When Catriona showed Dreya Shifting Stars and the other references that seemed to verify the claims made therein, Cat wasn’t expecting Dreya to snap her fingers and immediately advance her research. After all, it wasn’t reasonable to suppose the sorceress would have a complete inventory of the Black Tower’s vast library in her head. Fortunately, that wasn’t necessary.
Dreya had been interested in some of the magical research conducted by Ulvarius. That may have worried some people, but not Catriona. She didn’t make the mistake others made with Dreya, in assuming she would one day become a tyrant like Ulvarius before her. That was prejudice, pure and simple: her black robes, plus her chosen residence did not automatically equal a prelude to world conquest. Dreya’s interest in Ulvarius was purely academic: nobody had had access to his research before, and to Catriona, leaving that resource untapped made no sense. How could anyone know whether there was something of value unless someone was prepared to look? It seemed to Cat that although Dreya was wholly committed to Dark magic and the power it could bring her, she had not forgotten her Red robe roots. No doubt Xarnas would have told her, many times, the central tenet of the order of Balance: ‘Knowledge is neutral; its application is not.’
In this case, gentle reader, the knowledge in question came from an entry in Ulvarius’ personal diary from the Day of the Lake of Tears that I have mentioned before. The day when, according to legend and his own journal (which is hardly unequivocal evidence), Lake Quernhow was formed.
A whole town wept for me this day. The baby started it, perhaps sensing how the greatness of Ulvarius was to be challenged. The rest of the town had to drown before they had a chance to spread the word and try to undermine me. Those deaths caused the ground to shake and sink beneath the waters of a brand-new lake, blessed with the souls of those I killed. It was truly magnificent.
Some higher planar creature came today to witness the glory of the power of Ulvarius. It refused to bow down to my greatness, even daring to suggest that a mage more powerful than I would one day rise. All nonsense, of course. The truth is, it secretly feared Ulvarius – I could tell – and was just using that ridiculous claim to try and make me hesitate to kill it. In the end, I let it run away so that it could warn other higher planar beings not to mess with Ulvarius in the future.
Even as the magic of Ulvarius made the whole town weep, it used some kind of staff to create a magnificent display of light in the sky in Ulvarius’ honour.
Nothing will be the same, now. Now that I know my magic has caught the attention of the higher planes, everything has changed, even the sky. For today, the stars moved for Ulvarius.
Now, I daresay something struck you about that, gentle reader – besides the revelation that Ulvarius even wrote about himself in the third person! It certainly struck my mother.
“The stars moved for him!” she cried, breathless. “Three hundred years ago, my Angel appeared, and the stars moved for him.”
“Well, I very much doubt they moved for him,” Dreya said. “That’s just his ego talking. To be honest, when I read this before, I just assumed it was a metaphor – or a delusion.”
“Understandable,” Cat accepted.
“But now that you’ve shown me your research and told me your own experiences, the similarities are too striking and repeated too often to ignore.”
Comparing star charts from Ulvarius’ time to more recent ones, showed a seemingly random group had once again moved out of position.
Some obvious questions naturally suggested themselves: Why did the Angel keep popping up at various times in history? Why did they conceal themselves from all but one person? And what were they doing with the Crystal Mage Staff to cause that lightshow?
“Can’t answer any of those,” Cat admitted, “but I do have a theory about the star shifts.”
“Go on,” Dreya encouraged her.
“Well, the author of Shifting Stars questioned whether it was the stars or Tempestria itself that was moving. He made a case for the latter, but I think he overlooked a third, more likely possibility. Maybe it’s neither. Maybe the stars and our world remain unchanged in their relative positions in the heavens. Maybe it’s merely our perception of the stars that is changing.”
“You mean, something in between is filtering or refracting their light?” Dreya considered. “You’re right, that does make more sense. I can’t imagine any magic moving heavenly bodies around but bending light – we can do that already. It’s just a question of scale. But why? What’s the point?”
Cat shrugged. “And that’s as far as my clever theory goes, I’m afraid. We don’t even know whether the shifting stars are a goal or a side effect.”
Dreya had to admit she could suggest nothing more.
“Also,” Cat continued, “there’s one other question that you’re being really sweet not to bring up, Dreya: Whatever my Angel’s been doing with this staff for goodness knows how many centuries, it must surely be important. So why in the name of Creation give it to me?”
“Maybe that’s important, too?” Dreya suggested.
“Yeah, right!” Cat scoffed. “Because I’m so important!”
“You’re important to me,” Dreya stated, matter-of-factly, “and I happen to think I’m pretty important, so it doesn’t seem an entirely unreasonable hypothesis.”
Cat shook her head and offered a wry smile. “Only you could combine a compliment and self-aggrandising in one sentence.”
