I will not fear evil, for where I go, God’s Light goes also. In the presence of God, I will not turn my gaze, though Light burn me. For Light will show the Truth of the world, and all the world’s Truth is of Feryn the Father.
—The Leonid, Meditations, Verse 5 (2 of Tiran)
Rune Reader
s summer raced toward winter at train speeds, Thomil advanced justA as fast. The days were still long when they moved from Trethellyn Hall back into the Magicentre, and Sciona told him to leave the introductory children’s books behind. A month into their time together, the days had noticeably shortened, and she had brought him to a grade-school level of competence. A week later, snowfall turned to vapor as it hit the warming barrier, shrouding the campus in mist that fogged the new windows of Sciona’s lab, and Thomil had moved on from copying elementary spells to copying Sciona’s. A little more than two months into their time together, the sun lasted only a few hours each day, and in the red haze of an early afternoon sunset, there was a bang that made them both jump.
“I did it!” Thomil exclaimed, eyes wide in a rare display of unmasked emotion. “I made a conduit!”
“Well, don’t look so surprised,” Sciona said, though she was unable to hold back a grin. “You’ve been studying the formulas long enough.”
Crossing the lab to examine his work, she found that he had executed one of her harmless smoke cylinders to perfection. This was the first step to magic: memorizing the spells of greater mages and replicating them.
“Well done,” she said earnestly. “Next, you can try training it on a unique voice command.”
“Unless you have something new for me to test?”
“I wish.”
“Still stuck on the same problem, ma’am?”
At this point, Thomil knew Sciona well enough to take her sullen grumble as a yes. Two months of research and she hadn’t come up with a mapping spell better than the hybrid composition she’d used back in the exam. This shouldn’t have surprised her. Even with the extra resources of the High Magistry at her disposal, this kind of research took time, trial and error. But she was starting to get nervous about the utter lack of forward movement. She should have had something to show for her work by now.
“Are you sure I can’t do a round of testing?” Thomil asked, looking over the smoking aftermath of the fire spells Sciona had been using to test her mapping composition. Whenever she made an adjustment, she would try siphoning through the new composition twenty times herself, documenting the results, then have Thomil siphon through it twenty more.
This gave her data from an experienced manual siphoner as well as an inexperienced one. So far, none of her tweaks had measurably improved siphoning accuracy for either of them. Sciona’s precision hovered stubbornly around 94 percent, while Thomil’s hovered around a respectable 73. Today’s modifications, she could already tell, would be no different.
“There’s nothing to test,” she said crossly. “We’re exactly where we were yesterday, and the day before that, and the day before that.”
“All right.” Thomil glanced at the tomes and testing bowls of burnt twigs covering every surface. “I can tidy up some of these books and dishes
unless you’re still—”
“I’m still using them,” she snapped.
“I’ll put on some tea, then.”
“Please.”
As Thomil went to the cupboard and produced the crockery he had somehow found time to clean in between rounds of caffeination, Sciona realized that he had learned her rhythm almost troublingly well. He glanced up at her, expectant, as he filled the pot from the tap. This was where she usually started ranting at him about the day’s impediments. Feryn, was she
really that predictable? No, she thought after another moment. No one had ever read her subtle shifts in mood quite like this Kwen. Not even Alba.
Thomil was just that perceptive, that perfect an assistant. He would absorb all of Sciona’s frustration without complaint and gently bounce ideas back at her when he could tell she needed to work them harder. Without looking at his coloring or registering his accent, one might have mistaken him for an exceptionally skilled and patient schoolteacher.
“I think I may have come to a dead end,” she confessed to that patiently listening face. “I can already make a marginally clearer mapping visual than any mage ever has. It’s what got me into the High Magistry. But after all my modifications, it’s still not perfect. It’s still difficult to read energy potency based on brightness. There’s still that little blur at the edge of each energy source, leaving a margin for error in siphoning. My purpose here is to eliminate that margin, and I’ve barely managed to reduce it with the lines I’m given.”
“With the lines you’re given?” Thomil repeated. “Aren’t you composing the spell yourself?”
“Not all of it.” Sciona sighed. “That’s the wall I’m hitting. All mapping methods use the same few lines to generate visuals.” She hauled over Norwith’s Analysis of Leonic Principles and flipped through to point to his transcription of the Leonic Method. “These lines, to be specific. They create the form in which we see the energy sources of the Otherrealm, with energy equaling light and the absence of energy equaling darkness.”
“But isn’t that the best way for a mapping spell to work, ma’am?”
Thomil asked. “For it to show you where the energy is and where it isn’t?”
“The best way?” Sciona repeated, intrigued by his wording. “How would you know the best way to map for energy?”
“I don’t, ma’am. But speaking as a simple Kwen, it’s easier to spot a deer on a snowy plain than in the summer woods.”
