HOUSE OF MALECH:
FALLOWTIME
The months after his marking passed in a blur to Jerzy, with every waking moment filled with lessons of one sort or another. After Harvest, slaves spent their days preparing the yards for the dormant season, trimming back the dead vines and bundling them to dry for firewood. When they were done, the ground would be strewn with the remains of the crushing, mixed with pigeon shit, to prepare the ground for the cold Fallow season. Once that was done, they would spend the shortened days repairing whatever was given them to fix, or cleaning whatever was given them to clean.
In the House, though, the real work was only beginning. His early fears that Malech would teach him nothing, that he would be cast aside, seemed almost laughable now. He woke with the dawn, took breakfast in the dining hall with Detta and, occasionally, Master Malech, then spent the rest of the morning alternating between working on his letters and numbers and map reading with Detta and being beaten into competence by Cai.
“You are a lump of young tubers,” the Caulian said in disgust after a particularly slow response landed Jerzy flat on his stomach, spitting dirt out of his mouth. “I would be afraid to let the likes of you out into a pen of lambkins, much less a battle.”
Jerzy flipped over onto his back, wincing as he did so. The yard where they practiced had a layer of dirt, but underneath it felt like solid rock. “I’m not going to go into battle,” he pointed out reasonably. “Fight off a wolf, maybe. Or a bandit, if one was foolish enough to attack the House. But battles are for soldiers and solitaires, not a Vineart.”
Cai picked up the cudgel Jerzy had dropped and weighed it in his hand. He himself was unarmed, having taken Jerzy down with leg and elbow. “Again thinking like a slave, boy. Power calls to those who are hungry for power, and there are hungry idiots everywhere. Think you forever will stay in this House, protected by Master Malech? A man on horseback is a target to a man without; a man with food is fair game to one who is hungry. I will not have you lose horse nor food for lack of skill to defend.”
“I don’t have a horse,” Jerzy said, getting up and accepting the cudgel back from Cai.
“You will,” Master Malech said. Cai stepped back a pace, his shoulders going back and his head inclining slightly in acknowledgment of a superior’s arrival. Malech acknowledged him, not looking at Jerzy. “If you’ve done with the boy for now, I would take him off your hands.”
“I release his sorry carcass to you,” Cai said. “Boy, be sure to be back here nextday morning, and be more ready to inflict harm!”
“Master?” Until now, most of his afternoons of study with Malech had involved him standing by and watching as the Vineart sorted the harvest and determined what it would best be used for. Had he expected great and wondrous things, he would have been disappointed: like the hours spent punching the juice in the vatting room, there was little outwardly exciting about the crafting of spellwines at this stage. And yet, he found it fascinating—and exhausting.
“Every day a little more,” Malech told him that first day, too many weeks ago. “Patience is the greatest skill a Vineart may have. Patience, and a gentle touch.”
He had tried to be patient. Something was different today. There was an air of excitement, or tension, about his master that made every nerve in Jerzy’s body quiver. Today, he thought, might be different.
“Come” was all Malech said, turning and walking back through the back archway into the courtyard, and from there not into his study or the usual workrooms where Master Malech tested and blended the basic spellwines, lecturing Jerzy on the aspects of each particular spell, but down into the racking rooms.
Unlike the vatting rooms where Jerzy had labored, the spellwines here were stored in smaller casks placed on their sides, with tapholes at top and front through which samples were drawn and replenished. Air tunnels carved through the foundation brought cool air in from the outside and kept the stone walls and floor from becoming musty, while spell-cast candles placed at careful lengths above Jerzy’s head gave the rooms a dim but clear light.
After the workroom, there were three rooms: the first and largest room contained five large wooden casks of the basic spellwine called heal-all, the second held three more casks labeled as healwine, and the smallest held two casks of the firewine, Malech’s secondary specialization .
Today, Malech took him into the first room, and stopped.
“Tell me about healwine.”
Jerzy had a moment of panic that crushed his excitement. “Healwine in its basic form is fresh and free flowing,” he said, repeating Master Malech’s words as perfectly as he could. “It’s responsive, easy to use, quick to readiness, and quick to respond.”
“So you have been listening. But have you been learning? No matter, we’ll soon find out.”
Malech placed Jerzy’s hands on the side of one of the tanks, palms flat against the wood, just at shoulder level. “Tell me what you feel.”
