Chapter Six
17 Hantar
We’ve been on the road all day, which was as tiring as it ever is. We were meant to start the journey yesterday, but Cederic insisted on touring Colosse (with me, in full Imperial regalia “liberated” from the same museum the Kilios’s robe came from) so everyone could see he was, in fact, not dead. It was a good idea, and drew large crowds of cheering citizens wherever we went. Reassuring to know not everyone is a potential assassin, but I for one don’t remember much of the journey because I was so preoccupied with scanning the crowd, prepared to kill anyone who went after Cederic again.
My only other thought was worry for what might happen to these people if the God-Empress captured Colosse. She’s capable of putting all of them to death, or trying to, because they “betrayed” her, and I wonder how ready her soldiers would be to carry out such an order, given that many of them have families here. But then I always wonder how anyone can bear to do the things she expects of her followers. It simply doesn’t make sense to me.
Then Sai Amaleten in conference with the healers decided Cederic needed a day of rest before exerting himself further. But “day of rest” meant he was allowed to come back to the camp yesterday afternoon and go over some of the logistics of our journey so long as he didn’t exert himself. We’re going to Barrekel, where the Black and Brown divisions of the Balaenic Army are headquartered, to get the support of its Lord Governor so when winter is over and we’re ready to face the God-Empress’s army, we can add the Barrekellian troops to ours. Arron Domenessar, the Lord Governor of Barrekel, is supposed to be a reasonable man and one who’s spoken against the King’s policies in public, so Mattiak is hopeful we’ll be able to get him to support us.
The real problem is Barrekel has already clashed with Castavir, specifically the Helvirite Army headquartered in Teliarne, which is about seventy miles from Barrekel in this new world. Cederic’s decree (in his role as Kilios, pre-Emperor status) that the Castaviran cities not engage with the Balaenics didn’t do much to stop the conflict. It was the coming of winter, and the fact that the armies were fairly evenly matched even with the Helvirite mage corps, that brought hostilities to a standstill. It took Lerongis’s command added to Cederic’s under the Emperor’s chop to get Teliarne to agree to open diplomatic relations with Barrekel, and all we know is that they did. We don’t know what kind of agreements they’ve come to, and there’s been some discussion over whether we should go to Teliarne first, but Mattiak is convinced Domenessar needs to know we respect him, which means not appearing to give precedence to Castavir. I guess that makes sense too.
There’s been a lot of discussion about how to convince the Lords Governor to follow a Castaviran ruler, and most of it is, uncomfortably, centered on me. I’m not nearly so optimistic about myself as a battle standard, or figurehead, or whatever, as Mattiak and the others are. I may be Balaenic, but I’m not noble and I’m nobody anyone would be automatically inclined to follow. Personally, I think it’s likely one or more of these Lords Governor will try to raise his own standard, not that any one of them is capable of taking the throne. If anyone could, it would be Caelan Crossar, which makes me wonder what happened to him. I can’t see the God-Empress being stupid enough to let him live.
After Barrekel, we’re going south to Teliarne, which is the capital of Helviran, so Lerongis will be able to order the Castaviran troops headquartered there to join us. That reminds me that I met his harpy wife, Joena, and she wasn’t at all what I’d expected. She’s about twenty years old, a lot younger than her husband, waifish and diffident, and it isn’t until you’ve spent some time in her presence that you realize whatever spine Lerongis has is on loan from her.
She never makes assertions, just comments on things by saying “I wonder if you’ve considered” and “I realize I’m not terribly informed, but it seems to me,” but her comments are always on point and insightful. She’s respectful of her husband, but he rarely says anything without glancing at her—I’m not sure he knows he’s doing it—and I get the feeling she doesn’t actually like him much. I wonder why they married.
She was polite to me, but in the way sharks are polite to each other: circling each other, recognizing a fellow predator, respectful but not remotely interested in becoming friends. It’s obvious to me she thinks she ought to be the one sitting on the throne, and honestly, I can’t say she wouldn’t be qualified. But given that Lerongis is totally unqualified for the position of Emperor, the only way she could get there would be by claiming the throne herself or marrying Cederic, and even if he weren’t married to me he’s clearly disdainful of her method of wielding power. He prefers a straightforward, unapologetically forthright woman. Lucky for both of us I’m that.