“Is it?” Sciona had never seen a snowy plain except in historical artists’ renderings.
“Dark on light or light on dark. In my mind, that’s the best way to reduce distraction and hit a target.”
“Sure,” she conceded, “a black-and-white visual might be best for hitting a target, but what about seeing the details of your prey? Some energy pools are more potent than others, even though they display at identical size and brightness—like I assume some animals are better for meat than others.
There must be a way to display the differences between those sources the same way a hunter sees the characteristics of his mark. There must be a way to actually see the Otherrealm in all its detail.”
“Didn’t your Founding Mage Leon claim that the Otherrealm was beyond human comprehension?”
“Faene said it was beyond human comprehension. Not Leon. And anyway, when did you get so smart about Tiranish religious texts?”
A wary shadow crossed Thomil’s expression. “If I’ve spoken out of turn, ma’am, I apologize.”
“No, no. You’re not out of…” Well, they were both speaking out of turn by speaking ill of Faene’s teachings. “They’re good questions,” she amended. The type she usually had to sit around asking herself for hours until her brain stripped its gears from running in circles. The run was easier with someone at her side. “Your questions are always good.”
“May I ask another, then?”
“Please.”
“Could it be that looking on the Otherrealm is dangerous?” Thomil suggested. “Like using the Forbidden Coordinates? Maybe the unobstructed sight of it is too much for a human mage, like looking into the summer sun?
Maybe the fog protects the eyes, like…well, like actual clouds protect from the sun.”
Sciona scrunched her nose in distaste. She liked to think of herself as a good, devout woman, but on the other hand, she despised the idea that anything was unknowable. If that was true, then divinity was entirely untouchable, and what was the point of the knowledge-seeking God commanded? What was her purpose on this Earth?
“Well, I’ve run out of adjustments I can make within Faene’s restrictions,” she said in frustration. “As far as I can tell, there is no way to generate a mapping visual any more informative than what I already have
without altering Leon’s unalterable lines in some fashion. As it stands, I’m just an idiot sitting here with a rag, polishing a window made of clouded glass. It’s not going to get any more transparent.”
“And altering the glass itself—changing those lines—is against your religious edicts?” Thomil asked.
“It’s against Tirasian religious edicts.”
“But you’re a Leonite, Highmage.”
“Working in a Tirasian institution for Tirasian employers,” Sciona said darkly. “My colleagues would be horrified if I threw Faene the First’s laws of magic out the window—and they’d be right. I mean, I may not worship Faene’s texts as gospel. I may not give his restrictions the same reverence I do Leon’s, but he was arguably the most important father of our magic system after Leon. The guidelines he put in place effectively made magic into the workable instrument of progress it is today. His laws are not to be disregarded lightly.”
“But if you had a good, weighty reason to break one of his laws?”
Thomil prompted. “You could do it and still be right with your god?”
“I could…”
Thomil’s smile was faintly conspiratorial as he set a steaming cup of tea before Sciona. “I won’t tell, Highmage.”
Sciona let out a half-hearted laugh. “Well…” Her index finger roved back and forth along the hydrangea and rhododendron pattern on the edge of the saucer. “We do only have a week left to get this right.”
“A little more than that,” Thomil said with a glance at the countdown clock still ticking away on its shelf. “Feryn’s Eve is eight days away.”
“But it will take at least a day’s worth of adjustments to tailor my spellweb to my final mapping spell—even for me. Functionally, we have a week. If I don’t find a way forward in the next few days, we may as well give up and go work for Cleon Renthorn right now.”
“No!”
Sciona looked up, startled by the intensity and volume of Thomil’s voice. “Pardon?”
“Sorry—just—don’t say that, ma’am. I’m sure you’ll figure something out. Don’t go to Highmage Renthorn, whatever you do.”
“If I recall, you were the one asking what would be so bad about my collaborating with him,” she pointed out.
“Because I was curious about your reasoning, ma’am. Not because I thought you’d actually consider it.”
“At this point, we might not have a choice,” Sciona said in miserable honesty. “If the mapping spells themselves don’t get any clearer than what I’ve already presented to the Council, then Renthorn’s excellent spellwebs are the Magistry’s only hope of powering the barrier expansion.”
“No,” Thomil said again, just as fiercely. “You don’t need him.”
“Thomil!” she said in surprise.
He was never this assertive with her. For the most part, this was what she liked about him—that he was the antithesis of a Tiranish man; he never tried to talk over Sciona just to be talking. When he did speak, it was because he had something to say—always offered with total deference.
Today, not only was he asking bolder questions than usual, he was telling her outright what she should and shouldn’t do.
She should have been annoyed, infuriated, but oddly, she wasn’t. She wanted more of this new Thomil with the lightning in his eyes and the steel edge in his voice.
