text: # Matters of Solace ## Chapter 1: A Choice Sometimes we pay terrible prices for proving ourselves correct. But I must begin at the beginning, for fragments fail to get us anywhere. I must grasp back to before my apprenticeship, before I was discovered by the Fellowship. When I was very small, I had the habit of wandering off. I followed the blades of grass as they bent away from me in the gentle breeze of late lazy Summer. I did not seek for where the grassland gave way to forest, or broke upon the banks of the river. I thought to wander where the wind went. Perhaps, I thought, if I could approach the wind, find where it came to pause, I could find what drove its restlessness. My mother would find me puzzling over the wind's indecision half-way between our village and the next. Fearless, she proclaimed to others, even while I was offered chastisement or weeping. Five year olds are bound not to get too far. But far enough to alarm my mother and father. When I was older still, my father found me in the foothills of the mountains. I wondered who it might be that had sorrow so deep their tears caused the river to flow on and on. I recall my father's words to me still. "Jolan, you look on the world and see not the same world we live in. It is dangerous. You must come to see what we see. How else can you find your way? How else can you become a man?" I know now he asked that of me from love, from misery, from fright. It is where words go and where they begin. But I answered as a child of eight harvests would, merely at the surface. "I made my way here," I said. "When I'm a man it will be the same." My father reddened a bit. He seemed ready to scold me, yet he merely took a deep breath, looked away and let it out with a barked laugh. "Come along, son. We must stay at the inn tonight." I imagine he would have had many more questions if he had realized I had not set out in the morning as he had thought. He had been riding for the better part of the day. I had already been wandering in the foothills for much of that same day. I was but a youth on foot, but had traveled faster than he on horseback. I suppose I could have sought for home and found myself there but that did not occur to me. I was with my father, trying earnestly to absorb his lectures about duty, his explanations of responsibility, his frustrations over the meddling and prying of the villagers. I understood little of the things he spoke, and even less of his motivations for saying them. I desired to understand, but the world didn't seem to fit his words. The only thing that came clearly to me was it had begun to bother others in the village and in the towns up the road or down-river. They could not countenance that what I beheld of the world was not what they took from it. Their eyes and my eyes, cast upon the same grass, the same river, the same plate of food, perceived so vastly different a conception that our words failed to mean the same, though they rang identically in our ears. When the cries of the young lambs in the yard came to their ears, they could not see what attention would come to them; the feeding, the shearing, or the sacrifice and evening meal. In the smell of the fresh rain they could not see the birth of the cloud from the mists and foam of the sea, or from the steam of a cow's breath. I would catch glimpses of what the raindrop had been, and would be, as I tasted it on my tongue. My mother would find me swaying in the rain and call me back to myself. To my parents, I was damaged. They needed to find a way to fix me. They appealed to wise elders, they asked a letter be sent to the healers in the capitol beseeching them for some remedy to my condition. Tinctures and poultices were administered. Many did nothing. Many made me ill. My father beat away a priest who, going beyond the purview of his order, attempted to burn me as one ought those who are possessed. That was the worst, for the priest had nearly succeeded. After driving him away, my father yelled in anger at me to ask why I did not flee or resist. I remarked only of the tree the kindling had once been. It had, in better days, sheltered a family of finches now gone from our land. They were exquisite yellows and blues. I tried to explain how remarkable they had been, the cheer in their song, though no one now alive had ever seen or heard them. My father despaired that day that I was mad. A letter arrived from the capitol, though it was not from the healers there. It was, instead, addressed to me. It said simply, "Seek." My hand fell upon the letter and I saw the slender fingers that curled and swayed applying the script to page. I saw the ink and the wasp's gall that had been crushed to make it. Too far... wrong way... I returned to the slender hand turning the quill through each stroke. I saw where the hand had been and where it was going. I saw the fingers open and I reached out and grasped them. I fell to the ground at once, dazed, letting go of the hand of the stranger that had sent for me with that single word. She bent over me with mild curiosity. "You are younger than I expected," she said. "Seekers don't often come in to their abilities at so early an age." She reached down, her slim fingers, the same that had pulled me leagues from my family, my home, and extended her hand offering to help me to my feet. Instead of taking her hand I could only say, "You were not here." A lilting laugh followed, causing my face to redden. She smiled down and said, "Oh