“Are you saying that mana is alive?” Liv asked.

“Mana is –” Aira paused. “It’s been a very, very long time, Livara, since my mother explained this to me. I was a little girl. I’d like to think that I remember things clearly, but I can’t be certain. And her explanation to me was an adult making something simple for a child. You understand?”

“We simplify things for children all the time,” Liv agreed. “Even first year students at Coral Bay learn a general rule to start with, when the truth is actually more complicated. But they aren’t ready for the complicated part yet. Archmagus Loredan used to say learning was like a spiral - you keep coming back to the same things, but you learn them in more depth.”

“So, knowing that,” Aira continued, “think of mana as something like a cloud of dust, or pollen floating in the air. Or the algae that grows on the surface of a pond. It has a physical form, but that form is so small that you can breathe it in without even noticing. It can spread all through your body, and the world around you, and we use it to work magic. The places we call rifts use ancient Vædic enchantments to create more mana. My mother was quite clear that their intention was to fill this entire world with mana, to make it like the world they came from. Where, I presume, mana occurred naturally.”

“Those ruins – the ones that are left – have been producing more mana for twelve-hundred years,” Aira said. “If mana simply persisted forever, wouldn’t they have long since finished their task?”

Liv sat back, only then realizing that she’d been leaning forward as she listened. “Ghveris mentioned mana-dead zones,” she said. “I didn’t think he was speaking literally at the time, just referring to a place where there was no mana.”

“If you reason things out, it must be possible to use up mana, destroy it, or for it to die on its own,” Aira said. “Or there would be nowhere left for humans to live. We know that we use up some of our mana, or at least exhaust it, when we cast a spell. Often there is waste left behind, though the right tools – like that wand – can help to minimize the waste. But do you really think there are enough people, casting enough spells, to make up for every rift in the world pouring out mana?”

“I don’t even have the beginning of what kind of information I’d need to answer that,” Liv said, after a moment. “We’d need to measure the total amount of mana being produced all across the world, every day, and then try to figure out a rough guess of how much is being used up by spells. If we put the entire guild on that problem, it would still take years to figure out.”

Aira shrugged. “I suspect – based on what I recall my mother saying – that mana does not ‘live’ forever. Even without being used to cast a spell, there is some eventual decay. If you freeze the body of that squirrel over there –” she gestured at a tree above the falls – “will it survive? When you thaw it out again?”

“Not without a lot of healing magic,” Liv answered. She thought back to how Rose had been frozen inside a pillar of ice, and nearly died. Probably would have died, if Liv hadn’t gotten her up to the ring to be healed. “The only reason it works with the hibernation spell is that Dā preserves the body.”

“I suspect the same is true of mana,” Aira said. “If you do not use it to create ice, but instead actually change the structure of the mana by freezing it, by removing so much energy that it is forced to change – I think there is good reason to suspect it would not ‘survive.’ You could, in theory, create a dead zone, utterly devoid of mana. You might even be able to effectively empty a mage of mana, rendering them unable to cast spells until they’ve absorbed more.”

“I’m not sure I actually want to do that,” Liv admitted. “I’m not sure I’m comfortable doing that. It feels wrong.”

“Whether you want to proceed down this line is up to you,” Aira told her. “There’s still time for you to go in a different direction. If you did create this kind of spell, it would certainly be deadly. It would go beyond Authority. You could rip a mage’s ability to cast away in an instant. That would end the fight against anyone who relies on magic.”

With a grunt, the old woman levered herself back to her feet. Liv scrambled up to help Aira back up the slope, but didn’t walk back to the encampment with her. Instead, she remained behind, looking down at the falls.

The archmage spell Aira described sounded, in all honesty, like the sort of thing Celris would have loved. In her ancestor’s mind, cold had been associated, inseparably, with darkness and death. With endings. Liv had no doubt that if the destruction of mana hadn’t been, at a very basic level, so opposed to the Vædim’s very survival instincts, he would have jumped on this way to kill people more efficiently.

Putting aside how disturbing it was that she was now starting to have a feel for Vædic survival instincts, which was in itself terrifying, Liv simply did not want to be like that. Celris’s point of view was miserable. It was absent, so far as Liv could tell, of hope, love, or warmth. She didn’t want to turn into him. Winter didn’t have to be a time when people starved or froze to death: it could also be beautiful, like ice-coated branches glittering in the light of dawn. It could be fun. Skiing, skating on the ice, or even riding a shield down the mountainside – she wanted her magic to be good for those things, too.

