“Then you spent eight years as an apprentice?” Rys asked.
“Pretty much. There are three stages of apprenticeship, with the final one involving a proper thesis and assessment to determine that you’re fit to be a mage,” Vallis said. “After that, you become a proper mage. The ranks within the mage towers are: adept, journeyman, magister, grand magister. There’s also archmagister and archmage, but those are special.”
“You compared my magic to Fara’s when we first met. Where would that put me as a rank?” Rys asked.
Vallis’s eyes widened. “Uh…”
Fara chuckled. “Somewhere extra special. Mages are researchers for the most part. A magister spends most of his time in a research lab. The ones who fight are few and far between. They call them combat magisters, because they’re given the rank for political reasons.”
Rus supposed that nobody wanted a bunch of pipsqueak mages bossing around the security, just because they weren’t researchers. But it raised major questions about how mage towers worked.
“Your evocation isn’t great, though. You’re definitely still an apprentice,” Vallis said.
“Thanks,” Rys said drily.
Vallis winked at him and waved her head back and forth.
Raising an eyebrow, Fara asked the obvious question, “Why bother learning? I feel that you’ve forgotten more about magic than almost anybody I’ve ever met.”
“I didn’t learn all of that through osmosis,” Rys said.
“Through what?” Vallis asked.
“Don’t worry about it,” Rys said. “Staying up-to-date on magical theory is a constant process. Infernals constantly thought they knew everything. They were wrong about a lot of things. The angels knew a lot more, but getting knowledge from them is like getting blood from a stone. The very concept of evocation contradicts a fundamental magical ‘law’ I accepted.”
“Which is?” Fara asked, her eyes narrow.
“Evocation uses the ambient magical energy around the user. That’s fine. But it also allows something without a magical essence to manipulate magical energy outside of itself,” Rys explained. “That’s what magitech does. Non-living things can manipulate magic. The possibilities that allows are mind-boggling. You could build an army of self-powered constructs capable of conquering the world.”
“Of course, your first idea is to use it to conquer the world,” Fara muttered.
“Pretty sure that already happened,” Vallis said. “It’s called the Golden Age of Magic. Mages invented a ton of stuff, but things got out of control. A lot of cities were destroyed and I know that Azrael got involved at some point and fought a huge dragon.”
“That’s less impressive than it sounds,” Rys said. “Fighting the dragon, that is. I’m very impressed by the part where human mages invented a lot.”
A quick check on his knowledge Gift confirmed that the Golden Age of Magic was one of the most significant events in history. Getting Darus to shut up about it was hard, particularly given they’d played a key role in the events. Vallis likely didn’t know much about it, beyond the basics.
“But I’m curious,” Fara asked. “About magical energy. I think I know how it works, but I want to hear you explain it. All of it. Because you said something about my tails before that confused me.”
Ah, so that was her interest in this. Rys had wondered why she had hung around.
“I can’t promise you’ll follow everything,” he warned.
“Try me,” she said.
After both women pulled up chairs, he settled in for an explanation.
“I’ll start with some knowledge that has been lost over the centuries: basic planar theory,” Rys said.
“Really? That’s where we’re starting?” Vallis asked with a groan.
He ignored her, noting Fara’s interest.
“We exist on the material plane, but there is also the magical plane—sometimes called the sorcerous plane—and the astral plane. The material plane is where everything interesting happens. The other two planes are basically gigantic blobs of energy.”
He drew a glowing circle on the floor between them. “Imagine that this is Harrium. The first thing you need to realize is that Harrium has its own material, magical, and astral planes. These are the local planes. All magical and astral energy in the world manifests locally. Our magical essences exist in this world, because we are native to Harrium.”
“So a divine being is one from planes that aren’t local?” Fara asked.
“That’s right, but we’re getting ahead of ourselves,” Rys said.
He then drew a dozen other circles around the first one. “These are the magical planes of other worlds. Collectively, we call these the ‘greater magical plane’ because they’re not ours. Hell is one of these. Magical energy from any plane other than the local one needs to be processed, or else bad things happen.”
“So infernal energy isn’t unique?” Fara asked.
“Nope. We just know a lot about it because Hell is one of the few worlds connected to Harrium, due to the Emergence,” Rys said. “The Emergence caused a ton of portals to connect several other worlds to Harrium. Those worlds aren’t even connected to Harrium anymore, but because we know about them, we can still connect to them using magic.”
The same could happen with other worlds, but finding other worlds was harder than it appeared. Rys had found that out the hard way. The greater planes were vast, and mostly empty. The same could be said of the space outside the planet, apparently. It was mostly void.
He got rid of the circles. “The other major plane is the astral plane, which is the plane of souls. It works differently. Our souls don’t exist in the local plane. They exist in the greater plane, which is basically a huge space somewhere.”
Rys drew a bunch of circles close together, connected by lines to elsewhere. “Imagine the greater astral plane as a gigantic mass of balloons. It’s infinitely large and the souls of every world connects to it. The only reason this matters is because the relative location of a soul affects a person. A soul in the ‘justice’ location of the astral plane will be more likely to want to see justice done. Same can be said for concepts like ‘order’ or ‘chaos,’ and some souls have more complicated concepts.”