Leaning forward, she asked, “What’s your quarrel with Renthorn the Third?” She had interpreted Renthorn putting Thomil in her employ as a slight against her—which it certainly was—but maybe the joke had been intended to hurt “Tommy” as well? She just couldn’t imagine why.
“I’m a Kwen janitor.” Thomil put on an amused expression that didn’t quite mask his agitation. “How could I have a quarrel with a member of the High Magistry?”
“If not a proper quarrel, then what is your issue with him?” Sciona pressed. “What do you know about him?”
“Other than what you’ve already told me, nothing, ma’am. That is—
nothing that would interest you.”
“I don’t know about that.”
“May I just say that I don’t like him, Highmage? Is that allowed?”
“Disliking Renthorn?” Sciona smiled. “In this lab, yes, that is certainly allowed.”
Thomil didn’t return the smile. “I’m sorry I’ve put you in this position, Highmage Freynan. I’m sure you’d be further along with a University- educated assistant to—”
“No,” Sciona cut him off. “Hey. None of that. I mean it. You’ve been as much help as anyone could be. You’re picking up your basics well, and in all honesty, you handle theory better than most students at the University.
Your comprehension of spellwebs…” Sciona wasn’t going to say it rivaled her own, but it was dumbfounding. “Feryn only knows how you do it when you’ve never had a proper education.”
“I think it’s the hunting and trapping, ma’am.”
“Hunting and trapping?”
“That helps me understand the theory behind spellwebs,” he clarified.
“When you hunt in the Kwen, you have to mentally map the land and calculate many of what you would call variables—more than in any of this magic.” He gestured to the mess of books spread across the lab.
“More than in magic?” The assertion was so ridiculous that Sciona laughed aloud, but Thomil seemed completely serious.
“Yes, ma’am. You must have dozens—sometimes hundreds—of miles of terrain committed to memory, then account for seasonal changes to wind, tree cover, animal migration. You must know where your prey is likely to run before and after it’s hit, how far you can afford to pursue in your condition, where you can shelter if the weather turns, where you will stand your ground if other predators intercept you. Eventualities on eventualities.
I think this is why I understand spellwebs at a level that surprises you.”
“Hmm…” Sciona had always thought of hunting as something primitive and thus inherently simple. But in practice, it would be as complex as tracking energy sources through the Otherrealm, wouldn’t it? And with the added stress of physical exertion.
After a tentative sip of tea, she set the cup back on its saucer to look at Thomil through the curls of steam. He had brought up hunting a few times
before in relation to mapping, but this was the first time it was clear that he spoke from firsthand experience. And if his experience was firsthand, that could mean only one thing.
“You’re not just a descendant of the Blightlands. You actually grew up
on the other side of the barrier.”
“I did, ma’am.”
Again, the odd dissonance of the idea that Thomil had lived a life outside this lab. It occurred to Sciona that she had barely asked her assistant any questions about himself after those few brushes with impropriety when they first met. In part, she had been trying to steer clear of any awkwardness between them. But also, when there was magic to research, the mundanities of one Kwen’s existence just never seemed terribly important. Maybe that had been an error in judgment on her part.
“Your Tiranish is so fluent,” she said. “You must have crossed into the
city a long time ago.”
“Ten years ago, ma’am.”
“Wow.” Like most Tiranish citizens, Sciona had never been to the city’s edge. Only barrier guards were allowed there. “What was it like? The crossing?”
Thomil’s expression changed subtly, closing up. He didn’t answer.
Unsure what to do with his abrupt, insubordinate silence, Sciona shook her head. “Sorry. I’m derailing us again, as if we have time for that.” She stood. “I should get to the library.”
“You need more books, ma’am?” Thomil said, eyeing the veritable city of stacked and open tomes throughout the laboratory.
“Since I’m changing course, yes.”
“Changing course? You mean—”
“Congratulations, Kwen. You’ve convinced me to rethink Faene’s rule on Leon’s unalterable lines. If I can’t clear that clouded glass, there’s nothing left to do but break through it.”
The fleeting sunlight had gone from the sky an hour after noon, leaving the library dim, the glimmering gold lettering on each spine readable only by the light of the reading lamps on the tables between the stacks. Sciona
selected carefully and still ended up with the maximum number of books she could carry. Altering old magic was easier said than done. The Founding Mages had composed in an antiquated style that could be difficult for the modern mage to parse. Sciona would have to read and reread every mapping and mapping-adjacent spell that survived from the Age of Founders to be absolutely sure she understood the compositions before she touched a single letter.
When she returned from the library, the stack of books tucked under her chin testing her arms, she found Thomil bent over Highmage Norwith’s Analysis of Leonic Principles, his gray eyes bright and intense, his index finger tracing a line across the page.
“You look engrossed,” Sciona said as she slipped into the room and nudged the door shut with her hip. Though she couldn’t imagine what Thomil could get out of a text as dense and old as Norwith’s. “Something on your mind?”
