The Law of Isolation (62 page)

Gevan tilted his head and studied the window. “So you reach a certain point and can’t move your viewpoint any closer?”

“Kind of. It’s not like there’s a sharp line. It just gets harder and harder the farther away you go. Up close it’s gradual, but out at the edge of our range it gets very difficult very fast. Eventually, no matter how hard we push we can’t force it any farther.”

“Hmm.” Josiah’s description hinted at something Gevan had begun to suspect about the way the wizards’ powers worked. If only he could take measurements and write down his observations in a way that would allow him to quantify the effect.

He realized, watching the shore slide away behind them, that he might be able to do just that. “Josiah, would you mind helping me with an experiment?”

“Sure.” Josiah’s expression gave every indication of real interest.

Gevan hoped he could get in enough observations before the boy’s excitement faded to boredom and he abandoned the task. “See that fallen tree?” He pointed to the most notable feature of the portion of shore they were passing. “Could you open a window on it? And tell me how difficult it is?”

“All right.” Josiah scratched Sar’s ears and held out his hand. A point of light sprang into existence over his palm and ballooned to the size of Gevan’s head. Clear and sharp, a close-up view of the dead pine splayed across the sand appeared. “This is easy.”

“Keep the viewpoint fixed in that spot. Call this level of effort ‘one,’ and call the hardest work you’re capable of ‘ten.’ Tell me when your level of effort rises to two.”

He was prepared to explain again, in more detail, but Josiah nodded, appearing to grasp the concept easily. Gevan began to count out seconds in his mind, tapping his foot to keep a steady rhythm. He sketched a rough graph in his notebook, using the time passed and what Captain Yosiv had told him of the ship’s speed to estimate the distance they traveled.

“I guess it’s about a two now.” Josiah leaned over and peered at Gevan’s notes as he jotted down the time and marked a dot on the graph. “So the harder it is, the higher the mark goes?”

“Yes, and the longer it’s been, the farther to the right. Now hush and let me count.”

Josiah was obediently quiet, watching Gevan’s lips move silently, until he reported, “Three.”

Gevan wrote it down. Josiah waited until he was finished. Then he offered, “I made a shadow-clock, once, when I used to have to count the strokes of the fulling mill.”

“I don’t think that will work, since we’re moving.” Gevan silently cursed as he momentarily lost track of the numbers. He resumed as best he could, hoping he wasn’t too far off. It didn’t really matter; this was just a preliminary trial to see if his idea had any merit. His methods would have to be much more precise and accurate later if he hoped to solidly support his theory.

“I guess not.” Josiah was silent for a few minutes. “Um, four. Hey, Kevessa, maybe you can count for us while your father writes stuff down, so he doesn’t have to do both.”

“I’ll be glad to, if that’s what you wish, Father.” Kevessa came to stand beside him.

He nodded and counted aloud until she picked it up, bobbing her head in time with the numbers. He kept his mental count going, but it was a relief not to have to worry about getting distracted. He knew Kevessa would take the responsibility seriously.

The three of them settled into a routine. Josiah called out his number, Kevessa responded with hers, and Gevan jotted them both down. The graph developed under his pen in just the fashion he’d anticipated.

“Seven,” Josiah said. “It’s getting faster now.” Gevan barely had time to get the time from Kevessa and write it down before Josiah reported, “Eight. Um, nine, ten—” His face screwed up as the view within the window shimmered and dissolved in a wash of gold. “Sorry. We couldn’t hold it any longer.”

“No, that’s fine.” Gevan traced a line through the dots on the graph. He felt a warm flush of pleasure to see his suspicion confirmed. “Look. See this curve? It’s a geometric progression. The effort increases in proportion to the square of the distance. Just as light diminishes with the square of the distance from its source. There’s a mathematical function underlying your powers. They really are natural phenomena. They’re governed by predictable rules. They can be described using the same sort of methods as the rest of creation.”

“That’s what we told you.” Josiah turned back to the shore. “Let’s try it again. I think can do better with my estimates; I was way off at first. See that rock just ahead?” He called a new window into existence. “Kevessa, get ready to start when we pass it.”

