I must make clear my strong objection to female mages being allowed into this, our holiest order. Leon himself held that logic is an intrinsically masculine characteristic. Women, being governed by emotions, have no place in positions of political or magical power.
It is fine and good to have them trained in magic as educators, as fits their nurturing nature, and it is my personal belief that such pursuits should be encouraged.
But to have a woman take the masculine role of innovator is neither right nor natural. To entertain the notion disrespects our forefathers as well as endangering our wives, sisters, and daughters. On these grounds, regardless of her talent, I reject Miss Trethellyn’s application to the High Magistry.
—Archmage Supreme Walsen Verdanis (280 of Tiran)
Mage’s Mirror
he ceiling of Leon’s Hall had been repaired since Sciona punched aT hole in it. An artist had painted Archmage Stravos’s face back in, and Sciona noted that he looked more like the other Founding Mages now.
Perhaps the artist had used the figures on the rest of the ceiling for reference. Perhaps he had simply thought Stravos ought to better represent the Tiranish ideal of manhood. His nose was more pronounced now and slightly turned up at the end, his brow a little flatter, his hair more brown than copper.
“I see Stravos got more handsome,” someone commented appreciatively as the highmages filed to their seats. And Sciona wondered if this was how the mutual history of Tiran and the Kwen had fallen so far out of public consciousness, washed out a little more with each coat of paint.
The last time Sciona had sat in this hall, the highmage hopefuls and their relatives had filled only a small section of the chamber. This morning, the benches were packed with white-robed mages, the entire High Magistry gathered as they did only a few times a year.
Mages of a department sat together, with presenters to one side—which meant that Sciona ended up elbow to elbow with Cleon Renthorn. The proximity—the smell of the grease in his hair—made her stomach turn and
her heartbeat pound straight to her head. But she couldn’t let the rat man see any of that, so she gave him a cordial smile.
“You’re looking sharp today, Highmage Renthorn.” She flicked her gaze pointedly to the bruise Thomil’s fist had left around his eye. If the blow had upset him, wait until she got her shot in.
“You know that assaulting a highmage is a capital offense,” he hissed, “you little slut.”
“Ha,” Sciona said as she realized that Thomil must have knocked a few moments of memory out of the spellweb specialist when he hit him. If Renthorn thought Sciona was the one who had assaulted him—and if he didn’t compare accounts with his colleagues too closely—maybe no one would think to go after Thomil. Yes, Thomil and Carra were holed up in the home of a former district councilman, where the authorities weren’t likely to search anyway, but in an ideal scenario, no one would be looking.
“I don’t know what kind of silly impact conduit you used against me,”
Renthorn continued under his breath, “but if this was all an attempt to throw me off before the presentation, you’re out of luck.”
I attempted to throw you off? Sciona raged internally. Ultimately, she opted for maximum damage and smiled instead of snarling. “That implies that I care how your presentation goes—which I might if your material was competition for mine, but we both know it’s not.”
Renthorn looked like he wanted to put his hands around her neck and strangle her right in front of the whole High Magistry. “You—”
“Shh.” Sciona pressed a finger to her lips. “The archmages are starting.”
With the hundred members of the High Magistry seated, there were opening words from Archmage Orynhel, followed by a brief presentation of the planned action spells for the barrier expansion—brief because these spells had been all but finalized years ago. Sciona already knew from her rifle through Orynhel’s office that the distinctions between proposed spells were incredibly minor, and they didn’t take long to cover before the Council moved on to the meat of the matter: mapping and siphoning.
Renthorn the Younger was called to present his sourcing plan first, with Tanrel assisting. The work the two of them had put together was masterful
—although not revolutionary. Everyone already knew Tanrel could compose a decent base mapping spell, and he had. Everyone already knew that Renthorn could write an excellent spellweb, and he had. Overall, they had completed the best possible work any pair of mages could within the parameters they were given. It made Sciona glad that she had spent her time pushing the parameters themselves instead of diddling around within them.
She waited with her hands clutched tight on her folio after Renthorn and Tanrel had finished presenting, but the archmages didn’t call her to the floor. They asked Renthorn a dozen follow-up questions, then a dozen more on irrelevant details—well, not irrelevant, Sciona supposed, but nothing that would ensure that his spellweb produced sufficient energy to power the barrier expansion. No matter how Renthorn, Tanrel, and their many assistants fiddled with individual lines of spellwork, the archmages were not going to tease out what they wanted—and what Sciona could actually deliver: a guarantee of success.
