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“God has set me forth the above to be known as the Forbidden Coordinates. Mages, have caution, for to gaze on the fruits of these coordinates within the coil is to walk a dark path and to siphon therefrom is certain and eternal damnation. So says Feryn, All-Knowing.”

T OMMY

PAUSED , PLAINLY confused by Sciona’s abrupt change in demeanor. “I thought you were just setting up today.”

“Yes, well, I don’t have a lot of equipment to unpack,” Sciona said. “What I do have is a lot of ground to cover if I’m going to show up those—” She clenched her teeth, realizing she couldn’t finish the thought in ladylike language.

“Your esteemed colleagues?” Tommy offered.

“See, you’re being a helpful assistant already.” But if Tommy was going to be genuinely useful, she needed him up to speed, so she dragged an extra chair over to one of the desks. “Sit.”

Tommy obeyed, and Sciona hauled a spellograph into a position where he could see the keys as she typed.

“So, here’s, um…” Sciona stopped short of saying, ‘here’s the first thing you need to know’ because Feryn, what was the first thing Tommy needed to know?

They would have to cover the basics, obviously, but this wasn’t a grade-school magic class.

There was no time to dally copying pages of out-of-context spell fragments and painstakingly reviewing all the parts of a spellograph.

Perhaps it was best to go backwards, start big and work from there.

“To begin, why don’t I tell you about what I’m here to do? You know how the Mage Council is planning to expand the barrier around Tiran?”

“I heard on the radio, ma’am.”

“And you understand why this task is urgent?”

Tommy gave a noncommittal shrug that said neither ‘yes’ nor’ no,’ so Sciona went ahead and explained.

“Obviously, overpopulation has plagued Tiran since before you or I were born.” And within Sciona’s lifetime, apartment complexes had grown taller, living conditions more strained.

“I mean, consider how the Kwen Quarter has overflowed in just the last few years with your peoples’ tendency to multiply like…

” A notoriously alarmist radio personality had used the word’ rats.

’ Aunt Winny always said ‘bunnies.’ Sciona realized that even the latter didn’t sound particularly kind with Tommy’s gray eyes on her.

“So, um…” Sciona withdrew from the social dimensions of the project and back into her comfort zone of magical mechanics.

“The barrier has two functions: warming and anti-Blight shielding. I don’t know much about the action spells that comprise those two functions—I mean, no one does, given that they date back to the Founding.

What I do know is that they take up an incredible amount of energy.

Think about it like”—how to explain to the layman?

—“I don’t know… a hundred trains’-worth of energy.

And magical energy doesn’t just come from nowhere.

It has to be sourced from the Otherrealm, so in order to expand Tiran’s barrier, the High Magistry will need to pull an unprecedented amount of energy from the Otherrealm all at once—that will be the hard part—and then sustain that higher-energy barrier indefinitely.

Maybe forever. Now, it’s not like the Otherrealm doesn’t contain sufficient energy to power the expansion and the subsequent increased energy demands.

We just—oh, wait. I should ask, do you know what the Otherrealm is? ”

“Only what the preachers say on the radio and in the square, ma’am.”

“Leonite or Tirasian preachers?”

“Um…” Tommy thought for a moment. “Forgive me, ma’am. I’ve never been totally clear on the difference.”

“Right!” Sciona laughed but, when Tommy didn’t smile, realized he wasn’t joking.

He really was that ignorant of basic religious doctrine.

“Oh. Well, Leonites subscribe to the texts Leon himself wrote during his life—the actual Founding Texts. Tirasians lump in everything an increasingly senile Faene the First wrote about Leon’s intentions. ”

“So, I take it you’re a Leonite, ma’am?”

“I know it’s unusual for a mage,” she said, “but don’t judge me. I was raised on the wrong side of the tracks.”

“I wouldn’t judge, ma’am. It’s all the same to me.”

“Well, it’s very much not all the same,” she said indignantly before remembering the more important topic at hand. “So—what do the preachers in your neighborhood say about the Otherrealm?”

“That God opened the Otherrealm up to the Founding Mages when he tasked them with building Tiran. Um…” Tommy frowned as though trying to recall more. “They call it the Garden.”

“So, Leonite preachers, then.” Tirasian preachers usually called the Otherrealm the Bounty and referenced God creating it for the mages’ use rather than just ‘opening’ it.

“And that’s all they explain?” Sciona supposed the workings of the world were always dumbed down for the general populous—probably doubly so in the Kwen Quarter.

