You are here.”
He sat back from his desk, and I fetched the water and washed his hands and feet, drying them, then rubbing in the fragrant oil. When I had finished, he indicated the chair at the side of the desk, waited until I had picked up the stylus, then resumed his lessons.
He made me redraw and explain all he had taught me the previous night. I struggled to remember. I had spent some seven hours at this desk last night, and much of what I now recalled for the Magus was vague and imprecise.
When my stylus slipped in my nervous fingers he shouted, and I cringed, half expecting him to strike me. But he only watched me, his eyes very careful, then asked me to draw some further figures that he had only touched on briefly before.
These, at least, satisfied him. “Good. You have not disappointed me.”
I blinked in amazement – and some very faint gratitude that I should have pleased him. I loathed the characters, truly I did, but I was craft-trained, and I took a professional pride in doing my best at whatever task I was set.
“Tonight,” Boaz continued, “I will instruct you in the art of constructing simple words with the characters you have already learned. See, here is your name again – do you understand how it is constructed?”
I glanced at him, and was surprised to see that his face held no scorn or animosity.
“Yes,” I hastened to reply as I saw a flicker of irritation at my hesitation. “I understand, Excellency.”
“Then draw it yourself.”
I did, and he seemed satisfied. “Now, my name. What characters would you use to construct that?”
I frowned. “Excellency?” It was a long word, and I was not sure of some of the characters.
He laughed. “Boaz!”
I almost dropped the stylus in my utter astonishment, not only at the laughter – unforced and easy – but that Boaz should be able to laugh. Then, completely forgetting my loathing of the man and his manipulations, my own mouth twitched. Excellency, indeed!
I drew the characters, and he nodded, his amusement fading. He took me through several other words, then had me lay down the stylus.
“Tirzah. You must not fear what I have just taught you. Yes, I can use words as sorceries, as numbers and symbols, to work my will, but I do not intend to teach you to do so. Nor will I make you write unwitting sorceries. That is not why I have asked you here. Do not fear the stylus so much.”
I relaxed still further, a dangerous thing to do, and smiled. “Thank you, Boaz.”
The change was instantaneous.
“You will call me Excellency!” he hissed. “If you dare presume again –”
“No, Excellency!” I stumbled, falling from the chair to the floor and my knees. “Forgive me!”
He turned back to his desk. “Very well. You may go. You are too tired to learn any more tonight.”
“Thank you, Excellency,” and I fled.
Isphet welcomed me home gladly, and gave me the herbal to drink. I lay awake for hours, trying to make sense of what had happened. He had smiled and laughed at my foolish incomprehension, and we had then sat in comfortable companionship as he taught me my first words. During that time I had not been frightened, angry or even resentful. Then…
I stared at the darkened ceiling. I understood what I had done wrong. I had presumed. I had stepped over that danger-edged invisible line of what was acceptable and what was not.
I drifted into sleep, and that night the chorus of the frogs in the reed banks rang loud through my dreams.
The next day I managed some time with Yaqob; I think the whole workshop had conspired to give us this chance. We found ourselves alone in the upper workroom as the workshop slowed down for the night.
“Tirzah.” He hesitated, then saw the expression on my face, and held me close. “Poor Tirzah,” I thought, wondering if he pitied me more than loved me.
“Tirzah, I must ask…about you and Boaz…”
Yes, I thought, yes he does. He cares.
“…if you think you will be able to glean anything from Boaz or his quarters…Raguel was so useful, and if you could find us something that will enable us to understand him, understand how to destroy him and escape from this place…”
I walked a few steps away. “I don’t know, Yaqob. His rooms are so bare, so barren…”
Yaqob seized me by the shoulders and turned me about. “He doesn’t say anything about weapons, or patrols?”
He saw