The Magicians' Guild (21 page)

He paused and she saw his head turn toward her in the faint light. “Remember how you said you wanted someone to show you how to use magic? Perhaps if you watch them, you’ll see something that will help you learn.”

“But… the
Guild
, Cery.”

He shrugged. “I wouldn’t bring you here if I knew it was real dangerous, would I?”

Sonea shook her head. She felt awful for doubting him. If he had intended to turn her in, he would have let the magicians catch her back at the hide. But he would never betray her. Though his explanation
was
incredible.

If this is a trap, I’m already doomed.

She pushed the thought away and turned her mind to what Cery was proposing.

“You really think we can do this?”

“Sure.”

“It’s madness, Cery.”

He laughed. “At least come and look. We’ll go as far as the road and you can see for yourself how easy it is. If you don’t want to try it, we’ll go back. Come on.”

Swallowing her fear, she followed him through the trees. The forest thinned a little, and through it she saw walls. Keeping to the shadows, Cery crept forward until he was less than twenty paces from a road, then darted forward and stood behind the trunk of a large tree.

Sonea hurried after and pressed her back against another tree. Her legs seemed to have lost most of their strength and she felt light-headed and dizzy. Cery grinned, then pointed through the trees.

She looked up at the building before her and gasped.

It was so tall, it seemed about to touch the stars.

At each corner was a tower. Between them, white walls glowed softly in the moonlight. At the front stone arches spanned the width of the building, one above the other, and from each arch hung a curtain of stone. A wide staircase led up to a pair of grand doors, which stood open.

“It’s beautiful,” Sonea breathed.

Cery laughed softly. “It is, isn’t it? See those doors? They’re about four times as tall as a man.”

“They must be very heavy. How do they close them?”

“With magic, I suppose.”

Sonea tensed as a figure in blue robes appeared in the doorway. The man paused, then strode down the stairs and walked away toward a smaller building to the right.

“Don’t worry. They can’t see us,” Cery assured her.

Sonea let out the breath she was holding and dragged her eyes away from the distant figure. “What’s inside?”

“Classrooms. That’s the University.”

Three rows of windows ran down the side of the building. The bottom two rows were mostly obscured by a line of trees but she could see warm yellow light through gaps in the foliage. A large garden was on the left of the building. Cery pointed to a building on the far side of this.

“That’s where the novices live,” he said. “There’s another building just like it on the other side of the University where the magicians live. Over there,” he pointed to a circular building several hundred paces to their left, “is the place where the Healers do their work.”

“What’s that?” Sonea asked, pointing to a collection of curved masts rising up from somewhere within the garden.

Cery shrugged. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “Never found out.”

He gestured to the road in front of them. “This goes to the servants’ houses down there,” he pointed to the left, “and the stables that way,” he pointed to the right. “There are a few other buildings behind the University, and another garden in front of the magicians’ building. Oh, and there are more houses for magicians up the hill a bit.”

“So many buildings,” she breathed. “How many magicians
are
there?”

“Over a hundred living here,” he told her. “There’s more that don’t. Some live in the city, some out in the country, and lots more in other countries. About two hundred servants live here too. They’ve got maids, stablemen, cooks, scribes, gardeners, even farmers.”

“Farmers?”

“They have fields down near the servants’ houses.”

Sonea frowned. “Why wouldn’t they just buy their food?”

“I’ve heard they grow all sorts of plants to make medicines from.”

“Oh.” Sonea looked at Cery, impressed. “How did you find out so much about the Guild?”

He grinned. “I asked a lot of questions, especially after I went looking around last time.”

“Why?”

“I was curious.”

“Curious?” Sonea snorted. “Just
curious
?”

“Everybody wonders what they do in there. Don’t
you
?”

Sonea hesitated. “Well… sometimes.”

“Of course you do. You’ve got more reason than most. So, do you want to spy on a few magicians?”

Sonea looked up at the buildings. “How are we going to look inside without them seeing us?”