“Yes, ma’am. But I’ve gathered from the mages’ conversations here that the Otherrealm is not a garden of earthly material… or… not just earthly material, anyway.” He looked tentatively at Sciona. “Mages can pull energy out of it. That’s what powers spells, yes?”

“Exactly!” Thank goodness Tommy seemed a little sharper than the average Kwen. “That process of finding and pulling energy is what we call sourcing . When you hear someone say a ‘sourcing spell’ or ‘hey, Mordra the Tenth is a terrible sourcer,’ that’s what they’re referring to.”

A smile twitched at the corner of Tommy’s mouth—so small Sciona barely noticed before it vanished behind the gray veil of indifference. “I see.”

“Now, sourcing can be difficult and dangerous because the Otherrealm is variable. Not every part of it contains the same concentration of energy. In that way, it really is like a garden; if you go into a vegetable patch blindfolded and start grabbing for produce, you’re going to end up with a lot of dirt and leaves—maybe some bees—but probably not that much vegetable, right? ”

“Right.” Tommy seemed to grasp the metaphor, and Sciona was pleased with herself.

“Mapping is what a mage does so he isn’t walking into the garden blind,” she continued.

“It’s the part of a sourcing spell wherein we open a sort of window to the Otherrealm—big or small, depending on the coordinates we choose.

Through this window, we can see where the energy is concentrated, where it’s sparse, and where it’s basically nonexistent.

That’s my specialty: manually mapping to tap into an energy source proportional to a given action spell.

So”—she plucked a teacup from the box next to her and set it on the desk—“say the goal of my action spell is to push this cup an inch to the right. I’m not looking for a very broad or deep well of energy there.

If the goal is to move this building one inch to the right, I’m looking for a lot of energy, and I’ll probably need a series of sourcing spells to get the amount I need.

We call that a spellweb—which we’ll get to soon. ”

“So, your specialty is finding energy sources of the right size in the Otherrealm,” Tommy said.

“Yeah. Not too difficult to understand, right?”

“No, ma’am. I think I follow.”

“Good. Because now I’m going to show you examples of the three basic types of mapping spell before we get into my weird custom ones.

” Sciona pulled the spellograph toward her.

“Let me just write up an action spell to demonstrate them. We’ll use a pushing spell on, um”—she looked around the desk—“not the cup.” That would break if she accidentally pushed it off the edge.

“This book,” she set Mordra the First’s Magical Engines on the desk before the spellograph and started typing.

When she glanced up at Tommy, his gray eyes had gotten a little wider. People always described the gray of Kwen eyes as lifeless and dull, but wonder had made Tommy’s eyes electric—like clouds backlit with lightning.

“What?” she said, oddly self-conscious in the glow of that bright bank of clouds.

“I just… I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone type that fast, ma’am.”

“You’ve worked on this floor for a while, haven’t you? You’ve seen other highmages typing.”

“Not like that.”

Sciona smiled. “Well, I started behind most of them. I’ve had to be fast to catch up.”

He nodded.

“Alright, so the spell I’m writing right now is pretty boring.

” Knowing Tommy didn’t have a prayer of following the magical symbols as they hit the page, she opted instead to narrate her process.

“Right now, I’m directing the action spell to recognize a rectangular object under two Leonic pounds within two Vendric feet of the spellograph,” she said over the click of keys.

“That’s a quick way to rule out everything except the book.

And, because we’re being boring, we’re going to name this rectangular, under-two-pound element ‘BOOK.’” She punched in the tag.

“So, whenever I refer to ‘BOOK’ for the rest of the spell, the magic will recognize it as this object.” She nodded to Magical Engines .

“So, magic recognizes Tiranish words, ma’am?” Tommy said in confusion. “I thought it was all written in this old runic language?” He gestured to the half-page of spellwork he couldn’t read.

“It is,” Sciona said, although she understood his confusion.

“The magic will only recognize our object as a book because that’s what I decided to call it and wrote the word into the fabric of the action spell.

I could have called it by its title, or TEDIOUS READING, or GASLAMP, or TOMMY, and the magic would recognize it as such.

That’s the fun thing about being a mage.

You get to call things by whatever name you want, and, through magic, it becomes true. ”

“Hmm,” Tommy grunted with a thoughtful frown but didn’t say anything more.

Sciona didn’t know why she prompted, “What?” She was supposed to be the one doing the explaining.

Tommy shook his head. “That’s a lot of power.”