THE REQUIEM: THE WORLD IN A DOWNWARD TILT
PART ONE: THE UNIVERSITY OF MELCENA
Chapter Two
With Odile's help, Sithli made her way into the pattern of life at the University of Melcena. She followed the steep staircases and winding corridors from lesson to lesson: grammar, logic, rhetoric, natural history, natural philosophy, language, geometry, astronomy, and half a dozen others. The sheer amount of work would have overwhelmed her if she'd felt obligated to do any of it. But she had noticed with relish that no one seemed to care what she did or when she did it. Within the confined of the university, she was quite free.
"No one expects anything of new students," Odile confided, over the evening meal at the end of Sithli's first day of classes. "If you turn your work in promptly, you'll be all right."
Sithli refrained from mentioning that she had no intention of turning work in, promptly or otherwise. "But what if it isn't finished?"
"Turn it in anyway."
What Sithli liked best about the University of Melcena was that no one paid her the least attention. She took Odile's advice about keeping to herself. Also on Odile's recommendations, Sithli cut classes judiciously and used the free time to make up her work as it was called in and graded. The first lecture of the day was the only event that required attendance. There was far too much work assigned in each class to make attendance at all of them possible.
Sithli's fellow students at first had given her the impression of high intelligence and strange intensity. Even slight familiarity taught her that this impression was, if not entirely mistaken, sadly incomplete. In fact, her fellow students were simply exhausted and overworked. Fatigue and anxiety took strange forms.
One day in the dining hall, Sithli sat across the table from a first-year student who stared blankly at the single artichoke on the plate before her.
"That looks good," Sithli had observed. The artichokes had vanished before she'd arrived and she cherished a faint hope that her classmate disliked them, perhaps enough to barter for it.
"Extremely good," agreed the first-year, dashing Sithli's hopes. Wearily she added, "if only I could remember how to eat one."
The only class given in instruction of sorcery took place in a lecture each morning given by the Dean herself and was known simply as "The Structure of the Universe". It was theoretical in the extreme, but it was all the university offered--aside from the far more experimental alchemy. Sithli listened half attentively to the Dean's instruction and attempted to sketch the armillary spheres used to model the celestial order.
It puzzled Sithli, at first, that the students were neither encouraged to study sorcery outside the Structure lectures nor permitted to practice it at any time. She decided that the rule was meant to prevent students from discovering there was no magic at the university to learn. Every student knew that whether or not sorcery existed within the gates of the college, it was exceedingly rare outside.
After a span of just a few shorts weeks, Sithli felt the first prick of homesickness. As it turned out, it was not an uncommon or untimely ailment. One student got so homesick; he stopped Sithli in the corridor for no better reason than the embroidery on her shirtwaist.
"Pardon me." The student, a boy who was taller than Sithli by half a foot, glanced down at the fine embroidery, snow white on the snow white of her blouse. "That's Murgo white-work, isn't it? Have you come from Cthol Murgos?"
"You have excellent vision," Sithli replied politely. She eyed the boy a moment, slightly taken aback. "I've never been to Cthol Murgos. This was a gift."
"Oh."
Something in the flatness of the boy's tone softened Sithli's reserve slightly. "Have you been to Cthol Murgos?"
The boy smiled at her soberly. "I'm from Cthol Murgos. I haven't been back since I came to college five months ago. And please, don't look so shocked." He added quickly, seeing the surprise that appeared briefly on Sithli's face. "I'm honestly somewhat a disappointment as a Murgo, so I've gleaned from many of my elders. It has something to do with changing times and generations, I think."
"You've come here to get better, then?" She retorted dryly. The boy looked slightly different than the Murgos Sithli had seen before. The features were there—in his eyes and certainly in the very dark coloring of his hair, but his face had a unique shape. His chin was slightly pointed and he had a rather long nose that ended in more of a point than a curve.
His smile became less sober. "Something like that. Prejudice and ignorance has been becoming less popular in Cthol Murgos in the last decade. I assume my purpose here is to research another way to survive those long, boring winters. Particularly since we've stopped picking fights with Mallorea. A regretful loss of a good squabble—or so I've heard."
"I'm Mallorean."
"I see." His face went very serious and he gave her a long look across the distance separating them. "Did you want to fight any?"
"Armed or bare handed?"
"Neither. I forfeit." He grinned at her and that was another surprise. As far as she'd always assumed from her readings, Murgos did not grin. Not with that kind mirthful candor. "I'm a terrible coward. My name is Urgar. Were you going to lunch?"