Dreya smiled back. Cat got the impression that not many people got to see that. “Just telling it like it is.”
“Well, that does lead me nicely to something I wanted to bring up,” Cat said. “Since I’ve met you, you’ve talked about your interest in bringing diverse magic together to strengthen the whole, and in that context, something else has struck me about my staff.”
It had occurred to Dreya, too: The readings from the Crystal Mage Staff seemed to indicate it contained diverse forms of magic, somehow bound together with higher planar energy. How, or for what purpose, the sorceress could not fathom.
Catriona snapped her out of her thoughts, speaking Dreya’s name in the most solemn tone the sorceress had heard from her, and following up with a most unexpected question.
“We’re friends, aren’t we?” Cat asked.
Dreya looked puzzled. “I like to think so.”
“But more than that – and I know it hasn’t been that long – I think we have a pretty good understanding of each other.”
Dreya agreed.
“So, I’m under no illusions: for you, the power will always come first.”
“I won’t deny that,” Dreya said, “but don’t for one moment imagine that means I don’t…” she hesitated, unused to expressing such thoughts, “…care. I am, in point of fact, very pleased to have you in my tower and in my life.”
“I know,” she assured her with a smile, “and no matter how…unconventionally you say things like that, as I say, I understand you.”
“What are you getting at, Cat?”
“I just want you to understand me when I say that I would never ask you to turn down a chance for power for the sake of friendship. You wouldn’t, and I get that, I really do.”
“Why do I feel there’s a ‘but’ coming?”
Cat nodded. “But equally, my staff and whatever it contains, is more important to me than your friendship, if it ever came down to a choice.”
“I can appreciate that,” Dreya agreed, “better than anyone. I think I can see the point you’re heading towards but say it anyway.”
“My point is that I want to try and find a way for us to live and work together, to grow as friends, in full understanding of each other, and I want—”
“—You want assurance that I will never take power from your staff, no matter how tempted I might be.”
“Exactly. I know asking you to promise is futile. Your word is not as binding as your debts. Therefore,” she concluded, “I want you to think of taking power from my staff, as a debt that can never be repaid.
“Because that is the one line I would never cross,” Dreya replied.
Cat shrugged. “Like I say: I understand you.”
Dreya took a slow breath, in and out, in deep consideration of how to answer.
*****
Aunt Dreya was always far more multifaceted than any tyrant ever was. People don’t often give her enough credit for that, but my mother always did. Cat was right that Dreya would break a promise if circumstances changed, but she did not like lies. To her mind, that was a form of debt. She would keep secrets, conceal strategic information, but first and foremost, she wanted to spearhead the building of a world of magic on Tempestria. Lies, it seemed to her, served as feeble foundations upon which to build anything.
Dreya’s quest for power, Cat’s search for knowledge, and their friendship for each other – all of these things were important to Dreya, and she was of one mind with Catriona in that she wanted to find a way for those things to co-exist.
*****
“Currently,” Dreya said at last, “the different powers are too entangled to even think of tapping into them. I couldn’t possibly control what might be unleashed. As for the future, you want to know exactly what is buried in that staff before you decide what to do with it. I completely agree. So, since I believe your word to be more binding than mine, I want you to promise me something: whenever you break through to the final layer of security and are ready to uncover what is buried, promise me I will be there, and you will include me in whatever you find. If you promise me that, I will consider myself indebted to you before the fact. Deal?”
“Deal,” Cat agreed.
She and Dreya shook hands to seal it. “OK Cat, having sorted that out,” Dreya said, “I have a compelling urge to shoot you.”
Cat knew, when Dreya said things like that, she didn’t mean it the way it sounded, but all the sane, she feigned indignation as she said, “And I thought we were getting along so well!”
“Don’t worry, I can turn the power of the energy beam right down. No sense in wasting power.”
“Heavens forbid you should ever waste your power on me,” her friend remarked.
It was Dreya’s turn to shake her head in wonder. “Oh, Cat,” she said, “only you could make it sound like I’m insulting you by not shooting you with a deadly energy beam.”
“Well, power isn’t everything, Dreya, but it’s nice to know I’m worthy of yours.”
“Has it occurred to you that half the things we say to each other don’t make any sense, conventionally speaking?”
“Of course!” Cat concurred. “We’re unconventional people. If we did make sense, that would be weird.”
Deciding not to comment on that, Dreya led Cat to her training room, magically shielded to prevent any accidents due to stray magic.
Having shut the door behind her, she wasted not a moment before shooting her friend. As promised, the power was turned down so much, it was about as dangerous as any other beam of torchlight. Still, Cat treated the threat as real and responded with her Nature’s Mirror, reflecting it back.