“The garden goes right up to the walls of the buildings,” Cery told her. “There are paths going back and forth, and beside them are trees with hedges on either side. You can walk between the hedges and nobody can see you.”

Sonea shook her head. “Only you would do something this crazy.”

He smiled. “But you know I don’t take stupid risks.”

She bit her lip, still ashamed that she had suspected him of betraying her. He had always been the cleverest of Harrin’s gang. If it was possible to spy on the Guild, he would know how to do it.

She knew she should tell him to take her back to Faren. If someone discovered them … It was too frightening to think about. Cery was watching her expectantly.
It would be a shame not to try,
a voice in the back of her mind whispered,
and I might see something helpful.

“All right.” She sighed. “Where first?”

Cery grinned and pointed toward the Healers’ building. “We’ll get into the gardens down there, where the road’s dark. Follow me.”

He scampered back into the forest and wove his way through the trees. After a few hundred paces, he moved back toward the road and stopped beside a tree.

“The magicians are busy training right now,” he murmured. “Or they’ve gone to their rooms. We’ve got until the night classes finish, then we’ll dig down and hide. For now, we just have to watch out for servants. Stuff your cloak in your shirt. It’ll only get in the way.”

She obeyed. Cery took her hand and started toward the road. Sonea looked up at the windows of the University dubiously.

“What if they look out? They’ll see us.”

“Don’t worry,” he told her. “Their rooms are full of light, so they can’t see anything outside unless they go right up to the windows and they’re too busy doing what they do to look outside.”

Taking her arm, he pulled her across the road. She held her breath and searched the windows above them for watchers, but no human shapes appeared in them. As they entered the shadows of the garden, she breathed a sigh of relief.

Dropping to his belly, Cery wriggled through the base of a hedge. Following him, Sonea found herself crouching under a dense net of foliage.

“It’s grown a bit since I was here last,” Cery murmured. “We’ll have to crawl.”

Moving forward on their hands and knees, he led her through a tight tunnel of vegetation. Every twenty paces or so they had to squeeze past the trunk of a tree. After crawling for several hundred paces, he stopped.

“We’re in front of the Healer’s building,” he told her. “We cross a path, then go into the trees against the wall. I’ll go first. Check to make sure the path is clear, then follow.”

Dropping to his belly again, he pushed his way out of the hedge and disappeared. Moving to the hole he had made, Sonea peered out. A path ran along the hedge. She could see the gap where Cery had pushed into the hedge on the other side.

Crawling out, she hurried across and pushed her way into the foliage. She found Cery sitting in the space behind, resting his back against the trunk of a large tree, facing a wall.

“You think you could climb this?” Cery asked quietly, patting the wall. “You’ll have to go to the second floor. That’s where they have their lessons.”

Sonea examined the wall. It was made of large stone bricks. The mortar between was old and crumbling. Two ledges ran around the building, forming the base of the windows. Once she had reached a window she would be able to rest on the ledge while she looked inside.

“Easy,” she whispered.

His eyes narrowed, then he began searching his pockets. Bringing out a small jar, he opened it and began smearing dark paste on her face.

“There. Now you look like Faren.” He grinned, then grew serious again. “Stay behind the trees. If I see someone coming, I’ll hoot like a mullook. You stay put and keep real still and quiet.”

Nodding, she turned to the wall and carefully set her toes into a crack. Digging her fingers into the crumbling mortar, she sought the next foothold. Soon she was clinging to the wall, her feet level with Cery’s head. She looked down at him and saw his teeth flash as he grinned.

Her muscles protested as she hauled herself up but she did not stop until she had reached the second ledge. Pausing to catch her breath, she turned her head toward the nearest window.

It was the size of a doorway and filled with four large panes of glass. She cautiously slid along the ledge until she could see into the room beyond.

A large group of brown-robed magicians sat inside, all gazing intently at something in a far corner of the room. She hesitated, fearing that one would look up and see her, but none glanced her way. Heart racing, she edged forward until she could see what they were staring at.