As the archmages argued over the particulars of Renthorn’s proposal, Sciona itched, her stomach in knots. Eventually, just as she worried that she might run out of time before noon, Archmage Gamwen murmured something to Bringham, who leaned over and whispered to Archmage Orynhel.
“Oh, yes, of course. Miss Freynan.” Archmage Orynhel peered over his spectacles at her. “Did you have anything to add to Highmage Cleon Renthorn’s demonstration? I hear that you were recently taken ill, so it’s quite all right if you have nothing to present.”
“No, Archmage.” Sciona stood. “That is—I don’t have anything to add to my colleagues’ presentation, but I do have my own.”
“Do you have copies of your spellweb for us?” Archmage Gamwen asked. “I don’t think I received any.”
“Apologies, Archmage. I, unfortunately, had to dismiss my assistant this week and haven’t had time to make copies myself. Suffice it to say the web is serviceable, but nothing you haven’t seen before—not as good as Highmage Renthorn’s. But I expect that once you’ve seen the mapping spells I’ve composed for the expansion, you’ll find that the differences
between my spellweb and Highmage Renthorn’s do not matter. My spellweb will more than suffice.”
Renthorn the Third looked like he had just swallowed a rotting lemon.
Meanwhile, a few other archmages muttered to one another in bewilderment and disapproval at her unwomanly confidence.
“That is a decision for the Council to make, Miss Freynan,” Duris said coolly. “Make your demonstration, and we will judge whether your proposal warrants consideration.”
A week ago, the admonishment would have made Sciona shrink and possibly vomit from nerves. It was oddly freeing to realize that Archmage Duris’s scorn was the least of her worries now.
“Gladly, Archmage Duris. Apologies.” She had to stop herself from jogging down from the seating to the presentation desk in her eagerness. “If I may, what I have to present for you today are two new mapping spell compositions. One we might call the Stravos-Kaedor Method”—because Thomil was right; “Stravdor” really didn’t roll off the tongue—“and the other I’m calling the Freynan Mirror. I believe this spellwork has the potential to increase our siphoning accuracy by a significant margin, but as you say, I will leave the assessment to you.”
On all sides, Sciona’s fellow mages looked bored, and someone made a show of covering a yawn. She didn’t blame them. This was a claim mages had made before—including Highmage Tanrel in the presentation just before hers.
“With your permission, I will now demonstrate a mapping spell I composed using the Stravos-Kaedor Method.”
At Archmage Orynhel’s nod, Sciona placed her folio on the demonstration desk and unwound the string. Unlike the exam, where spells were written on the spot, here, presenters brought their pre-written spells with them to save time and technical difficulties. Under the eyes of the Council and her peers, Sciona fed her first sheaf into the spellograph and hit the mapping key.
“The visual you see here represents the space between Otherrealm coordinates 334.44 H, 334.63 H, 242.9 V, and 243.13 V,” she said as white
shapes glowed to life before the assembly.
This Lynwick spellograph was modified for presentations, sporting a comically large mapping coil three times as tall as Sciona herself. As the Stravos-Kaedor visual lit up, despite everything, she allowed herself a moment of pride. Even expanded to the size of a house, every grayscale energy source was bright, every edge crisp as type set. It might not be the Freynan Mirror, but it was as clear as any mapping visual these mages had ever seen.
Gratifyingly, several of the Council gasped as wondering chatter rippled through the chamber. Archmage Scywin leaned forward, snatching his spectacles from the front of his robes in a rush to put them on. Ancient Archmage Thelanra startled as though waking from a nap.
“This is impossible!” Archmage Duris exclaimed, more in anger than awe.
“Of course it’s possible, Duris,” Archmage Gamwen said. “It’s just that no one’s ever done it with a Kaedor mapping spell.” He turned to Sciona in fascination. “How did you achieve this, Highmage Freynan?”
“Well, I didn’t use a Kaedor mapping spell, per se. The spell is Kaedor in structure, but some of the lines are pulled from Stravos’s writings, with my own modifications to adapt his work to the spellograph.”
“Of course the Leonite modified a Kaedor spell,” Archmage Mordra the Ninth said in disgust.
But Gamwen made an impatient shushing motion with his hand and pressed, “Which lines, Highmage Freynan? Can you explain your process?”