Anyway, it seems like Lerongis will have no trouble bringing the Castaviran troops under Cederic and Mattiak’s command. Even so, this makes me more worried than getting Domenessar to fall in line, because integrating the troops…I’m no military expert, but I can hear what Mattiak and the generals aren’t saying, which is that it’s going to be difficult even if there wasn’t a language barrier. The army in Teliarne is huge, though, and we need all the troops we can get, especially since the western regiments of the Balaenic Army will certainly be added to the King’s Castaviran forces.
(It just now struck me as so odd that we’ve basically swapped armies. Castavirans fighting for Balaen, Balaenics fighting for Castavir—or maybe it’s more accurate to say we’ve already begun integrating our countries. I’d be more cheerful about that if all our lives weren’t at stake.)
Moerton Taissatus came to the meeting with Perce Aselfos, which surprised me for a few seconds until I remembered Cederic had said he’d turned out to be a capable ally, if not one with leadership qualities. It seems he’s been working with Taissatus on keeping order in Colosse after the army left, turning his network of spies outward to keep track of pockets of unrest and people who still support the God-Empress. They’re staying in Colosse where they can maintain contact with the consuls, some of whom are either already in enemy territory, like the one at Carinne (which is the city Mattiak was besieging before they called him back to Venetry to defend it), or are going to be overrun before we can return in the spring.
Taissatus is trying to convince them to support Cederic, but a lot of them are concerned for their cities because some of them aren’t very big and certainly can’t hold out against the Castaviran Army. He and Aselfos seem confident, but I’m worried for both of them. What happens if spring comes and the God-Empress reaches Colosse before we do? Much as Taissatus makes me mildly uncomfortable (only because I like being able to read people) and Aselfos makes me uncertain (because I don’t totally trust him to keep faith with Cederic) they’re loyal supporters so far and I’d hate to see anything happen to them.
Also to my surprise, I’ve become the leader not only of our mages, but the Castaviran ones as well. I’m not sure why that is, whether the Castavirans are responding to my being their ruler now, or if some of Cederic’s charisma has rubbed off on me (unlikely) because I still don’t understand their magic any better than I did six months ago. I am the only person who’s successfully combined Castaviran magic with Balaenic, and maybe that’s it.
Either way, they look to me for guidance, even Terrael, which is strange. He’s mobile again, and able to serve as Cederic’s aide, but he has to rest often, and fortunately he has Audryn to tell him when he’s overexerting himself. We’ve talked a bit and he says, not that he wanted to be tortured or anything, but it’s been good to have time to put his mental energies toward the problem we (mages) care most about, which is bringing our magic together.
“I’ve been thinking it can’t be as simple as drawing th’an with a pouvra, like you did with that binding th’an in the Codex summoning,” he said a few hours ago after we’d all eaten and were sitting around relaxing by the fire.
“Right, because that was so easy,” I scoffed.
“I said simple, not easy, Sesskia,” he said, scooting up where he had his head in Audryn’s lap.
(He really has changed. He used to be sort of formal with her in public, tentative, like he was afraid she might change her mind about him, and now he’s affectionate and loving—I saw them standing together off to one side of their tent one time, where I’m sure they thought no one could see, and he had his hand on her belly and was saying something that made her laugh. I felt shy about having witnessed it, but it made me so happy too.)
Anyway. He went on to say, “That was an obvious solution, but it’s only doing two types of magic at once, not a new integrated whole.”
“Do you think that’s what we’re looking for?” I said.
He shrugged, and said, “It’s what happened to the worlds, isn’t it? They’ve come back together and you can see the places where the landscape’s a combination of what used to be in each world. What worries me is that it didn’t just happen automatically. The magic reuniting, I mean.”
“Maybe it has, and we haven’t realized it yet,” Audryn said.