Dreya repeated the attack numerous times, sometimes with high frequency, other times with a long gap in between, so as not to give Cat any rhythm to anticipate the ‘attack.’ Still, every time, without fail, Cat reflected it back. Dreya switched to other magic, periodically, which allowed Catriona time to recycle the mirror back to sand.
“Interesting,” Dreya remarked. “Why don’t you just reuse the mirror?”
Cat picked up the most recently used one and invited Dreya to shoot her one more time. When she did so, the mirror failed to stop the torch beam and disintegrated into magical energy, leaving her with nothing to recycle back to sand.
“See?” Catriona said. “They only work once. I have to recreate all my magic from scratch every time. It’s one of the drawbacks of druid magic.”
“Everything has drawbacks,” Dreya replied. “Conventional wizard magic takes more power than what you would need to accomplish the same thing, and as you pointed out, it requires the free use of the hands. Blood magic requires self-harm and the utmost concentration.”
“What about your power words?” Cat asked, referring to the way Dreya had turned their initial contest around with nothing but the words, ‘STUN,’ ‘BREAK,’ ‘SHATTER,’ and ‘SQUEEZE.’
Dreya explained that one of the more thought-provoking parts of Ulvarius’ research had involved trying to compress writing in the language of conventional spells into what he referred to as ‘power words.’ He had been close, but as with blood magic, what he lacked was control.
Before explaining further, Dreya fetched a simple wooden chair from another room.
“If this broke apart, could you put it back together with your magic?” she asked. Cat agreed that would be perfectly simple. “Good,” Dreya said. “I rather like it.”
She set the chair down in a corner and stepped back, indicating Catriona should join her.
“If I just look at the chair and say ‘Break,’ nothing happens.” Sure enough, nothing did. “But if I use my power word, ‘BREAK’…” The chair broke apart. “Over to you, Cat,” she said. Catriona used her magic, visualised how the chair looked before, and reconstructed it, flawlessly. “Now, I can’t just do that again straight away, because power words aren’t as simple as they look.”
Dreya left the room again for a moment, returning with a pen and a sheet of paper. Then, by way of analogy, she wrote the word ‘BREAK’ and then folded the paper in a specific and elaborate way.
“That’s like your power word,” Cat understood. “Compressed, made small, but you can’t just fold it any old way.”
“That’s one of the things Ulvarius didn’t understand. In his arrogance, he thought he could make magic bend to his will as easily as he could bend people. Magic breaks if you fold it the wrong way.”
“So do people.” Cat remarked. “When you use your power word, then, you unfold the piece of paper, I presume.”
Dreya took hold of one corner and with a deft flick of the wrist, caused the paper to unfurl once more. Catriona clapped in appreciation of the trick.
“I take it Ulvarius couldn’t do that?”
“Not consistently, no. Because Ulvarius was folding the magic in random ways, the results were also random. He might intend something to break, and it wouldn’t because there was no power behind the word or vice versa.”
Cat’s eyes widened. “You mean if you didn’t fold and unfold the magic properly and you said something like, ‘Let’s take a break’…”
“…I could break you, yes,” Dreya affirmed, “or myself. And I don’t think you could use your druid magic to put you or me back together as easily as that chair. Folding the magic properly takes time and concentration. I can’t risk doing it on the fly and getting it wrong. Interrupting a power word could make it backfire on me.
“I can only use a power word once, because after I use it, the magical sheet of paper I wrote it on does this…” the paper burst into flames, leaving nothing but ash. “Now, the analogy isn’t perfect, because the magic will regenerate in time, but still, it means every time I use a power word, I have to remake it from scratch.”
“As you say, everything has drawbacks,” Cat said, accepting the point.
“Yes, but the drawbacks of your druid magic are balanced by a huge advantage that I don’t think you’ve fully realised.”
Cat frowned, trying and failing to think what her friend could mean.
“I had a suspicion already, and the experiments we did today prove it.”
“Prove what?” Catriona wondered, fascinated. This was so much better than her lessons in college had ever been.
“When I shoot my energy beam at you, you reflect it with your Nature’s Mirror, right?”
“Yes, I’ve really got that down, now.”
Dreya nodded. “Definitely, but there’s a problem I couldn’t figure out until today.”
“What problem?” Cat asked, still not seeing it.
“Cat, it’s impossible. You can’t anticipate and block a beam of light. There isn’t time to make your mirror in the fraction of a second before my beam hits you.”
Cat had never thought of it like that, but she couldn’t deny Dreya’s logic.
“Your magic has a Temporal element. Somehow, you’re manipulating Time so that the Mirror is in place exactly when you need it to be. It’s the same when you mend a chair or old Renjaf’s tower: you’re rewinding Time. Only to a small extent, but you’re doing it. Clerics can do it, too. That’s how they heal injuries: they make the body revert to its pre-injured state.”