“The wood is cool, but not slick. I can. . .I can feel the pressure of the wine inside. It’s heavier than the mustus in the vatting tanks, more powerful, but it does not press the way the mustus did. Master, if all the healwine is in these casks. . .” His voice trailed off, and Malech waited. A shiver went through the boy, as though something had passed over his grave, then he went on.
“Punching the wine: that brought the magic out, made the power of the juice come together with the strength in the skins. Filtering it, getting rid of the skins”—that had been the second step, the skins going into the fertilizing mixture the slaves spread over the soil to feed it— “allowed the juice to come out on top, for power to use strength, and not to be overwhelmed by it. Now. . .It is not pressing me because it is. . .waiting?”
He didn’t stop for a response, certain for once that he was correct.
“You’ve taught me about five different kinds of healwine: heal-all, blood staunch, bone-heal, melancholia, and deep-heal. There are five tanks here, and three in the next room, and none of them are separately marked, so the next step must be for all of them, equally, and then. . .then they are crafted for each specific spell?”
As the words tumbled out of his student’s mouth, Malech felt his face purse up in an unexpected smile. “Who knew such a mind lurked under all that dirt. Well done, boy. Well done. Yes, there is a process we have not yet discussed. Healwine magic cures or corrects ailments, creating the proper delicate balance in the human—or animal—body. But magic is not, of itself, delicate or balanced. Just as we created a balance between strength and power, now we must craft a delicacy into that power; to teach the magic where to stop, else it do harm where it might heal. Without that. . .What might happen then?”
Jerzy, his hands still flat on the tank, shuddered. “A heal-all, told to close a wound in the face, might close up the mouth as well?”
“An extreme case, but possible. And so, here is where your own abilities come into play. Feel the power within that cask, boy. That cask and only that cask, the magic speaking to you, touching back at you, and let your own magic rise to greet it, the way you have been greeting the smaller vials. There is no difference in power, no difference in technique. Do you feel it?”
“Yes. It. . .sings to me.” The boy sounded surprised.
“Sing back to it. Sing to it of control and balance. Of a delicate flavor and delicate touch. The magic wants out, that’s all it has ever wanted. Show it the way to get there.”
Jerzy nodded, his face set in a fierce determination. Malech placed his hands on the boy’s shoulders, feeling the muscles bunch and tighten in response.
“No, relax. Relax. There is nothing here that controls you; you control it.” He softened his voice, making it as soothing as possible. The boy was quick and smart, but the lessons—and the scarring—of the years of slavery lay in all of them. Stress made for riper fruit—but delicate handling was what made a powerful spellwine—or Vineart. “Relax and listen. . ..”
Jerzy’s muscles slowly softened, but the tenseness remained until Malech let go and stepped back, still giving instructions until he saw Jerzy’s head lean forward, his forehead touching the side of the tank, and his breathing even out so that a stranger might think that he had fallen asleep in that position.
“Tell the magic that it must listen to you, in order to be free. Like a horse to harness, magic must know what is expected of it. . ..”
Even as he spoke, Malech reached out to the cask as well, not physically but with his other senses, overlaying the boy’s efforts with his own. This was still his wine; he was the Vineart. Stress the vines, stress the Vineart. . ..But too much stress ruined both, and he could not afford to have the boy fail.
“Enough now. Relax, let go, let the wine settle, and release. . . .Good.”
Jerzy sighed, and he felt those neck muscles tense up again. This time Malech removed his hands, allowing the boy his privacy. “Now,” he said, keeping his tone conversational, “I want you to go into the workroom and do exactly that same thing on the sample there. Only this time, you will be the one to lay down a spell-structure, and see if you can convince it to take hold.”
He watched carefully while Jerzy nodded, and turned, as though in a daze, and walked back to the workroom. Yes. Students, like vines, needed to be stressed. Like spellwines, they needed to be crafted. Balance was important in knowing which method to apply, and when.
“UP! UP, DAMN you!”
The Master’s voice slammed into Jerzy’s ear, tumbling him out of his narrow bed and onto the hard stone floor. He did not stop to consider that he might have imagined the summons: six months within the House had shown him too many wonders to doubt, and so he merely reached for his clothing, grumbling a little at the timing of masters who interrupted dreams just as they were reaching a good point, in this instance having to do with a faceless but nonetheless invitingly warm figure wrapped around his nether regions. Then something in the night air alerted him, and he stopped with one leg halfway into his trousers.
