.
At an hour or so before Noon, Lisrau Mining Town was a much brighter place. The cold, forbidding town I had seen at night is lit by a sun unhindered by the thicker atmosphere in the lowlands. The grays of the gravel, the gray-greens of lichens on boulders, the painted wood buildings and the stunted flowers in the alpine tundra outside town all positively sparkle in the clear air.
I was very surprised when my ‘returning bird’ flew into a random warehouse instead of the inn in order to track down Uncle Arken. But I suspected I knew what was going on, because not long before that, I had felt Light magic following through my connection to Ceria.
We landed outside the building and dismissed our wings, but were hesitant to just enter some stranger’s warehouse, even though we could both see active mana flows going on within. But Arken emerged after a short wait and waved us in.
High altitude villages stock large warehouses like this one full with preserved foods, feed for their animals, fuel and other necessities through the summer in order to survive the long winters cut off from the outside world. They basically eat their way through the contents while the community is snowed in, which was why this building was largely empty now, in the spring.
I had expected that the divination would be over and done with by the time we arrived but, inside, the team was watching Allia, Ceria and Talene positioned at 120 degree positions around an enormous, complex magic circle.
“The other two are supporting Lady Allia by channeling Light and Aether mana for her,” Arken explained quietly. “It apparently gives her a better chance of success.”
What my fairy sight was telling was, Ceria and Talene were maintaining two concentric magic circles while Allia maintained a third. With one level for the initial container spell and one for each circle, this would be fourth level magic, except that Allia wasn’t finished.
The initial container and the first magic circle had probably gone down immediately. Handing the task of feeding Aether to the first circle magic to Talene had taken two or three minutes, involving an incantation recited in unison by both Allia and the recipient and a long cooldown waiting for the handoff to be stable. Drawing the next circle would have taken another three or four minutes, thanks to the complexity of drawing one circle within an existing, active circle. That had been followed by another handoff, to Ceria, which was what I had felt as I arrived. Adding the third circle, written of Aether again, had probably completed shortly before we entered, which meant they had been working between twelve and fifteen minutes on this ritual. Allia was probably waiting out the cooldown from drawing that third circle at the moment we walked in. That time dramatically increases after level four.
Senhion could have managed this on her own, but these women simply didn’t have an Elder’s unreasonable capacity to channel mana. All three were sweating under the strain.
“Why aren’t you helping?” I whispered to Arken.
“Between the three of us, who do you suppose is the weakest?” he wondered, a rueful smile playing on his face. “I would only drag these women down.”
Half-dwarf fairling Talene would have to be a real powerhouse. And Ceria could draw mana through her connection to me. The bitter humor in Arken’s eyes was because these three women, barely more than children in his eyes, could outmatch him. As elves, none of them would even be old enough for puberty yet. You could add their ages up and get only the equivalent of a late teenager.
“I thought you were going to do this right after breakfast,” I commented. “What happened?”
“We were ready to go outside town to do it, when Talene asked us to wait for her to borrow this storehouse from the innkeeper. She wanted to do the ritual under the concealment of [Secret Chamber].”
I hadn’t noticed the spell operating until he mentioned it. My fairy sight had been drawn to the complicated magic in the middle of the warehouse. But his spell was indeed currently cast on the first floor of the building, the upper boundary being the floor of the hayloft. Before this, I had not known that he could use it on such a large area.
Allia raised her staff– I noticed it was actually Arken’s staff. Allia had gone on this journey equipped as a magic swordswoman and didn’t have one along– and strode forward into the circle at a stately pace. As she did so, Ceria and Talene both walked the perimeter counter-clockwise, with Ceria stopping first at the easternmost point followed by Talene at the westernmost point. Last, Allia reached the center.
She raised her arms, with the staff in her right hand, and stood in a pose exactly like that of the officiating priestess at a worship service for Oranos. It looked a little peculiar, when struck by a woman wearing a leather jack and Roman legionnaire-style leather kilt.
Wind mana began channeling in a powerful whirlwind around Allia, as she chanted, “Lend to me the lore of Heaven, / By the right granted to these creatures below, / According to the ancient accord.”
The mana crescendoed as Allia added extra Light and Aether to the Wind she was already channeling. She then began the second of the two magic triads in the double incantation.
“I seek the truth that answers my entreaty, / A revelation from the divine reservoir / Shaped by the words that I pronounce henceforth. / [Divination!]”
The triggering spell interwove the three magic circles, binding them with the Wind mana control spell, which swept them up into a toroid of glowing manifested mana tall enough to surround Allia to the height of her upraised staff. A new flow of mana spiraled inward into the cylinder from the two women supplying it, Light from Ceria and Aether from Talene, feeding the glow of mana lost and needing replenishment as the spell exceeded the limits of mana density in the Mortal World in order to open a communication stream into the upper realms.
