Page 61

But Gamwen made an impatient shushing motion with his hand and pressed, “Which lines, Highmage Freynan? Can you explain your process?”

So, Sciona went through the Stravos-Kaedor spell line-by-line for the Council.

Some of them seemed uninterested except to shake their heads in disapproval.

Archmage Bringham beamed, and Archmage Gamwen took notes like a boy in school.

For a moment, wrapped in the beautiful minutia of the work, Sciona could almost forget that they were dealing with human lives on the other side of that luminous screen.

Almost. But not quite. The real presentation was still ahead of her.

“Well,” Archmage Orynhel said, openly pleased.

“If these spells of Highmage Freynan’s hold up under review and testing, we should be able to move forward with the expansion on our earliest timeline.

And you believe these mapping spells are ready for integration with the barrier expansion action spells, Miss Freynan? ”

“Yes, Archmage Supreme.” In fact, she already had integrated them with barrier expansion spells and left the work sitting on her spellograph in the widow’s house with Thomil.

But no one in this chamber needed to know that spellograph existed.

According to their records, it had been scrapped and melted to steel ore by now.

“Brilliant work, Highmage Freynan,” said Archmage Orynhel. “You may have a seat.”

“Thank you, Archmages,” Sciona said with a glance at the great clock above the Council. Less than ten minutes until noon. The weak winter sun was rising, bleeding red light through the windows. “But what I demonstrated doesn’t actually represent all my findings.”

“It doesn’t?” Archmage Orynhel said in surprise.

“I’ve composed a second spell that shows the Otherrealm in even greater detail—detail I believe to be unprecedented in the history of Tiranish magic.”

She didn’t wait for permission this time. Noon was only minutes away. Quickly swapping the sheaf out of the spellograph, Sciona activated her second mapping spell.

This one was the Freynan Mirror, adapted from Stravos’s witch magic.

It displayed the same coordinates as the first spell but in color, as though through clear glass.

Sciona had chosen the location carefully.

It was far south, where winter was brighter and not as brutal.

This was a forest full of life: strange furry creatures pawing about in the leaf litter, birds flurrying about, and a small human settlement exposed by a gap in the tree cover.

People were just visible through the lattice of bare branches—men carrying wood and women tanning a deer hide as children chased around their legs.

Silence had fallen behind the Council desk. Bringham looked like he might be ill. Duris and Mordra the Ninth looked offended. All looked utterly astonished.

“Wh-what is this?” Archmage Thelanra stuttered at last.

“It’s the Otherrealm as it would look to the human eye, Archmage.” Sciona stepped back to face the Council. “That is to say, of course: this is the Kwen.”

Ripples of confusion broke out among the highmages. Not all of them had served in the High Magistry long enough to know.

“Miss Freynan,” Archmage Gamwen started. “I don’t think—”

“When we siphon energy for our spells, plants, animals, and human beings die beyond the barrier. Only some of my peers know this.” Sciona turned and gave an apologetic nod to the highmages on the benches all around her.

“But the Magistry Council has always known. They’ve known since our forefathers laid the foundations for Tiran. They’ve chosen to keep it quiet.”

As Sciona turned back to the Council, the expressions there still ranged from shock to rage. No hint of guilt to be found.

“How dare you!” Thelanra stood, his wispy beard trembling with rage.

“You dirty little Leonite—” Archmage Duris started, but Gamwen, the only Leonite currently seated on the Council, cut him off.

“Watch yourself, Duris.”

“Oh, spare us, Gamwen!” Renthorn the Second snarled. “The girl is out of line in her claims and her spellwork. It’s a disgrace. And you!” He whirled on his son, who had begun laughing. “That’s quite enough of that!”

“Why, Father?” Renthorn the Third was wearing a look of total delight—the same one he had worn as he pounced on Sciona in the library. “She’s only showing you the bare, beautiful truth of our art! Why deny our power? Why deny our superiority?”

“Silence!” the Second snarled. “Or, by Feryn, I will have your research seized and passed to a mage of worthier character. Archmage Supreme, excuse my son’s outburst. Freynan obviously speaks heresy and nonsense.”

“It’s easy for you to call it nonsense,” Sciona said.

“It’s easy to deny the truth when our mapping only deals with bright shapes on a gray backdrop.

I think the Founding Mages knew this. That’s why Faene the First retroactively forbade the modification of standard mapping spells years after Leon and Kaedor were dead.

