She was determined to profit from an outstanding marriage.

"Don't be so bitter. Yes. Maybe there is an angle in this. Maybe he'll listen now. For my safety."

She became thoughtful. After a while she began unrolling an implausible plot.

He loved her anyway. They were best friends. She listened to his dreams, too. And she did not laugh.

"We'd better find Plaueri. Father will check." The Safire was a methodical man.

"Wow. I'm overwhelmed." She was no more excited about education than he.

Their instructor, Mikas Plauen, was doing his Brotherhood Novitiate. The Safire had contracted his services with his Order, the Yellow.

The Brotherhood was an anomaly of the times, a non-sectarian organization which, nevertheless, displayed characteristics of a religious mystery cult. Its avowed purpose was to preserve, conserve and transmit knowledge. The lower ranks everywhere appeared as court scribes, secretaries and, as here, as instructors of the nobly-born.

At its highest levels, though, the Brotherhood formed the aristocracy of wizardry. All the great western sorcer- ers belonged, and at the very top stood several men possibly the equal of the Mindak of Ventimiglia.

There were two major Orders, the Red and the Blue, and three minor, the White, the Yellow and the Green. The minor Orders remained devoted to the Brotherhood's founding purpose.

The Red and Blue, though, had become worldly, political and contentious, always striving for control of the Brotherhood and the temporal power that mastery represented. Many an intrigue had been played between the two. The Blue Order was dominant at the moment, but the Red was making a comeback under a cunning, vicious, unscrupulous Magister named Gerdes Mulenex. Rumor said this Mulenex was a western would-be Mindak.

Gathrid did not care. He couldn't untangle the political and philosophical differences between the Orders. He saw only naked power lust. For him it was enough to know that the Orders existed and that, though they supposedly shared a common purpose, sometimes contended to the point of armed confrontation.