Year of the Griffin (5 page)

Nobody had a ruler. They used pencils and the edges of desks rather than have another scene. So far they had got by without one by keeping as quiet as they could. But Lukin's face was blanched with rage. Ruskin's was deep pink, and he was muttering, “Oppression!” even before the top of the hourglass emptied and Wermacht's heavy feet went striding away.

“Plain damn rudeness, I call it!” Lukin snarled as they pushed their way out into the courtyard. “I'm so busy keeping my temper that I haven't time to learn anything!” Olga took his arm and patted it while she led the way across the courtyard for coffee. Olga drank coffee by the quart. She said she needed it to run in her veins. “
And
we've got the beastly man again this afternoon!” Lukin complained. He was soothed by Olga's patting, but not by much.

“And in between comes lunch,” said Claudia, “which may even be worse than Wermacht.”

The rest groaned. Of all of them, Claudia probably suffered most from the truly horrible food provided by the refectory. She was used to the food that the Emperor ate and the exquisite, spicy waterweeds of the Marshes. But dwarfs ate delicately, too, Ruskin said, even the lower tribes; and, Felim added, so did the Emirates. Elda craved fresh fruit; Olga yearned for fresh fish. Lukin did not mind much. The poverty of Luteria made the food there very little better than the stuff from the refectory.

“But,” Lukin said, as they forced a way up the crowded refectory steps, “I would give my father's kingdom for a properly baked oatcake.”

“Oatcake!” Claudia cried out, quite disgusted.

“Why not?” Olga asked. “There's little to beat it if it's made right.” Her northern accent came out very strongly as she said this. It always did on the few occasions when she spoke of anything to do with her home. “Find me a fire and a griddle, Claudia, and I'll make you one.”

“Yes, please!” said Lukin.

It was one of those muggily warm autumn days. Every student in the place seemed to be outside sitting on the refectory steps. Olga put their six cups of coffee on a tray and carried it over to the statue of Wizard Policant instead, where they all sat on his plinth except Elda, who spread herself out at their feet, alternately bending down to sip at her straw and raising her big golden beak to sniff the mushroom and wheat straw scent of autumn, carried in from beyond the town by the faint, muggy wind. Something in those scents excited her, she was not sure what, but it made her tail lash a little.

“A fire and a griddle,” Claudia said. “If I could do it unjinxed, I'd fetch you both, Olga. Why, with all this magical ability there is in this University, doesn't anybody make the food at least
taste better
?”

“That's an idea,” Ruskin grunted, banging his dangling heels against the plinth. “I'll do it as soon as I learn how. Promise. Charcoal roast and mussels with garlic. How about that?”

“Newly caught trout with parsley butter,” Olga added yearningly.

“I've never had mussels,” said Elda. “Would I like them?”

“You're bound to. Your beak looks made for opening shellfish,” said Felim.

“And chicken pie to follow,” said Claudia. “What pudding, do you think?”

“Claudia,” said Lukin, “stop encouraging everyone to think of food and tell me how to deal with Wermacht. If he calls me ‘you with the secondhand jacket' once more, I may find I've opened a mile-deep hole underneath him. I won't be able to help myself.”

“And I might savage him”—Elda agreed—“next time he calls me an animal.”

“Let's think.” Claudia leaned forward, with both bony hands clasped around one of her sharp knees. Her eyes took on a green glow of thought. In some queer Marshperson way, her hair seemed to develop a life of its own, each dark lock coiling and uncoiling on her shoulders. Everyone turned to her respectfully. They had learned that when Claudia looked like this, she was going to say something valuable. “I've heard,” she said, “that Wizard Wermacht is the youngest tutor on the faculty, and I suspect he's very proud of that. I think he's rather sad.”

“Sad!”
exclaimed Ruskin. His voice rose to such a hoot that students on the refectory steps jumped around to look. “I may cry!”

“Pitiful, I mean,” Claudia explained. “He swanks about with those heavy feet, thinking he's so smart and clever, and he's never even noticed that those other wizards make him teach all the classes. Why do you think we're so sick of being taught by Wermacht? Because all the older ones know it's hard, boring work hammering basics into first years and they let Wizard Wermacht do it because he's too stupid to see it isn't an honor. That's what I mean by sad.”

