Imager

Contrary to poetry and populisms, Avryl is far from the cruelest month of the ten. Rather Feuillyt is, for it is in the month after harvest when everyone comes to understand that the bounty of nature and man could have been far greater than it was, no matter how much better the gathering of grain and golds happened to be than in previous years. So it was no surprise to me when Master Caliostrus appeared on the twentieth of that Feuillyt, to stand behind my shoulder and peer at the uncompleted likeness upon my easel. The twentieth of every month is a Vendrei, of course, whether the year is 754, as it was, or any other year.

“That’s not an acceptable portrait, Rhennthyl.”

Without Factor Masgayl being present, I’d been working on the detailing of his crimson and gold brocade vest, a vest that, for all its richness, had seen better days, not that the portrait would show that. “Sir?”

“You can’t do that with the eyes.”

“But that’s the way the factorius looks, exactly the way he appears.” Incautious as that statement was, coming as it did from a journeyman portraiture artist to his master, we both knew that the portrait was far more flattering than the reality of Masgayl Factorius, one of the more junior, yet least self-effacing, factors in the city.

“It is not the way he looks,” replied Master Caliostrus, “not to himself and not to those who patronize his establishment, and not to his family.”

The problem was not with my eyes, but with those of Master Caliostrus, for his had become a slave to his desires for influential patrons, rather than lenses of artistic impartiality.

“You do not paint a man with deep-set beady eyes, even if his eyes are as hard and as tiny as those of a shrewt,” Caliostrus went on. “That is, if you wish to remain a portraiture artist in L’Excelsis. Without satisfied patrons, even if you become a master, you will not remain long an artist. You will not become a master, because I certainly cannot support or lend my name to a portraiturist who is insensible to the self-images of his potential patrons.”

“Then, Master Caliostrus,” I replied, gently setting my brush on the edge of the oils tray, “how am I to comply with the dictates of the guild? What of the goal of artistic precision?”

“Artistic precision, my dear Rennthyl, is the goal of obtaining the precise image that will please the patron. You most certainly did so in pleasing Craftmaster Weidyn and young Mistress Weidyn. So far, you also seem to be pleasing Mistress Thelya D’Scheorzyl and her parents.”

I had been able to please Master Weidyn because the true visage of his daughter had been pleasant enough and because he could not have cared less how true the portrait had been so long as his wife and daughter were content. The same looked possible with Thelya, although I had barely begun that portrait. I certainly had no problem with Caliostrus’s logic, nor with his desires to increase the girth of his wallet. My difficulty lay elsewhere. “As artists, do we not have a duty, in some fashion, to present an accurate and precise view of what lies before us?”

Caliostrus laughed, as I knew he would. “The only people in all of Solidar who reckon the need for a precision that grates upon all sensibilities are the Imagers of L’Excelsis. In fact, they might be the only ones in all of Terahnar. That is because power allows impartiality.”

“So you’re saying, master, that if I want to be impartial, I should not be a portraiturist, but an imager?”

“You don’t even want to try to be an imager, Rhennthyl. Renegade imagers, if they do more than minor imaging, risk their lives, even if the imagers do not catch them. In the outlying districts, imagers are considered disciples of the Namer, and people believe they create hidden names of ruin and despair with each image that they make real. Most of those who try to become true imagers die young, entering Imagisle by the Bridge of Hopes and departing in a cart over the Bridge of Stones. Most who do survive spend the rest of their lives slaving for their masters, trying to create images and devices that never were and never could be-or dying slowly as they fabricate parts of machines for the armagers of the Council.”

How was that so different from what I did, handling the portraits for those of lesser affluence for Master Caliostrus, mixing pigments, and combining oils, powdering charcoal, and a thousand other mundane and mind-numbing tasks?

“All you young artists think that you, too, could be great. . . .” Caliostrus let his words die away into silence before punctuating the silence with a snort. “Greatness isn’t what you think it is, Rhennthyl. Be content to be a portraiturist. And fix those eyes.” He turned away without another utterance.

My corner of the large studio was the one in the southwest-where the light was harshest and brightest and washed out everything. But it did have a single window, one that was open because the fall air was cool, but not cold, and, while I’d always loved the use of oils to create, I’d never much cared for the odors of the paint. Most artists didn’t seem to mind, I supposed, because they only created a visual image, not one that embodied touch and taste and scent, although the very best paintings could evoke a sense of that.

From the far corner, Ostrius said, “He’s right, you know, Rhenn. In the end, all that matters is reputation and golds.” Standing by his easel, he held a palette knife he had just wiped clean. “The test of a reputation is whether the artist’s golds last as long as he lives.”

That was easy enough for him to say, since, as his father’s eldest, he’d inherit the studio and the reputation, not that the stocky Ostrius was not a capable portraiturist, for he was, and he’d just made master, if tacitly under the understanding that he would remain within his father’s studio for the near future. He was also anything but artistically adventurous.

“That observation is discouraging, true as it may be,” I pointed out.

“It doesn’t make it less accurate.”

Thinking about what Master Caliostrus and his son had said, before I lifted the brush to get back to detailing the vest of Masgayl Factorius, I glanced out the second-level window. As with most artists, Master Caliostrus had placed his workrooms and studios on the second level, with the gallery and storerooms below, and the family quarters above. From the heights of Martradon, one could see Imagisle a good three milles to the west, a granite ship pointed upstream in the River Aluse, its masts the twin towers of the Collegium Imago. From that distance the three bridges looked as slender as hawsers mooring that ship to the city that surrounded it.