NOVEL NEXT 63. Study of Secrets
Excerpt from Master Eladri’s ‘Modern Magic—A Study of the Modern Mage.’
“Be careful not to judge a mage by her equipment. One can spend a million leaves on the purchase of gold-plated microscopes, automatically aligning orreries, diamond-tipped spell-scribers and more, and still be outperformed by a master with a sharp rock and good notes. Wealth is no longer the barrier for entry as it once was, supplanted by skill and training.”
The research chamber was glorious. Visually stunning even to an outsider, it was a well-ordered paradise of technical equipment, gleaming and polished. Racks of tools lined the shelves, some of which Yenna couldn’t identify at a glance, alongside small bookshelves of reference material. Heavily runed cages and glass jars held all manner of curious artefacts, all neatly sorted and labelled in their shelves and containment circles.
Yenna felt like a child again, walking into a bookstore and being told to take whatever she liked. She looked back at Eone, her eyebrows threatening to ascend up into her hat with sheer delight, and got a small nod from the captain. Eone remained in the doorway, offering only a light chuckle as the kesh mage bounded into the room.
There were two other people in here. The snake-like silupker from earlier was coiled up on the floor beside a thick-barred cage, possibly guarding the sorcerous skull within. The other was a surprisingly short woman, a lizard-like tail parting the back of her white coat. She turned and regarded Yenna with yellow slit-pupil eyes and a smile full of sharp teeth—if the mage weren’t so pleased to be here, and to possibly be greeting another professional, she might have yelped in surprise at that predatory visage. A smattering of scales crossed her face and hands, as though not fully committed to covering smooth flesh with smoother scale to complete the lizardly look.
“Aah, who is thisss?” The lizard-woman didn’t elongate her words with a hiss, but instead with a broad accent that made it sound like she was quite unwilling to finish her words.
Yenna gave a small bow, her front two legs dipping as she curtsied with her robe.
“Master Yenna, mage of Aulpre… and now in the employ of Eone Deepstar. A pleasure to make your acquaintance…?”
“A maaaaage!” The woman gave another unsettling grin. “It has been a while since I last saw a maaaaage. Oh!”
As though just realising what Yenna meant, the woman walked over to the mage and clasped both of her hands over one of Yenna’s.
“Valkh, researcher of all things magical here in Highshiiiiiine. Not that they give me much to do herrrre. Ha. Ha!”
Valkh’s laughs were short, deep barks, and her hands were exceedingly warm on Yenna’s. The mage wasn’t sure if she was meant to reciprocate the hand gesture, and was on the verge of just tearing her hand away when Valkh let go.
“Guess I’ll leave you two to it, eh? Have fun, Yenna!” Eone gave a little wave and began to leave—she stopped for just a fraction of a moment, her eyes flicking to the side as though just noticing the silupker in the room, before making her exit. The brief pause confused Yenna, made her uncomfortable on a level she couldn’t fully understand. The mere presence of the silupker in Highshine seemed to make the captain unhappy somehow, though Yenna couldn’t even begin to guess at why.
“Now, mage, what brings you to my lab todaaaaay?” Valkh’s unusual drawl knocked Yenna out of her introspection, the researcher smiling up at her expectantly.
“I’m… well, I suppose I didn’t have anything specific in mind. There are some magical items I wished to inspect, that I haven’t had the facilities to properly analyse. Though…” Yenna realised that if she was to look over the black book, she would have to go and fetch Jiin. “I suppose that will have to wait for the time being. For now… May I?”
Yenna gestured to the equipment, and Valkh gave a bobbing nod. The mage got the impression that Valkh was rather deprived of entertainment, likely well-paid and well-kept but not utilised as much as she would like. All of her workspaces were extremely neat and tidy, and Yenna realised belatedly what a poor sign that was—the workshops of all the masters of arcane magic she had known were cluttered messes of experiments, books, artefacts and miscellany piled high. This was the workshop of a person with no work to do.
Still, Yenna wasn’t going to deny Valkh the satisfaction of taking part, knowing full well the woman’s foreign brand of magical knowledge would likely lead to insights that an arcane mage or fledgling witch would never have. With a flick of her wrist Yenna conjured her quicksilver dagger, and Valkh’s eyes went wide.
“Ohooooo! A gorgeous little item, maaaaage. What is iiiiit?”
“It’s… something of a long story. I’d like to work through an aetheroconductivity suite—I can explain it all to you as we do so, if you like?”
“Yesss!” Valkh nearly jumped for joy. “I’ll set up the resonation chamber, if you are comfortable operating the shielding apertuuuuuure?”