So, Sciona went through the Stravos-Kaedor spell line by line for the Council. Some of them seemed uninterested except to shake their heads in disapproval. Archmage Bringham beamed, and Archmage Gamwen took notes like a boy in school. For a moment, wrapped in the beautiful minutiae of the work, Sciona could almost forget that they were dealing with human lives on the other side of that luminous screen. Almost. But not quite. The real presentation was still ahead of her.
“Well,” Archmage Orynhel said, openly pleased. “If this spell of Highmage Freynan’s holds up under review and testing, we should be able
to move forward with the expansion on our earliest timeline. And you believe this mapping spell is ready for integration with the barrier expansion action spells, Miss Freynan?”
“Yes, Archmage Supreme.” In fact, she already had integrated them with the barrier expansion spells and left the work sitting on the Harlan 11 in the widow’s house with Thomil. But no one in this chamber needed to know that spellograph existed. According to their records, it had been scrapped and melted to steel ore by now.
“Brilliant work, Highmage Freynan,” said Archmage Orynhel. “You may have a seat.”
“Thank you, Archmages,” Sciona said with a glance at the great clock above the Council. Less than ten minutes until noon. The weak winter sun was just making its brief appearance over the mountains, bleeding red light through the windows. “But what I demonstrated doesn’t actually represent all my findings.”
“It doesn’t?” Archmage Orynhel said in surprise.
“I’ve composed a second spell that shows the Otherrealm in even greater detail—detail I believe to be unprecedented in the history of Tiranish magic.”
She didn’t wait for permission this time. Not with noon only minutes away. Swapping the first sheaf out of the spellograph, Sciona activated her second mapping spell.
This one was the Freynan Mirror, adapted from Stravos’s maternal witch magic. It displayed the same coordinates as the first spell but in color, as though through clear glass. Sciona had chosen the location carefully. It was far south, where winter was brighter and not as brutal. This was a forest full of life: strange furry creatures pawing through the leaf litter, birds flurrying about, and a small human settlement exposed by a gap in the tree cover. People were just visible through the lattice of bare branches—men carrying wood and women tanning a deer hide as children chased around their legs.
Silence had fallen behind the Council desk. Bringham looked like he might be ill. Duris and Mordra the Ninth looked offended. All looked
utterly astonished.
“Wh-what is this?” Archmage Thelanra stuttered at last.
“It’s the Otherrealm as it would look to the human eye, Archmage.”
Sciona stepped back to face the Council. “That is to say, of course: this is the Kwen.”
Ripples of confusion broke out among the highmages. Not all of them had served in the High Magistry long enough to know.
“Highmage Freynan,” Archmage Gamwen started. “I don’t think—”
“When we siphon energy for our spells, plants, animals, and human beings die beyond the barrier. Only some of my peers know this.” Sciona turned and gave an apologetic nod to the highmages on the benches all around her. “But the Mage Council has always known. They’ve known since our forefathers laid the foundations for Tiran. They’ve chosen to keep it quiet.”
As Sciona turned back to the Council, the expressions there still ranged from shock to rage. No hint of guilt to be found.
“How dare you!” Thelanra stood, his wispy beard trembling with rage.
“You dirty little Leonite—” Archmage Duris started, but Gamwen, the only Leonite currently seated on the Council, cut him off.
“Watch yourself, Duris.”
“Oh, spare us, Gamwen!” Renthorn the Second exclaimed. “The girl is out of line in her claims and her spellwork. It’s a disgrace. And you!” He whirled on his son, who had begun laughing. “That’s quite enough of that!”
“Why, Father?” Renthorn the Third was wearing a look of vicious, deranged delight—the same one he had worn as he pounced on Sciona in the library. “She’s only showing you the bare, beautiful truth of our art!
Why deny our power? Why deny our superiority?”
“Silence!” the Second snarled. “Or, by Feryn, I will have your research seized and passed to a mage of worthier character. Archmage Supreme, excuse my son’s outburst. Freynan obviously speaks heresy and nonsense.”
“It’s easy for you to call it nonsense,” Sciona said. “It’s easy to deny the truth when our mapping only deals with bright shapes on a gray backdrop. I think the Founding Mages knew this. It’s why Faene the First retroactively
forbade the modification of standard mapping spells years after Leon and Kaedor were dead. Faene realized that Leon’s and Kaedor’s forms of mapping would never show their descendants the real cost of magic. But there was one mage in history—Andrethen Stravos—who knew how to open a clear window to the lands we falsely call the Otherrealm. Now there is a second.”
