“As often as possible, both,” Sciona said.
Thomil let out a sigh and agreed, “As often as possible, both, Highmage.”
Sciona frowned, realizing how unsatisfied she was with the answer. “No,” she decided. “I prefer that you be honest. Always.”
Thomil’s sponge stopped. He turned to look at her with penetrating gray eyes. “Do you mean that, ma’am?”
She met the gaze without blinking. “We’ve talked about this. Am I one for jokes?”
“Then… In the bar that first night, you asked me about that word Raehem called you: Meidra.”
“Yes?” Sciona tensed in apprehension, assuming Thomil was using this as an opportunity to show that she couldn’t take his honesty. Well, she could take it. She braced herself. “What does it mean?”
“You Tiranish would translate it as ‘lady mage.’ ‘Sorceress,’ maybe, but across the Kwen, it’s a term of deep respect. It’s the only word we have for a ‘highmage’—someone surpassingly skilled in magic.”
“So…” Sciona paused as she tried to parse his meaning. If the word ‘sorceress’ was the Kwen word for a highmage—
“The great magic practitioners of the Pre-Tiran Kwen were all women.”
“What?” Sciona whispered. But no. That couldn’t be. “You’re joking around with me.”
“After I just promised to be honest?”
“But—I would have heard about that,” Sciona said. “I would have read it somewhere.”
“Would you?” Thomil said. “How much Kwen history actually makes it into your mages’ books?”
“Not much.” It generally wasn’t considered worth preserving. “There… there were really female mages?” she breathed, alight with the idea. “At the time of Tiran’s founding?”
“Oh, long before Tiran’s founding,” Thomil said. “Long before men of any race wielded magic. Your texts might call them ‘witches.’”
“Oh.” Yes, of course, there were mentions of Kwen witches in some histories; Sciona had just never thought of them as proper magic users. She had certainly never thought they might be the female equivalent of mages. “Why women and not men?”
“It’s nothing as nonsensical as this High Magistry business”—Thomil gestured vaguely around them—“or any of the strange reasons you Tiranish divide work by sex in a world where Kwen and machines do half your work for you. It’s practical.”
Sciona had never heard anything about her culture described as nonsensical or impractical. It should have made her angry—not giddy. What in Feryn’s holy name had taken hold of her? Why was she hanging on the silver light of Thomil’s eyes like it was salvation?
“How is having women practice magic practical?” she asked, breathless, guilty at how hungry she was for the answer.
“For most of the old Kwen, magic was an art of protection, practiced by those with a deep connection to the home and community. Those people were usually women, who spent long hours tanning hides and stitching clothing, listening to their elders, surrounded by knowledge and love. Men in the Kwen have always spent most seasons hunting, so deep magic isn’t something they ever had time to perfect at the highest levels. Many hunters practiced small magic they learned from their mothers. And a man who couldn’t hunt due to illness or injury might develop quite advanced magic, but the really powerful magic users—the highmages of the Kwen—were well-studied women. Like you.”
Sciona could only sit in silence, trying to absorb the idea. Everything he said made sense, but it was so foreign, so far off. She ached to touch it… and yet it was heresy.
“Thank goodness Archmage Leon took the meidrae’s texts and drove them from this basin to found his superior civilization, right?” A jagged shadow clung to Thomil’s smile. “I’m sure he knew better than they did.”
The challenge bristled in the air between them, and Sciona took it.
“Female or otherwise, there can’t have been Kwen magic-users on the level of Tiranish mages,” she said, her tone more dismissive than her heart.
“Why would you, of all people, say that, ma’am?”
“Because there were witches among the Horde of Thousands when Leon drove them from the Tiran Basin. And there weren’t that many Founding Mages at the time of the conquest.” Only five: Leon, Stravos, Kaedor, Vernyn, and Faene the First. “If the witches of the Kwen were so powerful, how did a handful of Tiranish mages defeat them?”
“That, I don’t know,” Thomil said. “Our songs say that the Tiranish channeled a strange type of magic—evil magic—that no Meidra would dream of practicing. But you’re the expert on magic, ma’am.”
“Yes, I am,” Sciona said firmly, “and Tiranish magic is not evil. Look around you. It’s the greatest force for good on this Blighted Earth. It’s the only reason we’re alive!”
“I’m not arguing with you, Highmage,” Thomil said, but there was a dark undercurrent in his voice that wasn’t quite acquiescent. “My knowledge of magic and history is obviously nothing in the face of yours. If your Founding Mages thought women weren’t suited to magic, and you think they were rightly inspired by God, then I suppose I have to take your word for it.”
Sciona just gripped the bowl in her hands until it hurt, her chest too full and too pained to form words.
“I’ll finish cleaning here,” she said finally.
“Are you sure, ma—”
“Yes. Go home.”
Nodding, Thomil dried his hands and withdrew.
“Thomil, I…” Sciona wanted to thank him—or shout at him, or both. Whatever she really wanted, she was too overwhelmed with the feeling, too afraid of it spilling it out to say anything except: “I’ll see you next week.”
“See you next week, Meidra.”
“I say that magic is hope. Those who are called Tiranish must ever pursue Truth for, through the Light of Truth, any man may achieve greatness in God’s eyes.”
- The Leonid, Meditations, Verse 30 （2 of Tiran）
SCIONA’S BED WAS deep and cloud-soft after a week on her cot at the laboratory, but sleep wouldn’t come. Communication tower conduit lights blinked off the mist on the window, transfixing her. In the distance, she could just hear the boom and hum of the factories that operated through the night. Like those machines, Sciona’s mind just couldn’t stop running, turning each of Thomil’s claims through the gears.
I know these runes you use in your magic… The Venholt Endrastae use these symbols in their oldest naming and divination rituals… The great magic practitioners of the Pre-Tiran Kwen were all women.
Three months ago, when Sciona didn’t know any Kwen personally, she would have said that the people from beyond the barrier made things up all the time. They were ignorant and easily ruled by emotion and illusion. They didn’t even worship the true God. But she knew Thomil. He was smart, he thought through his claims carefully, and he wasn’t one for lying.
As she lay with her eyes open to the fogged window, Sciona thought back on everything she had ever read about Kwen witches—not that there was much to review. Tiranish scholars rarely expended ink on women in general, let alone barbarian ones from beyond the limits of civilization. But if the Kwen women they called witches had, in fact, been mages, practicing similar magic to the Tiranish—