“I think if it had, neither of our magics would work anymore,” Terrael said. “Maybe we’re looking at this the wrong way. Maybe they can’t come back together and this new world is going to have two branches of magic.”
“I don’t like that,” Jeddan said.
(I forgot to mention that all day yesterday, while I was off being Empress-Consort, Audryn and a handful of the other Castaviran mages were using Terrael’s altered translator kathana to give the Castaviran language to all the Balaenic mages. It’s been interesting to see which language people choose to speak by default, since some of the Balaenics have decided they’re more comfortable with Castaviran and vice versa. It doesn’t seem to matter the nationality—and maybe that’s a sign we’ll be able to blend our magics as easily as we have our languages.)
“At least we’d all still have magic,” Terrael said, not seeming to notice he’d included himself in the magic-having group.
“We would,” Jeddan said. “What about the children born with the ability? Your child, maybe—he or she—”
“She,” Audryn said.
“She’s got a good chance of being born a mage,” Jeddan went on, though I wanted to override him and demand to know how Audryn could be so sure. “Suppose she’s born with a pouvra the way they—” he waved his hand at Jerussa and Tobiak, sitting nearby—“developed one during the convergence. Would she even want to learn all those th’an when learning pouvrin is faster? Think of all the knowledge we’d lose if Castaviran magic disappeared. Or suppose she doesn’t start out with a pouvra, and doesn’t experience anything to trigger Balaenic magic? Pouvrin are going to stay rare, even though they’re more powerful. And worse, we might end up with factions where each side believes their magic is superior and is dismissive or even antagonistic toward the other—you want the new world to look like that? I think, if it’s true the magics can’t come back together naturally, we ought to be looking for ways to make it happen.”
Terrael sat up slowly and said, “I think you’re right. But it doesn’t make sense. Magic is what brought the worlds together—you can’t keep it apart. But the worlds are together, and the magic still isn’t.”
“Which suggests there’s something still keeping it apart,” I said.
Terrael nodded, but he had that abstracted look he gets sometimes when his mind is already off in pursuit of some solution to an intellectual puzzle. “I can—no. That’s not right. If we…or…”
“You have to say all the words, Terrael,” Audryn said with some amusement. He glanced at her and grinned.
“Sorry,” he said. “I think I should give this more thought before I say anything more—what little it seems I’m capable of saying. It’s just…when you said that, Sesskia, I had the image of something propping a door open. I wonder if it’s not literally true something’s keeping the magic from joining.”
“Or a clot of dirt in a lock that keeps the, um, key from opening it,” I said, refraining at the last minute from implicating myself as a thief, even though I’m sure they all know it.
“Or a misalignment that keeps the teeth of two gears from meshing,” Jeddan said.
“Nice imagery, but isn’t it more likely the alterations the original kathana made to the requirements for magic aren’t completely gone?” Audryn said. “Given that those mages wanted to make it possible for everyone to work magic, and that meant changing its fundamental principles.”
“I hadn’t thought of that,” Terrael said “but it’s worth considering. I’m convinced this problem is more important than it seemed at first.”
“You keep saying that, but I’m not sure why,” Jeddan said.
“So long as magic isn’t unified, the convergence isn’t complete,” Terrael said. “It suggests a possibility that the worlds could diverge again, if only in pieces—though ‘in pieces’ might be worse than a complete divergence. But it’s not just that. The Codex Tiurindi referred to those mages performing magic so powerful I could barely comprehend it. If we’re going to defeat the former Empress, we’ll need every advantage, and if we can use the unified magic and her battle mages can’t, that’s a huge advantage.”
“But they’d have access to it as well,” I said.
“It’s unlikely anyone will be able to use it immediately,” Terrael said. “It will take practice. But in making the discovery, we’ll have a head start on them—more so because none of those battle mages have any experience with research.”
“We still have to practice battle tactics,” I said. “But if you’re right, bringing magic together is another kind of battle tactic.”
“That’s one way to look at it,” Terrael said. “And now I’m for bed, if you want to join me, my lady wife?”