“Master?”
There was no answer, only a sense of impatience and. . .worry?
“Guardian?”
But there was no heavy flap of stone wings at his window, either. The Guardian, who had more than once been sent to fetch him while he slept, was elsewhere.
Something was wrong. He looked out the window, his gaze unerringly drawn to the nearest slope of the vineyard, and his breath caught at the flickers of light where there should only have been still darkness.
Root-glow.
Jerzy had no memory of getting dressed, or indeed of how he made his way from his bedchamber to the fields. For all he knew, he sprouted wings and flew there. Once on the ground, the sight was worse than he could ever have dreamed; all along the rows of winter-dormant grapevines the soil flickered with a sickly yellow color where the infection was attacking the roots, spreading even as he stood there, horrified, and watched.
Root-glow was a springtime infestation. How was it here, now, in the middle of Fallowtime?
“Take this.” Malech appeared next to him, and thrust a wineskin into his hands, his words coming out as puffs of frost in the cool night air. His master was wearing a quilted jacket, cinched at the hips with his usual double-wrapped tool belt, and was pulling on fingerless leather gloves even as he spoke. “It’s heal-all. Do you remember how to cast a clarification?”
Jerzy nodded, even though the Master hadn’t waited for a response. “Take the downslope; I’ll work uphill. Go, boy!”
A clarification spell was simple enough; in its most common form it was used with healwines to determine the truth of a story in court, stripping away the lies and elaborations until only the unvarnished truth remained. But that was on people. How was he supposed to. . .
The months of being drilled on soil, vines, and spell-crafting kicked in, and Jerzy understood. Strip the additions away. Strip away that which was not part of the truth, the original form. A vinespell was crafted to do a specific thing, focusing the magic within the wine, but the magic that existed within the grape was broader than any spell, and that magic could be manifested in a variety of ways—if you were a Vineart.
Even as he was uncorking the wineskin and taking a mouthful, Jerzy was already focusing his will on the liquid in his mouth, ascertaining the properties of the fruit, fresh and sweet, but with a surprising depth and structure to it. That was unusual for a heal-all. Not a young vintage, maybe five harvests back, when the weather had held warm and dry?
Now was not the time to play spot-the-vintage, he scolded himself. Too many hours had been spent memorizing the signs of blights and infestations for him to underestimate the danger. Root-glow, if not stopped, could seriously damage growth in the spring—and, in worst-case scenarios, require an entire field to be undone and replanted with new stock.
Around him, slaves scurried with sand and shovels, working to dig out roots that were already too infected to survive, trying to stop the spread that way. But it was too slow, too inefficient a way to save the vines, especially when the slaves had to beware touching the actual rot or risk a painful rash on the exposed skin. Root-glow was only lethal to plants, but everyone knew it wasn’t kind to flesh, either, and the soothe-salve used for it smelled worse than the rash-blighted skin.
Holding the mouthful of wine in his mouth, Jerzy focused his awareness on the liquid, tasting the properties of the grape, the nature of the soil. He could recognize the specific spellwine, down to what yard the vines had grown in, and that allowed him to unlock the deeper magics within. Had this been a wine of another’s crafting, it would have resisted him. But the crafting had been Malech’s, and the magic recognized him, too. More, this was a spellwine from this very vineyard, soil-to-soil and vine-to-vine, and there was a special strength in that.
To the root, go. Once, to direct. Once, to decant. Once, to strike. That was the rule.
He could feel the magic summoned by his direction, sliding from his mouth, out and down the rows of vines, slipping through the thick, clotted soil to spread over the roots, waiting for decantation. What to say? Jerzy felt panic flutter inside him, making his stomach sick, and every thought fled his mind, leaving him helpless and near panic. Why hadn’t the Master told him what decantation to use? He didn’t know, he was only a half year removed from ignorant slave, and he had never done this before, never used a spellwine outside the working chamber before, he didn’t know, it was too much; too much weighed on him!
These vines were his responsibility to save.
That thought staggered him, hitting like a blow to the gut, and then a slave shoved him aside, digging frantically at a half-mature vine, swearing as he did so, and Jerzy’s paralysis was broken. It was too much, but to do nothing was unthinkable. He was no slave, to dig and grub—he was a Vineart.
