L. Modesitt - Imager

I eased toward a redheaded young man. “Is this the table for the imagers primus?”

“For us lowly primes, it is. You’re new, aren’t you?”

“About as new as one can be,” I admitted. “I crossed the bridge this morning.”

“I’m Etyen.”

“Rhenn, or formally, Rhennthyl.” As I stood there, I realized that several of the figures were young women. I also saw two older women coming through the arched doorway, one of them gray-haired, and walking toward the adjoining table, and a third, also gray, moving toward the masters’ table with a white-haired man. I must have stared because Etyen spoke again.

“There aren’t that many women imagers, but Maitre Dyana is a Maitre D’Structure. She’s old, though.”

“How old?”

“She must be forty-some . . . or even older.”

Somehow, I didn’t think of someone my mother’s age as old, but Etyen couldn’t have been much more that fifteen, and he must have come to Imagisle right out of a grammaire.

“Where did you come from?” I asked.

“From Asseroiles.”

Asseroiles was more than three hundred milles to the northwest. “Are all the imagers in Solidar here at the Collegium?”

“Oh, no, but most of them are. There are three other Collegia. There’s Mont D’Image to the north . . . well, it’s actually northwest of Asseroiles, somewhere off the Nord Pass through the Glaces, and Westisle outside the harbor of Liantiago, and Estisle near Nacliano.”

That did not seem like many imagers, not for a land the size of Solidar, stretching close to three thousand milles from coast to coast. How had the Council kept it all together before the steam engines of the ironway had made land transportation faster than horse and wagons?

“Rhenn here is new,” Etyen announced.

Several of the primes looked at me. Most didn’t, and people sat down as they came in without any blessing. I thought that odd.

“What room are you in?” asked Etyen.

“Fourteen, second level, south wing.”

Someone nodded.

“. . . Corsarius’s room . . .”

Several primes looked hard at the fresh-faced youth who had murmured the words.

“What happened to him?” I asked.

“Bridge of Stones,” replied Etyen in a low voice, adding even more quietly, “We don’t talk about it.”

Not talk about it? When someone died?

“You didn’t come here straight from the grammaire?” asked the prime across the table from me. “Oh, I’m Lieryns.”

“No. I’ve been an apprentice and a journeyman portraiturist. I didn’t realize I could image until a little while ago.”

“Sometimes, it’s like that.” Etyen nodded. “But I always knew.”

“You always know everything,” murmured someone.

There were low laughs from more than a few primes, and as I looked down the table, I was relieved to see that there were a few who looked as old as I was, if not older.

“You were a journeyman. You actually painted real portraits, then,” observed Lieryns.

“Some,” I replied, looking at the large bowl of rice being passed down the table. Behind it followed some sort of dish in sauce. “Mostly of girls and cats.”

“Cats?”

“My master said I had a talent for painting cats, and I don’t think he liked dealing with girls and cats. I did do one portrait of a factorius.”

At that point, the rice arrived, and I served myself a solid helping, as well as of the tomato-sauced fowl chunks that followed. If the lunch fare was any indication, I was going to be better fed than I had been by Madame Caliostrus.

Sometime later, after several mouthfuls of food, and some swallows of a fair red plonk, I took another look around the table before speaking. “I haven’t had a chance to read anything. What do we do, besides study?”

“Whatever we can,” replied Lieryns. “I’m helping Master Schorzat in the chemistry laboratory, but mostly I image little things out of glass for his experiments.”

“I thought there was a counselor-advocate to the Council named something like that.”

“That’s his brother,” someone said. “Scheorzyl. Master Schorzat said his father wanted everyone to know the two were brothers.”

My eyes went to Etyen. “And you?”

“I’m still working on making shapes with metals. They’re harder.”

I couldn’t say that I learned all that much at lunch, but everyone was certainly friendly. Afterward, I left the dining hall and, map once more in hand, began to explore and try to memorize where everything was. No one seemed in the slightest interested as I wandered all over Imagisle and the buildings of the Collegium that Lundi afternoon. I still worried about why no one talked about it when someone died.

As Master Dichartyn had intimated, I had to wait to see him on Mardi morning. I sat on a bench outside his study reading the thin volume on the Collegium. I’d made it through fifteen boring pages when he opened the study door and an older imager walked out, somewhat stiffly.

“You may come in, Rhenn.”

His study was small, not more than three yards by four, with a long narrow window, open just slightly. The space held two enormous bookcases, a small writing desk, two filing boxes stacked on top of each other, and two chairs, one with a cushion and arms and one straight-backed and not too comfortable. I sat in the straight-backed chair.

“Before we start, I’d like you to know that one of our messengers delivered your letter to your parents yesterday, late in the afternoon. They were relieved to know that you were safe.”

“Thank you, sir.” Mother was relieved at my safety; Father was more likely relieved I hadn’t embarrassed him or gotten into some difficulty that might have cost him in some fashion.

“Now . . . when was the first time you realized you might have imaging abilities?”

“Not until around the first of the year.” It was actually just a bit earlier, but not much. “I was working on a portrait, and I couldn’t get the area around the eyes right. I could almost see how it should be-and then it was right, even with my brushstrokes, as if I’d painted it just as I’d visualized it. I still wasn’t sure that it was imaging. I thought maybe I’d painted it and then imagined that I’d imaged it.”

“And . . .?”

“Maybe a month later, I was working on another portrait, and it happened again.”

“And you didn’t come to us then?”

“No, sir. I’d heard about how imagers had turned the alabaster walls of the Council Chateau into stone harder than granite, and how they could image parts of machines into being. All I could do was image just the slightest bit of oil paint.”

“All?” Dichartyn laughed. “There are some seconds that can’t do that and never will.”

“I didn’t know that, sir. It seemed very insignificant to me, and I was beginning to get commissions-the kind where patrons asked for me personally.”

He nodded. “What did your master say?”

“I never told him about the imaging. When he talked about the imagers, he was quite clear that I should never want to be one, that most died young, and most of the rest never amounted to anything.”

“He said that?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I can see where that might give you pause, Rhenn.” He leaned back in his chair and fingered his clean-shaven chin.

All the imagers were clean-shaven, I realized, unlike artists, most of whom had beards or mustaches, if not both. In that way, at least, I did fit in. I’d never liked beards.

“So why did you finally seek us out?”

“Master Caliostrus died in the fire. No one else would take me on. My father wanted me to become a wool factor. I thought that my small talents for imaging might gain me a place here.”