That broke up the party, and I came back here to write, and now I’m looking at our bed with some distaste. It was only a few nights in Colosse, but I got used to having a thick mattress and room to sprawl, though Cederic and I usually end up cuddled together however large the bed is. I suppose what matters isn’t the size of the bed so much as who you share it with, and if I think of it that way it’s a very fine bed indeed.
18 Hantar
Past midnight, so maybe technically 19 Hantar, but I’m not sure. I’ve been waking late at night more frequently since the assassination attempt, always with the same dream that the man is lunging at us and if I don’t wake before he strikes, Cederic will die. This time I didn’t feel sleepy, so I decided to do some writing—I neglected it today because Cederic came to bed at a decent hour and I think he took the hint, by the way I was lounging around in just my undershorts and breast band, that I was feeling amorous. At least, the way he stripped down to nothing in about four seconds flat makes me think that.
Today wasn’t very exciting. We sent out some message riders to the villages we passed, three Castaviran, one Balaenic, with handbills explaining the coup and Cederic’s ascension to the throne and the two worlds coming together. We’ve decided not to approach these towns along the way directly, since the Balaenic Army, while not as big as the Castaviran, is still very intimidating, even to Balaenics who don’t have reason to think they’re under attack by foreigners. But we do want to prepare people for the future. Hence the handbills.
I saw the mages creating them and it’s a fascinating kathana, though tediously slow compared to printing and not nearly as crisp. Since we can’t exactly haul a press around with the Army, this is still better than having to write it all out by hand.
It started snowing again mid-morning, though after our stop in Colosse we have covered wagons like the one I rode in while I was injured, so it wasn’t so bad. I don’t know why the Balaenic Army never used covered wagons. Probably they’re not used to transporting anything but cargo in them, and crates don’t care if they get wet.
I rode with the people I’m starting to think of as my command team, as if I were really a leader and not just the one who
No. I am the leader. I’m the one who directs our discussions and clarifies points and organizes our investigations. I’m Empress-Consort now, and I’m chief of the Balaenic mages. Even if I still don’t know exactly what that first responsibility entails, and I’m not quite comfortable using the second to command the Castaviran mages in Cederic’s absence, nobody seems to mind when I tell them what we’re going to do next. So I think I need to get used to it and stop being dismissive of my abilities, even if they’re unexpected.
I should ask Cederic about the Empress-Consort thing. At some point we will have to sit down and discuss how we’re going to rule a united kingdom/empire, and I have the feeling I’m going to have to speak up on behalf of Balaenic law and custom. Fortunately for both of us I’ve never had a problem telling Cederic when he’s wrong.
Anyway.
I rode with the people who have shown the most interest in and aptitude for solving the problem of bringing our magics together: Terrael and Audryn and Jaemis of the Castaviran mages (all good friends from the Darssan, too, and it makes me sad that Sovrin isn’t with us anymore, being busy overseeing the translators), and Jeddan, Relania, Jerussa, and Tobiak of the Balaenics. Two of “ours” are old mages, two of them new, and all of them including Jeddan have non-aggressive pouvrin as their “primary” ability. I don’t know if that means they’re naturally more inclined toward study and introspection, but as much as that would be interesting to investigate, I don’t really care right now.
Today we focused on identifying things both our magics have in common that might be part of the original, unified magic. I’m glad so few Castaviran mages attached themselves to this group, because Terrael is as intimidating in his way as Cederic is, being brilliant and quick-thinking and capable of seeing connections no one else does, and I know a lot of the Castaviran mages are inclined to defer to him. And we don’t need that; we need people who are willing to challenge one another and not just accept something because the person who came up with it is a genius.
Audryn, of course, doesn’t think of Terrael that way (imagine what a disaster of a marriage that would be if she deferred to him all the time) and Jaemis is a tenacious thinker who takes hold of an idea and worries at it until it either falls apart or is proven sound to his satisfaction. The Balaenic mages aren’t overawed by Terrael because he may be brilliant about Castaviran magic, but he knows nothing about Balaenic magic and is (because he’s Terrael) utterly humble in asking for explanations of things. Relania is the most likely to challenge him when he goes off into abstractions, and I think he likes that. After today, I feel more confident we might actually be able to figure this out.