“Restore to health.” It was as clumsy a decantation as could be, yet all Jerzy could think of. Healwines. “Heal the vines. Go!”
Even as he gave the strike order, Jerzy swallowed the spellwine, feeling it rush down his throat and explode through his body. Ordinary folk didn’t feel this, the intoxicating power flooding every nerve, making him shake in the aftermath, Malech had said. But he couldn’t revel in it; this wasn’t a training class. Even as the spell was cleansing and protecting the roots from invasion, the yellow glow fading and sputtering out up and down the row, Jerzy was moving on to the next grouping of vines, repeating the process over and over again as he moved downslope, slaves moving out of his way even as they kept digging at the roots that still glowed. His world narrowed to the wineskin in his hand, the feel of the rounded, sweet fruit in his mouth, and the flickering lights in front of him, his body moving mechanically down and down the hill, aware only of the darkness behind him and the lights ahead, until there were no more lights on the ground, only a pale glow overhead. He tilted his head back, and wondered blankly if he was supposed to do something about that glow as well.
“Young one.”
Jerzy blinked, and turned to face the source of the voice. The overseer stood there, his hard face covered with dirt and worn with exhaustion. “The Master calls for you.”
“But. . .I must. . .” Words felt strange in his mouth, and he was suddenly aware of a confusing dizziness in his body.
“Master calls for you,” the overseer repeated, and then something strange flickered across his face, and his huge hand came down on Jerzy’s bare shoulder. Jerzy was too tired, too confused to flinch, but the touch, while firm, did not crush his shoulder as expected. “You done right, young Jerzy. The field is safe. Let us handle the rest, like we know how. You go to the Master, now.”
Still numbed and confused, Jerzy realized that the morning had come, his wineskin was near empty, and the buzzing in his head was not due to a swarm of insects but the pressure of so much magic ingested too fast.
“Yes. All right,” he said. Tucking the wineskin over his shoulder, Jerzy stumbled around a slave still digging around the roots, although with less frantic energy, and headed back up the slope to where the Vineart waited.
“Master?”
Malech was looking out over the fields, and Jerzy turned to echo him. The vines were still brown, bare, and wizened, and it was almost impossible to believe that in a few months, pale green leaves would begin to unfurl and ripe fruit would hang low. The soil was innocently still, to all intents and purposes untouched except where spades had turned out root and filled the spot in with paler sand, to halt the root-glow infection.
“Out of season,” Master Malech said, as though to himself. “Out of season and so fast. It could all have been gone. The entire yard, my oldest vines. Overnight, in the blink of the moon and the whim of the silent gods. All our care, our skills, are nothing in the face of such disaster.”
“Is there no vine immune to root-glow?” Even as he asked the question Jerzy cursed himself for a sleep-addled idiot. If there were, would not the Master already have planted it? He deserved to be hit, for such ignorance.
“You pay a price for such an immunity,” Malech said, and to Jerzy’s relief there was no censure in his voice, only a weary instruction. “A vine might be bred to resist rot, or a particular bug, or to grow where rains come heavy or weather runs cold. And then?”
The night air was chilled, and he shivered despite the sweat, wishing he had thought to grab his quilted jacket as well. “To change the nature of the vine in such a way. . .it would change the nature of the grape as well?” Vines showed the nature not only of the roots but the soil they grew in. A spirit-healgrape grown in the dry sand of Malech’s home-land would have different effects from the same grape transplanted to the Cerian Hills and their shorter, cooler summers, and neither would be the spirit-heal Malech grew in his northern fields. The magic itself would change, depending on the location and the Vineart. It seemed logical that changing the plant itself would have no less an effect.
“And?” No hint if he had answered correctly or not, merely his master offering more rope with which to truss himself.
“And only Sin Washer had the right to change the nature of the vines?”
The expected cuff landed then, although not as hard as it might have been on another morning. “The Sin Washer gave the vines into our care,” Malech said. “We have dominion. . .but that dominion must be tempered with wisdom, else we have learned nothing from the fate of the prince-mages. And wisdom, boy, means considering the balance of the universe when making such a decision. A vine resistant to root-glow almost inevitably opens another weakness—one we would know nothing about until it struck. And then, our fields denuded and a full span of replanting to wait before a new harvest; what happens to a Vineart then?”
