Chapter Nineteen
12 Shelet
We reached the Myrnala River early this afternoon and it took most of the time until dinner to get everyone across. I didn’t realize there was some worry about whether we could cross it at all, given that the landscape has changed and the river might be wider or deeper, and maybe the bridge wouldn’t even be there. But the Myrnala was actually narrower than it used to be in either Balaen or Castavir, I gathered, and the bridge was still there.
We made a huge procession going through Narness, which is the town at the eastern side of the bridge, and people came out and cheered, though I don’t know what they thought they were cheering. I guess it’s not obvious there’s more to us than just the Balaenic Army. I wonder what they’ll think when the Helvirite Army comes through. Unless they came through ahead of us. That would be wonderful. I probably should have asked Cederic whether they have or not. It’s a big army and couldn’t possibly have left no traces of their passing.
More experimenting. More discussion. Rode with Cederic for a bit and learned something of the tactical situation at Colosse. We have two plans, one for if the God-Empress is there when we arrive and one for if she isn’t. I already knew Colosse isn’t a very defensible city, but I didn’t realize what a problem it would be trying to fight street to street. And our goal is to protect the people. So we’re hoping to get there soon enough to set up between the city and the God-Empress’s army.
I’m worried the Helvirite Army won’t get there in time and we’ll be crushed between the army and the city, but apparently there are things we can do to mitigate our being at a numerical disadvantage. One of those things, as Cederic pointed out, is for our mages to practice battle magic. So much as I hate giving up research time (because, frankly, I think it’s going to be more important in the long run) I have to admit Cederic’s right. We’re going to compromise and divide our work day in half—mornings working battle magic, afternoons studying the revelation pouvra. This isn’t the most practical use of our time, since we’re going to be so tired from our morning work we’ll have trouble with the revelation pouvra, but if we did it the other way around we’d definitely be too exhausted for battle pouvrin and kathanas.
If we aren’t in time, and Colosse has already been overrun…then it gets difficult. Then we get to street-to-street fighting to force them out of the city, and a lot of non-combatants will die, not to mention soldiers and mages. And that’s going to make the mages less effective, too, because they’ll have to be so close to the fighting they can be killed before working magic. I’ve started mentally urging the army to move faster. Too bad there’s not a pouvra for that. I’d flit ahead to see where the God-Empress’s army is, but it would take too long.
We proved the blobs are what magic truly looks like—well, I say “proved,” but Terrael calls it a hypothesis that’s subject to further investigation. I had to soak his head again. The idea was to see if we could use th’an to make the blobs move the way we want them to. So someone (Jeddan) worked the revelation pouvra, and our Castaviran mages stood inside the haze and drew the mind-moving th’an—the plan was to move on to the mind-moving pouvra if the th’an didn’t work.
What happened was as soon as the mages started scribing, blobs would drift in their direction, and eventually they would stretch and contort until they matched the shape of the th’an, and then they’d disappear and the th’an would activate and make a breeze as it moved the air away from the mages’ boards.
It was fascinating. They looked like mud-colored taffy, and when they stretched thin, you could see brighter colors here and there like strands of yarn. We did some playing around experiments with different th’an, and then with pouvrin, and the blobs were attracted to both. So I don’t care what Terrael says, we’ve succeeded in making foundational magic visible. We just don’t know what it means.
We aren’t sure, either, what it means that it takes so long for the blobs to activate th’an or pouvrin. It might be they’re moving more slowly than usual, or it might mean there aren’t as many of them as before. But no one’s been able to come up with a way to prove which of those is true (unless it’s something else entirely). Maybe the problem will solve itself if we can work out how to bring the magic back together.
13 Shelet
Good news—the Helvirite forces did cross ahead of us and we’ll catch up to them just outside Colosse. I really hope the God-Empress’s troops aren’t there, or that General Garatssen will be smart enough not to engage with them if they are. That’s a stupid thing to say. General Garatssen is excellent at what she does. She and Mattiak together are probably another one of our advantages over our enemy.
We’re so out of practice with the offensive pouvrin we’re almost back to where we were when we started learning them. Cederic was right to insist we work on them. We took our wagons well out of the line of march and practiced starting fires, testing our ranges (I’m still at 600 yards, but some of the others are going to surpass me soon), and they emptied out a wagon and gave it to the mind-movers to practice lifting with. I wish I knew how many battle mages the God-Empress has. If it’s only the Viravonian Army’s mages, we outnumber them, but we don’t know how many other Castaviran forces she’s accumulated. Not something I want to worry about, so I won’t.
