Chapter 42: Ch 33 p.1

Leah spends the next few hours fiddling with the battery, trying to figure out how to make the whole affair more compact, and less likely to break. While she does she muses on its applications.

A meeting room, lit by a single light bulb and with wiring that runs all around, would be enough to stop almost all scrying. Carry an electronic device in your pocket, and no-one could charm, compel, or attack you. If electricity ever became widespread, magic use would totally disappear; no spell would work anymore.

If this world ever has an industrial revolution, magic users would be fucked. That’s…sort of depressing, but still very interesting. Can magic totally supplant electricity, to dissuade its use? Certainly Devad understands the basics of electricity, but they haven’t started teching-up. Not even within their military, if they’re still using mainly cavalry. They strike me as pretty warlike, conquerors in their own minds. Roman, almost. Just without the infrastructure, so even when they conquer land, they can’t properly rule it. They’d rule the whole Gulf if only they could figure out roads.

Leah snickers to herself. She finishes tinkering with the bottles, noting that the size of the container doesn’t seem to matter, but wondering how to get a sufficiently small container that still separates the metals. If lemons or potatoes work for this sort of thing, maybe it doesn’t even need to be a liquid; maybe it just needs to be vaguely wet…man, I wish I had even one book from back home. I could change the world here with a beginner’s science kit.

Ah, but change it for the better or the worse?

She clears her mind and goes to the mess hall, only getting lost once on the way there. Teo isn’t there today, nor was she at breakfast. Leah realises she hasn’t seen the teen since last breakfast, and finds she misses her a bit – the one “friend” she’s made while here, other than John, but the fact that John was her “prison guard with hero worship” at first sort of puts a sour flavour on that whole affair.

Eating alone, she finishes the plate of flatbread with some sort of sweet-and-fatty pâté, then goes to her room to fetch the book Seffon had leant her after the failed divination spell. Suddenly realizing the obvious question, she grabs the dowel rod and rushes to the tower. Before Seffon can explain the next spell and its purpose, she asks her question.

“The failed spell with the oak and the burnt runes, the divination one; did it fail in the same way that the scry failed, because of the battery?”

Seffon reflects, putting aside the bottle he is holding. “No. It wasn’t a blocked effect, like the battery; the battery just makes the scry spell fail utterly, the moment it leaves the caster’s hand. The divination we tried returned with a definitive ‘no.’ If you want we can try again…”

Leah requests that they do, and so Seffon does: he retakes the oak dower, puts a drop of oil on, and mutters the same very soft incantation as before. The dowel gives no response, and he shakes his head. “Nothing; she’s not hidden, she’s gone.”

She accepts this with a sigh. I thought for sure I was on a roll. Can’t guess ‘em all right, all the time, I guess.

Seffon continues with his original plan, apparently thrown off-track by Leah’s interruption. “So. Based on what we now know…” He picks up the discarded bottle. “If you were in fact brain dead, we can assume that was likely the moment the switch happened – when one consciousness left, and another arrived. However, from the candle spell, we know that your consciousness arrived here slowly, over the course of many hours, and the brain death lasted mere moments. Also, the elemental rune test said that your body had completely avoided the desiccation over the past three months, and even momentary brain death should have registered.” He fetches other ingredients while he talks. “So, what I want to do is this: I want to repeat the adapted Bitter Dream spell, but with an additional adaptation, to pinpoint the exact moment that the brain death happened.”

Leah slumps a bit, mentally preparing herself for the scent. I was really hoping for something new…wait, have I become inured? Numb to magic? When did this stop being cool?

Probably when I started getting homework.

“The spell is designed to notice empty spots, fill them in – and nothing’s emptier than death,” Seffon is saying, picking out the necessary gemstones.

Pulling her focus back to the conversation at hand, Leah snickers. “Charming. No hope of an afterlife in your religion?”

“For the mind, yes. For the body, no.”

“I thought Bitter Dream measured blank spots in the mind, not the brain?”

Seffon tilts his head a little. “I said adapted, and I meant it.”

He sets up the usual pattern of gems on the table in front of her, but instead of making her inhale the fumes of the liquid, he uses it to trace a rune on her forehead. She holds her hands over the gems, and at his instruction, tries to think of nothing.

“Rafters?” Leah asks.

“If you want, but it might hurt your neck.”

Leah stares at the stone of the wall and empties her mind. Without the fumes to dizzy her, or the skull to burn, she’s not sure how they’re supposed to know when the spell is finished.