“Yes, ma’am, if you’ve time for another detour?”
Sciona did not have time but, for whatever reason, found herself saying, “Sure,” wanting to know what a tenuously literate Kwen could possibly get out of Norwith’s writings. She set her load on the desk, where it teetered precariously for a moment before stabilizing. “Let’s detour.”
“I’ve been thinking for a while now…I know these runes you use in your magic.”
“Well, you’ve been studying the simplified versions for—”
“From before I studied with you or learned a word of Tiranish.”
Something in Thomil’s voice seemed to catch, but he pushed past it smoothly. “From beyond the barrier.”
“What?” Was that even possible? It had been more than a century since a Tiranish mage had last ventured out of the city. “How would the runes of Tiranish magic make their way into the Kwen?”
“I’m not sure the runes did make their way into the Kwen,” Thomil said.
“I think they might have originated there.”
“What?” Sciona almost laughed. The claim was so ridiculous. How could magical runes possibly originate in the Kwen when the natives
weren’t even literate?
“Not in my tribe; Caldonnish is spoken only, never written. But the Venholt Endrastae use these symbols in their oldest naming and divination
rituals…At least they did.”
“ ‘Did,’ past tense?”
“Before Blight took all their centers of cultural knowledge,” Thomil clarified. “Last I heard from the Kwen, there are only little pockets of Endrastae left in their original homeland. If…” He shook his head, his voice low and strangely fragile. “If their script is still in use, I doubt it will survive another generation.”
“And this writing system uses some of the same symbols as runic magic?” Sciona said, unable to imagine how that could be the case.
“Most of the same symbols, I think. I didn’t recognize them on spellograph keys or in print because of the style—all boxy and angular. But like this”—Thomil indicated the Leonic spells Highmage Norwith had transcribed by hand a generation before the spellograph and printing press had come along—“I know these characters.” There was a wistful quality to Thomil’s expression as though, looking down on the page, he saw the face of an old friend.
“Well, there are finite ways to compose letters from lines and dots,”
Sciona said. “The similarities are probably coincidental.”
“I don’t think so,” Thomil said. “My brother-in-law was half Endrasta and practiced some of their divination. In ritual, he wrote his name like this.” Picking up one of Sciona’s pens, Thomil scratched five characters onto the corner of some scratch paper in his painfully clumsy handwriting.
“Addas?” Sciona read out. “One who pursues?”
“That’s it. Only we pronounce it Arras. It means ‘hunter.’ Specifically, a long-distance big game hunter. We have other words for fishers and trappers.”
“Oh. Well…” Sciona’s first impulse was to say that this Arras’s people had probably gotten the letters from the Tiranish alphabet, but then a new and fascinating thought dawned on her. “Wait…That actually makes sense.”
“What makes sense?”
“Your brother-in-law’s people. What did you say they were called?”
“The Endrastae, ma’am. Venholt Endrastae.”
“Venholt…as in the Venhold Mountain Range?”
“Yes.”
“Then that makes sense!” Sciona exclaimed. “You know how the Leonid is the basis of all Tiranish magic and morality?”
“Yes, ma’am. I’ve had its contents preached at me.”
“Right! So, you remember the story of Leon receiving his visions from God?”
“Um…” The furrow in Thomil’s brow clearly said no. Not his fault. The wording of the Leonid ambiguously referred to “the Mount” or “the Peak,” but scholars who had read texts from Leon’s contemporaries knew that these words referred to a specific mountain west of the Tiran Basin.
“Founding Mage Leon was in the Venhold Mountains when God showed him his visions of Tiran and gifted him the magical revelations to make it a reality. Now, Leon mostly cites direct instructions from God, but he also describes instances in which God led him to inspiration in the surrounding wilderness. There are later scholars, including Highmage Norwith”—she gestured to the open tome before Thomil—“who believe Leon based the foundational principles of magic on texts he discovered somewhere in or around the Venhold Range.”
“Discovered?” Thomil raised his eyebrows.
“Yes. In the year ten Pre-Tiran. There’s, um…” Sciona flipped to a bookmarked page as fast as she could without damaging the antique volume. “Here. Norwith collectively calls the borrowed texts the Vendresid, although you’ll find them called a few different names, depending on the source. Some claim they were sheaves that God spun from pure light and bound into a book for Leon. Some claim they were a series of stone tablets.” She read aloud because she knew Thomil was slow to read on his own: “Thus, Leon brought the Vendresid and its many mysteries to his stronghold in the basin and, from them, rose, at God’s command, the City of Tiran.”
Thomil was frowning down at the passage. “You know there were Endrastae and several other tribes living in the Venholt Range back then?”
“Yes,” Sciona said, not understanding the way his expression had darkened. “Leon saved precious knowledge from the mountain natives before it could be lost to time.”