Sciona indicated the human settlement milling in irrefutable color before the High Magistry, then leveled her gaze at Orynhel.
“Archmage Supreme, may I ask why you’ve allowed this to continue?
The mass murder and the lies surrounding it?”
“Insolent child!” Thelanra spat. “That is not for you to ask, as it is not for us to ask of our glorious forebears! For shame, young lady! For shame!”
Sciona lifted her chin to the quivering old man. “If there is shame to bear here, Archmage Thelanra, it is not mine. I’ve used my talents to seek God’s Truth for my entire career. Can you say the same?”
“You dare—” Renthorn the Second started, but Orynhel held up a hand.
The Archmage Supreme’s answer was calmer than the others’. “I see your pain, my child, and I understand your confusion. But the Founding Mages were wise in their decisions, and Faene the First was wise in his teachings. God gifted us the Otherrealm and bade us use it to prosper. To neglect that bounty would be an insult to Him. The Founding Mages nobly took the pain of knowledge from their children so that we might please God as pure souls in clear conscience.”
Sciona took a breath to steady herself. “But human lives can’t possibly be treated like bounty. Mass lies can’t possibly please the God of Truth.”
“Tiran is God’s city and His treasure,” Archmage Orynhel responded with serene confidence—addressing not just Sciona, she realized, but all the highmages in attendance. “All that benefits Tiran pleases God. I am sorry that the burden of knowledge has come upon you too early, before you were ready to bear it, but bear it we all must. Now, close this window, Highmage Freynan. And if you value that brilliant mind and good heart of yours, do not look through it again until you can face it.”
Orynhel’s tone remained warm, fatherly in its serenity, even as the mages on either side of him seethed. At his age, he must have given this speech so many times to so many younger mages…Either he had started to believe the words himself, or Sciona was standing opposite Tiran’s master deceiver.
She had to take a deep, steadying breath before answering him. “I’m sorry, Archmage Supreme. I was taught that the quest for knowledge is at the core of all magic”—a direct quote from Faene the First—“and self- delusion is the death of God, Goodness, and Truth.”
Archmage Duris rolled his eyes. “You see this, Bringham? Do all of you see now? This is precisely why we don’t allow women into our order. God made them to be mothers. They biologically don’t have it in them to do what is necessary to practice great magic.”
“The girl has a good heart,” Archmage Gamwen protested. “That’s no bad thing in a mage whose duty is to serve God and Tiran. Miss Freynan, I have the utmost sympathy for your pain. All of us, I’m sure, remember when we learned the truth of magic and how difficult that was. This is the burden we all bear as stewards of God’s Haven. No one is telling you that this responsibility is easy, but it is a necessary one to maintain our city and to punish those who would defy God’s teachings.”
All the same rationales over and over, as though, by repetition, they would become true.
“You all seem so sure of yourselves…” Sciona murmured, then, realizing her voice had gone too quiet in pain, she spoke louder so the archmages could hear. “But I’ve looked back on the historical facts available to all of you. I’ve run the numbers available to all of you, and you are wrong.” It set a tremor through her whole body to speak such heresy to the heads of her discipline and religion. But if Sciona didn’t stand up to this, who would? No one else can do what you do, Alba had said. There was no one else to stand up for Thomil’s people, for Carra’s future, for the sanctity of Truth in the face of this insidious lattice of lies. “If what we do to the Kwen is not murder, if it’s all the will of God, then why hide it?”
“As you have just demonstrated, my child,” Archmage Orynhel said, “not everyone is ready to know the truth. Many minds are too weak, many hearts too soft. It would cause the common people too much distress.”
“Is that it?” Sciona asked. “Or is it that, if the common people knew, they might not see the Magistry as Tiran’s highest good—magnanimous, untouchable, above criticism?”
“Sciona!” Bringham said, more imploring than angry. “Stop! You are unwell.”
“I know that,” Sciona said. “I know. But whatever illness has taken me, you’re all in the advanced stages. You’re all so far gone that you can’t tell a human soul from food for your ambitions.”
“Please!” Archmage Renthorn wasn’t the only one who reacted with incredulity.
