“This particular subject?”
“The true nature of the Otherrealm,” Bringham said quietly, as though worried someone might hear him—here within the walls of his office at the top of his own building. “We do not speak of it.”
Sciona’s world had gone blank.
Bringham knew. Everything she had told him about Blight and the source of magic… he had known, and he had lied to her.
“This was not something God ever intended men to perceive,” Bringham continued. “This is why He bid Leon compose mapping spells with guards in them and then bid Faene fix those lines in sacred canon. We are a civilized people, living civilized lives. To talk about where magic comes from is… It is in poor taste.”
In poor taste? “Well, I need you to talk about it.” The only part of Sciona’s body that still felt real was her heart, beating far too hard. “If I’m going to stay and keep researching here. Please…” She needed to hear him say the words ‘it’s not really true. We don’t siphon human life. I had no knowledge of this. None of us had any knowledge of this.’
“Freynan, be realistic. We need a great deal of energy to keep Tiran in its glory, to keep its citizens safe and free and provided for. We can’t do all that while wringing our hands about where that energy comes from.”
Sciona’s heart, floating in bodiless limbo, froze straight through.
“I’m posing this to you logically, not mincing words, because I know you can handle the truth. I’m trusting you.” Bringham said it as though she owed him something in return. What? Her acceptance? Her calm?
“You really knew…” This whole time, the archmages had known. Bringham had known and persisted with magic, great and small, teaching it to the next generation, claiming it was a blessing from God.
“Of course, I know, Freynan. All of us do.”
“But—how?”
“Think about it, Freynan. Archmage Thelanra and Archmage Gamwen are both mapping specialists. Did you imagine that, throughout their combined hundred years in the High Magistry, they never deduced what you did in a few months? Did you imagine that their illustrious predecessors never deduced it? You’re a damn good mage, Freynan, but—”
“I didn’t just deduce it,” Sciona cut him off. Embarrassingly, Thomil had been the one to draw conclusions from the Forbidden Coordinates before Sciona suspected anything. “I saw it. Clearly. As though it was right in front of me. If Gamwen or Thelanra had seen what I did, they…” What did she mean to say? That they wouldn’t continue using magic? That Bringham wouldn’t? “I saw a girl in my mapping coil, and when I… wh-when I—”
“Freynan, listen to me.” Bringham leaned forward with a note of urgency. “The most powerful minds and hardest hearts have a breaking point. This—what you’re doing right now—is not something mages can afford to do to themselves. This is not something I want you to do to yourself. Please. You have too much to offer.”
“So, you don’t want me to acknowledge the truth? To name it? Isn’t that a mage’s purpose under God?”
“Not in this case,” Bringham said softly. “Not when it comes to the Otherrealm.”
Thomil was right. Bringham didn’t care. Not about Sciona, not about the lives he had taken in his long career of magic. And if warm, giving, nurturing Bringham didn’t care, then none of them did. Sciona was certain. And, with that certainty, a deep hatred welled in her frozen heart, shooting the ice through with wrath. It wasn’t just hatred for one man who had carelessly killed so many for his power; it was pettier and more intimate than that.
Bringham and his ilk had built themselves up as Tiran’s heroes for generations, all the way back to the Founding Mages. Hundreds of thousands of people worshipped them. Hundreds of thousands of little boys—and little girls, when they were as ambitious as Sciona—wanted to be them. The mages of Tiran accepted that reverence as if they had earned it when, in truth, they were the deepest, lowest sort of evil. By both the Kwen metric of the harm they did and the Tiranish metric of intention, these were the worst souls in the universe. How dare they hold that evil up before Sciona as an ideal? How dare they siphon her energy, her enthusiasm, her life’s work into their organization on the promise that it was a great good?
“Why?” Was the only word she had in her, this cracked whisper that couldn’t possibly contain all the rage in her being.
“Because Tiran comes first.” Bringham’s voice was as softly earnest as it had ever been, and it poisoned every kind thing he had ever said to her. “Progress comes first. Magic is all that separates our civilization from the hardship and savagery of the Kwen.”
“But we have a hand in making the Kwen a savage place!” Sciona burst out. “The conditions beyond the barrier—those are conditions our magic created.” She thought of scarred Carra clutching that knife, determined to kill her. What had to happen to a little girl to turn her into that? What sort of horrors did she have to endure?
“Our magic creates civilization. Where it comes from is out of our hands. It is God’s will.”
“But it’s not,” Sciona protested. “It’s literally not. We look for energy sources, map them, siphon them—willingly, knowingly. How do you abdicate responsibility for that?”
“By remembering that God gave His chosen mages access to the Otherrealm for a reason. He meant for us to use it.”
“Except he didn’t ‘give us access to it,’” Sciona said. “Founding Mage Leon figured out how to map and siphon based on texts he took from the Endras—the Kwen of the Vendholt Mountains.”
“Under divine inspiration,” Bringham said with insufferable confidence. “Remember, this was at the same time God sent him a vision that he must found a new city.”
“Why would a good God ask anyone to found a city at such a cost?”
“No one can know the Father’s reasons, and those are not for us to question.” Bringham seemed to see that his answer had not satisfied Sciona and pitifully tried to patch it. “We can infer that God knew that hard times were coming to the Kwen, and He wanted His true worshippers to be protected.”
“Hard times…”
It was such a pleasing story, imagining that the Tiranish were simply chosen for survival by an all-knowing power beyond their control. But there was a serious cause-and-effect problem with Bringham’s logic that Thomil had identified only moments after coming to understand the origins of Tiranish magic. ‘Hard times’ had come upon the world because of Blight—if not solely because of it, mostly because of it.
How was a population supposed to recover from a bad crop or bitter winter when death kept striking out of nowhere? The Kwen hadn’t coincidentally fallen into chaos and starvation during the same time that Tiran was founded; the Kwen had fallen because Tiran was founded. Because stolen magic had enabled Leon and his disciples to take even more of what was not theirs.
“Need I remind you that Leon gave the tribes of the Kwen a chance to join him in salvation?” Bringham said. “He warned them of the dark times to come if they chose not to submit to the true God. Those who refused him simply suffered the consequences of their heresy. They brought Blight on themselves.”