“Yes, Master,” Jerzy said. His head spun from the wine and the cuffing and the lack of sleep, but he dared not show any of that until the Master released him from lessoning.
Malech stared at the vines a moment longer, his eyes deep set with exhaustion under shaggy gray brows, and then sighed. “Enough. I race ahead of your understanding once again. Tell me, what decantation did you use?”
“A restore-to-health,” Jerzy said, grateful to fall back on his familiar role of student being quizzed. “I thought at first to strengthen-and-protect, but was afraid that it might attach itself to the root-glow rather than the root itself.”
“Hrmmm. A fair enough concern, and a passable solution, if lacking elegance.”
“Would not a rougher vinespell be preferred?” Jerzy knew he was exhausted, if he was challenging his master, but the question seemed a fair one. “This. . .root-glow is rough and ugly and seemed to call for blunt flavors, not delicacy. Is that not why you brought heal-all, not something more particular?”
“Hrmm.” A pause, and then the Master laughed. “Perhaps you have been listening in lessons, after all. Go, get some food in your stomach, boy, and meet me in the workroom at the eighth hour.”
Released, Jerzy staggered off back toward the house, feeling every hour of exhaustion in his parched skin and weary bones. Halfway there, he turned and looked back. Master Malech still stood on the rise, his long and lean form upright against the pale blue Fallowtime sky, so like the Guardian’s stone-still form as to be carved of the same materials.
Shaking the thought off as useless fancy, Jerzy went in to break his fast. The kitchen was already roused, aware that there had been a disturbance in the night, and he found himself seated at the scarred wood table in the dining hall with a bowl of sweetened grain on the table in front of him and Lil pouring out a cup of steaming tai from the cast-iron kettle. She had been made cook the month before, freeing Detta to more efficiently run the Household and manage the business aspects for the House of Malech. The change had also affected their relationship; he was oddly more comfortable with her now, and she teased him less as a result.
“Here.” Lil’s red kerchief was slipping down over her sweat-beaded forehead, and she shoved it back into place with the inside of her elbow. “I made it extra strong and extra sweet this morning, and drink it up and no complaining. It will keep you going until you can fall over.”
Jerzy hated tai, especially sweetened, but the girl was right—it would help him stay awake throughout the day. He took the mug from her hands and sipped, trying not to grimace.
“Take it all at once,” Detta said, bustling into the room and sitting down to take her own meal. Unlike the others, she was dressed for the day, her wide leather belt jangling from the keys and pouches hanging from it, and her gray curls neatly combed and coiled. The uncertain hesitation Jerzy had once felt in front of the older woman hadn’t quite disappeared—she was still as much a force of nature as Malech, and with almost as much power within these walls, but it was tempered now by the knowledge that Detta saw them all as her cubs to protect, even the Master.
“It ruins my taste,” he said, scrunching his face to show his dislike of the brew.
“That’s why you should take it all at once,” she told him. “Sipping it spreads it on the tongue. Gulping it gets it into your throat that much the faster.”
Jerzy was annoyed that he hadn’t thought of that himself; it was so obvious now. Taking a spoonful of the grain, he chased it down with half the mug’s contents, wincing a little as the steam hit the inside of his throat and rose up through his nose. The second gulp was more cautious, trying to avoid the gunk that waited at the bottom of the mug. Lil hadn’t been jesting when she said she had brewed it strong.
“You were able to contain the infection.” It took Jerzy a moment to realize that Detta was stating a fact, not a question. She had worked for the Master her entire life; she knew that if they hadn’t, he wouldn’t be here, spooning grain into his mouth and waiting for Lil to serve out the cheese roll he could smell baking in the oven.
“How did it get into the vines?” Lil asked, refilling his mug without regard for his protest. “Another mug, and then I’ll leave you be. Doesn’t Master have protections up against such a thing?”
“Of course.” Jerzy felt a flash of annoyance that Lil—a serving-girl— questioned the Master so casually.
Lil wasn’t at all abashed by his tone. “Then how?” She looked first to Jerzy, then to Detta. Detta shook her head, and looked at Jerzy, as though he would have the answer.
“I don’t know,” he had to admit. “Master Malech will, though.” He scooped the last of the grains into his mouth and swallowed, then washed his mouth out with the entire mug of tai in one long gulp that left him coughing.