Fara and Vallis looked at each other.
“Is that really how my soul guides me in life?” Fara asked, troubled. “I have a more orderly soul, so I obey others?”
“I mean, it’s a ball of energy,” Rys said, amused. “How did you think it guided you? You are your own person. What you are can affect your decisions, but you make the final call in the end. It’s different for beings like angels, though. But even they can do more than they choose to.”
“Really? Like what?” Vallis asked.
“Sex, for one,” Rys said. “But the angels did rule a continent once. They did some questionable things.”
After erasing the glowing diagram of the balloons, Rys leaned back. “Anyway, you asked about your tails. Planar theory matters for one reason: when you’re trying to use magic, you need to use magical energy. Whenever you use a spiritual technique, you first convert astral energy into magical energy, then cast the technique.”
“That seems inefficient,” Fara said.
“It is for everybody else,” Rys said. “It’s why spiritualism is usually awful. Astral power cheats by bitch-slapping reality with astral energy directly, but this directly overwrites reality. There are side-effects, and using astral energy is lethal for most races. So us mere mortals have to convert astral energy first.”
“But foxes are better at it?”
“Maybe? I don’t know. Your tails look like a gigantic ball of astral energy. I’d love to get a look at one, but you seem attached to yours,” Rys said.
Fara hugged her tails and glared at him. “You’re not touching my tails.”
“I don’t plan to do anything to you,” he said, raising his hands. “I can learn enough from seeing you cast magic.”
That was a lie, but
Fara was far more valuable as an ally. Plus, there was an entire race of foxes. Surely, he could get his hands on one eventually.
“Gonna admit, I didn’t follow half of that,” Vallis said with a shake of her head. “But I can tell that you can’t use evocation still. How about we get back to your practice?”
Vallis grinned at him, and he resisted the urge to glare at her.
“Well, I’ll leave you to it,” Fara said, rising from her seat. “Thank you for the explanation. It was surprisingly illuminating.” She gave them a look. “Maria is coming tomorrow. Don’t stay up too late.”
“I’ll only ride his cock until midnight,” Vallis said with a wink. “You can trust me to be responsible.”
“Don’t make me slap you again,” Fara warned.
Chapter 16
When Maria arrived in the morning, it was by horseback rather than carriage. Rys had asked her to leave Barul behind, so she brought two other guards. They wore guard uniforms of Anceston and had horns protruded through their helmets.
Maria dismounted at the entrance of the manor, waving off the guards who tried to help her. She wore riding clothes, with her only nod to fashion being a frilly skirt. Uncapping her helmet and pulling it over her horns, she gave Rys a bright smile.
“Lord Talarys, what a surprise to stumble into you on my morning ride,” she chirped, blatantly lying.
The guards looked to either side, their expressions stony.
“Grigor, why don’t you join Lady Maria’s guards in one of the break rooms?” Rys suggested.
Grigor nodded and led the guards away, who tried not to stare at his bulk too much. He had covered his chest this time at least.
“I take it that we’re going to discuss final terms?” Maria said as they entered the manor.
Rys led her directly to his study. A plate of pastries sat on the table, along with a carafe of water and some leaf teas. Nobody else was present, as Rys wanted to discuss matters with Maria in private.
Picking at the refreshments, Maria smiled. “I recognize all of this. These are my favorites.” She held up a danish. “They’re even freshly baked, aren’t they? Did you send somebody to my favorite bakery first thing this morning? I’m surprised you found out about the leaf tea, as I buy it so rarely through Tarmouth.”
Rys settled in on his sofa and stretched out his arms. “I figured a demonstration of my intelligence assets would help.”
Maria gave him a sidelong look as she nibbled on a danish. “I see.”
He allowed her to putter about for a few minutes to make her tea and put together a small tower of pastries. Afterward, she pulled up a chair opposite him.
“You move swiftly, Lord Talarys,” Maria said, a smile plastered on her face.
“This is fairly important. I wanted to give it my full attention,” he lied. “Last time we met, you said you wanted to solidify your rule over the territory and we’d share the results. I have an alternate proposal.”
Maria’s smile didn’t shift and she stared at him.
“Any split of power needs to be honest about what we each bring to the table,” Rys said, undeterred by her behavior. “You came to me. I’d say that’s for good reason. Compagnon are a merchant league with effectively infinite wealth compared to you. But I have military assets that cannot be bought, intelligence capabilities, my own merchants, and more magical ability than you know.”
“I can imagine your magical ability,” Maria said. “Mansions don’t appear overnight through normal means.”
Rys inclined his head. Fair point.
He noted that she hadn’t responded to his point, however. Her smile remained firmly in place.
“By contrast, you’re the Lord-Mayor. You might have political influence, but everything else could be taken by force. Compagnon proves that,” Rys said. Maria’s smile flickered, but only briefly. “That influence and your connections do make you valuable. But they also come with baggage, such as—”
“The Kinadain,” Maria interrupted. “The tensions with them are strong and have worsened since Compagnon arrived. I looked into what you mentioned. Fortunately, the Kinadain have promised to help against Compagnon.”