So we discussed similarities, and came up with a list of things we know about magic we think are still true after the convergence, though we don’t know what to do with them yet:
1. Magical ability. It’s obvious you have to have an inborn ability to work magic. We knew that not only from how some people can’t do it post-convergence, but also from what little we understand from the Codex Tiurindi about what those long-dead bast mages wanted to accomplish.
2. Will. Jerussa and Tobiak had a verbal tussle that led to the surprising realization that Balaenic and Castaviran magic both require a measure of will, though Balaenics have to bend their will to meet the pouvrin and Castavirans have to exert their will on magic by scribing th’an. That’s too stark a contrast not to matter. So magic needs to interact with will in some way.
3. Structure. Th’an and pouvrin are so similar in the sense of having structure it’s hard to believe the original magic didn’t have some kind of structure too.
We also have the things we learned from the Codex Tiurindi:
4. Pre-“divergence” magic was something like th’an expressed through will rather than through writing. Which suggests some combination of Castaviran and Balaenic magic, even though we’re sure it’s not as simple as that.
5. The divergence kathana worked by temporarily suppressing magic, and it ended up (either on purpose or by accident) spread so thin it couldn’t be used, which led us to:
6. Magic, whatever structure it has, has to have a certain level of concentration to be usable.
I have no idea what to make of all of that, but we have a lot of time in which to investigate the possibilities. We all felt exhausted when it was time to make camp. I never thought of intellectual discussion as exhausting, but it is. I told all of this to Cederic after our wild lovemaking—it’s amazing how much cleverer I feel when I’m snuggled up with him—and he said, “You might also consider the matter of residual magic, though that is not an accurate description.”
“That was in the madman’s book, the one that had the concealment pouvra, right?” I said. “You said it was more like pre-existing magic.”
“As far as anyone knows,” he said. “I’m afraid I can’t tell you much about it, as I never had leisure to research it. It hints at the possibility of th’an drawing on a source of magic we are not aware of because they are so efficient at shaping magic. But it might be worth your mages looking into.”
“That sounds so strange, ‘my’ mages,” I said.
He put his arms around me and pulled me close. “They look to you because you see things as no one else does,” he said, “possibility and reality. And because you have no interest in using your position for self-aggrandizement—it never even occurs to you, and I think others can see that.”
“I never thought of it that way,” I said. “Honestly, I can’t see why anyone would go out of their way to take on that responsibility. I feel the burden and I’ve got fewer than a hundred people looking to me for guidance. I don’t know how you do it, Emperor Cederic.”
“I have a beautiful, intelligent, extraordinary Empress-Consort,” he said, sliding his hand under my sleep shirt, “and I depend on her utterly.”
“You should warn her you also have a jealous wife,” I said, and kissed him the way any self-respecting jealous wife would.
He looks so peaceful when he’s asleep in our bed. Not that I spend a lot of time watching him sleep, which would be boring, but he looks different, as if he’s laid down whatever weight he has to shoulder when he’s awake. Although I love him all the time, I feel so tender toward him when he allows himself to be vulnerable with me. It’s times like this I truly understand the Castaviran marriage promise; that kind of trust is like a gift.
19 Hantar
More riding in the wagon, more discussion, less fruitful this time. Still, it’s bringing us together as a unit, which is important.
24 Hantar
There hasn’t been anything to record, so I decided not to waste pages on saying “nothing to report.” I wouldn’t even have written now except I wanted to remind my future self why there’s so big a gap in the record.
26 Hantar
Another wedding, Audryn and Terrael this time. I know I wrote I remembered very little of the ceremony from my own wedding, but I remembered enough to note certain key differences, namely that their unborn child was explicitly made part of the union. Audryn said afterward, when I asked her, a couple who are already expecting a baby when they make their marriage vows like to recognize the child as part of the family they’re creating, make it feel welcome even though it wasn’t conceived after the vow like Castavirans are expected to do.
