Stained Glass Monsters

Chapter Seventeen

"Like a mother duck and her ducklings."

This made Sukata’s eyes widen, and Lieutenant Meniar laughed outright, then tried to pretend he hadn’t. It was true though. They’d stopped somewhere south of Knifecliff, on a white road cut through rolling greenery. Rennyn Claire had started walking about, dangling the big round crystal which apparently held the Black Queen’s focus, and a little deputation of Sentene and Hand mages trailed behind her, while everyone else watched. So serious they made Kendall’s teeth ache.

The road, overlooked by a farmhouse and plenty of sheep, ran alongside an abrupt fall from pasture to a sliver of sand edging the endless blackness she was told was the Deridian Sea. It stretched further than Kendall could see, and she was unable to resist standing close to the edge of the proper, solid world, drawn and repelled by the mass of water.

Right now, she was betting the Sentene wished they were anywhere else, as Rennyn Claire walked straight up to the cliff’s edge and, after the briefest pause, right over it.

"Barin," said Lieutenant Meniar. "Go up to that farmhouse and ask them about tides. Everything about tides."

"Yessir," said one of the Ferumguard, sounding just about as pleased as Meniar. Kendall watched her supposed teacher walk from the narrow beach to ten feet out over the water, then stop. She glanced back at the beach and with a gesture brought a man-sized boulder flying toward her. It sank into the dark water beneath her feet.

As Rennyn floated herself back to the top of the cliff one of the Captains ordered most of the crowd to setting up camp, leaving only a small group to stand about being dismayed.

"You did say something about Sentene mages and trying situations," Kendall muttered to Sukata, and then scooted herself in at the back to listen to the senior Hand mages yak on about whether their clever shields would work under water.

Captain Illuma turned to Rennyn when she set herself down beside Kendall. "Can you delay entering the Eferum until this is settled, Lady Montjuste-Surclere? We may need your advice."

"I’ll be delaying entering the Eferum until the last moment anyway," was the response. "Since it seems I can’t reliably conceal myself, it’s the simplest way to limit my exposure." She glanced restively down at the waves. "The cliff top should be within range, so I’ll set my circle up here, too."

"This is a situation we’ve not encountered before, My Lady," said one of the Hand mages, a twittery, dark-skinned woman who was a good deal sharper than she made out. "We are aware that natural breaches open over water, of course, but given the difficulty of studying them, we have little information."

"Mm. The water’s about ten feet deep where I put that rock, and the bottom drops sharply." Rennyn’s attention had drifted back to the waves with a touch of the same fascination Kendall felt. "I’d abandon any idea of that shield," she continued after a moment. "If you hadn’t already. There’s too much confluence between deep water and the Eferum, which is why I need to keep my circle at a distance. This breach will be very large, its strength enhanced by the environment, and will form at the surface, wherever the surface happens to be. Still, few Eferum-Get do very well in water, so if there is another horde, some of them may drown."

"We should look at nets," Captain Illuma said. "Reinforced and cast over the area to drag them under. Use the water to our advantage instead of taking it as an obstacle."

This suggestion produced lots of nodding, and a detachment was sent back to Knifecliff to wangle some nets. Kendall followed Rennyn as, rubbing the back of her neck, she wandered off to the coaches to ferret around in her bags. Kendall had seen her eyes open more than once during the journey, and wondered if there was anyone who could order the woman to go back to bed.

For a group who usually travelled in pairs, the Sentene acted like a well-drilled army. Or perhaps it was mainly the Ferumguard, whose normal role was keeping villagers out of the way and searching out any remaining traces after a Sentene pair had taken care of whatever thing had been ravaging the countryside. In any case, they had a small town’s worth of tents erected in little clusters, food cooking, the horses rubbed down, and the local farmer soothed, all before Rennyn had finished dissecting her luggage. A handful of mages were busy constructing two temporary circles to keep out stray Night Roamers – those that were stupid enough to come anywhere near a Sentene camp.

At least the meal, a salty mix of buttered grains and vegetables, made Rennyn look a bit more alive, to the point where, sitting in front of one of the tent clusters as the afternoon started thinking about twilight, she turned her attention on Kendall and Sukata.

"So, tell me what you know about magic."