The philosopher Ardower occupied Sithli through the next week. By that time, mid winter had set in and classes had moved on to more advanced topics. Sithli began to discover that there was more to being a student at the University of Melcena than studying, sleeping, and complaining about the food. And there was more to being Urgar's friend, she learned, than marveling over his unorthodox demonstration of cultural difference. Urgar's acquaintance was shockingly wide, his friends drawn from every year. There was wide-eyed Malden, a newly arrived student from the village on the coast of the Melcene empire. There was calm Eridis, from Dal Zerba, who would probably take her comprehensives with record high marks, and even more probably stay to lecture at the university in years to come. And there were Airi and Nathalie, third year students who spent almost as much time slacking off as Sithli. Nathalie, Sithli recognized. She was the girl who had been so tired she'd forgotten how to eat artichokes.
It was Nathalie who revealed Urgar's real identity to her, one afternoon while Sithli was sitting in dining hall with the third year girl and the soft spoken Eridis.
"My family owns a great deal of property in the Melcene empire," the girl was explaining, while she spread butter generously on a steaming dinner roll. "but we don't have any formal titles, so the casualty that they treat rank with here wasn't all that startling for me. One of the other girls in my year though, she's a duchess and for months she would bristle with outrage every time someone spoke to her without using 'your grace'. It would be easier to have sympathy for students like her, but then you compare them to others like Urgar who looks pained even you even look like you're going to 'your highness' him."
Sithli had looked up from chasing a pea around the outer edge of her platter, eyes flying to the older girl. "Your highness?"
Nathalie looked back, shrugging slightly. "Well he's the crown prince of Cthol Murgos, you know. Although you wouldn't know it. He seems so self effacing and giddy."
"That's all an act." Eridis said in her voice like flute music. She'd been listening politely to Nathalie speak but hadn't spoken herself until just then. "He's actually very clever and very ambitious. But those are dangerous traits for a ruler so he hides them behind flippancy and caprice."
"If that's so, isn't it just as dangerous for you to be revealing his true face?" Sithli pointed out.
"We're all friends. I'm sure none of us will do anything untoward." Gentle Eridis gave them both a very stern look that was startling considering her disposition.
With quick insight, Sithli realized that petite Dalasian girl was in love with Urgar. A smile made the edges of her mouth curl up and her eyes danced. She felt a bubble of hilarity settle in her chest. Nathalie was just as quick and, to judge from her similar smile, had come to same conclusion as Sithli. Eridis caught their dual smiles and she sighed, in a long suffering fashion, and looked away.
Airi approached their table and looked down at the three of them quizzically. "What's so amusing?"
"Ladies' things." Nathalie replied with deliberately flippancy.
Airi looked pained. "I wondered why Malden was seated at the other end of the hall." And went to join the other boy's table.
Later that evening Sithli went looking for Urgar. After a brief visit to the boys' dormitory she was pointed towards the library. She found the Murgo boy seated at one of the polished goldenwood tables, pouring over a large book bound in ruddy brown leather.
"Prince Urgar?"
His head came up and he made a face at her, closing the volume he'd been scribbling notes in. "Oh, don't do that."
"You didn't mention you were the son of the King of Cthol Murgos. When you told me were from Cthol Murgos I assumed you meant Verkat or Rak Cthaka or one of those other islands."
"Rak Cthaka isn't an island." He corrected with an even tone. "It's a peninsula. I didn't assume that my title would be all that important here. Besides, I don't usually go around announcing I'm the next king of the Murgos off handedly when I'm not in the midst of two or three hundred armed guards. It's the sort of thing that can get you a knife in the back."
"I can't imagine that's a legitimate fear here. And don't snipe at me for my shocking geography." Sithli added. "If it isn't the Empire, it's all the same to me: Rak Cthaka, Cthan, Goska. You really can't expect me to keep all those little provinces straight. I'm not ignorant, just Mallorean."
"Can you tell a peninsula from an island?"
"Don't sulk, it's not becoming." She looked him square in the face. "My father's name is Zakath."
"Oh? Oh!" He looked startled and then, without warning, he began to laugh. He continued to laugh until someone at a nearby table turned and shushed him firmly, their expression grim and offended. "My father's been terrified of your father for years." He sighed and smiled at her. "I suppose we really should fight now."
"I suppose we should." Sithli agreed, but she was smiling back.
Before they could say anymore the silence of the library was interrupted by the sound of voices calling their names. From the little topiary garden outside the library, merry voices called until Sithli unlatched the nearest window and swung it wide. The winter night air fluttered the pages of Urgar's other open books and he shoved them aside and joined her at the window. Sithli ignored the icy breeze and the cold looks from the other students in the reading room and leaned out into the darkness. The light from the library's green shaded lamps reached far enough to show her four upturned faces, hardly more than pale masks in the gloom, but she recognized Nathalie, Malden, Eridis, and Airi.
