L. Modesitt - Imager

“Grandisyn, this is Rhennthyl. He’s the new imager second I told you about.” Master Dichartyn turned to me. “This is Grandisyn. He’s a senior imager tertius. He knows more about imaging materials than most masters. I will leave you in his hands.” With that, he hurried away.

“You’re fortunate to have him as a preceptor,” Grandisyn said. “Fortunate, but he’ll make you work and think and then some.”

“I have noticed that, sir.”

“Just Grandisyn, Rhennthyl.”

“Rhenn, please. When people use my full name, I always wonder just what I did wrong.”

He laughed. “I can see that. My papa did the same.” After a moment, he began to explain. “Your task will not be easy at first, but it is simple. All you have to do is image some of these aluminum bars.” Grandisyn lifted a bar of a silvery metal out of the wooden crate on the right end, which had three of the small ingots in it, the only crate that did, then pointed to the barrels lined up along the wall. “It should be easier if you concentrate on imaging from the barrels. They’re filled with high-grade bauxite. Master Dichartyn said you might have to work at figuring it out, but that you could do it. Take your time.” He gave me a smile, then hastened off.

I was still holding the small aluminum bar, possibly worth several hundred gold crowns, and I was supposed to image more of them? In a way, from what I’d read, it made sense. Refining it was costly, and that made it very valuable, but why weren’t we refining gold? Or platinum?

I wasn’t quite sure what I was doing, but I concentrated on the image of the bar, the shining light metal, right on the workbench, and tried to visualize a vague link between the barrels and the bar I was attempting to image into existence.

A series of dull clanks followed.

Not only did I have a bar, somewhat larger than the one I’d been shown, but there was a line of aluminum fragments on the stone floor running spiderweb-fashion toward the barrels.

Obviously, my vague link needed to be far less direct.

I kept trying, and by the end of the fourth glass, I was exhausted, and my head was pounding. But there was a wooden box filled with the metal ingots, some of which had been refashioned from all the loose fragments I’d created before I’d figured out how to image without creating patterns of aluminum running from the barrels. Yet, in the end, refashioning from the fragments had been far easier.

I finally just sat down on the stool that had been tucked away under the bench. I was just too tired to do more. When I’d first imaged that small part of the Factorius Masgayl’s portrait, I had had no idea how exhausting imaging would turn out to be.

Before long, Grandisyn walked in and crossed the floor to the wooden crate. He looked at the crate, and then at me. “Hmmmm. We may have to find other things for you. I’ll be talking to Master Dichartyn. You look done in. Go get some rest.”

I didn’t need any more encouragement.

Back in my room, I slept for more than a glass and then had to hurry to the dining hall for dinner, where I ended up at the bottom of the table among several thirds I didn’t know, but I did my best to be cheerful.

After dinner I went back to my room and read some more, but I was careful to make my way down to the common room about a half glass before eight. The common room was in the lower level on the north end of the building, little more than a narrow space some fifteen yards long and seven wide with tables and benches spaced irregularly. The wall lamps were infrequent and wicked down to minimal light, so that the impression was of gloom. I found Johanyr and several others in a corner, with chairs pulled around a newishlooking table of a design centuries old. It should have been battered, but wasn’t. It took me several moments to realize why.

“Rhenn . . . pull up a chair.” That was Diazt. “We were talking about what’s got the masters all stirred up.”

I lifted a chair and set it between Johanyr and Shannyr, then sat down. My feet hurt, and I still had a trace of a headache.

“Only half the masters were at dinner, and neither Master Dichartyn nor Master Poincaryt was there,” said a short muscular secondus.

“They usually aren’t,” Shannyr said. No one looked in his direction.

“The newsheets said a Caenenan shore battery fired on one of our merchanters.”

“Why would they do that?” asked Shannyr. “Merchanters don’t carry cannon.”

“What would that have to do with the Collegium?” I inquired.

Diazt laughed. “The Collegium has something to do with everything in Solidar.”

“Master Dichartyn’s your preceptor, isn’t he?” asked Johanyr.

“Yes, but he didn’t say anything, except he cut my session short this morning, and then let Grandisyn tell me what to do in the workrooms. He left in a hurry.”

“They were all like that today.”

“Did he let anything slip, even indirectly?” pressed Johanyr.

“The only thing he said was that both Ferrum and Jariola had nasty habits in making snoopy strangers disappear.”

“I told you it couldn’t be just Caenen!” declared Shannyr.

“Does the Council have any problems with the Oligarch there?” I asked.

“There’s not a country in the world that doesn’t have problems with the Oligarch,” someone else said. I couldn’t tell who with the quietness of the words and the dimness.

“There’s not a country in all of Terahnar that doesn’t have problems with Solidar,” replied Johanyr.

“Because of imaging?” I suggested. “We don’t have that many imagers.”

“No one else has anywhere near as many.”

“You can’t have many imagers if you kill most of them as children,” added Shannyr.

Diazt cleared his throat. “We still don’t really know what has them worried. It has to be something important to have all the masters meeting twice in one day.”

“It can’t be just firing on a merchanter,” said Diazt.

In the end, no one added anything, and I had to wonder who knew what, if anything. Still, I’d been there, and I had the feeling that I’d better drop in at least a few times a week.

On Mardi morning, I spent a glass outside Master Dichartyn’s study reading Practical Philosophy because it was so boring that it seemed better to read it when I couldn’t do much else. At those times when my eyes threatened to cross, I spent a few moments with the newsheet- Tableta -but there was nothing of great interest, except for the massive avalanche near Mont D’Image and the speculation that somehow the imager Collegium there had been involved. Also, according to the captain of the Aegis , a Caenenan gunboat had fired on his ship, but missed.

When another imager left-I recognized the tertius as Engmyr, whom I’d met at the dining table-Master Dichartyn beckoned me to enter. He looked less tense than he had the day before, and he was smiling as I closed the door and took my seat.

“Grandisyn tells me that you imaged a week’s worth of aluminum ingots in two glasses. How do you feel?”

“I ended up with a terrible headache, and I almost fell asleep in the common room.”

“Take time in between imaging this afternoon, and see if you can find a better way. Try several ways. Even if you can’t, taking time between each effort will leave you less exhausted.”

“Sir . . . besides testing imagers, what is aluminum used for?”

“Its rarity, except that it’s not rare, except in pure form. It’s just that, except for imaging, it’s so difficult to refine and process that it is valuable. So the Collegium provides a certain amount to the Council, and they sell it discreetly to enhance revenues.”