Talon dried his hair with a coarse towel. He enjoyed bathing, though it had not been a regular part of his childhood. The Orosini had to heat water in which to bathe, since all the rivers ran with snowmelt year round and only in the hot months of summer could one swim in the lakes and rivers of the mountains. In winter you sweated in the lodges and scraped off dirt with a stick.
He had been introduced to bathing at Kendrick's, but there he had to use a tub, often after others had used it, so it seemed that all he was doing was trading his own dirt for someone else's. But the Villa Beata had a wonderful set of rooms in which to bathe. It had three connecting baths with cold, warm and hot water which were enjoyed by many folk in the community on a daily basis. And smaller tubs were available in each wing of the estate buildings.
After working or riding, he was glad to get the grime off and don fresh clothing. And every day there was fresh apparel in his clothes-chest. He knew that other students were assigned work in the laundry, but it still seemed like magic to him. He would leave his dirty clothing in a hamper outside the door to the room, and when he returned from his studies or exercises, clean garments awaited him.
As he wiped his face dry, he felt the stubble along his jaw.
He had started shaving the year before, in the same manner as Magnus, although the Orosini's preferred method was to pluck each hair out of the chin one by one. Talon decided he much preferred a sharp razor.
Talon stropped the razor while Rondar and Demetrius came in from their baths. "What are you doing after supper?" he asked, lathering his face.
Rondar threw himself upon his bed, a coarse towel his only garment, and grunted something noncommittal. Demetrius said, "I've got kitchen duty tonight, so I'll be serving, and cleaning up. You?"
"I'm free," said Talon as he started shaving. "I thought we might build a fire in the pit down by the lake and see who turns up."
"It helps if you spread the word during supper that you're doing so."
Rondar said, "Girls."
"An impromptu gathering is often the best."
"Well, tomorrow's Sixthday, so no matter how tired you are in the morning, by midday you can rest."
"I can," said Demetrius. "And he can," he pointed to Rondar, "but you can't. Didn't you check the roster?"
"No."
"You've got kitchen duty all day, sunrise until after last meal."
Talon sighed. "So much for a revel tonight."
"Well, it's a good idea, even if you're not going to be there," said Demetrius.
"Yes," Rondar agreed.
"Thanks. I think of it, and I can't go."
"You can go," said Demetrius. "Just don't stay up too late."
"Wine," said Rondar, as he sat up and began dressing.
"Yes, we'll need wine."
Demetrius looked at Talon who grinned at him. "You're the one in the kitchen tonight."
"If Besalamo catches me in the cellar again, he'll cook and eat me."
"Taldaren," observed Rondar with a nod.
Talon laughed. Besalamo was a magician from another world-a fact that had taken Talon some time to fully assimilate-and looked almost human, save for two fins of white bone that ran fore and aft along his skull in place of hair. And he had bright red eyes. "I think he started that rumour about Taldaren eating boys to keep us in line."
"You want to find out?" asked Demetrius.
"No, but I'm not the one who needs to get us some wine. Without the wine the girls won't come down to the lake."
"They might, if you asked them," suggested Demetrius.
Talon flushed at the suggestion. It was becoming clear that as the new boy he was the object of much curiosity among the girls on the island.
In total, there seemed to be about fifty students on the island, and after taking away those who weren't human, there were sixteen young men, from Talon's age up to their mid-twenties, and fourteen girls, aged fourteen to twenty-two.
"Alysandra," said Rondar.
"Yes," Demetrius agreed. "Invite her. If she says yes, all the boys will come, and if all the boys are down by the lake, then all the girls will come as well."
Talon's face and neck turned deep crimson.
"Blushing," said Rondar with a laugh, as he pulled on his trousers.
"Leave him alone, you useless barbarian. If we're going to get the girls to the lake tonight, we need Talon to ask Alysandra." Talon gave Demetrius a dubious look but said nothing. He had no problem talking to Alysandra, as some of the other boys seem to have, yet he had come to the conclusion that she was totally uninterested in him. Between her polite but unenthused responses to him over the last few weeks whenever circumstances brought them together, and the near awe with which the boys regarded her, he had decided early on that any pursuit of her was a waste of time.
Still, if Demetrius was willing to risk the cook's wrath by pilfering some wine, and even Rondar was excited at the prospect of the gathering, Talon felt he'd best do his part.
He finished dressing and set out to find Alysandra.
The fire burned brightly as the young men and women of the island sat in pairs or threes talking quietly. Except Rondar, who sat slightly away from Demetrius and a girl whose name Talon didn't know.