“Don’t breathe and drink at the same time,” Lil suggested pertly, taking the now-empty bowl and spoon away, even as he put the mug back down on the table and pushed his bench away. The cheese rolls would have to wait.
“Master’s waiting for me. Don’t know that we’ll be finished in time for supper,” he told Detta, who nodded as though she had been expecting such, and likely had. “I’ll have Lil set cold meats aside,” she told him, “for whenever you’re finished, or famished, as comes first.”
THE STEPS DOWN to the workrooms were steep and shadowed as ever, but after half a year’s climbing up and down, Jerzy took them confidently, if not carelessly. Halfway down, he heard the sound of stone brushing against stone, and ducked even as the Guardian moved overhead.
“And where were you, all night we were slogging and spelling?” he asked, not expecting an answer. The stone dragon took its usual place on the mantel, curling its wings tight against its body, and merely stared at the boy. Jerzy didn’t even know what the Guardian guarded—it moved from workroom to House and then back again, occasionally disappearing but never for long.
The boy shrugged and entered the workroom. The now-familiar smells of must and candle wax met his nose, almost overriding the memory of the tai on his tongue. Malech was in his usual spot, leaning back in the carved wooden chair and staring off, seemingly into space. Jerzy settled himself on the small bench, the surface after so many months a comfortable perch.
“Today we will continue with the crafting of heal-all, as we used up a considerable portion of our stores this evening past. Go fetch a half barrel from the last but one Harvest and bring it in.”
Jerzy blinked disbelievingly at Malech, who met his gaze with a solemn, unperturbed look of his own. Clearly, today’s lesson was not to be about root-glow. He bit back the questions still on his tongue, and did as he was bid.
MALECH WATCHED HIS student carefully all morning as they poured vial after vial of the jewel-red wine from the barrel and tested Jerzy’s understanding of craft. It was a delicate process: only a trained Vineart could convince the liquid magic to accept a spell. It was that framework—the spell—that made spellwines viable, allowing someone other than its creator to use it. Without the spell, the wines were no better than a toy, an amusement. Properly incanted, they were powerful tools.
The gift and the training were equal sides to the crafting, and needed to remain in balance to create a balanced spellwine, an effective spell-wine that would do as directed. That was the secret to Vinearts’ continued survival: not that they could command the magic themselves, but that they had learned, over centuries, how to allow others to do so as well. And if those others never knew how very little of the magic inherent in a spellwine they in fact used, compared to what a Vineart might command. . .
Safer that way for all concerned.
All this went through Malech’s mind as Jerzy focused intently on a vial, trying to sense the magic within and bend it to his will. Some might caution against letting him jump so swiftly from slave to blender, but Malech had seen from the very first that the boy was a fast learner, swift to comprehend and cautious enough not to overjump his abilities. And it had been a good Harvest; they had spellwine to spare, if the boy ruined a batch, or it came out too weak for use.
Still, the boy was not without flaws and weakness. He hesitated, looked too much to Malech for approval instead of trusting himself. He was a follower, not a leader. Neither of these things were fatal, but. . .For that reason so far the boy had handled only the heal-all, the simplest if most lucrative of Malech’s craftings, although they’d worked the other healspells together, Malech guiding the boy’s touch. By the time the vines flowered again, the boy should have the basics down cleanly. After next Harvest, he would start the boy on more complicated crafting of firewines, and then. . .if Jerzy survived that far, then they would move on to the most delicate of the three vines the Valle of Ivy was known for: a rare fertility-wine that grew only in a small enclosure along the coast and was vinified only once every two or three years, as conditions allowed. Growvines were the oldest variety, and required a steady hand, a delicate balance, and a mind strong enough to clear itself of all but goodwill and good wishes, else it turned into a curse. Grow-spells were nothing for a beginning student to touch.
It would be a shame if this promising boy were to fail before that point. Malech had grown fond of Jerzy, and this attack on the vine-yard—and it had been an attack, no mistake—would have overwhelmed most of those of his age and limited experience. Aware of that, the Vineart was alert to even the slightest sign of breakage. So far, save for a few carefully hidden yawns, the boy seemed the same as the day before. Curious, yes—only a Guardian wouldn’t be curious!—but not flinching, not hesitant. . .and not overconfident, either, despite his success during the night before. The boy was taking the events in stride, and not shirking in the day’s learning. Good.