no, you have it quite backward. You were not here." This time I took her offered hand. I stood up, and swayed once more. For a moment, I knew her entirely, but I could not fit her into places that were mine to keep. "You are Lily," I said. "Pleased to meet you, and I can see we'll be getting you some gloves as soon as we have attended to some other matters." She turned away and bade me follow, and only then did I become aware of my surroundings. I was in the market quarter of the central square of the capitol. I had some knowledge that I was not as others were. Yet I assumed it merely to be a singular, intense delight at the wonders of the world around me. That, so distracted, I simply didn't realize how long my legs had been carrying me. For the first time I saw something that even I could not fail to recognize as out of the ordinary. I had taken Lily's hand and come to her from across the span of a week's travel by wagon. I was too full. Questions came all at once and struggled to burst from my mouth so that none could issue forth. I stopped following Lily, dumbfounded. She turned back to see me transfixed in front of an old woman's stall. The old woman was trying to sell me squashes but could not get my attention. Lily laughed again. "All your questions, and some you don't yet realize you have will be answered. Come." She turned and slowly began to walk again. I followed. So many of the questions I had then were of the same variety of those of any child that craves acceptance. They open themselves to the painful possibility they may not get that acceptance, even from those they most love. From the simple and superficial, like whether my impending failure as an adult was an inevitability as my parents feared, to questions of whether they would bear the sight of me once they had proof I was different. That last was the least worthy, or, of so little importance to need never be asked. In later years my thoughts would turn to that moment, and the only regrets I have now are my doubts, for a time, of their love for me. But that is not part of this tale, so I hope you'll forgive the digression. Lily had led me through the various parts of the city into the corridors of the citadel. We wound our way past dining halls, past large rooms filled with men and women gesturing wildly with their hands. Lily counseled me to touch nothing, lest I lose myself and undo her work of having recovered me. We passed rooms filled with scribes copying manuscripts, up stairs, past closed chambers and open studies. I scarcely noticed for I could feel myself becoming part of the pattern of the place. I had always been here. I smile now at Lily's thought that gloves would provide insulation. They cannot. They provide diversion, at will, but all things are connected. Lily was to be among my teachers, but she was not a Seeker, like me. We stopped in the study of a small robed man with curly brown hair and dark eyes. He was seated behind a desk littered with books and dusty objects of uncertain provenance. He was a Seeker. Of those who would become my teachers, he would be the one to provide me the most directly relevant insights, and the least patience with my lack thereof. His gaze turned to Lily, ignoring me for the moment, and asked, "How was the transition?" Rather than speak, Lily opened her hands. A small version of Lily hung in the air over the man's desk. She was walking through the market when her hand seem to become blurry. Her miniature first showed mild surprise. She flexed her blurring hand before her face. Then the confused look relaxed into a smile. As I watched, I flexed my own fingers, knowing the echoes of what skills she was now employing. She was weaving a seeming from her memories, using her own expert abilities. I knew, for example, that she was not making a construct of light in front of us. Had anyone else come in the room, they would merely have seen Lily stretching out her hand and the two of us staring at a vague space above the man's desk. She made each of our minds perceive what she wanted us to perceive. I knew it was not a simple weaving, and I also knew, that it was not among my talents but of hers. Yet I understood it. The figure she projected continued to reach out. A small hand, my own from just a short while ago, reached out to hers. As the hands clasped I was suddenly there, whole, and falling to the ground. Some in market ran away, others stood shouting and pointing. Some clapped as though it was a stunt. I recalled none of this, but knew its truth. The figures faded and Lily closed her hands, taking a breath. "That's all? No additional energies? No other manifestations?" the man asked. Lily looked at me, and back to the robed figure. "It was as you saw. There was nothing else." The robed man gave her a look of consternation, but Lily merely returned his challenge with an expressionless face. The gleam in her eyes suggested she was enjoying his discomfiture. Not understanding, but as ever desperate to, I broke the momentary silences. "Should there have been something else?" The man blinked. "Ah. I'm forgetting myself. I am Renfro, Master Seeker. You may call me Master Renfro. I'll be your teacher here, at least in matters of our specific art. You are one of us now, Jolan." "Pleased to meet you Master Renfro," I said, responding as I had been taught. "One of who?" "Have you not heard of the Fellowship of Orianthus?" Master Renfro asked. As he spoke some of the fading recollections