She thought she understood a little more clearly why her grandfather had worked together with House Däivi to capitalize on a spell that could put people into a frozen sort of hibernation. It was a way of using Cel that preserved life, rather than took it. It must have been a personal rebellion on the part of Auris ka Syvä, a way of proving to his father there was more than one way of looking at the world.

Liv sighed. She felt like she’d hit a dead end, and even wondered if it had been a waste of time to train Aluth with Cel, day in and day out. What if she’d have been better off training Dā, instead – or even a combination of Aluth and Luc, so that she could master Julianne’s archmage spell? In either case, the hardest work would already have been done for her.

She made her way back down the rocks to the pool at the base of the waterfall, and began to trace her finger over the surface of the water, leaving trails of floating ice behind. Liv thought about doing something with the waste heat, but she’d found that she needed it less and less. Perhaps it was a byproduct of mastering Cel, but she rarely felt the cold anymore. Now, if she didn’t need to keep her friends warm, it was nearly useless to her –

Liv paused.

“Waste heat.” Celris had turned heat into mana. Julianne’s spell had turned lightning into a surge of mana. What if there was a way to take advantage of the waste heat produced as a byproduct of her spells? If she was lucky, she might even be able to use some of the language in Julianne’s spell, and adapt it.

Liv scampered back up the dirt and tree roots, sending pebbles flying. She needed to get to her tent and have a look at her notebook.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

☙

How many bells passed while Liv worked on the language of the spell, she couldn’t have said. She was now certain that she could use elements of Julianne’s work, but she also wanted to have another look at the enchantments in the Tomb of Celris, to see precisely how they converted heat to mana. If she was right about how the spell could work, it would practically feed itself: a runaway, building explosion of cold that used waste heat to fuel the ongoing effect. She’d actually started to worry more about how to stop the effect, than whether it would work.

It was Kaija who finally interrupted her. “They hit us at the second barricade,” the former-armorer said, holding the flap of Liv’s tent back. “I think you’ll want to be there for this.”

Liv looked down at the notes scribbled across two facing-pages of her notebook, and clenched her hands. Had she actually written everything down? She didn’t want to forget something, to lose a piece of the shape she’d been building in her mind. With a cry of frustration, she corked her ink bottle, set aside her quill, and left the book open to dry.

Two of her guards fell in behind them as Kaija led her across the encampment to the great command tent that had been set up near the center of the plateau – not so far from Liv’s own. All of the alliance leadership had been placed far enough away from the palisades that an assault on the camp should have difficulty reaching them, but also far enough apart that a single spell in the night wouldn’t hit them all. There were sentries to watch for an assault, of course, scouts roving over the mountain slopes to warn of enemy movements, and wards set down for additional security: but Valtteri was not taking any chances.

“They hit us from the flank just after Journeyman Brom took down the ward,” Sir Randel explained, as Liv swept into the tent. She saw that the knight was battered and bruised, and that a bandage of white linen was wrapped around his forehead, soaked through with blood.

Liv’s father, along with Commander Soile, her cousin Miina, and the elders, were clustered around the great map table at the center of the tent. Ghveris and Wren lingered together near one end of the table, and Arjun was poking at Randel’s bandage while the injured knight spoke.

Leaving her guards outside the tent, with the exception of Kaija, Liv began to make her way around to the table. When Randel saw her, however, he attempted to kneel. “Sir Randel,” Liv said, “if I have to tell your son that you fell over and hurt yourself worse trying to kneel to me, I’m going to be very upset. Stay where you are and let Arjun work. How bad is he?”

Arjun carefully looked beneath the bandage. “He has a fractured skull. I can heal it, but once I do we should probably send him back to Whitehill. It can take months to recover from a brain injury.”

The image of Keri in one of Henry’s wheeled chairs flashed across Liv’s mind, but she managed to keep from frowning. “Let him finish his report then, and then take him off for treatment,” she said. Miina stood up from her chair and offered it to Liv, then took up position behind her once she’d sat down.

Liv’s father tapped his fingers against the table. “They let us take the first ward without much opposition to lull us, make us confident,” Valtteri said. “Then hit us at the second. Tell us everything you can about the force they used, Randel, before Arjun takes you away.”

“War machines on the heights, shooting down at us,” Randel said. “At least a dozen bats fell on us at the rear. Some of them fed on the blood of the wounded or dying, others turned into bears, great cats. Lucanian crossbows from behind the palisade. I still think we could have made a retreat in good order, if it wasn’t for Ractia’s commanders.”

“Can you confirm which of them were present?” Valtteri asked.

