It was not fair! That fourth word must have been defective, and now he was stuck with the words he knew until the day he died. He might gain a fraction more power from time to time when whoever else shared his various words died, but then he would just have to share that word with some pimply-faced novice, so any improvement would be very brief.
Eventually he took a rest from his labors. He wandered out to the stacks and consulted some of the historical archives. Mearn had not been far wrong. The last reported assembly of the archons had been two hundred seventy-six years ago and was believed to have debated a shortage of words of power. Whenever there was need of a new Keeper, the archons chose one of their own number as replacement, but apparently they could do so without formally assembling.
Grumpily he went back to his desk.
And now this wisp of a girl had provoked an assembly? Slouched on his stool, he worked it out and his hair stood erect. Archon Raim had asserted—and puissant sorcerers were seldom mistaken—that someone had been meddling. No one within the College would or could tamper with its official business, the Keeper’s business. Never! So the meddling must originate Outside. So security had been breached. So the work of a millennium was overthrown, and the demons might invade Thume again, bringing all the evils of ancient times. Jain’s reclusive pixie heart cringed into a prune.
He decided to go and talk with Mearn, as the two of them seemed to be in this together. He hurried out of the Scriptorium into sunshine and the cool spring wind, and strode off along the Way.
A sorcerer’s hunch told him to look near the Commons and he found her outside, in the courtyard. Even a mundane could have guessed she would be outdoors somewhere. Four novices had passed through the Defile the previous night and would still be recovering. They would especially want sunlight. She was sitting at an outdoor table with three of them, in the dappled shade of an arbutus tree, which had not been there yesterday. Apart from them, the courtyard was empty, but it would soon fill up. Lunch was a popular social event.
“How did it go?” he inquired, pulling up a chair. Mearn pursed her lips at him, but with less than her usual distaste. “Novice Doob had a nice walk in the hills.” She glanced at the youngest of the three.
He smiled back shyly. “I’m going home!”
“What’s his talent? ” Jain inquired. The boy wasn’t close to pubescent yet, and looked about as intelligent as an average mango.
“He hasn’t any but his Uncle Kulth wouldn’t believe it. ”
”No harm done?”
“No, he saw nothing but moonlight and shadows. Can’t say the same for Novice Maig.”
The second boy was slouched slackly in his chair, arms dangling, head propped against the wall; he might have been put in position by somebody other than himself. He seemed quite unaware of the world around him. His face was locked into a sick stare of horror, and his unblinking eyes gave Jain familiar shivers.
“Don’t look—it’s very nasty. ” Mearn meant not to look inside, of course. “He was half-witted to begin with, ” she said sourly.
“It happens. Will he recover?”
“Probably not. Of course!” she added aloud. “Just takes a little time.”
Not necessarily. Jain would certainly never forget his own visit to the Defile, nor the many sleepless nights that had followed. He had gone in with six companions and come out with five. The biggest, toughest-looking novice in his class had died of fright. Admittedly that was unusual. The sneer on Mearn’s face showed that she knew what he was thinking.
She turned to regard the third youth. “However, I think Novice Woom may have gained some benefit from the night’s activities.”
Woom was old enough to show that he had missed shaving. He had been sitting with his arms on the table, staring fixedly into a mug of coffee. Now he raised his head to send Mearn a stare of calculated dislike. He was holding himself under very tight control, so that his whole body seemed clenched. His eyes still bore the wildness of eyes that had looked on unimagined horrors. His lower lip was swollen where he had chewed it. He had also torn the palms of his hands with his nails and was keeping them hidden.
“Do you enjoy subjecting people to that?” he inquired hoarsely.
“Normally, no,” she said quickly. “Sometimes, yes. You were an obnoxious streak of slime yesterday. Today you know that there’s more to life than poking your betters in the eye.”
He flushed, but he held her gaze a long moment before speaking again. “I can go back to a clean slate?”
“Absolutely.”
“Good.” He returned to his brooding.
Mearn radiated a burst of satisfaction. “See that? He’s ten years older than he was last night!”
“Would you go through what he did if you could be ten years younger tomorrow? ”
“Of course not. Stupid question.”
Woom looked up again, frowning. “Where’s Novice Mist, ma’am? Is he all right?”
Mearn primped up her mouth as she so often did. “And concern for others now, see? He had what I call the panic reaction,” she said aloud. “He’ll run himself to exhaustion and probably pass out. He’ll feel better when he wakens. I’ll go and track him down shortly.”
Woom’s lips writhed into a mawkish smile, while his wild eyes did not shift their expression at all. “And did you make a man out of him, also, ma’am?”
Jain suppressed a grin. Nicely done, lad!
Mearn did not flinch—she had been processing adolescents for longer than a mundane lifetime. “If I give you my opinion, will you keep it to yourself?”
Woom blinked, then nodded.
“I think Novice Mist broke in the kiln. I don’t think there were the makings of a man there to start with.”
“So what do you do with the pieces?”
“We send them home. He’ll find some sucker of a woman to care for him. Perhaps his descendants will be Gifted. The worthwhile ones we keep, and let them help us.”
Woom blinked again, and then looked down at his coffee again. ”Thanks,” he said quietly.
“One out of four—that’s well above average,” Mearn sent. “And this one has real promise.”
Her paean of self-satisfaction was interrupted. A clap of thunder in the ambience announced the arrival of Novice Mist alongside the table. He was standing on his feet, but at an impossible angle. Mearn made an occult grab to stop him falling. Jain jumped up to help, and they lowered him onto a chair.
A quick glance of hindsight told Jain that Mist had been dispatched from the Thaile Place by Archon Raim himself. He shuddered at the implications. Things just kept getting worse, and it was almost noon.
4
The archon had told Jain he would be summoned and there was no denying the summons when it came. While he was helping Mearn restore Novice Mist to jittery consciousness, the world seemed to open under him. He plunged into cold darkness. He staggered, seeking sure footing on uneven, spongy ground.
His first thought was that he had gone blind and deaf, but that was only because the ambience was now closed to him. All his power had been taken away. He felt bereft and vulnerable, because he had come to rely on sorcerous talents far more than on his mundane senses. After a confused moment he established that he was standing in forest denser than any he had ever seen. Enormous trunks soared up to a canopy thick enough to cut off the noonday sun. The damp, fetid air was heavy on his skin-cloying and stagnant, as if no healthy breezes ever penetrated.
His feet had sunk to the ankle in soggy moss; his hose were already soaked by clammy, knee-high ferns. The faint chattering noise beside him was coming from Mistress Meam’s teeth.
As his eyes adjusted to the gloom, a vast building came into view before him, a pile so ancient that it seemed to have sunk into the forest and become part of it, or else to be itself a product of the jungle, something that had grown there over the ages. The old walls were cracked and canted, the very stones crumbling under leprous coats of greenish lichens. Narrow windows once inset with glass were now gaping holes toothed by fragments of columns and tracery. Doors, likewise, had long since rotted away; the entrance archway gawked at him like the mouth of an idiot. The roof must have survived, though, for the interior was even darker than the enveloping forest.
“The Chapel!” Mearn said unnecessarily. “I . . . I did not expect it to be so large.” She moved forward, and he hastened to follow. Stumbling on roots and rotten timber, they waded through the drippy undergrowth to the forbidding facade. The building had sunk or the forest had risen; uncertain light revealed a ramp of humus and detritus leading down to the dark interior floor.