14 Shelet
Battle practice as expected. Terrael is working on a kathana that will magnify the effect of the revelation pouvra and maintain it longer than a mage working the pouvra can. More difficult is figuring out how to experiment on the blobs without them being sucked into the th’an or pouvra to fuel it. Terrael says he has some ideas but doesn’t want to talk about them until he’s certain, for fear of losing his focus. This probably means it’s something abstract and complicated pertaining to Castaviran magic and I wouldn’t understand it anyway.
I’ve been putting off having a conversation with Audryn about her not participating in the fight. The problem is while she’s hugely pregnant, she’s also one of our most versatile and creative battle mages, and it would be a huge loss if she had to sit out the war. But I feel uncomfortable asking her to risk her baby. On the other hand, if we lose, the God-Empress’s troops aren’t going to spare her just because she’s pregnant. So maybe I’m not thinking about this the right way. I think I’ll talk to her and see what she wants to do, though knowing her, sitting out the fight hasn’t even occurred to her.
15 Shelet
We’re only two days from Colosse and the scouts report it hasn’t been attacked yet. I think everyone’s pushing themselves harder now. Our battle mages seem confident in their abilities, but we’re still practicing. We don’t want to be complacent. Me, I’m not sure what I will do during
It’s really late now, but I have to write this down. Terrael interrupted me just there. He was beyond excited. “I figured it out,” he said. “We can do it tomorrow.”
“Figured what out?” I said.
“The kathana,” he said. “If we create the kathana first and let it absorb as many blobs of foundational magic it needs to activate, then—it has to be th’an—we put the th’an close together in positions where the magic they attract has to cross paths. We can force it to join. And that might—I’m pretty sure about this—teach, maybe that’s the wrong word, but teach the rest of the blobs how to join. They look like they’re independent, but they’re all functionally part of one thing or they wouldn’t be able to exert an influence on the world.”
“I’ll take your word for it,” I said. (I actually had to make him repeat himself, and I asked him a lot of questions, before I understood even that much of what he was saying. So what I wrote above is my intelligible version, written so it reflects some of his excitement.)
“I’m right about this, don’t worry,” he said. “And if we can do this tomorrow—”
“We can restore magic in time for it to make a difference in the war,” I said. “What do you need?”
“We can’t do this in the wagon, because it will need the biggest kathana circle anyone’s ever drawn,” he said. “So we’ll lag behind the army, but I’m sure we’ll be able to catch up quickly. And it’s going to take all of us, and we don’t have time to practice. But I don’t think it will require much practice, just teams of two Castaviran mages working in tandem. And the Balaenic mages who can work the revelation pouvra. I wish we had more of you.”
“Then let’s gather everyone and get started,” I said.
We were tired enough that under normal circumstances, we wouldn’t have had the energy to do anything Terrael suggested. But his excitement was infectious, and I certainly felt invigorated enough that the revelation pouvra wasn’t difficult. Terrael paired up the Castaviran mages and showed them the th’an they had to do and the order they had to do them in, and explained how the pouvrin came in—it wasn’t only the revelation pouvra, it was the walk-through-walls and the mind-moving pouvrin too, and Terrael was right, it was the most complicated kathana I’d ever seen, which I realize isn’t saying much, but the Castaviran mages said the same thing.
Writing this has calmed me down. It must be before midnight still, because Cederic hasn’t come to bed yet, but I think for once I’d prefer to fall asleep alone. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s that magic has always been a solitary act for me, and this is the biggest magic I’ve ever participated in. Which isn’t to say I’d kick my husband out of bed if he did come right now, just that I feel the need for solitude and I’m glad to have it right now.
16 Shelet
I wish for once things would just go smoothly for us. I’m tired of writing “I’m so discouraged.” So instead I’m going to write “We’re making progress” and hope writing it makes it come true.
We (the mages, Terrael, Cederic, and I, Cederic having declared he wasn’t about to let me do something potentially dangerous without him nearby) set out before dawn to the place we chose for the kathana circle. I don’t think I mentioned we’re traveling through thick forests and there aren’t a lot of clearings large enough for what we wanted. But yesterday we passed through a little Castaviran settlement, not even big enough to be called a town, and they’d cleared a lot of the forest out for their crops. So we talked to one of the farmers and asked if we could use a fallow field, and he didn’t like the idea until Cederic handed over far too much money. Then he didn’t care what we did.