Faene realized that Leon and Kaedor’s forms of mapping would never show their descendants the real cost of magic.

But there was one mage in history who knew how to open a clear window to the lands we falsely call the Otherrealm.

Andrethen Stravos knew. Now, there is a second. ”

Sciona indicated the human settlement milling in irrefutable color before the High Magistry, then leveled her gaze at Orynhel.

“Archmage Supreme, may I ask why you’ve allowed this to continue? The mass murder and the lies surrounding it?”

“Insolent child!” Thelanra spat. “That is not for you to ask, as it is not for us to ask of our glorious forebears! For shame, young lady! For shame!”

Sciona lifted her chin to the quivering old man. “If there is shame to bear here, Archmage Thelanra, it is not mine. I’ve used my talents to seek God’s Truth for my entire career. Can you say the same?”

“You dare—” Renthorn the Second started, but Orynhel held up a hand. The Archmage Supreme’s answer was calmer than the others’.

“I see your pain, my child, and I understand your confusion. But the Founding Mages were wise in their decisions, and Faene the First was wise in his teachings. God gifted us the Otherrealm and bade us use it to prosper. To neglect that bounty would be an insult to Him. The Founding Mages nobly took the pain of knowledge from their children so that we might please God as pure souls in clear conscience.”

Sciona took a breath to steady herself. “But human lives can’t possibly be treated like bounty. Mass lies can’t possibly please the God of Truth.”

“Tiran is God’s city and His treasure,” Archmage Orynhel responded with serene confidence—not just addressing Sciona, she realized, but all the highmages in attendance, some of whom would be new to the truth about the Otherrealm.

“All that benefits Tiran pleases God. I am sorry that the burden of knowledge has come upon you too early, before you were ready to bear it. But bear it we all must. Now, close this window, Highmage Freynan. And if you value that brilliant mind and good heart of yours, do not look through it again until you can face it.”

Orynhel’s tone remained warm, fatherly in its serenity, even as the mages on either side of him seethed. At his age, he must have given this speech so many times to so many younger mages. Either he had started to believe the words himself, or Sciona was standing opposite Tiran’s master deceiver.

“I’m sorry, Archmage Supreme,” she said. “I was taught that the quest for knowledge is at the core of all magic” —a direct quote from Faene the First—“and self-delusion is the death of God, Goodness, and Truth.”

Archmage Duris rolled his eyes. “You see this, Bringham? Do all of you see now? This is precisely why we don’t allow women into our order. God made them to be mothers. They biologically don’t have it in them to do what is necessary.”

“The girl has a good heart,” Archmage Gamwen protested.

“That’s no bad thing in a mage whose duty is to serve God and Tiran.

Miss Freynan, I understand your confusion.

All of us, I’m sure, remember when we learned the truth of magic and how difficult that was.

This is the burden we all bear as stewards of God’s Haven.

No one is telling you that this responsibility is easy, but it is a necessary one to maintain our city and to punish those who would defy God’s teachings. ”

All the same rationales over and over, as though, by repetition, they would become true.

“You all seem so sure of yourselves…” Sciona murmured, then, realizing her voice had gone too quiet in pain, she spoke louder so the Archmages could hear. “But I’ve looked back on the historical facts available to all of you. I’ve run the numbers available to all of you, and you are wrong.”

It set a tremor through her whole body to speak such heresy to the heads of her discipline and religion. But if Sciona didn’t stand up to this, who would?

No one else can do what you do, Alba had said. There was no one else to stand up for Thomil’s people, for Carra’s future, for the sanctity of Truth in the face of this insidious lattice of lies.

“If what we do to the Kwen is not murder, if it’s all the will of God, then why hide it?”

“As you have just demonstrated, my child,” Archmage Orynhel said, “not everyone is ready to know the truth. Many minds are too weak, many hearts too soft. It would cause the common people too much distress.”

“Is that it?” Sciona asked. “Or is it that, if the common people knew, they might not see the Magistry as Tiran’s highest good—magnanimous, untouchable, above criticism?”

“Sciona!” Bringham said, more imploring than angry. “Stop! You’re unwell.”

“I know that,” Sciona snapped. “I know. But whatever illness has taken me, you’re all in the advanced stages. You’re all so far gone that you can’t tell a human soul from food for your ambitions.”