“Hmm,” said Lukin. “You've got a point. But I don't think it'll hold me off forever.” A grin lit his heavy face, and he flung an arm around Olga. “If I get angry enough, I may tell him he's being exploited.”

Olga leaned her face against Lukin's shoulder. “Good idea.”

The rest watched with friendly interest, as they had done all week. Olga was extremely beautiful. Lukin was almost handsome. Both of them were from the north. It fitted. On the other hand, Lukin was a crown prince. All of them, even Ruskin, who was still having trouble grasping human customs, felt anxious for Olga from time to time. Elda had her beak open to ask, as tactfully as possible, what King Luther would think about Olga when they heard, quite mystifyingly, the sound of a horse's hooves clopping echoingly through the courtyard. There was a great, admiring “O-o-oh!” from the refectory steps.

“Riding in here is illegal, isn't it?” asked Felim.

Well-known smells filled Elda's open beak. She clapped her beak shut and plunged around the statue, screaming. In the empty part of the courtyard beyond, a superb chestnut colt was just trotting to a halt and folding his great shining carroty wings as he did so. His rider waited for the huge pinions to be laid in order, before slinging both legs across one wing and sliding to the ground. He was a tall man with a wide, shambling sort of look.
“Dad!
” screamed Elda, and flung herself upon him. Derk steadied himself with several often-used bracing spells and only reeled back slightly as he was engulfed in long golden feathers, with Elda's talons gripping his shoulders and Elda's smooth, cool beak rubbing his face.

“Lords!” said the horse. “Suppose I was to do that!”

“None of your cheek, Filbert,” Elda said over Derk's shoulder. “I haven't seen Dad for a week now. You've seen him every day. Dad, what are you
doing
here?”

“Coming to see how you were, of course,” Derk replied. “I thought I'd give you a week to settle down first. How
are
things?”

“Wonderful!” Elda said rapturously. “I'm learning so many things! I mean, the food's awful, and one of the main teachers is vile, but they gave me a whole concert hall to sleep in because the other rooms are too small, and I've got
friends
, Dad! Come and meet my friends.”

She disentangled herself from Derk and dragged him by one arm across to the statue of Wizard Policant. Derk smiled and let himself be dragged. Filbert, who was a colt of boundless curiosity, clopped across after them and peered around the plinth as Elda introduced the others.

Derk shook hands with Olga and then with Lukin, whom he knew well. “Hallo, Your Highness. Does this mean your father's allowed you to leave home after all?”

“No, not really,” Lukin admitted, rather flushed. “I'm financing myself, though. How are your flying pigs these days, sir?”

“Making a great nuisance of themselves,” said Derk, “as always.” He shook hands with Felim. “How do you do? Haven't I met you before somewhere?”

“No, sir,” Felim said with great firmness.

“Then you must look like someone else I've met.” Derk apologized. He turned to Claudia. “Claudia? Good gods! You were a little shrimp of a girl when I saw you last! Living in the Marshes with your mother. Do you remember me at all?”

Claudia's face lit with her happiest and most deeply dimpled smile. “I do indeed. You landed outside our dwelling on a beautiful black horse with wings.”

“Beauty. My grandmother,” Filbert put in, with his chin on Wizard Policant's pointed shoes.

“I hope she's still alive,” said Claudia.

“Fine, for a twelve-year-old,” Filbert told her. “She doesn't speak as well as me. Mara mostly rides her these days.”

“No, I remember I could hardly understand her,” said Claudia. “She looked tired. So did you,” she said to Derk. “Tired and worried.”

“Well, I was trying to be Dark Lord in those days,” Derk said, “and your mother's people weren't being very helpful.” He turned to Ruskin. “A dwarf, eh? Training to be a wizard. That has to be a first. I don't think there's been a dwarf wizard
ever
.”