“Lost to time?” Thomil repeated with an incredulous edge in his voice that Sciona had never heard there before. “If the knowledge was so precious, why are we assuming they would lose it?”
“Well”—Sciona almost laughed at the absurdity of the question—“we
are talking about Kwen.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning…” Sciona realized belatedly how the implications might have hurt her assistant and felt a pang of guilt. “Not Kwen like you, obviously. You’re different, educated. But on the whole, Kwen tribes don’t have the best track record of preserving their own cultures and artifacts.”
Thomil’s voice had gone cold. “There are some extenuating circumstances.”
“Yes, but currently, these runes survive and thrive in Tiran while Blight plagues the Kwen. Surely, the texts of the Venhold Mountains were ultimately safer in Leon’s hands—and more productive! I mean, look at what he created with that knowledge!”
Thomil didn’t seem convinced. “You said that your Leon received his inspiration in the year ten Pre-Tiran, ma’am?”
“Yes.”
“Blight didn’t start until the year five Pre-Tiran,” Thomil said. “After Leon saw fit to take magical knowledge from its rightful home. We Kwen have a word for that—taking ancestral items from people who aren’t dead.
It’s called stealing.”
For a moment, Sciona was too scandalized to speak. When she did, her hands were in fists.
“Founding Mage Leon was not a thief! He was a great man. He wouldn’t take something unless he had a good reason—the greatest of all reasons in history, in fact. His inspiration laid the groundwork for all of
this.” Sciona gestured around her to indicate the city itself. “He’s the reason a place like this exists, safe from Blight. He’s the reason you and I are alive to have this discussion. That’s a pretty good reason, don’t you think?”
Thomil didn’t respond—because he knew she was right, she decided, drawing her shoulders back. She was obviously right. Where in the world had he gotten the idea that it was his place to question the Founder of Tiran —this city that had given him refuge from his own savage homeland?
Then again, Sciona liked that this Kwen was willing to argue with her— and about such strange and taboo subjects. This was something she never could have gotten from a well-bred, well-studied Tiranish assistant.
“I don’t know that I believe the purity of your Leon’s motives,” Thomil said, still, amazingly, unwilling to back down. “He couldn’t have taken the texts for safekeeping before he knew the Kwen was in danger of Blight.”
“But he did know,” Sciona explained, impatient with Thomil’s ignorance of extremely basic religious doctrine. “Ten Pre-Tiran was the year he received his visions from God portending Blight and the need for a stronghold to guard against it.”
“Right,” Thomil said in a tone she didn’t like.
“What?”
“Nothing, ma’am…It doesn’t matter.” He broke eye contact, finally seeming ready to back down. “Whether Leon foresaw the coming of Blight or not, you’re right. He built this city, which has kept many safe. His influence was positive. I shouldn’t criticize.”
Sciona should have taken Thomil’s retreat as a victory and left it at that, but his tone wasn’t right, and she found herself pressing back into the fray.
“He did foresee the coming of Blight. I just told you that. God sent him
visions before it happened.”
“Yes, ma’am. But I don’t…”
“Don’t what?” Sciona prompted when the Kwen trailed off.
“I don’t worship your god,” he answered after a pause, “so I can’t believe that visions from him constitute truth the same way you do.”
Sciona opened her mouth in shock—though she shouldn’t really be shocked, should she? Thomil always referred to Feryn as “your god” and
swore the heathen way—using “gods” instead of “God.” “But—your hair is cut,” she said finally, clumsily. The mark of an unconverted Kwen was usually that he wore his copper hair long and unruly in the way of the tribes beyond the barrier.
“Yes, ma’am,” Thomil said. “Do you have any idea how hard it is to get a job in this city with the wrong hair?”
“Some.” Sciona ran a hand back through her own short locks. Though she hadn’t cut her hair to conceal her religious affiliations as much as to draw marginally fewer stares in a laboratory full of male mages. It wasn’t quite the same. “I’m just surprised at you, Thomil. How can you not believe in God? I mean, you’re a reasonable person. You know truth isn’t subjective, and I’ve shared Feryn’s power with you. You’ve witnessed it— felt it—at your fingertips!”
“I never said I didn’t believe your god existed, Highmage. I just don’t believe he’s the greatest or only deity at work in this world.”
“How do you figure?” Sciona asked. Feryn was the God of Truth. To believe in any other deity was to willingly embrace the darkness of ignorance.
“Where I come from, each clan has its own god—or, more often, many gods—reflecting the things that give our lives value, the things that make us strong. You worship the god of your community, and I worship mine.”
“Well, all communities must value truth,” Sciona protested. “And besides, you’re part of this community now. You’re Tiranish.”
“Am I?” Thomil said. “Or do I just serve Tiran?”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
Thomil sighed. “It wasn’t my intention to offend you, ma’am. My beliefs just aren’t yours.”