Suddenly the skin of her forehead feels very dry and itchy. She twitches to scratch at it but Seffon tells her to remain still. The feeling fades, but a vague discomfort remains for a few seconds more.

“It’s done,” Seffon says softly, and Leah focuses back on the present. The pain fades.

“What did we learn?”

Seffon looks very uneasy. Leah repeats the question, a little more nervously.

“Well, as far as I can tell – and I will have to confirm with Sewheil – the brain death that her spell noticed was linked to your mind’s original body, not the current body. Which, I suppose, explains how you avoided the desiccation, technically.”

Leah’s heart stops a moment. “I’m dead? My body back home is dead? I won’t ever be able to go home?” With each question she sits a little taller, leaning forward desperately, dread bubbling up in her core.

“Momentarily! Remember, it was only momentary, and it wasn’t even full brain death – closer to a coma, probably.”

Mind still reeling, Leah takes deep breaths, trying to listen to his reassurances and believe them.

“I don’t want to pressure you, but at this point I really must ask.” Seffon sits alongside her on the table, speaking gently. “Could something have happened in your world to initiate the switch? If electricity is so common, maybe that had an effect?”

Leah bites her lip, still trying to figure out how to feel about brain death. “I doubt it, heavily. I’m not denying the possibility, now that I know magic and electricity have a relationship. I mean, technically, the brain is full of electric impulses; if magic is related to electricity, then maybe that’s how people perform it? Although the distinction between born and learned seems to dispute that.”

She takes a steadying breath, and wonders again if magic might be possible in her home world, if the only difference is that this world is pre-industrial. Maybe if you get away from all the telephone wires and portable tech…but how far? There are almost no places left without electricity in the cities.

Seffon accepts her verdict, though his darting eyes and twitching hands show that he is still preoccupied by the question.

There is nothing else to be learned from the spell, despite the unsettling implication. As Seffon puts away the supplies and Leah looks around the room, she is struck again with the horrid memory of waking up here.

“I was asleep – or unconscious, whatever – for three days,” Leah says, and Seffon confirms. “And I woke up when the rest of the five came to rescue me.”

“I remember clearly,” he says, with a tone.

“Why did I wake up then? Did you see what they did to wake me up? I know none of them know magic, so it must have been something mundane…”

Seffon pauses and thinks. “The thief woke you up. I was busy trying not to be killed by the redhead, and the berserker was laying waste to every guard in the room.” His eyes flit across the room as he recalls the scene. “The archer was in the doorway leading back to the main keep, holding down their path of retreat. I don’t remember what the thief did, though.”

Leah confirms this with her own memories. “What were you doing right before they got to the room?”

Seffon sighs, thinking hard. “The alarm was raised about forty seconds before they arrived at the door. I had been on the third floor, trying to figure out how to deal with you when you awoke; restraining spells, because I didn’t trust that you wouldn’t just snap any ropes we bound you with.”

Leah remembers bending the prison bars, and nods without comment.

“I had less than a minute. My guards wanted to carry you up to the third floor, to keep the five from taking you back. Someone unconscious from that sort of a trap spell…it’s best not to move them too much. It was probably for the best that you woke up before they carried you off, or you would have been even worse off when you finally did come to; muscle soreness like you wouldn’t believe.”

“But why did I wake up then?”

“I don’t know! What do you remember?”

Leah pushes aside the sound of the skull crunching. No, that was after. We were already down the hall at that point. “Kain – the thief – she woke me up. Iris, with the war-hammer, came over to help her. I don’t remember any details, I was totally disoriented. I remember seeing you – just a man in red, I didn’t know who you were…or who anyone was.”

“Did they say anything to you?”

“It was noisy, I don’t know.”

They stand in silence, both trying to remember.

Leah stands and starts pacing. “If my consciousness arrived slowly, over a few hours, maybe the effects of the trap spell wore off a few hours before the rescue, but I just didn’t wake up right away. What happened before the rescue? I remember everyone seemed to believe they’d rescued me in the middle of a spell, but I assume that was just fearful thinking.”

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Seffon paces as well. “They arrived just before sunrise. I’d done the soul anchor spell two days before that. I’d assumed you would awaken soon, and I wanted to know what to expect. Instead you stayed asleep for three whole days. I didn’t perform any other spells on you after that; besides, based on your story of the laundry visit, this world’s Leah first encountered your soul about half a day before you woke up here. Possibly, over that six-to-twelve hour period, the switch happened, and then you slept normally until you were awoken.”