from my fleeting contact with Lily danced through my head, just beyond my conscious grasp. Realizing these glimpses to be hers I answered simply in the negative. Master Renfro's explanations and expoundings were those you may find in many of the common tales of the deeds of Orianthus all those centuries ago. How he organized practitioners of wide and varied arts to serve the crown and the people of the kingdom. Nothing of particular import in our tale here. At some point in his monologue, Lily had excused herself to attend to other duties. The discussion turned to practicalities of my living arrangements and the beginning of my studies. I would room with another apprentice in the citadel. Meals came at the third, fifth, and seventh bells, and were to be taken in company. In none of these instructions was there question of what I was to become. For Master Renfro, at least, the notion was settled. I was an apprentice of the Fellowship. My life was to take the shape of those who had walked these halls before me. "One final item, then, Jolan," Master Renfro intoned. "Use of your abilities, except as prescribed by your instructors is forbidden. You are not to leave these grounds except as is required of you, or in company of one of the Fellowship. Do you understand?" In all my life I had never gone or left. I had not ever thought of myself moving along the pattern. I simply was. That to which my musings turned was part of me, and me part of it. Even the language was strange to my ears. What Master Renfro was saying was that I was not to be me. "I don't know how. How do you not?" Master Renfro seemed surprised. His face held a brittle smile of one not expecting contradiction, and wanting nothing so much as to not be in the same room as me. I'd seen that look on the faces of other villagers, but this was different somehow. He strode the few paces from behind his desk, reached for my hand and gripped it tightly. The experience was very different from my grasping Lily's hand. I felt him walk through the threads of my life. I saw the point of connection, began to feel his doubts, but then the impression dissolved into so many embers blown upon the wind. He had stopped me from knowing him the way I had comprehended Lily. His eyes were wide, sweat breaking out on his brow. His effort continued. I could feel traces of the glimpses he was able to pull from my life, as wisps of silk running through my fingers before I could grasp them tight. He was struggling to see them. He could feel the wind on the grass, the river, the rain. When I peered too close to the connection I'd see the embers flee from my gaze into the dark of night, campfire sparks disappearing in heat eddies. Master Renfro gasped a bit with the effort and muttered, "What are you?" He released my hand and swayed twice before shaking his head. The gesture reminded me of the hound licking its nose to clear the scents it had taken in. I wanted to ask what he'd meant. It would have been another question he'd have been bound to ignore, but at the time I was too anxious at the thought I might shatter from hearing the answer. I let the question lie, and the moment for voicing it passed. For a few breaths he kept his eyes closed, muttering to himself the while. At the time I wondered if he were also able to wield words of command, that he was uttering an incantation of some kind. That is not what Seekers do, though I didn't realize it then. He blinked and said, "Ah yes. Ah... You... You will be given a..." He paused, sunk into his chair, and began rummaging through his desk. He drew out a spool of twine. Measuring off a length, he cut it with a dull stationery knife and handed it to me. "Keep that around your wrist, or your finger. When you feel your attention begin to focus, to carry you, touch that. It will bring you here, or better, remind you of the rule." I took the twine and turned it between my fingertips. I saw the work of pulling and twisting the fibers, of dyeing the cloth. I saw the harvest of the plants and the earth they grew in. Surely this was not meant to bring me only to the spool, only to this study, only to this Master. It was not the strength of the twine's connection to the spool that kept me in the chamber at that moment. It was not even the reminder of the rule the twine was intended to be. Rather, it was the absurdity of the idea that the associations this piece of twine held were as simple as those Master Renfro intended. It was the absurdity that his Master before him had cut him a length from the same spool, and that he carried it still. Ten year olds do not appreciate tradition. I laughed. I understand now I was likely slapping Master Renfro in the face, rejecting him, in a way, and all of his experiences, again without understanding the challenge I unintentionally offered his role with my laughter. Perhaps if I had been older, as Lily implied most students were, things would have started differently. The possibilities are too many to consider now. His eyes flashed briefly and he said, "Compliance is expected." He stared at a space just behind my eyes for a moment, then looked to his papers implying they were of far more significance than a small, vigorous fish plucked from a pond and flipped into the fisherman's basket. I began to ask a question, but a low bell tolled, followed by a bell several tones higher. "Tonic and dominant," said Master Refro, "midday meal." Without further word he moved past me into the hallway. I