"Aren’t you supposed to tell us?" Kendall retorted.

"It helps to know where to start. You know the differences between the three so-called spheres of magic?"

"Force, Sigillic and Symbolic," Kendall said, reluctant because there were at least half a dozen people unashamedly eavesdropping. "Sebastian found me a book which explained a bit. Far as I can tell, Clumsy, Complicated and Scary magic."

"You’re not far off," Rennyn said, laughing. "Though that’s more the usual outcome than the sphere itself. Casting is just a mage trying to tell Efera to do something, but you have a choice of approach. How have you been going with the exercise Seb set you?"

Hunching her shoulders, Kendall glowered at the small wooden bowl she’d recently set down. It jerked to one side. "It goes everywhere but up," she muttered.

"And you, Sukata?" Rennyn asked. "The first step of Thought magic – to lift and hold steady a light object."

"The Teremic approach–" Sukata began.

"Goes on interminably about the relative uselessness of what they like to call Force Magic, and counsels those who would use it be well-grounded in Sigillic before attempting anything. You’re a couple of years off summoning your first focus, I presume?"

"Yes."

"Can you lift up that bowl?"

"I–" With more than a hint of reluctance Sukata turned her eyes on the bowl, but it didn’t do anything and she shook her head.

"What about you Lieutenant Meniar?"

Meniar stopped pretending to be busy watching for attackers. "Ah…I’d better not."

"The Teremic approach is like putting off learning to walk or talk until you’re twenty or so – an excellent way of discouraging you from starting. Because you’ve no magical strength yet, Kendall, there’s a limit to how much damage you can wreak while you’re trying to find out how to order your thoughts. Lieutenant Meniar has apparently reached the point where he thinks he might kill someone if he tries."

Kendall was astonished. All this time watching pebbles hop about, she’d thought she mustn’t be particularly talented at magecraft. "But – they can cast – why is it possible for them to cast at all if they can’t do that?"

"Thought magic. Telling Efera what you want simply by thinking it. It’s an exercise of will and mental discipline. Sigillic magic puts a buffer between the Efera and your thoughts, and uses an entirely different muscle – as if you were using your arms instead of your legs, for instance." Rennyn searched about in her pockets and produced a small wooden box containing sticks of chalk. Calling the bowl to her with a gesture, she wrote a bunch of sigils on the curving wood, then pushed power into them until the bowl rose a short way into the air and stayed there. "Although mages usually think or even speak the name of the sigils as they power them, they’re not making any attempt to do anything with Efera except run it through the shape of the sigil. Whatever they’ve written shapes the result of the casting. Complicated is a good description, since, because the casting is at one remove from the caster, factors such as duration need to be taken into account. You’ll see few good Sigillics which don’t have some limit or cut-off mechanism – a word or a phrase. But that’s the structure of the casting. The act is the same whatever the spell: push power to the sigils and let the sigils form the outcome."

"It’s easier to make the sigils do things than it is to hold up a rock? Sigillic magic is the easy kind?"

"During the activation. It’s the safest method, and allows even those with no particular mental discipline to cast. More importantly, it allows the creation of spells which are really beyond the ability to compass in a single thought, and can be used for castings which persist after the user has stopped thinking about it, or even putting power into it. Thought magic takes a good deal more effort to produce the same outcome, and usually only basic outcomes can be achieved. Picking up a rock."

"Are the sigils magic themselves?"

In answer, Rennyn released the bowl, cleaned it off and then wrote on it again, this time in neatly printed Tyrian script. Again she pushed power into it and again it obediently lifted a couple of feet off the ground and sat there.

"Efanian, the language of magic, reaches well back into the beginnings of structured magic. The Wizard Corela, one of the early great practitioners, invented it, although it has naturally been constantly refined. The sigils were designed to allow each symbol to be a single word, and the language attempts to remove all ambiguity, so there are no homonyms – no words that can mean more than one thing. Think, for instance of telling Efera to make something light, to light a fire, to conjure light."

"How would you make it float with Symbolic magic?"