Leah thinks. “Was anyone guarding me the day before the rescue?”

“There was always a guard, just in case.”

“Can we talk to them? Ask them if they saw anything?”

Seffon shrugs, looking over her shoulder at her, still pacing. “Most of them were killed by your rescuers.”

Leah’s steps falter a bit. “Right…” She starts up again, slower. “‘Most?’”

“Lieutenant Adan survived, as did one of the common militia members on volunteer duty that day; Goren, you haven’t met him yet.” Seffon pauses. “I’ve made sure you haven’t met him. He’s understandably untrusting of you.”

Leah squirms internally through all this.

“But we can certainly talk to Adan. We ought to, anyway; if we can outfit any number of our teams with your anti-magic invention, it will give us a powerful edge over – ”

Leah stops pacing and cuts him off. “I’ve been thinking about that.” She waits until she is sure he is paying attention. “Where I’m from, the sort of a battery I’ve made here would be considered very weak, and mostly useless. The potentials for this technology are…are…it’s really strong, when you know how to use it.” Seffon looks confused, with an ‘isn’t-this-a-good-thing?’ face. “The sort of electricity that would be considered normal and just what we use every day in my world would likely be enough to smother any magic attempts in its vicinity, and practically every landmass of my planet is covered with that level of electricity, at the minimum.”

Seffon is a bit more sombre, but still unsure.

Leah spreads her hands, gesturing around the room. “And yet…the things that magic can do are basically the things that electricity can do, with some exceptions. Electricity can make magnets, and as far as I can tell, magic can’t. Magic can influence people’s behaviours and thoughts, and electricity certainly can’t do anything like that, or at least not with such precision and safety. Chemotherapy can treat cancer, but electricity can’t cause a bleeding wound to close within seconds – magic can. I think…I think two things.” She takes a deep breath. “I think that if this world ever adopted widespread electrical use, magic would utterly disappear, in all its forms. And I think that because of everything that magic offers, this world would never independently discover electricity. Out of curiosity, maybe, but there are too few needs that electricity can fill that magic doesn’t also. Even Devad’s dabbling in static is only that; dabbling, which takes second place to chemistry.”

“And so?” Seffon prompts.

“And so, once I’m gone, and actually before if possible, I’d like for everything having to do with that battery to be destroyed.” Seffon goes to protest, but Leah holds up a hand. “The more people who know about electricity’s existence and the trick to its creation, the sooner they’ll realise it can be used to strip magic of all potency. I come from a world without magic, and I can guarantee that life without magic is so much less interesting. Not only that, but magic is an equaliser; anyone can learn it, and so anyone can use it to make life better, in a way that you can’t with electricity. Magic lets you improve your quality of life, in an immediate and tangible way.”

Seffon is nodding along. “That was one of the initial causes of the genocide. Magic allowed certain people to get ahead of their neighbours: people could learn spells to improve their crop yield, or decrease their neighbours’ yields; they could convince people they wanted to work for free, and pay their labourers nothing; they could scare the wolves away from their flocks, and send them after a competitor’s.”

Leah grimaces. “I can see why the situation blew up.”

“It wasn’t all bad. People used it to balance the odds; those who had poor, rocky soil could use magic to keep the plants healthy, and those far from the trade routes could use it to speed their travel and reach the markets on time. But even this much equality is frightening to those accustomed to absolute power. And I see your point, about the battery.” Seffon stops pacing, and they face each other across the table again. “Being able to block all magic in an area is…quite a dangerous thing, for any side of the conflict to have.”

They both sit in a depressed silence.

Leah breaks it. “Is that why Volst hates you so much?”

Seffon looks up. “Hm? No, Volst hates us because of the duel.”

“I remember, you said, but that was one incident, and when the guy was killed that would have restored balance. Since then have you trained anyone from Volst?”

“No.”

“So why else would they hate you, if not for the fact that you rose to your station through magic? ‘The pretender-lord.’ This is Jun province in their mind, and the fact that you call yourself ‘Lord,’ and manage an estate, and just in general run this region like an independent state – ”

“We are an independent state.” Seffon’s expression is reserved but not angry; mostly Leah gets the impression he is curious what she is building up towards.

“Exactly! You symbolise that anyone can govern. You symbolise an alternative to the colonial mindset, of centralised government claiming lands and appointing leaders; that’s a threat to Volst and Devad and Cheden.”

Seffon can’t seem to decide if this is a compliment or not.