was left alone, in his study, the abrupt conclusion to a whirlwind of change. It had only been a few hours since I had left home. I imagined my parents searching frantically for me. What must they be thinking? How could I let them know? Would they understand? I also took in the fact that I could go to them now if I chose. My mother's hand on the threads in my shirt, homespun from the wool shorn by my father's hand would carry me right to them. I could hear the wheel spin, twisting the wool as my mother fed it into the spindle. I could see her foot rocking up and down on the pedal as she softly hummed to herself. The smell of the wool was as much a comfort as the smells of the cooking from the next room had been. As much as those impressions let me dwell in the past, savoring the warm happiness of those moments, they brought me to the here and now, reminding me how terribly hungry I was all of a sudden. If I was to fit somewhere, it must be in this place. I must understand these people, live this life. I could not go home. I swayed and it felt as if the ground beneath me had torn asunder and part of the world had fallen away. Fleetingly, I grasped at that world for a moment, but I had chosen, and I clasped at wisps of smoke. I curled and uncurled my fists and set out from Master Renfro's study into the hallway. This was my world. I had walked these paths... would walk these paths. I saw myself carrying messages to the other masters. I saw my shoes pound around many turns, as I jostled past other students. I saw the citadel unfold in many shapes, in the scents of autumn, the cool dampness of winter, lamp light playing through corridors at night, back to shafts of sunlight in midday. I came back to myself, back to now. I stumbled, staggering to the wall. What had just happened? Was it this place that had caused this? It must be me. I shook my head. This was my world now. I must walk to the dining hall. Simple. I knew the way. I shouldn't know the way, but I did. "You're going to miss the meal, and so am I. Come on!" An older boy turned away and began walking off. I followed. "You came looking for me?" I asked. "Yah. Master Renfro sent me. Said you might not be there. You Seekers are always popping off here and there. Good you didn't. Spares you the punishment." He kept walking, turning down a right fork at one of the intersections. "Punishment?" I kept pace. "You'd be washing dishes and peeling potatoes for a month. Cooks'd be happy." He spoke from first-hand knowledge, I learned later. "My name is Jolan." "Right," he said. "I'm Ander. I get to watch you for a bit, until you get assigned." I took this in and began to ask the obvious question, but we were approaching the dining hall. The sounds of chatter, the clatter of utensils on bowls, the shuffle of feet, and the smells of food stole our attention. We walked through the archway into the hall. Ander waved me to one side where bowls of porridge and various dishes of cooked vegetables had been laid out for the taking. Boys and girls, young men and women, and some of the masters looked up at the late arrivals. All of them were older than me. All of them were bigger than me. Master Renfro sat among other masters at one of the far tables. Lily was at the other end of that table. She looked up and smiled. Master Renfro looked also, blinked once, and turned his attention back to his meal. Ander shoved a bowl and plate into my hands. "Come on," he said. We sat at a table with other boys and girls. They were already nearly finished so conversation had become their focus. "What is he, then, Ander?" asked a stocky boy with a cracking voice. "That's not polite," said the slim girl to the boy's left. "You should introduce yourself, first. I am Delia, and the rude one is Ben." Ben looked to Delia to begin objection, but Ander spoke up instead. "Jolan here is a Seeker, seems like." Ben fixed his gaze back on me, his eyebrows raised in surprise. "So you can poof off to everywhere and *see* stuff?" he asked, still chewing his crust of bread. Delia answered before I could open my mouth. "Well of course he can't yet. He has to be trained. You couldn't do more than shake the dinner table until you were taught properly." I began to answer, but Ander cautioned me to eat while we could. Delia and Ben began to argue about what Seekers could and could not do. Ben claimed they could read minds. Delia lectured that they just knew where you were or where you'd been from something that had touched you. Others joined the discussion. I watched and chewed. Ben could move things, shape them, but was not a Seeker. Delia was Lily's student. Ander could direct creatures with his will. Still others could bring things into existence from nothing, it seemed. A tall, gangly boy with dark skin could send his voice to anywhere he chose it to be heard. But none were Seekers. Only Master Renfro. I ate, nodding at the assertions of some, shaking my head at others. A few asked where I was from, only to seem disappointed when it was not some exotic location they'd only read of in books. I wanted to tell them of the wind, to share with them the story of the finches, to explain the rain's journey, but the conversation bent away from those things. There were more questions but they were interrupted by the same low bell, followed by the higher-toned bell, followed by the low bell once again. Midday meal was over. "Come on," Ander said. "I have to see Master Beddick, then get you settled.