Talon was surprised to see nearly fifty people around the fire. The two bottles of wine Demetrius had produced were augmented by a large cask of ale someone else had purloined from the storage shed, and a few of the boys were already showing the effects of too much to drink. He helped himself to a goblet, and walked a little away from the group.
Talon enjoyed wine, but ale held little interest for him. The honeyed drinks of his childhood were but a dim memory and he had been denied the fermented honey the men drank. He stood there, on his own, swilling the pungent liquid around his mouth, savouring its taste.
"Why are you alone?"
Talon looked up and found a slender dark-haired girl named Gabrielle standing next to him, a light shawl around her shoulders. She had startling blue eyes and a warm smile.
"Hardly alone." Talon said.
She nodded. "Yet you always seem . . . apart, Talon."
Talon glanced around and said nothing.
"Are you waiting for Alysandra?"
It was as if the girl had read his mind; and on this island, that was a distinct possibility! Gabrielle's smile broadened. "No . . . yes, I suppose so. I mentioned this gathering to her before supper and-" he waved his hand at the other girls "-apparently she mentioned it to a number of the girls."
Gabrielle studied his face then said, "Are you yet another of those who have fallen under her spell?"
"Spell?" asked Talon. "What do you mean?"
"She's my friend. We share a room and I love her, but she's different." Gabrielle looked at the fire as if seeing something within the flames. "It's easy to forget that each of us is different."
Talon didn't quite know where Gabrielle was taking the conversation, so he was content to remain silent.
After a long pause, Gabrielle said, "I have visions. Sometimes they are flashes, images that are with me only for a brief instant. At other times they are long, detailed things, as if I were in a room watching others, hearing them speak.
"I was abandoned as a child by my family. They were fearful of me because I had foretold the death of a nearby farmer, and the villagers named me a witch-child." Her eyes grew dark. "I was four years old."
When Talon reached out to touch her, she pulled back and turned towards him with a pained smile. "I don't like to be touched."
"Sorry," he said, withdrawing his hand. "I only-"
"I know you meant well. Despite your own pain you have a generous spirit and an open heart. That's why I see only pain for you."
"What do you mean?"
"Alysandra." Gabrielle rose. "I love her like a sister, but she's dangerous, Talon. She will not come tonight. But you will find her, soon. And you will fall in love with her and she will break your heart."
Before he could ask any more questions, she turned and walked off into the dark, leaving Talon staring after her bemusedly. He weighed her words and found himself feeling a mixture of confusion and anger. Hadn't he had enough pain already in his life? He had lost everything dear to him, nearly been killed, been taken to strange places, and asked to learn things that were still alien and disturbing to him at times.
And now he was being told that he had no choice in how his heart was to be engaged. He stood up and turned his back on the revellers and slowly started to head back towards his quarters. His mind spun this way and that, and before he knew it he was in his quarters, lying upon his bed, staring at the ceiling. It seemed to him then that two faces hovered above him, changing places: Alysandra, whose brilliant smile seemed to make a lie of Gabrielle's words-for how could someone so gentle and beautiful be dangerous? But then he'd recall the pain he saw in Gabrielle's eyes and knew that she was not giving him false counsel. She had perceived danger, and Talon knew he must heed that warning.
He was dozing when Rondar and Demetrius returned from the gathering, both of them a little drunk. They were chattering. Or rather, thought Talon, Demetrius was chattering for both of them.
"You left," said Rondar.
"Yes," said Talon. "As you recall, I have a long day in the kitchen tomorrow, so do us all a favour and stop talking."
Demetrius looked at Talon then at Rondar, and started to laugh. "That's our Rondar, talk, talk, talk."
Rondar pulled off his boots, grunted, and fell upon the bed.
Talon turned his face to the wall and closed his eyes, but sleep was a long time in coming.
Weeks passed, and the events of the night in which Gabrielle shared her vision with him faded. Talon found much of the work that was given to him routine and predictable, but there were always enough new lessons to maintain his interest. As Magnus had predicted, Rondar turned Talon into a fine horseman, and over the next few months the Orosini emerged as the most able swordsman on the island. It felt, however, something of a hollow honour, as most of the students on Sorcerer's Isle spent little or no time studying weapons and their uses.
The magic classes were strange. He barely understood half the things under discussion, and seemed to have no natural aptitude for the subject at all. Once or twice he would get an odd feeling just before a spell was executed, and when he told Magnus and Nakor about this, they spent over an hour asking him to describe that feeling in great detail.