We used the mind-moving pouvra to clear a flat space, then the Castaviran mages drew out a double circle and filled the space between them with inert th’an. The Balaenic mages spread out around the outside of the circle, as evenly spaced as we could get—we were supposed to be close enough to spread our arms and barely touch our neighbor’s fingertips, but some people have longer arms than others—and settled on the ground in whatever position we felt most comfortable. Then we waited for the Castaviran mages to finish and take up positions standing behind each of us. That was so uncomfortable, feeling hovered over.
The rest of the Castaviran mages, and the Balaenic mages who wouldn’t be working the revelation pouvra, stood inside the double circle, which from my position looked like the rim of a giant magnifying glass, which was a good image considering we were trying to magnify foundational magic. Or something.
“Begin,” Terrael said, and I started to bend my will to meet the revelation pouvra. This time, I kept my eyes open; I’ve gotten good enough at it that I’m not easily distracted. So I could watch in an idly curious way as mages began scribing the active th’an and the kathana began to resonate. It was something Terrael had incorporated into the inert th’an so we could immediately tell if it was working—the circle gave off a hum that made the tingling in my fingers and toes weaker. I could see the haze forming around the other mages (you can’t see the one you produce yourself, don’t know why) and spreading outward in all directions. We’d thought about trying to direct it into the kathana circle, but decided we didn’t have time to learn a new technique and risk losing effectiveness. So we made a huge, misty dome that completely surrounded us, each mage’s pouvra overlapping with the next. For some reason that didn’t thicken the haze at all the way gauze gets more opaque the more layers there are of it. Strange, but fortunate for what we were doing.
We saw the muddy little blobs, ranging from pea-sized to the size of Jeddan’s enormous fist, floating and darting around. Some were drawn to the edge of the circle, where mages were still scribing th’an, drawn to it and then stretched out to match the th’an. Others neared the circle where the active th’an were and were repelled by them. It was all fascinating in a dreamlike way, or so I felt from my abstracted state.
Then Terrael said, “Go,” and the pairs of mages raised their boards and began scribing. And about twenty of the blobs floating within the circle started quivering as if they were being shaken apart. I knew from Terrael’s explanation the mages were scribing pairs of identical th’an, a variation on the mind-moving th’an, on opposite sides of a blob. The idea was that the th’an would absorb magic and activate, then the central blob would be repelled by one and then the other and be unable to escape, and the th’an would guide it toward another blob and force them to unite.
It seemed to be working. I focused on the blob nearest me and watched it, dreamily, as it drifted through the air (this one was about five feet off the ground, because they don’t only move in straight lines parallel to the ground, but in all directions at every angle). It seemed to move with purpose now, which made sense because it was basically being driven, and I couldn’t help thinking of it as alive, which made me sad for it, but only for a few seconds and then I realized I was being foolish.
It started shaking harder—that’s probably what made it seem alive, it seemed to be shivering as if it were cold, or afraid—and I could see flashes of color when it stretched and snapped back together. It was fascinating. The mages were moving it toward another blob that was somewhat lower and closer to me. The other one was shivering too, and then they were shaking so rapidly they looked like sea urchins, spiny and spiky but with the spikes expanding and retracting fast enough they looked like flashes of dull color.
Then they exploded, and those spikes flew in all directions. I shrieked and ducked, the pouvra disintegrated around me, and my face felt as if a hundred needles had pierced it. I reached up to touch my face and felt nothing, and soon the sensation passed. All around me I heard similar shrieks, then Cederic’s arms were around me and he was saying, “Are you hurt, Sesskia? Show me your face.”
I removed my hand, and he touched my face gently. “You look as if someone has given you freckles,” he said. “Does it hurt?”
“Not anymore,” I said, rubbing at my face as if I could feel the spots, but my skin felt as smooth as always. “It felt like being jabbed by needles.”
“They are fading now,” Cederic said. “I cannot see any other marks.”
“Did you get it?” Terrael said. I looked up, but he wasn’t talking to me, he was kneeling next to Audryn, who held a notebook in her lap.
“I think so,” she said, “but I can’t tell if it failed or if it just recorded an image that doesn’t make sense.”
I got up, with Cederic’s help, and went to her side. “It’s a th’an that collects an image and draws it on a page,” Terrael said. “I thought it would be a good idea to record whatever was visible, if anything, and this is much faster than drawing by hand.”
“There’s some of the blobs, the ones we weren’t manipulating,” I said, “but what’s all this?”