Ruskin gave a little bow from where he sat. “That is correct. I intend to be the first one. Nothing less than a wizard's powers will break the stranglehold the forgemasters have on Central Peaks society.”

Derk looked thoughtful. “I've been trying to do something about that. The way things are run there now is a shocking waste of dwarf talents. But those forgemasters of yours are some of the most stiff-necked, flinty-hearted, obstinate fellows I know. I tell you what—you come to me when you're qualified and we'll try to work something out.”

“Really?” Ruskin's round face beamed. “You mean that?”

“Of course, or I wouldn't have said it,” said Derk. “One thing Querida taught me is that revolutions need a bit of planning. And that reminds me—”

Elda had been towering behind her father, delighted to see him getting on so well with her friends. Now she flung both feathered forelegs around his shoulders, causing him to sag a bit. “You really don't mind me being here? You're going to let me stay?”

“Well.” Derk disengaged himself and sat on the plinth beside Filbert's interested nose. “Well, I can't deny that Mara and I had a bit of a set-to over it, Elda. It went on some days, in fact. Your mother pointed out that you had the talent and were at an age when everyone needs a life of her own. She also said you were big enough to toss me over a barn if you wanted.”

“Oh, I wouldn't do that!” Elda cried out. She thought about it. “Or not if you let me stay here. You
will
, won't you?”

“That's mostly why I'm here,” said Derk. “If you're happy and if you're sure you're learning something of value, then of course you have to stay. But I want to talk to you seriously about what you'll be learning. You should all listen to this, too,” he said to the other five. “It's important.” They nodded and watched Derk attentively as he went on. “For many, many years,” he said, “forty years, in fact, this University was run almost entirely to turn out Wizard Guides for Mr. Chesney's tour parties. The men among the teachers were very pressed for time, too, because they had to go and be Guides themselves every autumn when the tours began. So they pared down what they taught. After a few years they were teaching almost nothing but what was needed to get a party of nonmagic users around dangerous bits of country, and these were all the fast, simple things that worked. They left out half the theory and some of the laws, and they left out all the slower, more thorough, more permanent, or more artistic ways of doing things. Above all, they discouraged students from having new ideas. You can see their point in that. It doesn't do for a Wizard Guide with twenty people to keep safe in the Waste when a monster's charging at them to stand rooted to the spot because he's thought of a new way to make diamonds. They'd all be dead quite quickly. Mr. Chesney didn't allow that kind of thing. You can see the old wizards' point. But the fact remains that for forty years they were not teaching properly.”

“I believe those old wizards have retired now, sir,” Felim said.

“Oh, they have.” Derk agreed. “They were worn out. But you haven't grasped my point. Six smart students like you ought to see it at once.”

“I have,” Filbert said, chomping his bit in a pleased way. “The ones teaching now were taught by the old ones.”

“Exactly,” said Derk, while the others cried out, “Oh, I
see
!” and “That's
it
!” and Olga said, “Then that's what's wrong with Wermacht.”

“All that about ‘your next big heading.' So schooly,” said Claudia. “Because that's all he knows. Like I said, pitiful.”

“Running in blinkers,” Filbert suggested brightly.

“Then it's all no
use
!” Elda said tragically. “I might just as well come home.”

From the look of them, the others were thinking the same. “Here now. There's no need to be so extreme,” Derk said. “Who's your tutor?”

“Corkoran,” said Elda. The others noticed, with considerable interest, that she did not go on and tell Derk that Corkoran reminded her of a teddy bear.

“He's the fellow who's trying to get to the moon, isn't he?” Derk asked. “That could well force him to widen his ideas a little, though he may not tell them to you, of course. You should all remember that for every one way of doing things that he tells you, there are usually ten more that he doesn't, because half of them are ways he's never heard of. The same goes for laws and theory. Remember there are more kinds of magic than there are birds in the air, and that each branch of it leads off in a hundred directions. Examine everything you're taught. Turn it upside down and sideways; then try to follow up new ways of doing it. The really old books in the library should help you, if you can find them—Policant's
Philosophy of Magic
is a good start—and then ask questions. Make your teachers think, too. It'll do them good.”