Yenna smiled. The woman’s enthusiasm was infectious, and she had forgotten what it was like to work alongside another magical professional—she was thankful that Valkh’s equipment ultimately wasn’t too different to the tools in an arcane research laboratory, though it stood to reason that Aulprean mages, with their focus on magic over craftsmanship, had very likely contracted out much of the requisite design work to the industrious yolm of Milur.
—
Three hours passed in the blink of an eye. Yenna found Valkh extremely easy to talk to—intelligent, well-versed in arcane principles and quick on the uptake of more complicated matters, with insights that furthered Yenna’s own knowledge. She was constantly in motion, operating this device or flicking through that book or scrawling notes, and Yenna felt a certain joy in working alongside a very similar person.
Together they learned a surprising amount about the nature of the dagger, though it still left a pile of fascinating questions on Yenna’s lips. As suspected, the metal was extraordinarily conductive to magic. This meant it made for an amazing wand, a focus through which to coordinate extremely precise movements for the construction of spells. The gems set in it, each crafted from one of the six colours of magic, worked to elementally balance the dagger to such a degree that all magic poured through it would be brought into equilibrium. Even the simple fact of it having a sharp tip made precision spell-drawing a treat, and Yenna found the dagger moved as freely in her hands as though she had been born with it there.
Between the pair of them, they could not figure out what mechanism allowed the dagger to teleport around back into Yenna’s grasp, or why it automatically did so when the mage wasn’t looking. More concerning was the fact that both Valkh and Yenna saw entirely different things happen when the dagger shifted positions—if Valkh was staring right at the dagger when Yenna turned her head away, she would see it slip off the bench or out of her hand in ways that shouldn’t have been possible, moving through angles incorrectly in a viscerally unpleasant manner. To Yenna, it would simply be there in her hand as though it had never left.
Their best guess was a kind of soul magic.
“Whenever it makes a move,” Valkh twirled a studded detector-baton between long fingers, “There’s a sympathetic pulse of energy from within youuuu. Deep inside, like it is emerging from within youuuu.”
“Yes, we established that. Did you have another theory?”
“You mentioned how this witchcraft ‘awakening’ brought about a release within, like the effects of understanding the secret of magic repeated once morrrre. Is it not possible that you are unconsciously remaking it, while the original is turned back to a pure magical formmm?”
Valkh’s grin widened, and Yenna recognised the face the researcher made when she had hit upon something clever. Unmaking and remaking would make a lot of sense—all of the moves the dagger made were entirely impossible, even accounting for some rather generous assumptions about its ability to get around. Even attempts to magically snare it didn’t so much as slow the dagger’s return. At least it didn’t emerge from her chest like it had the first time.
“It came out of your chessssst? May I seeee?”
“S-See? See what? I can’t pull it out of there again.”
“The spot it came out offffff. Perhaps there is some kind of–”
“No, no!” Yenna shook her hands in front of her. “There’s absolutely no mark, magical or mundane. I doubt the process had anything to do with the physical location on my body.”
With a rather impish grin, Valkh giggled, a sound like rocks clacking together. “I wasn’t aware kesh were shy about their bodiesssss.”
Yenna blushed, despite herself. “No, really, it’s quite nothing. B-Besides, before it gets too late, I better find my other subject– ah! We can run tests on Demvya, too! Ahh, what a good idea! Perhaps we can find Tirk and… hm, I don’t suppose we have time for all that.”
Valkh gave a grin as though she thoroughly disagreed—all the time in the world, Mage, for locking oneself away in private study. However, the diminutive researcher made no efforts to stop Yenna, leaving the mage to traipse back out into the halls as she went over her new stack of notes.
Before she left the room, Yenna threw one quick glance towards the silupker. They had not moved at all the entire time Yenna had been here, except evidently to coil slightly tighter. They faced the skull, locked away in its cage, locked in a staring contest between two eyeless creatures. Could the skull still see and hear them, locked away in its containment cage? Was it awake and aware, or lying dormant? The very thought of it intact gave Yenna a dark chill, and there was the manic urge to crack open the cage and stomp it to dust with a hoof until nothing remained of the swirling symbols across its surface. Blinking slightly too hard, Yenna turned away and left.
It had become night when Yenna wasn’t paying attention, the windows set high above in the library impenetrably black with the reflection of internal lights. Magical lamps were set in key places in the walls, giving the library a soft, comfortable glow to it. The lights were bright enough to read by, but dim enough to allow the accumulation of gentle shadows—not big enough to hide dangers within, but pronounced enough to give a kind of cozy depth to them. Yenna felt a yearning to lose herself in the comfortably lit rows of books, to forget all about her tasks and read a dozen books until her eyes watered with a lack of sleep, but she gently tamped down the urge.