For some Castavirans, it’s become a superstition that has all these horror stories attached to it, which is the other reason Audryn didn’t tell anyone about being pregnant until after Terrael came out of his depression—she didn’t want to deal with people criticizing her or warning her about what might happen to her baby because she’d flouted tradition. I think it’s horrible that anyone might tell an expectant mother her child would be born unlucky, or deformed, or mentally deficient, just because of when it was conceived, but Audryn told me nobody takes those people seriously. Even so, it was a burden she didn’t need.
It was a beautiful ceremony, much quieter than mine, but with all our friends attending, and they both looked so happy it made me cry and Cederic teased me about it. He really is less formal than he used to be, even in public, though I’m sure he still feels the pressure of maintaining the dignity of the Emperor’s office. He hasn’t said anything to me about maintaining the dignity of the Empress-Consort’s office, and I haven’t asked, for fear he’ll tell me I have to stop making jokes in public. I’m sure if there were anything inappropriate in my behavior, he’d tell me.
No study today thanks to the wedding. We all needed a break anyway. Theory is good, but we need some way to experiment, and no one’s figured out how to test our theories using actual magic. A rest day is probably what we need. (Though Terrael may be incapable of not thinking about the problem, since it’s not as if he can turn off his brain. Hopefully Audryn knows how to keep him distracted, and by distracted I mean lots of legally sanctioned sex.)
27 Hantar
A big storm blew in about ten o’clock this morning, and we had to make camp and huddle in. We (the mages) discussed for most of the morning and eventually decided we will focus our efforts on discovering what’s keeping the magic from fully combining, though that broke down into an intellectual argument (i.e. we weren’t fighting, just passionately defending our own sides) about whether we’re looking for a literal thing, or trying to identify the conditions that have to change. I finally sent everyone to their own tents to think about the points we’d all made, and we’ll make a decision tomorrow.
Cederic and I spent most of the afternoon together in our own tent, talking as if we were any other married couple. We told each other stories of our childhood, him more than me, which makes sense because half the stories of my childhood aren’t the kind you want to remember. He grew up in the north, in a town west of where Durran is in my world, and was a perfectly ordinary boy until he entered school and turned out to have a prodigious memory and a thirst for magical knowledge. I told him, “I can just picture you as a skinny little boy with big eyes, using long words at all your teachers.”
“I was actually a very quiet student,” he said, “because everything I was taught came so easily, and seemed so obvious. I thought there must be something wrong with me that I did not struggle as my classmates did. I realize that sounds arrogant, but in truth I felt awkward for many years.”
“That I can’t imagine,” I said. “What changed?”
“I came to realize I had a gift I could share with others,” he said. “And I was fortunate to have teachers who realized why I was so quiet in group lessons and so forthright and confident in my individual tutoring sessions. They encouraged me to take extra study in magical theory and put me on the path that led me to the Darssan, and then to the Kilios rank. Eventually I felt comfortable enough I could make friends, like Denril—”
He stopped, and rubbed his forehead as if it ached. “I still cannot understand how our friendship turned so sour,” he said. “I respected his understanding of magic and his passion for the priesthood. I never thought he resented me at all.”
I left my chair to sit in his lap and put my arms around his neck. The chair creaked alarmingly, but didn’t collapse. “You had what he wanted,” I said. “Fame and recognition. And then it wasn’t enough that he had the most high priesthood—he wanted you to have nothing, or his accomplishment wasn’t enough. Some people are like that.”
“You are very wise,” he said, putting his arms around me. “And beautiful. And you fit so nicely into my arms. I think we may have been destined for one another.”
“I don’t know that I believe in destiny,” I said, “because how sad if you’re meant for just one other person in the world and you never meet her?”
He nuzzled my neck. “But I did,” he said in my ear, “and every day I hope I am becoming more perfectly someone you will want to spend the rest of your life with.”
“I feel the same,” I said. Then we moved on to the kind of conversation that doesn’t need words.