“It does?” Rexei asked, blinking. “I don’t remember that. Mum said it comes from within people and is something I should never, ever let the priesthood find out about, because they’ll steal it all away.”
“Oh yes, it has a whole cycle, like rainwater,” he told her. “Rain evaporates from the land and the lakes, goes up into the sky, condenses into clouds, falls as rain, evaporates again . . . Magic comes from plants and is absorbed by animals when we eat the plants—we humans are animals as surely as any donkey or cat, just a whole lot smarter. And we in turn shed magic, or rather, life-energy, which in turn the plants drink up and grow strong, feeding us again. The only exception is the Vortex, and similar fountains of energy.”
“There are other places like the Vortex?” she asked.
“Yes—those Guardians you spoke with, they guard other, similar resources. Some are formal points in the world where magic spills in from the . . . well, it’s not the Afterlife, but it’s on the way to the Afterlife. The Darkhanans call it the Dark, and they base their religion around it. I think,” he added, frowning slightly. “Priestess Saleria of the far-off Empire of Katan was explaining some of it to me, because she’s being visited by a Darkhanan Witch—not Witch-Knight Orana Niel, but someone else. I’ve met her, you know. Our secret champion.”
Rexei smiled at his lofty look. She held out her thumb sideways, the other fingers curled into her palm. “I’ve pricked this thing thirty times—thirty-and-one, if you count your guild—signing the petition books. I even met her once, in the Glassworks Guild. Though at the time, I had no clue who she was or what her significance was. I just knew everyone in that guild trusted her completely and that we were signing special books to get Mekha removed from the world. No one believed it’d happen in our lifetime, but . . . we clung to the hope.”
“And here we are, with Him actually removed.” He relaxed into the corner of the divan, then sighed. “Well, we won’t know any details of how it all happened until after the Convocation ends and we can speak with everyone in Nightfall, but I’m confident Sir Orana carried through on all her promises. I hope she—they—weren’t harmed doing it, but when I met her, she swore on a Truth Stone she’d brought that she’d lay down her life to get the job done.”
“If she could . . . Is she really immortal?” Rexei asked. “That’s what everyone was whispering.”
Alonnen shrugged. “Millanei said the Witch-Knight hadn’t aged one bit from when she was a young apprentice, so she very well could be. But nobody knows how she did it.”
Thinking about it, Rexei finally shrugged. “Maybe it’s because she slew Mekha? Slay a God, gain immortality?”
A tip of his head acknowledged her point. “Yeah, but the buggering bastard didn’t stay dead.”
Her eyes widened at the epithet. She hadn’t ever heard anyone apply it so casually, so jokingly, to the God that so many had feared for so long, mages and non-mages alike. “You don’t fear Mekha, do you?”
“I did,” Alonnen told her. “But after living here most of my life, seeing His magics fail to find the mages who fled to the dam even while being tracked by His dog-priests . . . no, I’m not afraid anymore. And even if He somehow did return, even some of His own priests won’t worship him anymore.” At her puzzled look, he reminded her, “. . . They let the mages go?”
“They let them go so that we wouldn’t attack,” Rexei reminded him cynically. “I sincerely doubt they’ll let any scrap of power go, if they can help it. Being told by the Consulate that the priesthood is no longer an officially recognized guild is going to enrage them. Particularly the lot here in Heiastowne.”
“Well, without Mekha to back them up with His God-power, they’ll get a good shock if they try to go up against us. We may be half trained compared to mages elsewhere in the world, but we know how to counter the priest-mages,” he asserted.
That assertion made Rexei frown. “Alonnen . . . if you can contact powerful mages via that mirror—mages outside Mekhana’s borders—then why do you say you’re half trained? Why can’t you just get the training you need from them?”
Her words caught him off-guard. It was an honest question, though. Sighing, Alonnen swept his hand over his head . . . then picked the knot out of the ribbon binding his hair at the nape of his neck. The golden strands fluffed forward, spiral curls released like snapped springs, and he caught her amused smile. He returned it, then dragged his attention back to her question.
“It has to do with the oaths of the Guardian, and the fact that, just up until a few months ago, we didn’t even have that particular scrying mirror. Just two precious ones that could only view things within the kingdom’s boundaries, and only with great effort could I peer at anything beyond. Mekha kept a shield over the entire border,” he explained. “Unless they were extremely powerful—maybe even shielded by another God—mages could not slip into the kingdom without being seen and tagged . . . and most mages on either side of that border could not scry past it. If I hadn’t had the power of the Vortex backing me, I wouldn’t have been able to try. So almost nobody could come to us to teach us without getting caught, and even Witch Orana couldn’t stay.”
“Then how did you get the mirror?” she asked. “You all acted like it had been working for some time.”
“The Vortex is connected to the Fountainways, and the Fountainways aren’t included in Mekha’s spell. Or weren’t,” he clarified. “I only got that mirror a few months ago. As it is, the Fountainways before that were voice only . . . and rules of Guardianship state most firmly that I could not explain to anyone that my Guardianship was within Mekhana’s borders. You took the oath; you know the spell.”
Rexei nodded and recited the rules of the oathbinding she had taken. “I know. Anyone who tries to say to the priesthood of Mekha, either of their own free will or via coercive spells, where the Mages Guild is located—or its members or speaks of the Vortex and its powers—automatically and completely forgets the answers before they’re revealed.”
“Exactly. As the Guild Master, my oathbinding is a bit different because I need to be able to talk about magic and mages and such . . . but as the Guardian, I am still bound by my oaths to keep the powers of the Vortex out of the hands of those who would abuse that power. And the one thing the priesthood of Mekha never learned—and never will—is that there is a Fountain, the Vortex, here in Heias Precinct. With the power of the Vortex at His fingertips, Mekha could’ve challenged a fellow God to His or Her face, even without needing the Convocation to meet them here in the mortal world.”
“War in Heaven?” She shivered. “Is it really that powerful?”
He leveled her a look. “Rexei, the Vortex has kept a God from finding out about the home of the Mages Guild. Perhaps not the strongest of Gods out there, since hardly anyone wanted to worship Him beyond His priests, but still, a God—and a God who drained magic from mages, at that, adding to His power. Not that it makes me the equivalent of a God or anything,” Alonnen added quickly. “But from what the other Guardians have said about such things, two or three of the Fountains combined might make a mage close to being a God, if that mage could handle the power. I can just handle the Vortex, but adding another would fry me alive. Giving it to a God? That’s just a bad idea all around. I don’t have to test the theory to know that much.”