The most amusing situation to arise during those weeks was Rondar's infatuation with a newly-arrived girl named Selena, a hot-tempered, slender Keshian girl who despised Ashunta horsemen on general principle, for she had seen them on the edge of her town many times as a child. Her outrage at his culture's treatment of women seemed focused upon Rondar as if he was the sole architect of his cultures values and beliefs. At first, Rondar had been silent in the face of her anger, ignoring the barbs and insults. Then he had returned the anger, speaking in rare, complete sentences, much to Talon and Demetrius's amusement. Then against any reasonable expectation, he became enamoured of her.
His determination to win her over resulted in Talon sitting quietly, biting his tongue to keep from laughing, as Demetrius tutored Rondar in how properly to pay court. Talon knew himself to be no expert in such things, and judged that the girl had a great deal more to say in these matters than the boy, but his experience with Lela and Meggie at least had made him a little more comfortable around girls than Rondar and Demetrius. Around all girls, that is, except Alysandra.
His initial attraction to her had been supplemented by his reaction to Gabrielle's warning. He now found her both appealing and daunting in the extreme. There was a sense of danger about her, and he wondered if it was of his own imagining, or if there was something truly risky in having any contact with her.
He decided that the best answer was avoidance, and when a situation arose which threw them together he was polite, but distant. He also found as many excuses as possible to keep away from her until he puzzled out how he felt about all this.
Nakor and Magnus provided new things for him to do all the time, and one afternoon he found himself undertaking the strangest task so far. Nakor had taken him to the top of a hillock, upon which sat a stunted birch tree, nearly dead from some pest, with gnarled branches and few leaves. Nakor had handed Talon a large piece of parchment stretched over a wooden frame, then a fire hardened stick, with a charcoal point. "Draw that tree," he said, walking away without waiting to hear Talon's questions or remarks.
Talon looked at the tree for a long time. Then he walked around it twice, and then stared for nearly half an hour at the blank parchment.
Then he noticed a curve below one branch, where a shadow formed a shape like a fish. He tried to draw that.
Three hours later he looked at his drawing and then up at the tree. Frustration rose up in him and he threw the parchment down. He lay back and looked up at the clouds racing overhead, letting his mind wander. Large white clouds formed shapes and in those shapes he saw faces, animals, a castle wall.
His mind drifted away, and before long he realized he had dozed off. He was not sure how long he had slept for-only a few minutes, he judged-but suddenly he understood something. He sat up and looked at his parchment; then the tree, and frantically began another drawing, to the left of the original sketch. This time he stopped looking for details and just tried to capture the sense of the tree, the lines and shadows which his hunter's eye had revealed. The details weren't important he realized: rather, it was the overall sense of the object that mattered.
Just as he was completing the drawing, Nakor returned and peered over his shoulder. "Have you finished?"
"Yes," said Talon.
Nakor looked at the two trees. "You did this one first?" He pointed to the one on the right.
"Yes."
"This one is better," he said, indicating the drawing on the left.
"Yes."
"Why?"
"I don't know. I just stopped trying to do everything."
"That's not bad," said Nakor, handing back the drawing. "You have a good eye. Now you must learn how to record what is important and not what is unnecessary. Tomorrow you will start to learn to paint."
"Paint?"
"Yes," said Nakor. Turning back towards the estate, he said, "Come along."
Talon fell in alongside his instructor and wondered what Nakor meant by "learning to paint".
Maceus scowled as he watched Talon. The man had appeared as if by magic outside Nakor's quarters the day after Talon had sketched the tree. He was a Quegan with an upturned nose, a fussy little moustache and a penchant for clucking his tongue while he reviewed Talon's work. He had been teaching the young man about painting for a month now, working from dawn to dusk.
Talon was a quick study. Maceus proclaimed him without gifts and lacking grace, but grudgingly admitted he had some basic skill and a good eye.
Nakor would come in and observe from time to time as Talon struggled to master the concepts of light, shape, texture and colour. Talon also learned to mix his colours and oils to create what he needed and to prepare wooden boards or stretched canvas to take the paint.
Talon used every skill he had learned in every other discipline he had been taught, for as much as anything he hack ever tried to master, painting caused him seemingly unending ftustration. Nothing ever looked the way he had imagined it would when he started. Maceus had started him off painting simple things-four pieces of fruit upon a table, a single leather gauntlet, a sword and shield; but even these objects seemed determined to escape his efforts.