calmed and watched Master Lindhall with her large dark eyes as if she understood every word. Arram and Ozorne were quiet as well, observing as those big fingers handled the tiny creature.
“You broke your left wing, and the strongest part, the radius bone. Now, I have small bamboo splints around here somewhere, in a red clay cup….”
Arram saw a number of such cups on a shelf in front of him. They were different sizes, with bamboo and wooden splints of corresponding lengths, from a foot to three inches. He took down the cup of three-inch splints and showed it to Lindhall, who nodded. Ozorne offered a roll of loosely woven cotton to the master, who said, “Would you be so good as to cut eight inches of that off for me?”
The boys watched as the man gently splinted the broken bone. He then bound the folded wing to the bat’s side to keep it from moving. Whether it was due to fright, magic, or fascination with Lindhall’s soft commentary, the bat remained still, her eyes fixed on her caretaker.
Finally Lindhall gathered her up and led the boys to a second room. Here a number of recovering animals, including two other bats, were housed in wood or metal cages. Lindhall placed the pippistrelle in one and filled its water dish. “My student will feed you later,” he assured the bat. He ushered the boys into the hall as he cut off the light and closed the door.
Back in his sitting room, he
looked at his guests. “Still here?” he asked, shaking his head. “You’ll be useless in class in the morning. Off with you! Oh!” he added as they turned. “You did right bringing her to me.”
They ran to their dormitory. They were settling in their beds when Arram said, “Thank you for helping. I didn’t know what else to do.”
Ozorne chuckled. “Are you joking? I jump at any excuse to visit Master Lindhall! Go to sleep!”
Grinning, Arram turned over and slept.
—
The term passed so quickly that Arram hardly noticed when the cold weather set in and the rains followed. He did realize that for the first Midwinter festivities since his arrival at the university, he had friends to share the holiday and gifts with him. Instead of spending long days and nights reading on his cot, he was welcomed to parties by Varice and those who wanted to stay friends with her and Ozorne. The prince even got to join them on the fourth day of the holiday, the longest night of the year. In his honor the emperor presented the Lower Academy with a fabulous breakfast of fruits, eggs, meat, fresh breads, and cheeses to mark the return of the sun. Afterward, everyone waddled to their beds for a long sleep before the evening’s parties.
“This is far better,” Ozorne told Arram between yawns as they staggered into their cubicles. “Mother didn’t like me spending so much time only with a girl the last couple of years, so she’d drag me to the palace every night of the holiday. I’d have to be polite to every stiff statue in court, even though they can’t be bothered to remember my name. Now that we’re friends, though, Mother isn’t clutching me so tightly.” He cleared his throat. “I may have mentioned that you like Varice.”
“Well, of course I do!” Arram replied, startled. “You two are the best friends…” He looked at Ozorne’s grin and realized his friend meant a different kind of liking. That wouldn’t do—Ozorne would tease him mercilessly if he believed Arram had feelings for their friend. “Ozorne! I don’t think of her like that!” he lied. “She doesn’t think of me like that!”
Ozorne wandered into his cubicle, shedding his long tunic. The beads rattled in his hair as he pulled on his nightshirt. “So sensitive,” he joked.
Arram made a rude noise and retired to his own cubicle to change into his night gear. He was drifting off when he said, “I thought you liked Varice.”
Ozorne responded with a yawn, then said, “We already have it worked out. It will be years and years before any of us have learned enough magic to make us happy. By then I will have gotten the emperor’s permission to set up as a mage on my own, perhaps in the central mountains. I could represent him there. Varice has agreed to be my housekeeper and hostess, and if you like, you can work with me as well. We’ll keep the emperor’s peace, study new plants, volcanoes, and waterfalls the size of entire towns, and no one will bother us. What do you say?”
“Sounds glorious,” Arram mumbled, then slept.
He was riding a log like a horse, bouncing along huge, roaring waves. Ahead of him the river thundered like the god’s greatest wrath. It was exciting; it felt strange; he was scared to tumble into what had to be waterfalls ahead. One more bounce as the log dropped off the top of a wave—
He woke on his belly. Outside his shuttered window he could hear the roar of pouring rain. “So that’s what it is,” he muttered, and dropped his face into his pillow.
His male organ was pinching him somehow. He turned to the side. That at least took his weight off of it, but it still didn’t feel quite right. He squirmed, but the feeling remained.
He touched his organ and flinched. It was not its usual relaxed and floppy self. “Stop it!” he ordered softly, wondering if someone had bespelled him, or if he was going to die. There was no change in his body’s new state.
He tried to hear if Ozorne was awake, but the rain drowned out his roommate’s light snore. Arram clutched his covers around himself and addressed prayers to a number of gods. At last his midsection began to feel as it usually did. When he took another peek, the member was back to normal. He silently thanked whichever god had intervened.
He heard a thump on the other side of the wall. Ozorne was up.