“Well, what are they, then?” What was so special about these Kwen religious convictions that they superseded the God who had created Tiran?
“I don’t know why it interests you, Highmage.”
“Is there something wrong with the Tiranish God?” she demanded.
“For you, ma’am, no. It’s always good for a woman to worship the gods of her foremothers. Your god suits you as he suits this city.”
“He just wouldn’t suit you?”
“No, ma’am,” Thomil said. “He would not.”
“Why?”
Another sigh. “If you must know, your god weighs souls differently from mine. Or, in other terms, your people and mine have different senses of right and wrong.”
“What do you mean you have a different sense of right and wrong?”
Sciona said, vaguely alarmed at the notion.
“It’s…” Thomil sighed. “It would be hard to explain to you.”
“What?” Sciona scoffed, bristling. “You think I don’t have the capacity to understand Kwen moral structures?” Sure, the humanities weren’t Sciona’s strong suit, but it insulted her that he wasn’t even trying to explain himself.
“It’s not a matter of capacity, ma’am. It’s just that…Kwen morality tends to be beneath Tiranish notice, so I don’t think the underlying principles would be familiar to you.”
“Well, I’m taking notice,” Sciona said stubbornly. “You’ve piqued my interest. Explain.”
“Very well, ma’am.” Thomil looked down for a moment in thought.
“Let’s say…there are two men who live in a city like this one. And, to make the story relevant to you, let’s make them highmages.”
“All right?”
“The first man lives his whole life with good intentions, every decision made because he believes it aligns with his values. Yet, let’s say that he pressures his wife into bearing children, but it only makes her miserable.
Maybe he fast-tracks a building project because he is eager to see it completed. The building collapses, and several of his workers die, leaving their families behind in poverty. He lends money to a friend, only for the friend to invest in a scam that ruins him. This pattern holds throughout the man’s life. The majority of his well-intentioned decisions end in disaster for
others.”
“And the second man?” Sciona asked.
“The second man has no such good intentions. Every decision he makes is out of self-interest, spite, intent to harm, or…whatever motivations his culture might deem unsavory. Yet, let’s say an employee he demotes ends up thriving in her new position and forming great friendships there. Maybe his cruelty prompts his wife to leave him and move on to a happier life with someone else. When he sabotages a rival’s project, that money is then allocated to a better cause that improves many lives. The majority of his actions end up changing his community for the better.”
“All right.” Sciona nodded, curious to know where this odd story was going.
“So,” Thomil said, “when these two souls are weighed before the gates of Heaven, who gets in? Who is the good man?”
“The first one,” Sciona said, “obviously.”
“Even though his effect on the world was negative?” Thomil asked.
“Many, many lives were worse because of his actions.”
“But he meant well.”
“Why does that matter?”
“Because…well…obviously, it matters!”
“Why?”
“It…” Sciona foundered, frustrated by her inability to come up with a logical answer when Tiranish culture was the one built on logic. The Kwen were the illogical ones. Everyone knew that. “It just does.”
“Right, ma’am,” Thomil said, ever gentle. “For you, it just does. This is the difference in our morality. The Caldonnae and most peoples beyond the barrier weigh a person by their actions and the effect they have on the world. It’s not enough to have meant to do good; if you don’t do good, most gods—those of the rivers, the sky, and the fields—don’t care for your motivations. Why should they?”
“They should care because a man who means to do good can improve,”
Sciona said, finally nailing down the underlying problem with Thomil’s logic. “He can do better next time.”
“We call that vakul, and there are certain gods who care for it. Just not most of them.”
“You call what vakul?”
“The thing that isn’t good and isn’t evil. The…” Thomil gestured vaguely, gray eyes squinting as he searched for the words. “The absence of goodness that still holds the potential for goodness. You don’t have a word for it in Tiranish…well, no. Actually, you do have the word in the literal sense. ‘Riverbed’…or…maybe ‘ravine.’ Vakul is also a common Kwen word for a valley or depression where a river might flow. There is no river there now, but there might have been once, and there might be one day again. All living creatures have in them some good, some bad, and a lot of vakul. But vakul can’t be all you are if you expect the love of your gods and fellow mortals. A ravine won’t water crops or quench the dying. At some point, there has to be a river, or what good can you really claim? If the man of good intentions never manifests a river, only calamity, should he not be
damned to hell?”
“It doesn’t seem fair.”
“But it’s only fair to the world he leaves behind.” Thomil’s voice had risen slightly. “This is the balance of the universe. It is only right for the world to bring back upon him what he brought upon the world. This is why I can’t worship your god or agree with the way he measures virtue. He allows this gray space for delusion. You take a void and name it ‘goodness,’ and it is so? If you can lie to yourself that you’re a good person, despite all evidence, then suddenly it is so? Then, within this system, anyone with enough self-delusion can admit himself to Heaven. This is nonsense.”