“If even just this corner of the Enterlan gained independence, it would set a precedent. The Volst provinces might all decide to govern themselves, to declare their noble families Kings and Queens. The duchies of Cheden might decide to distance themselves from the imperial family – certainly Ben-Lia could make an argument that the Auzzos are Emperors in their own right. It’s in everyone’s interests to remove you from power, and anyone else like you. But if you’re not in control, who is? Devad has failed to govern the Enterlan for three hundred years. Volst lost it in a war, but judging from the lack of infrastructure dating to that time, I assume that even back then they didn’t do a very good job of it. No-one wants you in charge, but no-one else is qualified.”

“High praise,” Seffon quips.

“I think that’s the main reason someone’s trying to incite a war against you, whether it be Devad or Cheden or both or neither. It’s not just magic, although that’s a major part of it; it’s the fact that the independence of the Enterlan is a threat, and that whoever kicks you out of power will suddenly have access to all this land…” Leah trails off.

“What are you thinking?”

Leah mulls it over. “If Devad properly controlled the Enterlan…their population would nearly double, I’d imagine, and with their laws about spouses filling in for military duty…their army would be immense, and armed with not just chemical weapons, but magic too.” She restarts her pacing. “If Volst properly controlled the Enterlan…”

Seffon jumps in, pacing the opposite side of the room. “They would be almost unstoppable. They’d have a monopoly on almost all precious stones and metals, and they’d have the combined economic power and geographic placement to utterly strangle trade along the Hyburn river. Cheden, Devad, Algi, Nent…they’d all be crippled. Nent doesn’t have the power to challenge Volst, and Algi would be a close tie, but as things stand now Devad and Cheden each might stand a chance…”

“And together, they’d certainly succeed.”

Seffon and Leah meet eyes across the room.

“But what about Jeno?” They say it together, with matching tones of confused frustration. Leah gestures for Seffon to talk first.

“She has imperial blood, however diluted. The empire would never allow one of the imperial family to be sent to an enemy nation. It’s built into the imperial family’s very history; their line began when a Bairish girl was selected to be sent as one of many tributes to marry a Greybryn king, in order to end a war. Her family fled with other war refugees to an island, escaped detection, and over the next few centuries built up their own nation, and eventually empire.”

Leah raises an eyebrow. “Greybryn?”

“Their kingdom fell apart and was divided between Bair and Algi…oh, seven hundred years ago? But they were powerful at the time.”

Leah reflects. “Jeno was always so put-together. Even though she was sad about the marriage in private, she was a model future-Lady in public. She, personally, was doing everything she could to make this arranged marriage seem natural and good. Whatever is happening behind the scenes, I don’t think Jeno knows about it, or even suspects.”

“When you were her guardian, did she confide in you? Confess anything?”

Other than the illegal stuff? “Uh…that she was terrified of you. Of magic in general, really – even the warrior-mages of her own nation. But she would freeze up anytime I mentioned you.” She trails her fingers along the edge of a bookshelf, digging up memories. “Vegetarianism. She said something about how magic always seemed to deal with death – bones, blood, the like – and that someone willing to kill an animal for magic might not feel as much regret for killing a human.”

Seffon nods. “That moral question has been raised before, in the discipline. Some magic users teach specially non-violent branches, with alternative ingredients, or abandoning spells entirely where they cannot be made without death. Not many, but some.”

They settle back into silence.

Seffon pauses at the table and looks to her with uncertainty. “Are you sure Jeno isn’t in on whatever is happening?”

Leah slows. I’ve always known what a good liar Jeno is; how she can keep a poker face no matter the topic, no matter how serious the consequences. “I can’t be sure, but my gut tells me that she isn’t. We could always scry on her, and see?” She says it only half-joking, but Seffon dismisses the possibility as too dangerous.

“The warrior-mage will likely have protections put up – magic protections, not the amber-and-wool ones, but just as strong if not stronger.”

Leah stops walking and places both hands on the stone table. “We don’t have all the facts. It’s useless to speculate.”

Seffon mirrors her posture. “Agreed.”

“Were we going to go talk to Adan about my time unconscious?”

Seffon nods, straightening back up and shaking his head clear of their speculations. “I’ll organise a meeting for this evening. Another supper, though more formal than last time. I want to discuss our plans with you; if Volst is either going to declare war or have war declared against it, we need to be ready to respond in either case, and I believe the five are going to play an important and highly unpredictable role in whatever’s to come, if their history is anything to go by.”

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