“You’d best not be lolling about in bed,” his friend called. “It’s the first day of the new term. The sun returns, or at least Great Mithros is planning to, and the Crone also considers loosening her grip. We can hope for warmth instead of freezing in class.”
Through all this Arram could hear his friend clothing himself. He cautiously rose and did the same, checking his member repeatedly. It remained in its proper position, as still as a post. Perhaps “post” was not the way to think of it, he realized, considering its earlier behavior.
For a moment he considered asking Ozorne about it, then rejected the idea in panic. He knew of older boys and men who were considered to be zoeg in Thak, or a couple in Common, but he also knew plenty of boys who turned nasty when they thought another boy might be interested in them physically. More than once he’d seen one boy viciously attack another when it was suggested. He didn’t want to risk it, and he didn’t want to risk the friendship. Better to find a book about it, perhaps in the Library of Medicine, or suck up his courage and see a healer. And perhaps it would never happen again.
—
The term rushed along. For a time his member behaved itself, enough that Arram forgot its unusual act. He had other things on his mind. At lunch on the first day of the spring term Master Cosmas called Arram out of the room and gave him a square of parchment. “Arram, I’ve made a bit of a change to your schedule. One of Master Lindhall’s assistants will instruct you in fish and shellfish anatomy during the time when you formerly learned sigils. This is where you will find the workroom.”
“Yes, Master,” Arram murmured, reading the paper.
“You’ll continue your study of sigils in your class on the written word and writing technique in the afternoon. Both your masters feel that you have made enough progress to manage the combination.”
Arram nodded, fingering the paper. Fish and shellfish meant more cutting dead animals up, as he did with birds and lizards, and drawing their insides. It was interesting in a peculiar way.
“Is something wrong?” Master Cosmas asked, his bright blue eyes worried. “Have I loaded you with too much? Several of your masters say you are outpacing what they planned for you this term.”
Arram smiled at the kind older man. Cosmas often checked to see how he was doing, slipping Arram a handful of sweets or an interesting book in addition. “No, sir, I’ll be fine. I’m twelve now, you know.”
Cosmas’s eyes danced. As head of the school, he had access to Arram’s records. He knew Arram’s true age, but he never let on that he did. “I believe I gave you a birthday present at the time,” he replied seriously. “But you appear concerned.”
“Oh, I was only thinking that Varice will fuss over me working with fish and shellfish. She’ll make me change clothes before supper, probably.”
Cosmas chuckled and looked up as the university’s bells chimed. “There’s the hour—I’ll walk you to mathematics. I have no doubt that she will do exactly that,” he said, continuing their earlier discussion. “She is very precise. Did you expect her to make a fuss over your cutting up animals?”
“I did a bit when I started with birds and reptiles,” Arram confessed. “But she was assigned to teach me how to do it. She’s very good at it.”
Cosmas nodded. “It’s her experience as a cook,” he murmured. “It makes her the most nimble-fingered student in this academy.” He looked at a group of rushing young students and called, “You will get there in time. Proceed at a normal pace.”
One of them squeaked at the sight of the headmaster. They promptly obeyed, swerving to the opposite side of the corridor from Arram and his intimidating companion.
“Truthfully, I was never so happy as when Varice and Ozorne took you up,” Cosmas went on. “Varice has been a wonderful friend to Ozorne. She brought him out of his shell after his father’s death
, but they both drew away from the school at the time. They turned inward, associating largely with one another. Now they have taken a liking to you, and it has made them more sociable. Introducing you to the university has gotten them to be part of it again.”
Arram remembered that upon his new placement, the three of them had usually sat alone. Then slowly others decided to become part of their small group. Now new students joined them for meals, study sessions, and explorations in town. Ozorne, who used to talk largely to Varice and Arram, did so now with the others, if not as much.
“But why?” Arram inquired. He couldn’t decide if he meant “Why me?” or “Why are you telling me?”
“Some special thread among you three,” Cosmas said quietly. “It is not only that you are the most rapidly advancing students in the Lower Academy, either. A thread that has brought you together, perhaps. Here is your class.” He left Arram standing in front of the room. “Good luck.”
For the first week of the term Arram tried to observe his two friends, looking for that special connection, but if it was there, he didn’t see it. He watched them so intensely that others noticed. One day at lunch a schoolmate joked, “What, are you in love with Ozorne? You goggle at him enough!”
Arram gaped at him. Then he snapped, “Who invited you to sit here?”
Ozorne led the laughter from the others and slung his arm around Arram’s shoulder. Varice did the same from the other side and told Arram’s tormentor, “If you can’t be witty, you may seat yourself somewhere else.”
His cheeks flaming red, the boy gathered up his things and left the table. One of the others left with him. Varice and Ozorne released Arram’s shoulders, each with a firm squeeze. Arram lowered his head, smiling and teary-eyed at the same time. They were such good friends!
“That was unkind,” Ozorne said. “I didn’t know you had it in you!”