“It’s not nonsense,” Sciona protested, “and it’s not about lying. It’s about intentions.”
“I think it’s about convenience,” Thomil shot back, “like most mages’ endeavors. It’s much easier to tell yourself you’re a good person than it is to actually be one.”
Sciona slammed a palm down on the desk. “That’s out of line!”
The way Thomil twitched back drove an unbalancing stab of emotion through Sciona’s chest. There was that slight rush. Power. Realizing she could knock the fight out of someone physically bigger than herself. It was the intoxicating hum of the spellograph whirring into motion at her
command—but tainted with something else. Because Thomil wasn’t a spellograph. He wasn’t a beam of pure harvestable energy. And when he broke eye contact, as always, Sciona felt a little something in her break with it.
“You’re right, Highmage Freynan,” he said to his feet, subdued and devoid of emotion. “I apologize.”
In an instant, he had shrunk back into the thing he had been three months prior, the cleaning man who held his tongue and his smiles. The distance stretched to a frozen wasteland between them, and Sciona belatedly recognized the cracking feeling in her chest as guilt. In the silence, it was too strong.
“It’s been a long week,” she said and found her voice as empty as his.
“Clean up the lab. Then you can go home early.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Sciona turned from Thomil and leaned into the heels of her hands on a lab table, wanting to retreat back into the simplicity of her magical puzzles.
But her mind wouldn’t start again. It stayed woefully, unprecedentedly quiet. And all that was left was the shuffle and clink as Thomil cleared the fruitless mess from the tables at her back. Like the servant he had been— and still was, no matter how the two of them dressed up and pretended a different relationship.
Thomil didn’t have the status or protections of a regular assistant.
Sciona could have him fired with a word, and he would go back to scrubbing floors. Or worse. The uncomfortable reality was that, if she wanted, she could do much, much worse. Have him imprisoned, possibly even killed, with one lie about his conduct. The mage spoke a thing and it was so, truth be damned.
Neither of them acknowledged the power difference while they worked, but it was always there. And Sciona had used it to win their argument… which wasn’t really winning at all, was it?
Truth over delusion. That was the first rule of magical study, of the University, of Sciona’s entire value system. If she couldn’t live by it here in
her own laboratory, how could she claim the superiority of Tiranish ideals?
How could she call herself a mage? She took a slow breath.
Truth over delusion. Growth over comfort.
She turned to face her perfect, infuriating assistant.
Thomil had stacked the ash-filled bowls in the laboratory sink and activated the tap conduit. As he started scrubbing, Sciona threw her white robe over the back of a chair, turned the ink-stained sleeves of her blouse back to her elbows, and joined him. He froze as her hands went into the suds beside his, the water shining on the corded muscles of forearms that were usually covered by his sleeves. Then he wordlessly resumed his task.
Beneath the water, Sciona’s fingers briefly brushed his before finding a bowl and sponge.
Eyes widening, she shifted over to give him space as she started cleaning. Blaming the flush in her cheeks on the piping-hot water, she refused to look at his hands, focusing instead on the circular movement of her sponge on the glass as she searched for the right words.
“Thomil…”
“Highmage?”
“Don’t stop doing that, please.”
“Doing what?”
“Contradicting me.”
Thomil’s sponge slowed inside the testing bowl in his hand.
“Look, Thomil, I…A highmage can’t improve without someone trying to poke holes in his claims. To quote Faene the First: ‘A true scholar thrives on contradiction and—’ What?” she said when Thomil gave a derisive huff.
“That’s not been my experience of mages—or Tiranish in general,” he said to the white swirl of soap in the testing dish. “I think that contradicting them is a good way to get fired.”
“Maybe that’s true of some people, but not me, all right?”
Thomil resumed scrubbing, looking unconvinced.
“I can’t work with you if we’re not honest with each other.”
“So, I’m fired if I stop contradicting you?”
“No—stop twisting my words to sound meaner than they are!”
“I’m not trying to twist your words, ma’am. I’m trying to make sure you mean them.”
“Then we’re on the same page. You want me to be honest. I want the same thing from you. But you can do that without disrespecting me, my work, and my culture.”
Thomil was shaking his head. “I can be civil, ma’am, or I can be honest.
You can’t have both in their entirety.”
“Why not?”
“Because Kwen truth isn’t civilized, ma’am.” Something heated in his manner, a crackle of lightning in those storm cloud eyes. “It’s bloody, and Blighted, and ugly. If you’re going to let me stay, I can be always respectful or always honest.”
“As often as possible, both,” Sciona said.
With a sigh, Thomil relented. “As often as possible, both, Highmage.”
Sciona frowned, realizing how unsatisfied she was with the answer.
“No,” she decided. “I prefer that you be honest. Always.”
Thomil turned to look at her with penetrating gray eyes. “Do you mean that, ma’am?”
