The Fall of The Kings (Riverside) by Ellen Kushner, Delia Sherman

Maybe one stepped on his toe, or spilled soup on him! How, then, can we take his opinion of them seriously? He’s biased. It’s not history, it’s not manners, and it’s certainly not morals. I think we should simply delete the chapter and be done with it.”
    This sally was greeted by hissing and expostulations, but Crabbe’s students fell silent when the little magister raised his hand. “Say what you like about morality, Magister Rugg—and we all know that you are the expert there—” Sniggers, this time from Crabbe’s historians. “But whose opinion can we trust, if not that of a man who was present at the time and wrote so eloquently about the decadent world he witnessed?”
    “The world he witnessed was in essence the same world we live in today. ‘Worlds do not change over time, nor the people in them,’ ” Rugg quoted sententiously.
    Crabbe closed his eyes in weary disdain. “And it therefore follows that the study of history is a pointless exercise, I suppose?” He folded his arms across his chest and jerked his chin at the massive youth perched precariously on the end of the bench. “Blake, you answer him. You know my arguments, or you should.”
    The student he addressed nervously raked his sandy hair behind his ears, which were prominent and, just now, rather red. Justis Blake was a large, slow young man, with large, slow thoughts. He did not like to be hurried, nor did he have the smallest idea how Doctor Crabbe would answer such a statement. He had only been attending his classes for two weeks. But he licked his lips and tried anyway. “History teaches us that worlds do change. We don’t have wizards now. That’s a change.”
    The metaphysicians hooted at this statement of the obvious. Rugg said, “Yes, the nobles took care of that. They burned the old charlatans like so much cordwood, and there’s an end to it. We still have nobles, though, don’t we? Nothing really changes.”
    But Justis went on, “People don’t change their basic natures, perhaps, but their surroundings can change the way they see things. For instance, a year ago I was still myself, but I lived on a farm—” Somebody mooed; it might even have been a historian.
    “Honestly, Blake,” Doctor Crabbe said. “If you can’t reason logically, at least you could remember my lectures. Or quote Trevor’s glorious words on the subject. You have read Trevor, haven’t you?”
    Blake’s cheeks and ears burned. This was Doctor Crabbe’s way, he reminded himself. He’d endured it in class and he’d survived it. The history magister’s habit of leaping on you and shaking your ignorance out of you reminded him of his mother’s terrier, hunting rats. Justis Blake had chosen to attend Crabbe’s lectures because he thought it would be good for him to be shaken up a bit. Now he wasn’t so sure.
    Doctor Rugg turned a comradely smile on him. “Take heart, boy. Scholarly debates draw no real blood. Try again.”
    Blake took a deep breath. “Thank you, sir. All right. If the question is, what was the wizards’ real function, and Placid can help elucidate it, then his opinion is as good as anyone’s, isn’t that so? Placid knew the kings, he knew the wizards. He didn’t think much of their magic.”
    “What Placid thought about magic was very much what we still think,” Rugg pointed out mildly. “ ‘Magic is like strong drinke,’ ” he quoted; “ ‘for the man who trusteth therein trusteth to the shadow and the image of power, that in itself is naught.’ Of Manners and Morals. Book IV.”
    “Well, yes, but—” Justis swallowed. The whole room was looking at them. His mother had been so proud when he left to study in the city. He wondered what she would say when he appeared at her garden gate, cast out and utterly humiliated. He took a deep breath. “But we ought to look at other things besides Placid. It’s like a stool, you see, that can’t stand on one leg alone. Placid is one leg of the stool. He