The ran the experiment again, getting much the same results. Next, Gevan had Josiah observe times in the past. A day and even a month earlier had only small effects on the distance they could view, but by six months their range was noticeably affected, and at a year Josiah couldn’t even force the window to reach the shore before it dissolved into sparkles.

Captain Yosiv shouted orders, and the sailors began altering the set of the sails in preparation for rounding the point. Gevan didn’t care that their changing speed made it impossible to conduct more trials. He was confident his theory was correct. All that remained was to refine it by collecting as much and as varied data as possible.

Josiah proved a surprisingly good source of ideas for how to do that. He chattered to Gevan as they watched the boundary stone draw closer. For once Gevan didn’t mind listening. “Lifting should be easy. We need to have a series of weights, like my mother uses to weigh her clay. Then we can see how far away we can lift each one. Or maybe just one weight, and move it farther and farther away, like we did with the window. Healing will be more difficult, though. It’s not as if we can heal the same cut from an inch away and a foot away and see how much harder it is. Although maybe we could, if we were careful to make them all exactly the same length and depth…” He traced a series of lines across his forearm with his fingernail.

“Josiah!” Elkan said sharply. “You may not harm yourself, nor anyone else. Gevan will have to be content with observing the normal course of our work.”

Josiah shrugged. “All right.” But Gevan could tell his mind was still worrying at the problem behind his guileless eyes.

Elkan shook his head and looked toward the shore. They were just coming even with the stone tower. Gevan saw his hands on the rail tighten. He glanced at Tobi. The mountain cat gazed back at him unperturbed, her tongue lolling out of her mouth in a way that gave Gevan the uncanny feeling she was laughing. Elkan took a deep breath. The tower was clearly behind the ship now. There was commotion aloft as Captain Yosiv put the rudder around and the ship swung into a long curve. The sails flapped as they lost the wind and bellied out again as the sailors adjusted their angles.

“Farewell, Tevenar,” Elkan murmured. He turned away. When he saw that Gevan had been watching, he flashed him a self-conscious grin. “Tell me more about what to expect when we reach Ramunna. Do you think it will be possible to convince the Purifiers we’re no threat if we confront them directly, or should we try to avoid them until the Matriarch’s problems have been dealt with?”

“I think the best policy will be to keep a low profile until you’ve shown the Matriarch your abilities. She’ll do anything to protect you once she knows you can help her. And it should be easy to gain the support of the Temple. First Keeper Emirre is an open-minded man.”

They discussed strategy as the
Verinna
finished coming about and settled into her new course. Gevan kept one eye on Kevessa and Josiah. They were taking turns with the window-glass, pointing out interesting sights on shore to each other.

He’d let his attention drift when he heard a startled exclamation from Josiah and a laugh from Kevessa. He turned to see Josiah looking through the large end of the window-glass, with the small end pointing at Kevessa. Gevan pinched his lips and went to rescue his device.

“If you can’t use it properly I’ll have to put it away.” He held out his hand and scowled at Josiah.

“Sorry.” Josiah meekly flipped the tube around. “I was hoping if it could make distant things close, maybe the other way it would make small things large. But it doesn’t. It makes close things look far away. It looked like Kevessa was way out in the middle of the water.” He grinned at her, and she giggled.

“Of course. It has to do with the way the light is bent as it passes through the lenses. Instead of gathering light from a wide area and focusing it, it takes light from a small area and spreads it apart.” He took the glass from Josiah.

Josiah looked thoughtful. “Could you, though? Use lenses to make something small appear bigger?”

“Probably.” Gevan considered the problem as he disconnected the tubes and tucked them into their case. The idea had occurred to him before, but he hadn’t thought it would be a very useful effect. “A single lens can do that to a certain extent. Look.” He unscrewed the metal band holding the large lens in place and pulled it out. He carefully held it close to the rail, where Josiah could look through it at the grain of the wood. He enjoyed Josiah’s enthusiastic reaction when he bent over and peered at the magnified lines, but kept tight hold of the lens when Josiah reached to take it from him. It would be far too easy to drop the precious bit of glass over the side.

