“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?”
“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 when 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, ma’am.”
“Then that makes sense!” Sciona exclaimed. “You know how the Leonid is the basis of all Tiranish magic and morality?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Thomil said, clearly not seeing the connection. “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 think 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. See?” She read aloud because she knew Thomil was slow to read on his own:
“So, 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 Venhold 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 other side of the barrier, it’s just a fact that 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 on Earth 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.