“I used to do that for hours,” Elodin said, drawing a deep breath and looking around the room fondly. “Good times.”
I went to look at the windows. They were thicker than usual, but not that thick. They seemed normal except for faint reddish streaks running through them. I glanced at the window frame. It was copper too. I looked slowly around at the room, eyeing its bare stone walls, feeling its strangely heavy air. I noticed the door didn’t even have a handle on the inside, let alone a lock. Why would anyone go through all the trouble of making a solid copper door?
I decided on my second question. “How did you get out?”
“Finally,” Elodin said with a tinge of exasperation.
He slouched onto the couch. “You see, once upon a time Elodin the Great found himself locked in a high tower.” He gestured to the room around us. “He had been stripped of his tools: his coin, key, and candle. Furthermore, his cell had no door worth mentioning. No window that could be breached.” He made dismissive gestures at each of these. “Even the name of the wind was hidden from him by the clever machinations of his captors.”
Elodin got up from the couch and began to pace the room. “All around him was nothing but smooth hard stone. It was a cell no man had ever escaped.”
He stopped pacing and held up a finger dramatically. “But Elodin the Great knew the names of all things, and so all things were his to command.” He faced the grey wall beside the windows. “He said to the stone: ‘BREAK’ and the…”
Elodin trailed off, his head tilting to one side curiously. His eyes narrowed. “Sod me, they changed it,” he said quietly to himself. “Huh.” He stepped closer to the wall and lay a hand on it.
I let my attention wander. Wil and Sim had been right, the man was cracked in the head. What would happen if I ran out of the room, unstuck the door, and slammed it? Would the other masters thank me?
“Oh,” Elodin said suddenly, laughing. “That was half-clever of them.” He took two steps back from the wall. “CYAERBASALIEN.”
I saw the wall move. It rippled like a hanging rug thumped with a stick. Then it simply…fell. Like dark water poured from a bucket, tons of fine grey sand spilled across the floor in a sudden rush, burying Elodin’s feet up to his shins.
Sunlight and birdsong poured into the room. Where there had been a foot of solid grey stone before, there was now a gaping hole big enough to drive a cart through.
But the hole wasn’t completely clear, some green material was spread across the opening. It almost looked like a dirty, tangled net, but it was too irregular for netting. It was more like a thick, tattered cobweb.
“That wasn’t there before,” Elodin said apologetically as he pulled his feet free of the grey sand. “It was much more dramatic the first time, let me assure you.”
I simply stood, stunned by what I’d just seen. This wasn’t sympathy. This wasn’t anything I’d ever seen before. All I could think of was the old line from a hundred half-remembered stories: And Taborlin the Great said to the stone: “BREAK!” and the stone broke….
Elodin wrenched off one of the chair’s legs and used it to batter at the tangled green web that stretched across the opening. Parts of it broke easily or flaked away. Where it was thicker he used the leg as a lever to bend pieces aside. Where it bent or broke it glimmered bright in the sunlight. More copper, I thought. Veins of copper running through the blocks of stone that made the wall.
Elodin dropped the chair leg and ducked through the gap. Through the window I saw him lean against the white stone railing on the balcony.
I followed him outside. As soon as I stepped onto the balcony, the air no longer felt strangely heavy and still.
“Two years,” he said, looking out over the gardens. “Able to see this balcony but not stand on it. Able to see the wind, but not hear it, not feel it on my face.” He swung one leg up over the stone railing so he was sitting on it, then dropped a few feet to land on the flat piece of roof just underneath. He wandered out across the roof, away from the building.
I hopped the rail myself and followed him to the edge of the roof. We were only about twenty feet up, but the gardens and fountains spreading out on all sides made for a spectacular view. Elodin stood perilously near the edge, his master’s robe flapping around him like a dark flag. He looked rather impressive, actually, if you were willing to ignore the fact that he was still only wearing one sock.
I went to stand beside him on the edge of the roof. I knew what my third question had to be. “What do I have to do,” I asked, “to study naming under you?”
He met my eye calmly, appraising me. “Jump,” he said. “Jump off this roof.”
That’s when I realized that all of this had been a test. Elodin had been taking my measure ever since we met. He had a grudging respect for my tenacity, and he had been surprised that I noticed something odd about the air in his room. He was on the verge of accepting me as a student.
But he needed more, proof of my dedication. A demonstration. A leap of faith.
And as I stood there, a piece of story came to mind. So Taborlin fell, but he did not despair. For he knew the name of the wind, and so the wind obeyed him. It cradled and caressed him. It bore him to the ground as gently as a puff of thistledown. It set him on his feet softly as a mother’s kiss.
Elodin knew the name of the wind.
Still looking him in the eye, I stepped off the edge of the roof.
Elodin’s expression was marvelous. I have never seen a man so astonished. I spun slightly as I fell, so he stayed in my line of vision. I saw him raise one hand slightly, as if making a belated attempt to grab hold of me.
I felt weightless, like I was floating.
Then I struck the ground. Not gently, like a feather settling down. Hard. Like a brick hitting a cobblestone street. I landed on my back with my left arm beneath me. My vision went dark as the back of my head struck the ground and all the air was driven from my body.
I didn’t lose consciousness. I just lay there, breathless and unable to move. I remember thinking, quite earnestly, that I was dead. That I was blind.
Eventually my sight returned, leaving me blinking against the sudden brightness of the blue sky. Pain tore through my shoulder and I tasted blood. I couldn’t breathe. I tried to roll off my arm, but my body wouldn’t listen to me. I had broken my neck…my back…
After a long, terrifying moment, I managed to gasp a shallow breath, then another. I gave a sigh of relief and realized that I had at least one broken rib in addition to everything else, but I moved my fingers slightly, then my toes. They worked. I hadn’t broken my spine.
As I lay there, counting my blessings and broken ribs, Elodin stepped into my field of vision.
He looked down at me. “Congratulations,” he said. “That was the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen.” His expression was a mix of awe and disbelief. “Ever.”