He doubts too much.
He did well last night, Malech replied.
He doubts, Guardian repeated. Doubt fails.
Malech pushed the stopper back into the bunghole of the half cask, and turned to face his student. “Now. Quickly and clearly. What are the three applications of heal-all?”
The boy set aside his decanting glass and stood to recite, his eyes fixed at some spot over Malech’s head. “To apply to a patient who is asleep or insensible: compose within the mouth and apply through the application of hands. To apply to a patient who is alert: compose with the mouth and apply through application of mouth to mouth. To apply to self: a patient must compose within the mouth and apply onto the wound particular.”
“And the limitations?”
“Limitations are. . .” Jerzy’s eyelids flickered as he tried to remember, his dark, almond-shaped eyes taking on a panic until the knowledge came back to him. “Healwine, in the hands of ordinary folk, affects only wounds visible or known. The healer must be aware of the injury and how to fix it. An unknown or unsuspected injury will not be affected. If an untrained ordinary were to attempt a healing, the spell would not work.” A pause, and one hand whisked nervously at a strand of hair that fell over his forehead; then he continued. “A Vineart, using a basic spell-wine, may heal all injuries known, even without healing arts. A more complicated spellwine might accomplish more. . .Master?”
The boy had done well enough that Malech allowed the interruption. “Yes?”
“You said the root-glow was out of season. So how did it get into the vines? Had it been there all summer? Could you have missed it, when we cleansed the soil after Harvest?”
The boy obviously braced himself for the cuffing a foolish question would normally earn, but did not flinch or show any other sign of uncertainty. Despite himself, Malech was pleased, both by the unexpected confidence in asking and the thinking behind the question. That didn’t stop him from cuffing the boy across the nearest ear, for impudence, and then again in case the first cuff hadn’t seemed serious enough. Jerzy’s skin flushed a dark red to match his hair, then faded to its normal tones. For the first time Malech wondered where the slavers had found this boy, with that skin and doe-slanted eyes and his dark red hair. The slave caravans traveled everywhere, picking up trade as they went, but such a striking-looking boy child normally would have been kept by all but the poorest, most overrun of parents, in the hopes of his catching a wealthy patron’s eye once he came of age. . ..
No matter. They all ended up where they were meant to be, somehow.
“You think I failed something as basic as a soil-cleansing?” Malech asked in return, his tone purposefully calm. The boy would have earned a third cuffing for such a suggestion. But not asking it would have been a greater omission, and an even greater disaster for them both. Guardian was correct, damn it. A Vineart could not doubt. The leap from a slave’s obedience to Vineart’s confidence was the most-often deadly one.
“If it wasn’t there before, and it would not occur in the natural order . . . the vineyard was deliberately infected?” Jerzy wasn’t asking his master, but rather speaking to himself: Malech could practically see the workings of his student’s mind, puzzling over the question. “Who could do such a thing? Only someone who knew how quickly root-glow spreads, and yet, if they knew that, they would also know that it is easily contained and destroyed, so long as one is alert. . ..”
His eyes widened, and he looked up at Malech in a combination of satisfaction and alarm. “Master, they were testing you. Who was testing you? Who would dare, to endanger a harvest. . .” Those eyes narrowed again. “More, the vintnery itself would have been damaged. Your reputation. . .”
The boy’s anger felt true, and it warmed Malech, even as he knew he had to contain it, before Jerzy lost the thread of his logic.
“My reputation is beyond the reach of anyone who might wish me harm. The worst they could have done was. . .bad. Yes. I am the best crafter of healwines”—no bragging there, simply fact—“and if there was another plague, or war, then the loss would be sorely felt. But there are other vineyards, as you well know. We would survive.” Barely, and not easily, but no need to burden the boy with that knowledge, nor the fact that there were some to whom the deaths of others, absent ready heal-wines, might be reason enough for the action.
“As to who it might have been. . .the possibilities are open.” He was not young, and had his share of conflicts with others, but the Guardian’s warning echoed, and he hesitated. No, now was not the time to tell the boy everything. Some details he would hold close to himself, until and if the time came to share them. But a few cold truths would be appropriate, at this time and place in Jerzy’s lessoning.
“Not all people hold our work in high regard, boy. There are those who say the Sin Washer meant to destroy the magic, not share it. That he was sent to destroy the vin magica entirely; that the juice of the grapes was meant merely to refresh, not empower.”