Yenna had a clear set of goals—find Jiin, run the black book and the spirit through the gauntlet of diagnostic equipment, perhaps find time for some food. Her thoughts drifted to late nights of university study, small treats of nutrient-rich mass to keep the organic engine of her body running, to fuel the device that held up her brain full of thoughts and ideas and learning and knowledge. Perhaps I’ll ask Valkh what she normally eats while working, Yenna thought as she walked. A place like this had to have its own chefs, the best money can hire, more than used to the kinds of outlandish requests a noble family could make. What was a little dreaming then, for a delicious, nutritious mid-study snack?
Practically salivating at the thought of some exquisite dinner, Yenna nearly failed to notice the dark shape rising from a nearby chair. Her heart skipped a beat, the part of her that was still on edge at the thought of an attack forcing her to turn and face it. A low laugh sent a shiver down Yenna’s spine, and she had no idea how she managed to avoid sprinting away at that very moment.
Her eyes adjusted to the slight gloom of the seating area and the shape resolved rather distinctly into Narasanha’s form. She had a book in one of her hands—a treatise on martial techniques that Yenna didn’t recognise—though the bodyguard put it to one side as she rose.
“You saw me, mage. You are getting better.” Narasanha’s rumbling approval was matched by a miniscule smirk on her chiselled-stone face. Hawk-like eyes stared straight through Yenna, and the mage quivered under her observation. She had left the research chamber to avoid being flustered one way, and found herself rather flustered in another.
“I– yes, I… Wait, it is not nearly dark enough for you to hide in plain sight. Why did it take so long for me to notice you? I was practically looking right at you.” Yenna’s nerves turned to academic confusion, a small frown playing across delicate features.
“It is a technique of my people, a lessening of presence. A hunter’s stillness, no magic to it. You are growing more observant—every other time, I have managed to reach your side before you notice.”
Narasanha was approaching all the same, and Yenna couldn’t help but watch her stalk forward—it felt like the bodyguard was going to pounce on her, and the mage wasn’t sure if she wouldn’t like that. Putting that thought aside for later, Yenna attempted to get back on track.
“I’m, um, going to go look for Jiin. You wouldn’t happen to know where she is, would you?”
“By Mayi’s side, no doubt. We can hunt her down.” Narasanha’s small smirk died back into the taciturn expression she usually wore, an impassive mask that betrayed no emotion. When the guard made no attempt to lead the way, Yenna reluctantly did so herself—heading back the way she had come with Eone, though the enormity of Highshine left her somewhat lost.
It took nearly half an hour for them to find the stonecarver, asking passing servants for directions here and there. Narasanha proved to be surprisingly bad at the task, as though the constraints of the halls of Highshine were debilitating to her skills. Still, she had an impeccable sense of direction, even if she didn’t have the faintest clue what part of the building Jiin or Mayi might be hiding in. In the end, they found Jiin not by following the directions of servants or the bodyguard’s instincts, but by the roar of a fierce shouting match.
From down the hall, out on what seemed to be a balcony, the pair of lovers were arguing loudly—Narasanha stopped Yenna from walking around the corner to where the mage might be seen, and both of them found themselves stuck in hearing range of interpersonal drama that they never asked to be a part of.
“...and she’s not going to replace you, Mayi! She could never replace you! I don’t understand why you’re so jealous!”
“Jealous?! My girlfriend is playing host to some… wandering spirit, and talks almost exclusively about her! I can’t tell her to leave, so suddenly I’m the one at fault for just wanting my girlfriend back!”
“Sh– Demvya’s not taking me away, Mayi. I’m still here!”
“Sometimes I can’t tell… You speak with her more than me. You’re so eager to give up the reins to her. Sometimes I can’t tell if it’s just you—is she telling you what to say? How to move and act? You’re changing, and I hate it. I want Jiin back.”
“Mayi–”
“Don’t touch me. Don’t get near me, Demvya! Find someone else to haunt, and give me Jiin back.”
Narasanha rather suddenly grabbed Yenna’s shoulder and turned her away, leading her down the hallway. Somewhat bewildered, the mage let her lead the both of them into a side-passage, behind a servant’s door. Moments later, stomping feet passed by where they had just been—Narasanha had saved everyone the rather poignant embarrassment of being caught in someone else’s private affairs.
They waited together for a few moments, awfully close in that cramped corridor, before Narasanha carefully stepped out. Turning her head, she gave a small nod.
“Come. Let us retrieve your subject, before she finds a darker corner to retreat to.”