It was not merely their voices she recognized, nor their relative heights, nor the attitudes they struck, with their batsleeved academic gowns rustling around them. It was their immense gaiety that betrayed them, their blithe confidence that hailing Urgar and her from studies at just this particular moment was the best and most hilarious thing they had yet contrived to do. From the geometrically neat garden below, four voices rose in wobbly harmony:
Time's my constant mistress
And the untamed space my marrow;
The flaming drake, and the night child make
Seed and flower of my sorrow
"The universe is full of noise," called Urgar, trying not to laugh.
Behind them in the reading room, throats were cleared, papers were shuffled, books were slammed on desks. A cross voice called, "Some of us are trying to study!"
The harmony struggled on, half submerged at times by stifled laughter.
With a host of chosen scions
Whereof the rose is commander;
With a burning sphere, and a horse of air
To the wilderness they wander
"Some of us are trying not to freeze to death," the cross voice called again. "Close the window!"
Sithli marveled for a moment at what kind of life these strict scholars must have led to make them so indifferent to the thread of song from the garden. She had never dreamed college would hold anything half so dear to her. Perhaps it was different when the song was for someone else.
"While the prince and dreaming princess" Urgar sang as he climbed out of the window and jumped feet first into the garden. "Summoned are to tourney; Ten millennia beyond the wide world's end; Methinks it is no journey."
Sithli followed after him, narrowly missing the topiary as her dropped into the white snow that blanketed the garden.
Nathalie said, "Just yesterday you told me you didn't understand conic sections, yet here we find you, trying to make yourself into one." She and Malden helped Sithli up and brushed the snow off her skirts. Eridis made sure the topiary was not damaged.
"What are you singing?" Sithli asked she shook snow off her braid.
"A hymn we found in an old book we found in the lecture hall. Though we've embellished some and forgotten more." Nathalie replied. Then she turned her face up towards the open library window. "Tee-hee quod she and clapped the window to." Before she'd even finished speaking, someone slammed the window firmly shut. Nathalie looked satisfied. "Thank you!"
Airi picked up the song again as they left the garden:
I know more than the anima
For oft when they lie sleeping
I behold the stars, at mortal wars
And the rounded welkin weeping
It had been almost three months since her arrival at the University of Melcena and it was then late winter when she received her first visitor.
She'd gone to Theory of Law that morning and had decided to skip her next class and return to her rooms to catch up on the sleep she'd missed while delving into a particularly interesting topic in the way of astronomy. Her visitor was waiting for her when she climbed the stairs up to her little room in the female dormitory. He'd seated himself at the desk the university provided in each room and was admiring a wax carving of an Algarian mare. He looked up when she entered and the smile he gave was as bright as the glowing nimbus of light that surrounded him.
"Eriond." She recognized, shutting the door behind her with a gentle click. "I was wondering how long it would be before you came to visit me. I was starting to think you were two busy." She stared at the young looking god, savoring the old familiarity that his presence brought her. Eriond had been a presence in her life for as long as she could remember. To her, he was like a gentle uncle or older brother—he just happened to also be divine. "You're glowing."
"I've gotten use to it. It's not really all that bad, glowing." He smiled at her, that smile of absolute love, and set down the wax figure. "Your father sends his congratulations on your admission."
"I was almost certain he would. How's mother?"
"Cyradis is the same as usually, of course. She sends her love, but she has her own way of keeping an eye on you."
The Horse God's voice had taken on that respectful, affectionate quality that Sithli noticed it always had when he talked about her mother. She knew why, of course. Sithli had read the accounts of the last twenty years. They had been compiled by a Mallorean historian named Mordant. Her mother had also arranged for her to have a copy of the memoirs of Belgarath the Sorcerer and of Lady Polgara the Sorceress. And she had bombarded her mother often for stories of the prophecies and the necessities. It was strange still to imagine the fact that her quiet, gentle mother had once been the focal point of the entire universe. Although she was suppose to have lost her seer abilities, now that her purpose had been fulfilled, it had been proven that Cyradis still had an uncanny ability for obtaining impossible information.
"Is there very much news from Mallorea?"
"A bit, if you'd like to hear it."
"I would." She replied eagerly, but smiled regretfully. "But I'm absolutely exhausted just now. It's unforgivable rude of me, but would it be very inconvenient if we talked longer after I took a brief nap?"
Eriond smiled at her, looking amused. "Go ahead and sleep Sithli. I'll be here when you wake."