“One of them was throwing fire,” Randel answered. “An Elden woman riding a wyrm, casting spells. But the worst of them was the man with the red eyes. I saw him take half a dozen forms - a bat, a bear, even a wyrm. I swear on my honor that once he was this horrible, bat-winged man, with gray fur and a fanged maw… I thought we had him, when two of our archers got a shot from his rear. He just dissolved into blood and the arrows went right through.”

“Aariv is the man with fire,” Arjun said. “Come along with me, Sir Randel. You can answer questions later.” He slipped his the older man’s arm over his shoulders, and together they made their way out of the tent.

“Seija,” Elder Aatu muttered.

“And my father,” Wren broke in. “Though I have no idea what that last form would be. And with such a well-planned ambush, I’d figure Manfred was there, as well. He’d be the brains behind this.”

“How many did we lose?” Liv asked.

“We’d sent a force of twenty scouts,” her father answered. “Sir Randel had a dozen Whitehill knights with him. Journeyman Brom to break the ward, and twenty Kerian archers to cover them. The thought was they’d be able to take advantage of the underbrush and the trees.”

“How many came back?” she repeated.

“A handful,” Valtteri said. “Sir Randel and perhaps half a dozen others.”

“We just lost fifty people.” Liv winced. It shouldn’t have affected her, at this point. The alliance losses after the battle at the pass had been much higher.

“Not quite,” her father said. “But about that, yes. We need to expect heavier resistance from now on. They won’t plan on catching us by surprise again, but they’ll make us pay for every inch of ground we gain, all the way up the mountain.”

“Brom?” Liv asked, but Valtteri shook his head. Another letter for her to write, like for Isabel. She hadn’t known him all that well, but he deserved – his family deserved – at least that much. It also reduced the number of mages they had who could use Aluth.

“...a mix of troops from all the houses, to spread out any losses,” her father was saying. “Can the wyrms break iron, Elder Aatu?”

“I’ll break the next ward,” Liv said.

Her father hesitated. “My understanding was that you were supposed to be training with the elders.”

“Until she has a clear idea of what spell she’s trying to make, there’s little point,” Aira tär Keria spoke up. “In fact, getting her head out of theory and training might be good for her.”

Liv could have said that she did have an idea, now, but she bit her tongue. She would have to admit that she needed a trip to the Tomb of Celris to study the sigils there, and once she did that, either Aira would want her to make the trip immediately, or they’d have to set the spell aside, anyway. And there was no world in which she left her father here to face Ractia without her.

“I’ll take Arjun, Wren and Ghveris,” Liv said. “Along with Kaija and my guards. Give us whatever other troops you think we need. If Ractia’s commander show up, we’ll fight them while the troops break the ward. Put someone in charge of them who knows what they’re doing, and make sure they have more than one way to shatter iron. If we go in force and they decide not to hit us, we’re through another layer of their defenses, and we’ve lost nothing.”

“There is some concern,” Elder Aatu said, “that your presence could draw Ractia out before we are ready.”

To Liv’s surprise, both her grandmother and her great-uncle, Eilis, shook their heads immediately.

“You’ve seen something?” she asked them, and everyone at the table focused on the two wielders of time magic.

“No,” Eilis explained. “I don’t see a confluence in the near future. When we get to the top of the mountain, perhaps, but until then I don’t think Ractia will make a move.” Liv noticed that he was frowning when he finished speaking, and resolved to find a moment alone with her great-uncle, as soon as she could find the time.

“We need to do this five times,” Aatu pointed out. “And we can’t afford to tire everyone out. I suggest that if Livara is going to take this ward, one of the elders take the next, and then we can alternate. That keeps the preponderance of our magical power back here at our base camp, to defend against any potential assault.”

Valtteri nodded. “I suppose any one of you should be more than capable of breaking these wards,” he admitted. “Very well. We’ll assault one a day, at least until we’ve reached a point far enough up the mountain to build a forward base. Can you be ready to go in the morning, Liv? Commander Soile, will you command the troops we send?”

Liv and the Elden woman both nodded.

“I believe we are finished here for now, then,” Valtteri said, and the meeting broke up, with everyone rising from their camp-chairs and making their way out of the tent.

Liv wasn’t surprised that Wren, followed by Ghveris, found her almost immediately.

“If there’s any chance my father will be there, I want to be at this assault,” Wren said.

“I understand.” Liv nodded. She looked across the tent, to where her own father was ducking out into the twilight. She tried to imagine how it would feel, if Valtteri had been enslaved by Ractia, and turned into a monster. What it would be like to face the prospect of killing him.

Liv didn’t know what she could possibly say to make that better, so she simply slipped an arm around Wren and hugged the other woman tight.