Josiah moved Gevan’s hand to adjust the angle of the lens. “Look at that, Kevessa. You can see every little line and bump.” After she obediently peered through, Josiah stuck his finger under the glass. “Hey, Elkan, look. See the ridges on my finger? They look like great big valleys.”

Elkan responded to his apprentice’s urging and looked through the lens, first casually, then with sharply increased interest. He glanced at Gevan, who released the lens into his grip. It made him nervous, but he couldn’t insult the wizard by refusing to trust him with it. And there was a strange reverence in the way Elkan handled it, as if it were a precious jewel. He studied the palm of his hand through the lens, moving it closer and farther away, with the sort of absorption Gevan had only seen when he was in the middle of a healing.

“I think I could make the effect stronger,” he offered. “A larger lens, certainly. And maybe a combination of several.” He pictured the path the light would follow and pulled out his notebook to sketch his idea. “One to capture the image, and another to magnify it further…”

He drew for a few minutes, then looked up to find Elkan staring at him with an intensity that was almost frightening. The wizard’s voice was hushed but fierce. “Would such a device reveal objects too small for the eye to see?”

Gevan swallowed, taken aback by such a strong reaction to an effect he’d considered only a curiosity. “Yes, I suppose it would, if it were strong enough. Why do you ask?”

Elkan put his arm around Tobi’s neck and called up a window. He peered at it through the lens. “Too dark,” he muttered. He turned so the window was shadowed by his body. “Josiah, put your hand up where the sunlight can shine into it.”

Josiah complied, coming closer to see what his master was doing. Gevan tried to figure out what the small window over Elkan’s hand was showing. It looked like a dark reddish oval, less than an inch across, with a gray patch in the center. He swallowed when he realized it was a cross section of a finger, presumably Josiah’s, looking for all the world as if a sharp blade had severed it diagonally between the first and second joints. Gevan suppressed a queasy feeling. Neither Elkan nor Josiah seemed to think anything odd of the apparition.

Elkan moved the lens closer to the window, adjusting both hands until he found the right distance to resolve the image. He studied whatever was thus revealed. His head blocked the lens from Gevan’s view, and he couldn’t get closer without shoving aside either Josiah or Tobi, so he watched Elkan’s face. The wizard was deeply absorbed by what he saw, his eyebrows occasionally drawing together, or his teeth worrying at his lower lip.

At length he pulled back and extended both hands toward Gevan. “Take a look.”

Gevan bent to see as Elkan went on. “It will work better if the window is in a dark place, while the subject stays in sunlight. Only a certain amount of light can travel through the tissues of the body. But even so, the lens reveals a great deal. Look how you can see the structure of the bone. And I can make out shapes within the blood. Only a little, but enough to hope that a stronger device might show them clearly.”

If he squinted, Gevan could see what Elkan was talking about. The bit of bone in the center of the image was dimmer than the surrounding flesh, but Gevan could make out a distinctly porous area with a network of filaments where he would have expected a solid mass. The soft tissues glowed a dull red, broken by various lighter and darker areas. Along one line, which Gevan realized must be a blood vessel, motion surged in a series of liquid rushes, the lens revealing a tantalizing suggestion of clumps of matter within the flow.

Elkan sighed, and the image vanished. He handed the lens back to Gevan. The look the wizard gave him was searching, a layer of caution keeping tight rein on boundless, breathless hope. “Much of what happens in the body takes place on a level too small for us to see. Wizards can sense what’s happening, but only roughly, vaguely. For all our study there are many mysteries we’ve never been able to puzzle out. The exact nature of the sorts of life associated with transmissible diseases, the functions of many organs, the mechanics of healing itself. If you can construct a device which will allow us to see on that level and solve some of those mysteries, it could increase our effectiveness as healers a thousandfold. We could discover ways to heal using less energy, or to prevent diseases from getting started, or even to cure them without using the Mother’s power.”

Gevan couldn’t help but respond to Elkan’s enthusiasm, though he still didn’t fully understand it. “But you have the Mother’s power. Of course it would be fascinating to comprehend more fully the way our bodies work, but I don’t see how it would be much of an advantage to learn new ways of doing the things you’re already able to do.”