Salamander by David D. Friedman Page B

circle, turned back to the class. “And what is this?”
    Jon again raised his hand, but this time Simon ignored him, gestured to another student.
    “Earth. The element and the glyph, just like for fire.”
    “Correct.” Magister Simon added to the board the symbols for air and water, writing the name of each underneath twice, the second time as a syllable in the true speech. “We start with these four elements, as mages have started for hundred of years. Suppose we combine them. What, for instance, is this?” He wrote two symbols: Fire and earth.
    Again Jon raised his hand. Simon looked around, saw nobody else, nodded to Jon.
    “Lava, sir. Burning rock. Or a volcano.”
    “Very good. Did you work that out yourself?”
    Jon shook his head. “ In something I was reading in the library, sir.”
    The magister gave him an approving look. “I am happy to see that at least one of you takes some interest in your studies.”
    He erased the symbols on the board, replaced them with the symbols for air and water. “And this?”
    To his surprise, it was Mari who raised her hand.
    “You have an answer, Lady Mariel?”
    “Mist. Clouds. Something like that?”
    “Correct. Both. Have you too been spending your spare time browsing the library?
She shook her head. “No. But it seemed to make sense, after Jon gave his answer.”
    “Very good. It does indeed make sense. It is the nature of the true speech, whether spoken or written, to make sense.”
    ***
    Ellen looked up at the sky. Almost dark; the gate would be closing in half an hour or so. Finding Mari again might take longer than that; Mari could find her way home alone.
    She was just passing Master Dur's shop when she heard someone calling.
    “Ellen. Come in. Quickly.”
    Nobody was in sight, but the shop door was ajar. She stepped to it, looked through.
    At the back of the shop a figure slumped in a chair; a second was lying on the floor barely a foot away. She thought she smelled a faint odor of burnt meat.
    “Ellen.” It was the figure in the chair.
    “I’ve been stabbed. Pull out the knife and weave together the wound.”
    She hesitated.
    “You are a weaver. Weaving can heal. You must be quick.”
    The voice was faint, but she thought she recognized it: Dur, the master jeweler who owned the shop and crafted its contents. He had spoken to her once or twice. But so far as she could remember, he had never heard her name.
    “Be quick.”
    Coming closer, light from the open door showed her the handle of the knife protruding from Dur’s side, the dark stain spreading below it. She put her hand hesitantly on the cloth.
    “The skin. Working through woven cloth makes it harder.”
    That made sense, however he knew it. She slid her left hand in through the open front of the wool robe, up under the shirt, against the skin over the wound, fingers either side of the blade. She closed her eyes, felt her way into the wound. The pattern of the flesh either side was clear, and the abrupt break, iron where there should be flesh. Iron.
    “You can’t work with the blade in. When you are ready pull it out, and be quick.”
    She took a deep breath. With her right hand she groped for the hilt of the dagger, found it, pulled it out. One fair sized vessel had been cut; she knotted both ends. Crude but fast; knots were the first thing you learned. Then she worked her way along the cut, starting where it was deepest, weaving the flesh back together, matching the ends of the tiny vessels that the knife had severed. She reached the skin, felt it moving, knitting together under her hand. She let her perception sink back into the wound, undid the knots and wove the final vessel together. Stood up. For a moment the world spun around her, then came steady. She stepped back, almost tripped over the body on the floor. She bent down to look at it.
    “Don’t bother; no healer on earth could help him now. The idiot thief didn’t see me sitting here with my eyes closed and the door open. The