“They say Sin Washer made a mistake?” Jerzy’s voice held amazement, not horror—slaves were not taught piety in the sleep houses, but survival.
Malech laughed without humor. “Not in so many words. They frisk around it like lambs determined that there is no butcher, only grass and mother’s milk forever. They say that his intent was subverted, his sacrifice made in vain, and so long as a single Vineart practices, the ideal kingdom of man will never come.” He settled down into discourse mode, letting the recently poured vial of lesson-wine rest on his desk, abandoned for the moment. “They are few, and shouted down at every opportunity by the Brotherhood of Washers, but they have won a toe-hold in a princeling’s Household here, a maiar’s city council there.
“It was this group that first discovered root-glow, on the shores of a distant land. There, in the stalks of a native grain, it was a frustration, not disaster. But they brought it back, and loosed it among us, and it took years before we discovered the way to combat it, to limit the damage it might do.”
“And you think that they, that some member of this group, set it on us? But. . .those are healvines!” The outrage in the boy’s voice was mixed with a rougher emotion. Malech was amused—and gratified—to identify it as a possessive sort of anger on behalf of the vines themselves.
“These people believe that the prince-mages should have been eradicated, not merely split; that only a magic-less world is pleasing to Sin Washer. Even if it means losing the good that spellwines do, yes. Be calm, Jerzy.”
“Why do we allow such people to continue?” The boy was almost spluttering in his upset.
Malech leaned back and fixed Jerzy with a stern glare. “Because it is not our place to stop them. Sin Washer’s Command is clear on that matter. Were one such fellow so foolish as to strike at me, I would strike him down, and none might gainsay me. But we are not princelings, with armies or courts. We do not decide the law, and the law in this land gives them freedom to do as they will, so long as it harms no other man nor property.”
Truth, if not the truth entire. Had these men thought to burn the vintnery itself, the law would have been his ally, finding the villains accountable for his loss. The vines, through Sin Washer’s act, were none of man’s owning. A Vineart might cultivate, and harvest, and make use of. . .but he had no dominion, no rights of ownership. Any man might grow vines and press a vin ordinaire, if he so desired. Few did, either fearing reprimand or through lack of knowledge, but in theory, any might.
That was theory beyond Jerzy’s understanding at this moment, however.
“Master?”
His voice was so tentative, Malech sighed. Still, caution was not unwise for a student. “I haven’t smacked you to the floor yet, boy; you might as well get your questions out now and stop being so mouseish about it.”
The boy practically tumbled his words over one another, anxious to get them out before Malech changed his mind. “Why did you not hunt down those who did this, discover who they were and punish them? Is that not a personal strike, and allowed by the Command?”
An easier question to answer, that. “No spellwine can tell truth from lie, or good from evil, Jerzy. Magic is a thing of nature, not mankind. Healing or growing, raising the wind or damping a flame, those are things a Vineart may do, by Sin Washer’s Command. This. . .such an attack, if it is such, is a matter of proof and courts. Vinearts tend to their magic and the princelings tend to their laws, and the world no longer rocks in the conflict between the two as it did in the days of the mage-lords. The Washers make sure of that.”
“But, Master—”
Malech’s voice cracked harder than his hand would have, and he took the time to make sure the blow landed properly. Caution was one thing. This line of questioning could only end in disaster. “Sin Washer came to us to save us from ourselves. I for one have no desire to require him to make a repeat visit. We are Vinearts. We compose our lives around the crafting, and we leave the governing to those who are born to that.”
Jerzy was properly subdued, and took up his vial and wine again without further comment, settling at a table across the room to work. The Guardian, however, lifted its head up from its stone paws and looked down with those sightless eyes at Malech; a steady, thoughtful gaze.
You know that cannot last. Not if the rumors we are hearing are true.
Recent rumors come to his unwilling ears, of strange plagues and seemingly random attacks. Of vineyards damaged, their fruit withered, or eaten away by some unknown rot. Like the unusual order coming from Atakus, things that happened outside his lands were no concern of his, so long as it left him and his alone.
And when it begins to concern you?
Malech looked away from the Guardian, and focused all of his attention on Jerzy’s careful, if halting, movements with the vials. It was a valid question the Guardian asked. He just didn’t know what the answer would be.