Magic, in its most basic form, was change. A trade of one thing for another.
There were three elements to every spell, though the way a thaumaturge achieved each element would vary according to their craft, as well as their level of skill and personal preference. The three elements were the Will, the Word, and the Sacrifice.
The Circle facilitated all three elements, and most magical crafts used one in some way. In drawing a Circle, you placed a physical boundary around a spherical domain you controlled, signifying that the things within were yours to trade away and change as you wished. It was possible to create a spell that affected something at a distance, like the stunning spell stored in the coppers’ battle wands, but those effects started within a Circle too.
A thaumaturge’s Will made magic possible. Philosophers and scientists alike struggled to define it to their satisfaction, but Siobhan had always felt it was quite simple. The Will was a combination of heart-wrenching desire and undeniable command that she pushed into the fabric of the world. Reality bent under the force of her Will because it could not have done otherwise.
The stronger a person’s Will, the more power they could channel, the less defined the Word needed to be, and the less power would be lost in conversion. With a strong enough Will, the knowledge to match it, and the right resources, a thaumaturge could raise mountains with a wave of their hand, pierce the veil between life and death, and travel into the Elemental Planes. She doubted there was anything magic could not accomplish, if the thaumaturge was strong enough.
The Word guided the transformation of energy or matter, steering the effects of the spell. It could be any type of instruction, though with sorcery it was most often written into the Circle as an array of glyphs and numerically significant symbols. These were often supplemented with speech or written instructions, especially for complex effects. Here, the Word was as complex, clear, and detailed as she could make it, which would hopefully reduce strain on her Will.
The Sacrifice was what one gave up for the effect of the spell. It could be an object, like a blob of mud used to create a brick, or energy, like the heat from a flame.
Modern magic had defined two different subsets of spells. Transmutation was based on the natural sciences. Water had a natural connection to ice, because with only a change in energy, one became the other. Transmogrification was based on sympathetic science. Water had a sympathetic connection to a drowning curse because people mentally associated deep waters with death. Thus, water could be used as a Sacrifice in a variety of different spells with completely different effects.
For this spell, she was using a few different components based on truth, text, and good sight. The flame from a small oil lantern would provide her with energy.
Finally, the Conduit channeled the thaumaturgic energy being converted. For most sorcerers, this was a celerium crystal, which could withstand powerful magical forces without exploding or melting. Celerium was the only element that even the most powerful could not transmute duplicates of, nor could they use transmogrification to transfer its properties through Sacrifice. It had esoteric properties that they did not understand, but which made it specially suited for its purpose. It could only be found in natural deposits like Lenore’s mines.
Her own Conduit was rated up to two hundred fifty thaums, which was still a few dozen more than her Will could handle. Eventually, with practice to strengthen her Will, she would need to upgrade. When the time came, her father would pass down her mother’s Conduit to her, an heirloom ring that he wore to remember the woman by, since Siobhan didn’t technically need it yet. Or so he insisted.
The first and most important rule her grandfather had pounded into her head was the importance of never, ever, performing a spell without a proper Conduit.
He’d given her nightmares with his cautionary tales. She was only ten at the time, and hadn’t started her apprenticeship with him, but he’d found her pretending to cast magic from one of his books instead of writing her assigned essay. She remembered it well. ‘Magic is like a beast,’ he had said. ‘Or a swarm of insects,’ he amended.
She’d been terrified by a swarm of angry bees only a couple of weeks before, and her eyes widened as she pulled the covers up a little higher under her chin.
‘Used properly, it can be guided with your Will. Controlled. But never tamed. However, it must have something to travel through as it transforms your Sacrifice into your magical effect. And without a Conduit, it will travel through you. Like a swarm of invisible insects, it will crawl inside and infest you. It will spread from your body to your mind, and some say even your soul,’ he intoned ominously as she stared at him unblinkingly.
‘It will bite, and tear, and sting you from the inside. But you will not realize it. For at the first touch of magic in your flesh, in your mind, you will feel only bliss. Such bliss that you will never want to stop. That is its poison, its revenge for your hubris in channeling it directly. Even those with the strength of your mother’s bloodline have lost themselves to it. I have seen a man’s flesh bulge out with pustules that burst and revealed clusters of eyes growing beneath his skin. I have seen a woman whose mind warped such that she felt an all-consuming hunger for the flesh of children whose blood still ran warm in their veins. Another man simply…disappeared. He was screaming with pleasure, but it sounded like he was being tortured. He faded away before my eyes—right in the middle of the street—and was never seen again. Though occasionally, when I walked that street at night, I would hear faint echoes of his screams in the wind.’
She had whimpered, and Grandfather’s faraway gaze had returned to the present, peering down at her sharply. ‘And that is why we never cast without a Conduit. Especially with your father’s weak bloodline. It is not safe, my child.’
Even now, Siobhan shuddered at the images her grandfather’s words had conjured. Assured that everything was as safe as she could make it, Siobhan clasped her Conduit between both hands and bent her Will to the decryption spell, the candle flame trembling as she pulled at it.
The text inside remained a jumbled mess of letters she recognized mixed with ones she was sure she’d never seen, none forming anything like comprehensible words, or any pattern at all. The occasional inked graph or illustrations were nothing more than loopy scribbles that seemed as if someone had tried to draw something from memory, with their eyes closed, without ever lifting their pen from the paper. Looking at it from afar, with her eyes slightly squinted, it seemed deceptively, tantalizingly close to coherence. There were words, paragraphs, and illustrations, not so different from her own grimoire. But when she focused, it made the back of her eyes ache to try and read it.
So she pushed harder, all of her concentration focused on that particular type of resolve that caused the world to bend and bow down under the weight of her Will. The candle flame guttered out, and she stumbled as the spell failed, vertigo sending the room spinning around her. ‘How pitiful,’ she thought angrily. ‘Close to Will-strain from a single failed spell?’
She’d known the risk was unlikely to pay off, but she was still bitterly disappointed. Either the book’s creator had been a much stronger thaumaturge than her, or the gap between the method of decryption and the sophistication of the encryption was simply too great. Most likely both. It didn’t help that she was still exhausted from the day before.
Siobhan noted details of the failed decryption spell in her grimoire, then returned to the stolen book, flipping through it in the hopes of finding some sort of clue in the jumbled, unintelligible symbols and shifting, half-ephemeral drawings that always twisted or faded before her eyes could quite capture them. Returning to a previous page, she found it completely different from the first time she looked at it. The number of pages couldn’t even be counted with any certainty.
Shutting the book, Siobhan’s eyes lingered on the single rune stamped on the cover. It refused to clarify into a shape with meaning. ‘Perhaps the text itself isn’t encrypted, but is casting some sort of illusion spell on me?’
She rooted through her pockets, wondering what spell components she had that could be associated with clarity of mind. ‘Would the small shard of crystal and the eagle feathers from my dreamless sleep spell be useful? Maybe some ginseng, too, though I don’t have any with me.’
When the door to her room opened, half her components were laid out on the floor, grouped by their sympathetic properties. She had scribbled over the half-erased Circle from the first spell with notes, arrows, and partially designed spell arrays.
Dryden’s gaze swept over the room.
Siobhan sat back on her heels and followed the path of his eyes, suddenly aware of the mess she’d made. “I have a system,” she muttered, alarmed to feel a blush creep up her cheeks. “It only looks like chaos to the untrained eye.” At times, she could get a little carried away trying to solve a puzzle.
He leaned a shoulder against the doorway, one eyebrow raised. “Obviously.”
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