“That’s where it’s different to druid healing,” Cat agreed. “We just speed up the body’s natural healing process.”
“I’ll take your word for that,” Dreya said, “I haven’t had chance to study druid magic before, but even that ‘speeding up’ process is temporal magic, in a way.”
“But they told us at college that time magic is impossible,” Cat objected.
She knew Magias, the first wizard, was supposed to have figured it out, according to legend, but since nobody could read the Nameless Book, she didn’t know how they thought they knew that.
“That’s because they’re only thinking about wizards.”
“Oh, just for a change!” Cat grumbled. “That got so annoying once I started growing my druid magic – they just wouldn’t take it seriously, like wizard magic was all that matters.”
Dreya agreed completely. “There isn’t only one way of doing things, there never is. That short-sighted view is holding magic back. You see, Cat, your fight is my fight, especially now.”
Cat found herself having to blink away moisture welling up in her eyes. “Dreya! You really do say the most unexpectedly sweet things.”
Dreya shifted, uncomfortably and replied, “Yes, well, don’t spread that around, OK? I have a reputation to maintain.”
“Your secret’s safe with me,” she promised. “Although there is someone I would like you to meet.”
Catriona had been living with Dreya for a month by now, and she thought it was finally time to broach the subject of Mandalee. Cat wasn’t sure how the Dark sorceress would feel about having someone else spend time in her home. After all, she may not kill all intruders like the Black Tower’s previous owner did, but still, she was hardly a socialite. Plus, Dark wizards and White clerics were usually an explosive combination. Even so, Cat knew it was vital that they should meet. The Crystal Mage Staff was nagging her about it with distracting persistence.
“Dreya,” said Cat, taking a deep breath, “when we first met, and you grabbed my staff, you remember how it reacted?”
“I’m not likely to forget it,” Dreya replied, rubbing the back of her head. “I’m sure I still have a small dent in the back of my skull!”
“Well, do you remember me saying that something similar had happened once before?”
“Vaguely, now you mention it. It’s all rather hazy, I’m afraid. I was a bit dazed at the time.”
“Well, I was thinking, if my staff reacted when you and I touched it, and also when my other friend and I touched it, then the obvious question is…”
“…What would happen if we all touched it together?” Dreya concluded. “Why haven’t you mentioned this before?” she wondered. “Since the first time, that is.”
“I wasn’t sure how you’d react,” Cat admitted. “My friend…she’s a White cleric, and I know you’re a big proponent of co-operation in magic, but still…”
“…Co-operation with wizards and druids from across the spectrum is one thing, but including clerics as well?”
“You’re opposed?” Cat wondered.
“On the contrary,” Dreya shook her head, “I’m fascinated by the idea. Imagine the power that could be gained from such a joining of magic! As you say, your staff seems to indicate that such a thing is possible. I’m just not sure even my ambition stretches that far. But this isn’t about including clerics in the Council or some grand joining of power. This is just about me joining hands with one cleric of Light, and for the sake of this one magical experiment, your friend has my invitation if she’s willing.”
Cat threw her arms around her friend. “Thank you!” she cried. “You never cease to amaze me,” she said, breaking the hug. Dreya seemed startled by the physical contact but did not object to it. “I really must stop underestimating you. Dreya the Dark inviting a cleric of Light into her home – whatever will the neighbours think?”
Dreya shrugged. “With any luck, it’ll confuse the hell out of them.”
“They might start to think you’ve turned nice!” Cat pointed out with a wink.
Dreya pulled a face. “There’s no need to be insulting, Cat!”
*****
When Cat sent a sympathic message to Mandalee, extending Dreya’s invitation, the power of the negative response almost knocked her off her feet. She’d never felt anything like this when she’d touched her friend’s mind before: Mandalee was furious. At first, Catriona thought it must be Dreya or the Black Tower she was objecting to. Sympathic communication wasn’t always clear on details, but when Cat projected ‘friendship,’ there was no doubt whatsoever. It wasn’t Dreya that Mandalee had a problem with – it was Catriona.
Honestly, Dreya’s power word could not have stunned her more forcefully. So much so, a concerned Dreya gently guided her friend to the chair so she could catch her breath. When Cat tried to project ‘negative understanding,’ all she got back was ‘LATER’ and then she felt Mandalee slam her mental doors shut, putting Cat in mind of the time Renjaf had done that, physically, and nearly broken her nose. This hurt far more. The emotional freefall, going from having such a fantastic time with Dreya to the fear that she was somehow losing Mandalee was too much for her, and she burst into tears.