“It appears to be the kathana circle, but something is wrong with it,” Cederic said.
“And I don’t know why it drew it this way,” Audryn said, running her finger over the page. “It’s as if it shaded in the spaces and left the th’an and the kathana circle lines empty. It should look like a line drawing.”
I walked around to face Audryn so I was looking at the image upside down. “This isn’t our kathana circle,” I said. “Look. You can see there’s another circle just visible in the corners. It’s showing a circle within our circle.”
“But we didn’t draw another circle,” Audryn said.
“Audryn, may I see that?” Cederic said. Audryn tore it from the notebook and handed it to him. He rotated the page, stared at it for a while, then handed it to me and said, “Pencil, please, and may I use that notebook?”
Audryn gave him the notebook, and Terrael found a stub of a pencil in his trouser pocket. Cederic began sketching. “I am not certain of this, and I would like your confirmation, Terrael, but I believe I know what that kathana is,” he said. We waited silently for him to finish drawing. When he finally handed the notebook to Terrael, I said, “What is it?”
“I don’t know,” Terrael said. Then he blinked, and said, “This can’t be right.” He snatched the image from my hand and held each at arm’s length, rotating them slightly. “It is right,” he said. “How did you see it?”
“I don’t know,” Cederic said. “Something about it roused a memory, perhaps. But you agree with me?”
“If you don’t tell us what it is,” I began.
“I beg you, do not finish that threat,” Cederic said with a smile. “It is the divergence kathana. Or some of it.”
I gaped at him. “How is that even possible?” I said. “Wasn’t it destroyed when it separated the worlds?”
“I don’t know,” he repeated. “Either it was not, or this is some remnant of it still in existence after a thousand years or more. This image indicates that the fragments of shattered magic were repelled by its lines, which is why the kathana appears inverted.”
“If it—but it can’t—this explains so much,” Terrael said. “If—no, I need to study it more, this isn’t enough information—”
“But we don’t have time,” I said. “We’re going to face the enemy any day now, and we’re needed in battle. Even if this is more important in the long run, it won’t do us any good if we’re dead.”
“You don’t need me in the battle, Sesskia,” Terrael said. “And Audryn shouldn’t fight.”
“I’m not an invalid, Terrael,” Audryn retorted.
“I wasn’t going to keep you out of the fight,” I said, “but I think Terrael may need you more than we do. If he discovers anything, he won’t be able to do anything about it unless he has a mage to help him.”
“You know I’m one of the best battle mages, Sesskia,” Audryn said, but it sounded weak.
“You are. And you also work better with Terrael than anyone else,” I said. “I’m going to assign you a few more mages, Terrael. We can spare a few. And if you can figure out why the divergence kathana appeared just now, and what we can do with that, the rest of us will join you. I’m sorry, Cederic,” I said to him, “but you know how important this is. If we can’t stop the magic from diminishing, we won’t be able to fight at all.”
“I agree,” Cederic said, “and I think we should rejoin the army. You will have another day or possibly three to solve this problem before we face Renatha Torenz’s army. Let us pray it is enough.”
Having passed the word about what we’d discovered, we rejoined the army, catching up to them just after noon. Nobody was in the mood for practicing battle magic; everyone was full of speculation about the divergence kathana and what it meant. We passed the image around so everyone could have a look, and Relania and Terrael got into a heated discussion—it was almost funny because their annoyance was directed at the problem and not at each other—which ended with them huddled over the notebook, Terrael drawing and Relania offering criticisms.
I still don’t know what they came up with, because I rode the rest of the day with Cederic and the general staff, me explaining what we’d been doing when we weren’t practicing battle magic and then all of us discussing strategies for if the mages had to leave the battle. None of the generals were happy about this, probably because they’d seen battle mages in action and wanted to have the ability to defend against them, but Cederic convinced them that even if they didn’t really understand how important our other work was, we were doing the right thing. (I’m annoyed they didn’t take their Empress-Consort’s word for it, but they are Balaenic generals and this is war and I am, after all, only a woman and know nothing about fighting. I can’t wait for them to meet Garatssen.)
We’ll reach Colosse by tomorrow evening. The scouts still tell us the God-Empress isn’t there. That worries me, because from the maps I’ve seen it’s not that far from Duberin to Colosse, so what’s she doing that keeps her from advancing? Again I have to tell myself, this is a good thing, this is progress. I wish I had more faith in what I tell myself.