“The Kwen are not people like you and me,” said Gamwen, who seemed to be the only archmage earnestly invested in out-arguing Sciona.
“They are heathens who worship false gods.”
“We worship a false god if we persist in this lie!”
“Freynan,” Gamwen said. “Please, calm yourself. They’re only Kwen.”
“Yes…” Sciona tamped down on the deep hurt in her chest. “That’s what I thought you’d say. That’s why I took this into my own hands.”
Only Bringham looked immediately concerned. “What?” he said.
“Freynan, took what into your hands?”
“The future of Tiran,” she answered. “Truth before comfort. That’s what Faene the First said, right? So, I’ve decided to live those words, and I’ll have the rest of you live them, too, whether you like it or not. This city is going to know where its energy comes from.”
“Sciona!” Bringham was on his feet. “Whatever you’re thinking of doing, it’s not worth it. Stop it immediately!”
“There’s nothing for me to stop, Archmage,” she said with a smile at the ticking second hand of the clock. “It’s already done.”
“What is already done?” Archmage Duris demanded.
“Wait for it, Archmage.” Sciona held up a finger and experienced a thrill of gratification as all twelve members of the Council stiffened at the
movement.
“What are you—”
“Shh! Wait.”
Tiran’s clocks struck noon in a resonant chime of bells, the master spellographs shifted, and Leon’s Hall went dark.
The assembled mages looked around in confusion when the lights didn’t come back on immediately, but Sciona had anticipated this. After all, the master spellographs had to process Sciona’s extra sheaves of spellwork before reaching their usual siphoning spellwebs. But industrial spellographs worked fast, and it was a short wait.
The electricity came back up a moment later—to light and carnage.
Freynan Mirrors, each five feet across, had opened over the clock and lighting conduits above the Council seating, showing wheat stalks disintegrating in white spirals.
It had been simple enough to write a spellweb that generated a Freynan Mirror for each site of siphoning. The spellwork expanding the visuals to presentation size without the physical anchor of a coil had been more difficult to compose. But looking at the pools of crisp light and color now, Sciona thought she had done a decent job.
When the light above the archmages spun from the wheat to claim a hare, viscera lit the space in jarring red. Unraveling animal intestines spun in oversized detail across the wall, drawing shouts of horror from the assembled mages. Across the rest of the chamber, Freynan Mirrors blazed to life at every conduit—every light fixture and temperature control unit— showing where the appliance’s energy was really coming from. Grass and flowers burned up before the mages’ eyes, animal blood lit white robes red.
The Freynan Mirrors themselves made no sound, but it was only seconds before the screams started—not just inside Leon’s Hall but from the corridors and campus beyond.
Cleon Renthorn looked to the high windows in near-orgasmic awe as a thousand spirals of blood stained Tiran’s barrier a deep red. Beside him, Mordra the Tenth was pale with shock. Tanrel covered his face with his
hands. In the row behind them, a highmage crashed from his seat in a dead faint. Others buckled and began retching.
“Sciona, what have you done!” Bringham cried, as deathly pale as any of the highmages.
But by then, what Sciona had done should have been quite obvious: she had activated her Freynan Mirrors all over Tiran. Everywhere a public utility spell tapped the Reserve, people would see in full color where the
energy was coming from.
And the city howled at the truth of it.
“I will not fear evil, for where I go, God’s Light goes also.” Archmage Thelanra was gibbering Feryn’s prayer, dull green eyes wide in horror. “In the presence of God—”
“I will not turn my gaze,” Sciona snarled the end of the prayer for him, “though Light burn me. For Light will show the Truth of the world, and all Truth in the world is of Feryn the Father. Behold!” She held her arms wide before the archmages. “God’s work!”
“Sciona Freynan!” Archmage Orynhel bellowed over the pandemonium, his voice chillingly powerful for such an old man. “You are under arrest!”
Sciona had never considered how heavily the archmages kept their meetings guarded until four fully armed men rushed onto the floor and laid hands on her.
“I did the right thing.” She didn’t know why she needed to say it, especially when no one could possibly hear her amid all the cries of horror and outrage. “I did the right thing!”
As the guards hauled Sciona to the exit, she knew she shouldn’t, but she glanced back at Archmage Bringham, some childish part of her wanting him to acknowledge that she had been right. She had done well.
He turned away, and she was dragged out of Leon’s Hall.
