Brightly Burning Read Online Free PDF Page B

Chitward,” Master Keileth said in his brusque manner. “I have assigned him to the Third Form. Choose someone in this section to take him through his classes.”
    That said, the Master left as abruptly as he had arrived, leaving Lan to face nine strangers alone.

    OWYN, the boy assigned to show him around, was a serious, studious youngster with huge brown eyes, untidy dark brown hair, and an unfinished air like a young owl, who performed his duty with utmost solemnity. As Lan had expected, if he had been ranked with his age group, he should have been in Fourth or Fifth Form, and being ranked with the students his junior was a mark against him. His own classmates regarded him with a certain veiled scorn for his lack of what they considered common knowledge.
    Their lives were marked by bells which rang to signify the changing of classes and mealtimes. Pupils remained in their seats; it was the teachers who moved from room to room to impart their specialized knowledge. Lan’s set began with Geography, which meant trade routes; routes whose particulars they were expected to have by rote. This knowledge was not only that of finding the way on an unmarked map, but of climate, conditions in each season, dangers on the way, and so forth. They were drilled mercilessly until every person in the class had the current route down perfectly, and only then did the class as a whole move on to the next route. This fascinated Lan; in his mind, he saw the conditions the teacher described, and he had no difficulty in memorizing the route, though he wondered if he might start to get routes mixed up when he had to recall more than one.
    At the end of the class, the pupils stood up as their teacher left the room—Owyn poking him in the back when he wasn’t quick enough—and a new teacher entered.
    The next three classes were in language: Hardornen, Rethwellan, and Border dialects. Lan’s head was stuffed full before the break came for lunch, and he wondered how he was ever going to keep the languages from running together.
    At the sound of the noon bell, the other students jumped up and stampeded for the door. Owyn solemnly took Lan in charge and led him down to the first floor, down a staircase packed full of strange people. Owyn didn’t really have to show Lan the refectory where they all took their lunch. Every pupil in the school was headed in that direction, all of them chattering at the tops of their lungs. The two boys just went along, carried on the stream.
    When they got to the door of the refectory, though, Owyn deserted him, squirming past students who were younger than either of them, and vanishing.
    Lan got out of the traffic to have a look around. This was an enormous room, high-ceilinged and echoing, with the dark timbers of the support beams showing starkly against the white plaster of the ceiling itself. Up above the wainscoting were windows surrounded by handsome carved wood, but from head height on down there were only plain oak panels. There were four long plain oak tables running the length of the room, with chairs, plates, and silverware marking each place. That seemed a little odd to Lan; he would have expected benches, until he saw how that even with the spacing between each student enforced by the seating they managed to poke and elbow each other. There seemed to be no particular order in which people were seated, although there were obviously seats that were preferred. Those Lan’s age and older had taken over the seats at the ends of the tables nearest the kitchen doors; it was obvious why, as they were already being served beef and bread and new peas while the rest were still getting seated. The seats least in favor were farthest from the kitchen, and those near the fireplaces, where stray breezes sent random puffs of smoke out into the room from the fire burning there.
    Friends sat together, forming little cliques; sideways glances and whispered comments discouraged approach. Owyn