"Mm. Not the most appropriate candidate for Symbolic casting. Make a soap bubble, perhaps, and then use either Thought or Sigillic magic to suggest that the bowl is like a soap bubble. Symbolic magic takes advantage of characteristics of objects and concepts to transfer those characteristics to the subject of your casting. The problem is a symbol is often worse than a homonym – the colour red can symbolise anger, passion, blood, romance, death, or indeed anything the caster thinks it means. Some argue that even things that the caster doesn’t know it means matter in Symbolic. With a soap bubble, the bowl would probably float, but since I consider a soap bubble a symbol of the ephemeral, it might also pop out of existence when I next touched it. To cast Symbolic magic, there must first be a sense of…rightness, of surety over what symbols you have chosen and the result they will bring. In a way you have to dominate the outcome, by being certain in yourself what your symbols mean. Otherwise you could end up with almost anything. Scary magic, as you say."

"What kind of magic do you mostly use?"

"Mostly? The best casting is usually a combination. What do you think circles are? A symbol of perfection, of a cycle, of a line not to be crossed which has no end."

Kendall was fascinated, enjoying this explanation far more than she’d expected, not least because: "You’re saying that almost everyone learns magic the wrong way round."

"Not precisely. The Teremic Approach would be appropriate – a necessity – for people who don’t have a great deal of strength of mind. Advanced Thought casting is absolutely more dangerous than anything except perhaps Symbolic, and I would not recommend any move past the simple exercise Seb gave you unless precise control is gained. But if you don’t start with it, you’re unlikely to ever use it. The stronger you become the more damage you’ll be able to do."

"So what can’t you do with magic?"

"In theory, nothing. In practice, you are of course limited by your ability to convey your intention, and your strength. Understanding exactly what you’re trying to do is fundamental. I, for instance, probably wouldn’t have done very well getting that poison out of Seb. To be a good healing mage, you need to understand how people work, and my studies have focused on the Eferum and divinations, not blood and bile and flesh.

"Size and distance also limit you. The further you try and send a message by magic, the less likely it is to arrive. Think of the difference between looking into the next room, and looking into a room on the far side of the country. Scrying is one of those things all the legends show the great mages doing, but no-one knows how they structured the spell. It seems a simple thing doesn’t it? One of Tiandel’s sons spent a great deal of time trying to work out a way to scry over distance, and when he finally succeeded the casting took all his energy and killed him."

"But he succeeded?" Lieutenant Meniar took a step forward eagerly. "A functioning distance scry? Truly?"

His excited advance brought a shutter down over Rennyn’s face, but then she shrugged and plucked the still-floating bowl out of the air. "Yes and no. It’s technically functional, but even I’m not powerful enough to cast it." She handed the bowl to Kendall. "Distance is a huge limitation, but choosing to learn only Sigillic is merely a self-imposed constraint. It’s up to you two whether you attempt Thought casting exercises or not. It’s not necessary to becoming a Sigillic mage."

"What about being a real mage?"

Rennyn Claire paused, turning her head toward the darkening horizon and the line where the grass stopped and the sky began. "The question would be whether you can truly understand magic if you ignore all but one of the ways of performing it. And that’s all Seb means by real mages – people who understand magic, and have the full set of tools to manipulate it."

There was a little silence, a weirdly upset pause, and then a shadow between the two tents behind Rennyn resolved into Captain Faille.

"What time do you wish to be woken, my Lady?" he asked.

"Midnight, I suppose. Three hours ahead should be safe enough."

Kendall was impressed that Captain Faille had managed to give Rennyn an order, just by not giving it to her. As soon as she had gone into her tent, everyone who had been lingering about shifted away, some only a short distance to stand guard and the rest to the busier end of the camp, where the noise immediately dropped to furious whispers. Kendall, retreating obediently with Sukata, considered the rearrangement appreciatively.

"It’s like she’s got a hundred nannies. The scariest woman in the kingdom, and they all tiptoe around her like she’s made of glass. She doesn’t strike me as fragile."

Sukata didn’t respond, heading for the cliff’s edge. She was obviously upset, though Kendall had only begun to be able to spot the signs. It was in the way she held herself, and the fact that she wasn’t being so proper and correct. Kendall held off prodding, and peered cautiously down. The water had moved, the beach growing to half again its width, and the Sentene had found a way to pick their way down the cliff to the water, where they were conjuring balls of light.