“Please!” Archmage Renthorn wasn’t the only one who scoffed at the statement.

“The Kwen are not people like you and me,” said Gamwen, who seemed to be the only archmage earnestly invested in out-arguing Sciona. “They are heathens who worship false gods.”

“We worship a false god if we persist in this lie!”

“Miss Freynan,” Gamwen said. “Please, calm yourself. They’re only Kwen.”

“Yes…” Sciona tamped down on the deep hurt in her chest. “That’s what I thought you’d say. That’s why I took this into my own hands.”

Only Bringham looked immediately concerned. “What?” he said. “Sciona, took what into your hands?”

“The future of Tiran. Truth before comfort. That’s what Faene the First said, right? So, I’ve decided to live those words, and I’ll have the rest of you live them, too, whether you like it or not. This city is going to know where its energy comes from.”

“Sciona!” Bringham was on his feet. “Whatever you’re thinking of doing, it’s not worth it. Stop it immediately!”

“There’s nothing for me to stop, Archmage,” she said. “It’s already done.”

“What is already done?” Archmage Duris demanded.

“Wait for it, Archmage.” Sciona held up a finger and experienced a thrill of gratification as all twelve members of the Council stiffened at the movement.

“What are you—”

“Shh! Wait.”

Tiran’s clocks struck noon in a resonant chime of bells, the master spellographs shifted, and Leon’s Hall went dark.

The assembled mages looked around in confusion when the lights didn’t come back on immediately, but Sciona had anticipated this.

After all, the master spellographs had to process Sciona’s extra sheaves of spellwork before reaching their usual siphoning spellwebs.

But industrial spellographs worked fast, and it was a short wait.

The electricity came back up a moment later—to light and carnage.

Freynan Mirrors, each the size of the presentation mapping coil, had opened over the clock and lighting conduits above the Council seating, showing wheat stalks disintegrating in white spirals.

It had been simple enough to write a spellweb that generated a Freynan Mirror for each site the Reserve siphoned.

The spellwork expanding the visuals to presentation size without the physical anchor of a coil had been more difficult to compose.

But looking at the pools of crisp light and color now, Sciona thought she had done a decent job.

When the light above the archmages spun from the wheat to claim a hare, viscera lit the space in jarring red.

Unraveling animal intestines spun in oversized detail across the wall, drawing shouts of horror from the assembled mages.

Across the rest of the chamber, Freynan Mirrors blazed to life at every conduit—every light fixture and temperature control unit, showing where the appliance’s energy was really coming from.

Grass and flowers burned up before the mages’ eyes, animal blood lit white robes red.

The mirrors themselves made no sound, but it was only seconds before the screams started—not just inside Leon’s Hall but from the corridors and campus beyond.

Cleon Renthorn looked to the high windows in near-orgasmic awe as a thousand spirals of blood turned Tiran’s barrier red.

Beside him, Mordra the Tenth was pale with shock.

Tanrel covered his face with his hands. In the row behind them, a highmage crashed from his seat in a dead faint. Others buckled and began retching.

“Sciona, what have you done!” Bringham cried, as deathly pale as any of the highmages.

But by then, what Sciona had done should have been quite obvious: she had activated her Freynan Mirrors all over Tiran. Everywhere a public utility spell tapped the Reserve, people would see in full color where the energy was coming from.

And the city howled at the truth of it.

“I will not fear evil, for where I go, God’s Light goes also,” Archmage Thelanra was gibbering Feryn’s prayer, dull green eyes wide in horror. “In the presence of God —”

“I will not turn my gaze,” Sciona snarled the end of the prayer for him, “ though Light burn me. For Light will show the Truth of the world, and all Truth in the world is of Feryn the Father. Behold!” She held her arms wide before the archmages. “God’s work!”

“Sciona Freynan!” Archmage Orynhel bellowed over the pandemonium, his voice chillingly powerful for such an old man. “You are under arrest!”

Sciona had never considered how heavily the archmages kept their meetings guarded until four fully armed men rushed onto the floor and laid hands on her.

“I did the right thing.” She didn’t know why she needed to say it, especially when no one could possibly hear her amid all the cries of horror and outrage. “I did the right thing!”

As the guards hauled Sciona to the exit, she knew she shouldn’t, but she glanced back at Archmage Bringham, some childish part of her wanting him to acknowledge that she had been right.

He turned away, and she was dragged out of Leon’s Hall.