“Have they now?” Rys asked.
Maria hesitated, but pushed ahead, “The elders promised Barul they would send additional warriors to free the villagers around Anceston. That will reduce the amount of work you need to do.”
“That’s it?” Rys said. He sighed, then plucked a pink crystal from his pocket.
The crystal shimmered in the light from the windows as he placed it on a coffee table between them. With a tap of his finger, Rys activated it. The crystal played the audio recording stored within it.
Several voices filtered out into the study. They spoke for close to fifteen minutes. Rys stood up and walked over to his desk while they did, allowing Maria to stare in shock at the crystal. Within his desk was a sheaf of papers—the transcription of the recording that Tyrisa had produced.
The recording stopped. Rys dropped the transcript on Maria’s lap and she jumped a foot in the air with a squeal.
“That’s a transcript of the recording,” he said.
“But…” Maria licked her lips. “That was the liaison for the largest dain in the region. Why is he speaking with that Compagnon bitch?”
“Because they’re colluding with them to control the artifact market here,” Rys said. “The Kinadain have a monopoly on collecting artifacts, but that’s only in this part of the archipelago. The artifact market is larger than this slice of Kavolara, so they can’t mess with prices much. But if you control both ends of a supply chain, you can squeeze the middle like a sausage.”
Rys did a charade of him pressing together an invisible sausage from both ends. “The Kinadain only sell their artifacts to merchants who sell to Compagnon. Compagnon then buy at rock-bottom prices from those merchants and sell the artifacts for massive profit to traders in Tarmouth. This pushes all of the costs onto the ordinary merchants, and those who don’t play along are crushed. The profits are then split between Compagnon and the Kinadain, leaving Anceston and Port Mayfield in ruins.”
Maria stared at him. “You… know a lot about this sort of thing, don’t you?”
Rys shrugged. “It’s more complicated than I expected. I’ll upgrade my assessment of Compagnon’s plan to a nine out of ten. Maybe even a nine and a half. Hard to fuck this one up, save for extreme bad luck.” Like Rys waking up from a 1500 year coma and ruining their plans.
“I had thought…” Maria closed her eyes. “I was so caught up in my family issues that I blamed everything on them. My father felt that everything was tied to the loss of our heritage. I believed him. It seemed so easy to believe. That the Kinadain were reluctant to help because they didn’t trust my family anymore. This is just greed.”
Tears welled up in the corners of her eyes. Maria wiped them away, then bunched her skirt up in her fists.
Rys resisted the urge to make a snappy misanthropic remark. This wasn’t the time.
Slowly, Maria regained her composure. “Do you have more?” she asked.
“Several more recordings and transcripts,” he said. “But with less important Kinadain.”
“I’d like them, please.”
“After we finalize this matter.”
She nodded and glared at the transcript in her lap. After several seconds, she refocused herself on Rys.
“I take it you don’t trust the promise that Barul received? Or even Barul?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Barul wanted to kill me the moment he saw me. But I’ll admit that the Kinadain’s attitude toward Compagnon is off. They supposedly hate foreign invaders, so this is out of character for them.”
“It is. If I hadn’t heard that recording…” Maria bit her lip. “Barul dislikes you because this castle is sacred to him. He is a Sword-Slayer, an elite warrior within the Kinadain who holds a special status. He knows things that other Kinadain don’t. When he learned that you
had turned this castle into your base, he flew into a rage. I had never seen anything like it.”
Yet she brought him here?
“I think we need to finalize our deal,” Rys said.
Maria nodded, face grim. “You want me to…” she trailed off. “Your captain called your Rys, correct? You want me to be on the bottom of our relationship, Rys? To be the one who begs for aid and assistance from you?”
“That’s not how I’d put it,” he said drily.
“But you want me below you.” Her tone turned sultry. Wasn’t she engaged?
Rys stood up and walked around the table. Maria stared up at him, her eyes widening.
“I don’t need you below me,” he said. “You already are.”
A long pause. Maria’s breathing turned short and rapid, and he felt it on his legs. Her eyes turned downward, focusing on a particular part of him.
Her eyes lidded and she licked her lips. She opened her mouth.
“But now we’re going to formalize that,” Rys said, before she did anything. “You’re going to sign a contract.”
Maria blinked. “Wait, that’s where this is going?” Her voice was a plaintive whine, as she realized she wasn’t getting into his pants just yet.
“It can still go somewhere else if you like, but not until you sign the contract,” he said.
There wasn’t a chance in Hell that he was sticking his dick in Maria before he ensured her loyalty. That was the path to pain and betrayal.
She pouted. “You ruined the mood.”
“I take it you’re not very interested in Barul,” he said as he sat down.
Internally, he contacted Tyrisa using mindspeak. She let him know she’d be over within a few minutes, once she gathered her materials.
Maria rolled her eyes. “It’s hard to be interested in somebody who isn’t interested in you, other than as an idolized statue far above him. If we’re talking contracts, does it include anything about my needs being met? Because I have those, and you’re being rather mean right now.”
“We’re not getting married,” Rys said.
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