Chapter 196 – To Mahatan Again

They first established communication protocols, and Mirian composed a letter to Liuan Var that would make its way by zephyr falcon, bouncing about aeries until it at last made it to Arborholm. Despite the cost of the delivery being absurd—it was a gold florin for each leg of the journey—money was of no consequence. Gabriel had figured out several different tricks for making money, most of which involved scams and heists.

“…and that gets me the initial money and connections. Getting the barges to collide is as simple as leaving a cask of ale in the right spot near the captain. That leads to a case under the magistrate where I can seize a bunch of assets of one of the guilds, which in turn can be leveraged for all the gold I need. That’s what I usually do,” he said. “Much easier. But if we need Urubandar under our thumb, I can do it like that,” he said, and snapped his fingers. He said it with such casual confidence, Mirian didn’t doubt he could.

“Did you reveal yourself as Prophet to do it?”

“No,” he said. “With Ibrahim running around up north, it wouldn’t do. Better to quietly gain leverage and connections among the lords and bureaucracies here and avoid an utterly pointless war.”

That was interesting. It implied Ibrahim would turn south if he knew about another Prophet. But he’d never cared about Mirian’s declarations.

She didn’t like Gabriel. The way he’d been acting before Mirian had encountered him stirred a quiet anger in her. But he would bring over a decade of accumulated knowledge, and again, that was far more valuable to her—and Enteria—than three extra days in any given loop.

Unlike Liuan, Gabriel had no compunctions whatsoever about traveling with her. “It ought to be an interesting change, at least. I haven’t been to Mahatan in… three years? Sort of stopped keeping track of the cycles after a bit. What are we on?”

“By my count, this is the 199th.”

“Ah! Nearly a round number. We should celebrate, don’t you think? Oh, don’t glare at me again, I was joking.”

As they prepared to travel upriver towards Alatishad, Mirian felt his gaze on her often. It wasn’t leering, despite how she’d first encountered him, but analytical.

“That hairstyle is common in east Baracuel, isn’t it?” he asked at one point. Mirian hadn’t even thought about how her haircut could be used to track her hometown. As they boarded the barge, he said, “What happened to that first spellbook you had?”

The truth was she’d demanifested it and was now carrying around a hollow book that she could manifest her true spellbook inside of if she needed to cast.

“It stands out too much,” she said. “So I keep it inside this,” she said, holding up the hollow book. She’d weighted it with steel and put a lock on it so the pages stayed closed.

“Makes sense,” he said, but she wasn’t sure if he actually believed her. Gabriel didn’t seem to have an attitude that wasn’t ‘casual,’ but she was beginning to see that he wasn’t a fool, either. After all, when he’d talked about dispatching Troytin’s agents, he’d talked about it like it hadn’t been any harder than making breakfast.

As they traveled up the river on a private boat, spell engines pushing them past the abundant barges, she asked, “So how much do you know about magic?”

Gabriel laughed. “You’re about as subtle as a hammer to the head, you know. You want to know if my capabilities can threaten you. Was it Sulvorath that made you paranoid, or were you always cautious?”

Am I that obvious? Mirian worried. She could remember Nicolus scolding her as he’d coached her on manipulation. But she’d fooled Luspire and Aurum, so she couldn’t be that bad. “He certainly made me more cautious. There’s two time travelers still out of the picture due to his efforts. One’s permanently cursed, the other is committing suicide as soon as the cycle starts.”

“Oof. That’s dark.”

“Mostly, I need to know how much I need to teach you about leylines, or if you can help with divination as we look for the Madinahr Gate.”

“Nothing much,” he said. “And neither does anyone else. At best, I could get a bunch of University scholars to shrug their shoulders confidently at me. There’s a leyline study going on in Urubandar, and another in Alatishad. The only thing they could say was that the cascade was unprecedented.”

Mirian related what she’d learned about the energy overload that started in Akana Praediar and then disrupted the leylines around the east Persaman desert just below the Divir moon.

“Huh. So that explains what everyone thought was a gravity anomaly. But why would that have happened?”

“What do you mean?”

Gabriel leaned back in his chair, putting his feet up on a plush stool. Outside the cabin window, they passed another barge loaded with fossilized myrvite. “I mean, when did the moon become suspended by leylines? What was the mechanism that formed it? And if the system was put into place intentionally, what function was that system supposed to serve?”

“The Elder Gods created Enteria and its two moons. As far as I can tell, the leyline network is an intentional cycle.”

“Surely it’s changed since the creation of Enteria. During the God’s War if nothing else. A balancing act like that shouldn’t have survived the Cataclysm. Besides, the holy texts say nearly nothing about the Divir moon, and it’s only later entries that begin to reference it. The oldest texts, those from the three Prophets of Baracuel, only mention the Luamin moon.”

Mirian pondered that. It seemed ridiculous. “Are you saying the Divir moon wasn’t always up there?”

Gabriel shrugged. “Maybe. It would make sense. You haven’t been to Mayat Shadr yet, have you? I think you should go see it at some point.”

Mirian had been so focused on studying the leylines that she’d paid very little attention to the moon itself. After all, it wasn’t exactly in reach. There were old stories of archmages trying to reach the moons, but it was inevitably a tale of hubris, much like the ones about delving too deep in the Labyrinth. Modern research indicated that the air got thinner higher up, so several wizards had posited that, if one went high enough, there would be no air at all. That was an ongoing debate though.

“What do you know of the Divir moon?” she asked.

“Not much. There was a researcher at Vadriach University studying astronomical bodies, but when I wrote to get a copy of his research, I was told they were incapacitated and I would have to negotiate the release of their notes either with him if he woke, or their estate if they didn’t. I considered making a trip out there, but never got around to it.”

Mirian’s eyes went wide.

Gabriel noticed. “What?”

“What… was that researcher’s name, if I may ask?”

“Professor Sio Jherica. Why?”

She closed her eyes and ground her teeth in frustration. The amount of damage Troytin had done… “That’s one of the time travelers.”

“Huh. No shit. Maybe that great bastard in the big chair really did have a plan.”

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

“So… what was he looking for? What property of that moon could help us?”

Gabriel shrugged. “I was hoping they could tell us. I took a look myself and it turns out it’s not that easy.”

“What do you mean?”

“You have any lensing spells? Give it a try. It’s a pretty clear day, you can see Divir well enough from here. We can even stop the boat so it’s easier.”

Gabriel went and talked to the captain of the vessel, who anchored them. Once the boat was still, Mirian summoned her spellbook within its fake casing, then cast several layers of lens spells, pointing them at the moon. She immediately noticed two problems. One, no matter how steady she held the spells, they seemed to shake just enough that the moon was a difficult target to hit. Second, there was some sort of distortion that made it impossible to make out much detail.

“See? So there’s a way to increase the stability and correct for distortions, but I couldn’t figure out what glyphs they were using for that. In the end, I put the lensing spells on a spell engine, did some trigonometry, and just found myself staring up at a bunch of blurry, jagged rock. No great revelation there. Even the ancients supposed that if Enteria was made of stone, the moons would be too. Another dead end, I thought.”