Chana had snorted, but the Maharam had not been amused. “I suppose your grandfather put you up to this,” he’d said to Lin.
“Davit, no,” Chana had protested. “Mayesh is quite against the idea, in fact.”
Davit. So the Maharam had a name. He responded to hearing it with a shrug. “I will think on it, Chana.”
Lin had been crushed, sure they’d been brushed off. But Chana, brisk as always, had only told her not to mope. The next day a messenger had come from the Shulamat, bearing the news that the Maharam had given his approval. Lin could study to be a physician, as long as she passed every test. No mistakes would be allowed, and no second chances.
Now, remembering the exuberance of that day, the way she and Mariam had danced around the physick garden, Lin managed a smile. “I remember.”
“I always counted it as a great victory,” Chana said.
“I never understood why the Maharam agreed to it,” said Lin. “He must be fonder of you than he lets on.”
Chana shook her head, setting the colorful beads of her necklaces to swaying. “Not at all. He agreed to annoy your grandfather, that’s all. He and your grandfather cannot stand each other.”
“Then I suppose I ought to be glad Mayesh was against my becoming a physician,” Lin said. “So typical of him. He was allowed to choose to be Counselor, but the Goddess forbid I have a hand in my own destiny.”
“Is he so bad?” Chana set her mug aside. “I had hoped, Lin, that when you grew to adulthood, you could find some peace with your grandfather. He did send that carriage for you and Mariam today, did he not?”
Lin shrugged, uncomfortable. “It was not meant as a kindness. He was simply showing his power.” And that he made the right decision, she thought, choosing the Palace and its opportunities over Josit and me.
Chana did not respond. She was examining the books flung across the table—the Book of Remedies, the Seventeen Rules, the Sefer Refuot, the Materia Medica. Well, not quite examining them, Lin thought. She was staring as if she could bore a hole through the pages with her eyes. “Linnet,” she said, “there is something I ought to tell you.”
Lin leaned forward. “What is it, Chana? You’re scaring me.”
“Your grandfather was never opposed to you becoming a physician. When I consulted him, he merely said it was your decision, not one for him to help or hinder. I told the Maharam otherwise because I knew it was the only way to get him to agree to allow it.”
“Mayesh said it was my decision?”
“Yes,” Chana said. “I should have told you before. I didn’t realize you even still remembered what I said that day, much less that you were still angry with Mayesh for it. There is much he has done that has earned your anger, Lin, but that was one thing he did not do.”
“Why . . .” Lin began, slowly. “Why does the Maharam hate him so much?”
Chana took a swig of cold karak and made a face. “You know of the Maharam’s son?”
“Yes. Asher.” Lin thought back. She did not remember the boy, but the stories about him persisted. “He was exiled, wasn’t he?”
Exile. The worst punishment the Sault and its council of elders could dole out. To be exiled was to be stripped of your identity. You were no longer Ashkar, forbidden to ever speak to or see your family, your friends, your spouse. Cut off from everything you had ever known, you would be driven from the gates to fend for yourself in the world of the malbushim, without family, money, or a place in the world.
“He was,” Chana said heavily. “You would have been perhaps five years old when it happened. He delved into what is forbidden.” She gazed at the fire, now sunk into saffron embers. “He believed that the magic that existed before the Sundering had not all been lost forever. That he could awaken it, access it, learn to practice it.”
Lin’s heart gave an odd little thump. “He was exiled just for trying to learn about magic? He was only a boy, wasn’t he—fifteen or sixteen? It seems like a mistake, not a crime.”
“He did more than just learn about it,” said Chana. “He tried to use it. Do you know what bone conjuring is?”
Lin shook her head.
“His mother had died a year or so before,” said Chana. “He was trying to bring her back. Even before the Sundering, such things were forbidden.” She crossed her arms over her broad chest. “Your grandfather was the only one of the elders to speak up against his exile. He told the Maharam he would regret it forever if he banished his only son, his only remaining family, from the Sault. The Maharam has never forgiven him for it.”
“Do you think he does regret it? The Maharam?”
Chana sighed. “I think he had no choice but to do what he did. He adored Asher, but the boy could have done nothing worse in his father’s eyes. In all our eyes. The world was nearly destroyed once by such dangerous magic. Mayesh should have known better than to say such things.”
Lin was silent. What, she wondered, had Asher Benezar done, precisely? Read books? Attempted spellwork? Like everyone in Dannemore, Lin knew of the Sorcerer-Kings whose battles had scorched the earth, leaving scars of Sunderglass behind—a constant reminder of the dangers and evils of magic. But she did not know how they had done it. How had magic been performed? The knowledge had been lost, she thought, along with the power.
“Lin,” said Chana. “What are you thinking?”
Lin stood up, crossing the room to the window. Outside she could see the winding cobblestoned street; over the tops of the nearest houses, the dome of the Shulamat rose, glimmering under the moonlight. And all around, of course, the walls, rising to cut off her view of Castellane. Only the Hill was visible, high and distant, and the white glow of Marivent—the Palace—like a second moon. “I am thinking,” Lin said, “that if there was a chance for me to heal Mariam using magic, I would be tempted just as Asher was.”
“We—the Ashkar alone—have magic. We have gematry. We have talismans. They are what we are allowed to use, and they assist us greatly. Lin, you know that.”
“I do know that. I also know that in the days before the Sundering, physicians mixed magic and science to wondrous effect. They could knit broken bones instantly, heal a shattered skull, stop the growth of tumors—”
“Enough.” Chana cut her off, her tone coldly forbidding. “Keep such thoughts out of your head, Lin. The Maharam was willing to exile his own son for seeking such knowledge. Do not imagine he would be any kinder to you.”
But power cannot remain untrammeled forever. As the knowledge of the One Word spread through Dannemore, magic altered from a force anyone with the talent and will could master to a jealously guarded secret gathered in the hands of a few powerful magicians. Those magic-users quickly rose to political prominence. They named themselves kings and queens, and began to lay out the borders of their territories. Tribes became towns, towns became cities, and land became kingdoms. And thus the age of the Sorcerer-Kings began.
—Tales of the Sorcerer-Kings, Laocantus Aurus Iovit III
CHAPTER FOUR
Most people, Kel knew, would panic with a blade at their throat. He didn’t like it much himself, but he could feel all the years of Jolivet’s training paying off: all the times Jolivet had run him through his paces over and over, teaching how he must learn to stand unmoving between Conor and an arrow, Conor and a sword, Conor and a dagger’s point. He had learned not to flinch at the touch of sharpened metal, even when it cut his skin.