"Going into the Eferum here is already risky," Sukata finally said. "Going into the Eferum when obviously in need of a full day’s sleep is courting disaster."

"She probably has nightmares," said Kendall, who had suffered enough herself in the past few days. "Why is it so risky going into the Eferum here?"

"The ocean is said to be like the Eferum – cold and dark and full of currents. When travelling between two such similar places there’s a danger of missing your direction."

"She didn’t seem that worried about it. Was what she said about Thought magic right? How come people do this Teremie stuff, if it means you get all messed up? Is it really that hard to do?"

The Kellian girl sat down on the cliff’s edge, which was more than Kendall was willing to do. "Force magic – too often children died trying to master it. The accepted wisdom is that it is simply not worth it. What can it accomplish that a well-constructed Sigillic cannot? It wears on the caster far more, and the danger of interruption or lapses of concentration is considerable. The basis of the Teremic approach is that a dead mage can’t cast any kind of magic, and the speed of something as crude as Force magic doesn’t balance the risk."

"Then why did everyone act like she was welcoming Fel to dinner? Hearts in boots and trying to put a brave face on it."

"There – there has been a great deal of debate over how much of what Lady Montjuste-Surclere does is Force magic. During the Asentyr incursion she was seen to use highly advanced Sigillic circles culminating in a Symbolic summoning, but much of her casting must be either pre-prepared or not Sigillic. I’m not sure she even carries a slate. She is powerful enough to maintain a number of pre-cast spells, it is true, but that casting after the palace incursion–"

"What casting?"

"You remember, an hour or so after sunset, there was a wash of colour? And then some lights in the sky?"

"I didn’t see the lights."

"It was a casting which altered Asentyr’s main circle so that it would pinpoint any Eferum-Get within its bounds. And it revealed two, both of them guised as the larger had been. Spies. Eferum-Get spies." Sukata’s voice dropped with the enormity of this idea, then lifted again. "From what I have been told, Lady Montjuste-Surclere went to the place the Eferum-Get attack had been most destructive and set up an idea of what Eferum-Get are like, and then used that idea to call to her a Life Stealer to cause a reaction with the shield. During all this she simply chanted three words which might count as Sigillic magic except she didn’t write them on anything, and the names of sigils alone do not constrain Efera. Which means that the spell was almost entirely Symbolic and…Thought."

"So, more than just lifting things."

"How do you describe red to a blind man?" Sukata asked as she fidgeted with the hem of her smock, another sign that she was really upset. "Sound to the deaf? That is the lesson we’ve just learned: that Force – Thought magic can be used to say what words cannot. It has only been considered crude because we have not used it with any level of skill. She just told us that none of us are real mages."

"Do you think Rennyn’s cruel?" Kendall asked, after a moment. "Nasty, just for the sake of being nasty?"

Sukata stared at her blankly, then shook her head.

"If she thought it was impossible for you to learn Thought magic – properly – she wouldn’t have told you to try and pick up the bowl. Besides, it sounds to me that the thing that kills would-be Thought mages is being distractible or just not able to think in whatever way it is you’re supposed to think. You don’t exactly strike me as the scatty type."

"I have spent years developing my strength," Sukata said, her thin voice dropping so Kendall had to strain to hear it. "I would not be encouraged to take such a risk."

"Pft – far as I can tell from what was going on back there, we were allowed along because everyone else wants to listen in on these so-called lessons. If they have that much respect for her opinions on magic, are they going to argue about what she tells you to do? And there’s plenty of empty fields in Tyrland to practice in."

"I–"

"Afraid you’ll die?"

"No."

"Afraid you’ll fail, then."

Sukata curled her fingers shut. "And you?"

"Dunno. Might give it a few more days."

"You are very pragmatic."

"Even if I can only use it to move things about, it seems worth trying to me," Kendall said, shrugging. "Could earn some money rescuing kittens from trees."

"Worth trying," Sukata repeated, then looked down to the darkening water, where her mother stood directing groups of mages to stand about writing on slates. Even though Sukata wasn’t smiling, Kendall could tell that she’d made her feel better.

This needed to stop. She was letting others mind her business, and worse still she’d started minding theirs. Where would that get her?

Annoyed with herself, Kendall found a pebble and made it hop.