"Change?" Xylina said, puzzled. How on earth could magic change? "What do you mean?"
Ware grimaced. "It is difficult to explain. The last addition brought about the present order, the one that you and all Mazonites believe that has been in place forever. Once, my dear, women were not the rulers. Men were not slaves. Your order is not the 'natural' order, it is only one of many possibilities."
She blinked. Where did that leave the words of the historians, who recorded nothing but female superiority since time began? Where did that leave the priestesses, who told their followers that the Supreme Power was, of course, female?
"Since that addition," Ware continued, "magic has been that of conjuration, and is channeled only through women. And since I am sure that you are curious, yes, I do know what the previous order was like."
Xylina hung on his words, avid with curiosity.
"Before the moment of that addition, it was a kind of magic that could make events occur," Ware told them. "What I mean is that this magic would force things to happen that would not otherwise have occurred, and it was controlled not by women, but only by virgin children under the age of puberty. The next addition-" He shrugged. "Who knows what that will bring?"
"What do you think?" Faro asked shrewdly.
"Well-" Ware lowered his eyes for a moment. "Let us say that I do not yet have an opinion. Many of my kind believe that it will bring about a complete reversal of the current order, and that magic will then be channeled through men. I do not think I need to tell you what that will mean."
Faro's eyes gleamed, and Xylina held her breath. Really, the only thing keeping men subservient to women was the women's ability at conjuration. If that were lost-if, in fact,men got magic power of some kind, the entire world would change. And she had no doubt how it would change....
"They would make us their slaves," she murmured, awed and horrified. "They would force us to serve them in every way, to wait upon them, bear them child after child, to serve their pleasures whenever, wherever they pleased-"
She shuddered. She knew that although she cared for and respected Faro, as she had Marcus, she could not live under a regime of that sort.
"I do not know that this will be true," Ware cautioned. "Just because such a reversal seems logical, it does not follow that it will be so. The last change did not follow such a logical reversal-the next may grant magic only to those who are blue-eyed, or those with golden hair, or to virgins, or those past bearing children. Or to those with a particular birthmark, or of a particular lineage! I cannot say. This magic is not even remotely logical."
Xylina let out a sigh of relief, and Faro looked disappointed for a moment. Then, oddly, his face cleared. She thought she understood why. No matter what the change was, it would mean that power was no longer completely in the hands of women. That would be enough for him....
"The new magic will also be more powerful, because the main crystal will be closer to being complete," Ware continued. "Just as the magic of Mazonite conjuration is more powerful than the magics that preceded it. The more of the crystal that is added, the stronger magic grows. When it is complete-perhaps all humans will have magic, and all forms of magic will be in effect. We do not know. Or perhaps-there will be no magic, and every human will have to rise or fall only on his or her own efforts."
Xylina tried to imagine a world without magic, and failed. But Faro nodded thoughtfully. Perhaps it was easier for him, magic-less, to imagine a world without it.
"We demons have known of this all along, of course," Ware said, matter-of-factly. "This is why so many of my kind are 'courting' the freedmen; frankly, we expect this change to take place within the next fifty years. And if magic goes to men, then the demons will be ready to remind them of all the favors we did them in the past."
"Favors?" Xylina said, doubtfully, distracted for a moment. "What do you mean?"
Faro bent and hid his face, and from the strangled sounds that came from him, she had a strong suspicion he was choking down laughter. She could not imagine what was so funny. Ware simply looked at her, with an enigmatic smile on his face, as if he too found something amusing.
"We treat the freedmen as equals," he said gently. "You know this to be true, for you have seen how I treat Faro, and you will see how I treat my own slaves-as servants, but not as inferior to myself. We are their conduit to the world of the Mazonites, as I explained to you earlier. We contract to them for goods and services, then contract in turn to the Mazonites. We also take their goods to the world outside Mazonia, and trade there for them. But the service that I believe Faro is so amused by is that we supply them with-hmm-bed-companions."
Bed-companions? Did he mean? He couldn't have meant-
Some of Xylina's shock must have showed on her face, for Faro looked up briefly, and doubled over again. Evidently he found all this very funny. She blushed, feeling her ears grow hot, her cheeks burning.
"But-" she said, then stopped in embarrassment. She did not know what she wanted to say, but she burned with curiosity as well as embarrassment.
"There are female demons as well as male," Ware pointed out, obliquely. "Succubi as well as Incubi. But the main-ah-trade is in simulacra. Creatures made from other living things, that look human, but are not. Created 'living dolls,' if you will, with no souls and no more mind than a rodent. Many of them are made from mice, or other lower creatures. They are created for pleasure, and nothing else. These are-well, let me just say that they are very popular with slaves and freedmen who can not afford foreign women."
Well, that certainly explained some things that Marcus would not tell her about the sounds coming over the wall, from what had once been her mother's house! Xylina flushed even deeper, and decided to change the subject quickly.
"What of the change that this new fragment would bring?" she asked. "Why are your kind so certain that magic would go to males?"
"Oh, they are hardly certain," Ware replied lightly. "That is simply what most of my kind think the most likely, or so they try to tell themselves. I-my opinions vary from day to day." His tone turned to one of warning. "But no matter what happens, Xylina, you must realize contemporary society will suffer extreme changes, dislocation-without any doubt at all, power will go to some group that does not currently have it. That means that there will be a revolution, and whatever leaders are in charge at that time will be deposed. Probably, they will be killed. That is what happened a millennium ago, when the last change occurred. Of this, none of my kind has any doubts. And when the change occurs, we will vanish from your ken until the chaos is over. It will be a catastrophe that will make every natural disaster, every war, every disruption your people have endured seem tame by comparison."
And Adria wanted this shard? Xylina was incredulous. Was she insane?
"Why on earth would the Queen wish to possess this thing?" Xylina asked, aghast at the visions that Ware's words invoked in her all-too-active imagination.
Ware smiled, a smile of deceptive gentleness. Xylina saw the smile, and was reminded of a hawk basking in the sun, who could turn into a deadly killer in the time it took to spot a rabbit in the grass. "Ah, but Adria does not know the stone's true nature," he said, a feral gleam in the back of his ever-changing eyes. "She knows only what she has been told: that when properly mounted in gold, it enhances the power of its possessor, and keeps the possessor eternally young. She wants that, more than she let you know. She wants it more than anything she has ever wanted before in her life. Physically, at least, she would be immortal-if she could keep a rival from killing her over it. Anyone who knew she had such a thing would of course want it herself. On the other hand, with her already formidable powers enhanced, Adria would be the single most powerful conjurer in the history of Mazonia. It would be very difficult to challenge her."