She met his gaze without blinking. “We’ve talked about this. Am I one for jokes?”
“Then…In the bar that first night, you asked me about that word Raehem called you: meidra.”
“Yes?” Sciona tensed in apprehension, assuming Thomil was using this as an opportunity to show that she couldn’t take his honesty. Well, she could take it. She braced herself. “What does it mean?”
“You Tiranish would translate it as ‘lady mage.’ ‘Sorceress,’ maybe, but across the Kwen, it’s a term of deep respect. It’s the only word we have for a highmage—someone surpassingly skilled in magic.”
“So…” Sciona paused as she tried to parse his meaning. If the word “sorceress” was the Kwen word for a highmage— “The great magic practitioners of the Pre-Tiran Kwen were all women.”
“What?” Sciona whispered. But no. That couldn’t be. “You’re joking around with me.”
“After I just promised to be honest?”
“But I would have known about that,” Sciona said. “I would have read it somewhere.”
“Would you?” Thomil said. “How much Kwen history actually makes it into your mages’ books?”
“Not much.” It generally wasn’t considered worth preserving except to illustrate how frightening the Kwen were. “There…there were really female mages?” she breathed, alight with the idea. “At the time of Tiran’s founding?”
“Oh, long before Tiran’s founding,” Thomil said. “Long before men of any race wielded magic. Your texts might call them ‘witches.’ ”
“Oh.” Yes, of course, there were mentions of Kwen witches in some histories; Sciona had just never thought of them as proper magic users.
Certainly, the women mentioned in the old texts—gnarled hags with their scrying windows and medicinal herbs—were not equal to mages. “Why women and not men?”
“It’s nothing as nonsensical as this High Magistry business”—Thomil gestured vaguely around them—“or any of the strange reasons you Tiranish divide work by sex in a world where Kwen and machines do half your work for you. It’s practical.”
Sciona had never heard any facet of her culture described as nonsensical or impractical. It should have made her angry—not giddy. What in Feryn’s holy name had taken hold of her? Why was she hanging on the silver light of Thomil’s eyes like it was salvation?
“How is having women practice magic practical?” she asked, breathless, guilty at how hungry she was for the answer.
“For most of the old Kwen, magic was an art of protection, practiced by those with a deep connection to the home and community. Those people were usually women, who spent long hours tanning hides and stitching clothing, listening to their elders, surrounded by knowledge and love. Men in the Kwen have always spent most seasons hunting, so deep magic isn’t something they ever had time to perfect at the highest levels. Some hunters practiced small magic they learned from their mothers, and a man who
couldn’t hunt due to illness or injury might develop quite advanced magic, but the really powerful magic users—the ‘highmages’ of the Kwen—were well-studied women, raised by women. Like you.”
Sciona could only sit in silence, trying to absorb the idea. Everything he said made sense, but it was so foreign, so far off. She ached to touch it… and yet it was heresy.
“But thank goodness Archmage Leon took the meidrae’s texts and forced them off this land to found his superior civilization, right?” A jagged shadow clung to Thomil’s smile. “I’m sure he knew better than they did.”
The challenge bristled in the air between them, and Sciona took it.
“Female or otherwise, there can’t have been Kwen magic users on the level of Tiranish mages,” she said, her tone more dismissive than her heart.
“Why would you, of all people, say that, ma’am?”
“Because there were witches among the Horde of Thousands when Leon drove them from the Tiran Basin. And there weren’t that many Founding Mages at the time of the Conquest.” Only five: Leon, Stravos, Kaedor, Vernyn, and Faene the First. “If the witches of the Kwen were so powerful, how did a handful of Tiranish mages wipe them out?”
“That, I don’t know,” Thomil said. “Our songs say that the Tiranish channeled a strange type of magic—evil magic—that no meidra would dream of practicing. But you’re the expert on magic, ma’am.”
“Yes, I am,” Sciona said firmly, “and Tiranish magic is not evil. Look around you. It’s the greatest force for good on this Blighted Earth. It’s the only reason we’re alive!”
“I’m not arguing with you, Highmage,” Thomil said, but there was a dark undercurrent in his voice that wasn’t quite acquiescent. “My knowledge of magic and history is obviously nothing to yours. If your Founding Mages thought women weren’t suited to magic, and you think they were rightly inspired by God, then I suppose I have to take your word for it.”
Sciona just gripped the bowl in her hands until it hurt, her chest too full and too pained to form words.
“I’ll finish cleaning here,” she said finally.
“Are you sure, ma—”
“Yes. Go home.”
Nodding, Thomil dried his hands on a rag and withdrew.
“Thomil, I…” Sciona wanted to thank him—or shout at him, or both.
Whatever she really wanted, she was too overwhelmed with the feeling, too afraid of it spilling out to say anything except “I’ll see you next week.”
“See you next week, Meidra.”