A man with dark green robes stood at the far corner. He held in his hands a carving of an arm with colored lines and words scrawled over it. The magician was using a short stick of wood to point at the different words.

Sonea felt a thrill of excitement. The magician’s voice was a little muffled by the glass, but she could make out his words if she listened carefully.

As she did, a familiar frustration grew. Strange words and phrases made up much of the magician’s lecture. It made as much sense to her as another language. She was about to give in to the ache in her fingers and return to Cery when the speaker turned and called out loudly: “Bring Jenia in.”

The novices turned toward the open door. A young woman entered the room, accompanied by an old servant. Her arm was bandaged and hung from a sling tied behind her neck.

The woman smiled boldly and laughed at something one of the novices said. With a stern look from the teacher, the class quietened.

“Jenia broke her arm this afternoon when she fell off her horse,” he told them. He gestured for the young woman to take a chair. As he began to unwrap her bandages the smile fled from her face.

A bruised and swollen forearm was uncovered. The teacher picked two novices from the class. The pair ran their hands gently over the bruised arm, stepped back and gave their assessment. The teacher nodded, pleased.

“Now,” his voice rose to include the class, “first we must stop the pain.”

At a signal from the teacher, one of the novices took the woman’s hand. He closed his eyes and the room was silent for a moment. A look of relief passed over the woman’s face. The novice released her and nodded at the teacher.

“It is always better to let the body heal itself,” the magician continued, “but we can mend it to the point where the bones join and the swelling is relieved.”

The other novice slowly ran his palm along the woman’s arm. The bruises faded under his touch. When the youth drew away, the young woman smiled and tentatively wriggled her fingers.

The teacher examined her arm, then replaced the sling, which the woman regarded with obvious disdain. He instructed her sternly not to use her arm for two weeks. One of the novices said something and the rest laughed.

Sonea drew away from the window. She had just seen the magicians’ legendary healing powers at work, something that few dwells ever witnessed. It was as amazing as she had imagined.

But she had learned nothing of how they had done it.

This must be a class for skilled novices,
she reasoned. New novices would not know how to treat an injury like that. If she found a class for new novices, she might be able to understand it.

She climbed down. As her feet touched the ground Cery grabbed her arm.

“Did you see any healing?” he whispered.

She nodded.

Cery grinned. “Told you this was easy, didn’t I?”

“For you, maybe,” she said, rubbing her hands. “I’m out of practice.” Moving to the next tree, she forced her tired fingers between the bricks, and hauled herself up again.

The teacher in the next classroom was a woman, and she was also wearing green robes. She was silent, watching her novices as they bent over their desks, frantically writing on sheets of paper and leafing through well-worn leather books. Sonea gave in to the ache in her arms and returned to the ground. “Well?” Cery asked.

She shook her head. “Nothing much.”

The next window revealed a class of novices mixing liquids, dried powders and pastes in small jars. The window after contained a single young man in green robes, his head resting on the open pages of his book as he dozed.

“The rest of the rooms don’t have lights,” Cery told her when she reached the ground again. “I guess that’s all you’ll see here.” He turned to point at the University. “There are more classes to watch over there.”

She nodded. “Let’s go.”

Squeezing out of the hedge, they dashed across the path and pushed into the foliage on the other side. Halfway across the garden, Cery stopped and pointed to a gap in the hedge.

Looking out between the leaves, Sonea saw they had reached the strange masts she had seen rising above the gardens. They curved inward, as if bowing to each other, and tapered to a point at the top. They were spaced evenly around a large circular slab of stone which had been set into the ground.

Sonea shivered. A vaguely familiar vibration tainted the air. Disturbed, she put a hand on Cery’s back.

“Let’s move on.”

Cery nodded and, glancing one more time at the tall masts, led her away.

They crossed two more paths before reaching the wall of the University. Cery placed a hand on the stone.