With the wind whipping her hair, Allia then stated her query in loud tones. “Reveal to me a path that I am able to physically travel from a reachable starting point to the entrance that leads to the great underground space below the northwestern Tabad!”
I stopped myself from groaning. Not only was that a dangerously long ‘entreaty’, likely to generate a response that a mortal would have difficulty receiving, there were at least a half-dozen entrances to Ilim Below within thirty miles of this place. Whether any were still open after ten thousand years of geological activity wasn’t assured, but even those that were open would be difficult to traverse.
The supervisory immortals of Huade created the underground world during a time of severe difficulty and global disaster, after the very same catastrophe that inspired the supervisors to create the Elder race in the first place. The entrances had been designed to defend against the dangers ravaging the surface at that time. If her request sent her to one of those entrances, and it was still open, it would be unlikely to be the Berado Tribe entrance that we needed to look for, and it would be dangerous to explore.
I crossed my fingers and hoped that the Sea of Knowledge would define the Berado Tribe entrance, a theoretical mine that had tunneled into Ilim Below by accident, to be a better match for a path that Allia was ‘able to physically travel’.
The wind increased, the mana flow increased, the glow of excess mana escaping increased, holding as a howling gale and an intolerable glare for nearly half a minute, then all cut off, in sudden, brutal silence.
Allia stood in the center, her hair a total mess, her eyes rolled up, leaving only the whites visible, caught suspended in the final phase of the spell, with three kinds of mana wrapped around her like a cocoon and the magic circles, still active, settling back to the ground where they began.
“What, what’s happening?” Ryuu demanded, beginning to walk toward the circle. I’ll admit it did look alarming, as if Allia had been petrified, but I could see her breathing.
I was the nearest to him, and grabbed him. “It’s dangerous, Mr. Kowa. Don’t get any closer.”
“What’s happening to her?” he demanded.
“She’s caught in the transcendence right now, Mr. Kowa,” I told him. “She’s receiving her answer, if she’s getting one.”
Arken added, “It’s a good sign that it’s going this long, but Melione, be prepared.”
“I know,” she responded, nodding. “She warned me.”
As abruptly as the Wind had ceased flowing, the mana cocoon whipped away from Allia into the three magic circles as if sucked up by a vacuum. She tottered, then collapsed to the ground.
Both Talene and Ceria had known what to expect and dashed in to catch her, but the distance was a bit too far. She sprawled on the ground before they could reach.
Melione had kept her grandmother’s fan ready in her hand, and was only barely behind the other two in reaching the woman. She was ready to use it, but Allia opened her eyes just as I felt the Healing begin to flow.
She held up a hand in the path of the fan. “It’s alright, child. My heart’s beating fine.”
“That’s not the only possible malady, My Lady,” Melione lectured. “Be a good girl and let me decide if you’re alright.”
This was a fifteen-year-old lecturing a woman with five kids. But, that’s Melione.
After several seconds of bathing her in Healing mana, Melione closed her fan and stated, “Next time you fracture a rib, don’t you dare call yourself ‘alright’.”
I realized she had fallen on top of the staff when she collapsed.
“Come on, that was just a bruise…”
Melione began tapping the fan in her palm, frowning down at her while saying nothing.
Allia finally sighed and said, “Fine,” before sitting up.
I guessed this was probably Allia’s first experience with Melione as a healer.
“Mom, you gonna keep us in suspense?” Bruna asked. “What did you learn?”
A deep frown creased Allia’s brow, and I knew she wasn’t happy with the answer. But it turned out, she did get an answer of sorts.
“I heard, From the base of the stairs in the valley of clouds, the celestial maiden shall lead the way.”
I rigidly controlled my expression as Allia glanced at me, Ceria and Bruna looking at me next.
They didn’t seriously just make the connection from ‘Celestial Maiden’ to ‘Strega’, did they?
I mean, I don’t think any Huadean culture even uses the term ‘Celestial Maiden’. Ostish has words for both ‘Celestial’ and ‘Maiden’, the latter even coincidentally standing for both ‘Virgin’ and ‘Young/Young-looking Woman’, just like in English. But Stregas don’t even fit the definition properly. Technically speaking, the Elders were a species of Mortal Realm vessels created for our celestial maiden souls to inhabit so we could take up residence in this plane, leaving our celestial maiden bodies in storage in the Fundamental Realm, where my old body presumably still waits for me. Those of us that had children here gave birth to second-generation Elders, not maidens. So the Braysians shouldn’t even be making the connection.
No, wait. To them, the stregas were women sent by heaven. Maybe we did fit the definition.
Ryuu was troubled. “The religion of my country has a kind of goddess called a tennyo. It’s written ‘heaven woman’. Maybe you have something like that, here too?”
Talene raised her eyebrows, but said nothing. Probably, I was the only one here who knew she’d lived her previous life in Ryuu’s native land.
“In our country, we had the stregas,” Ceria answered, looking straight at me. “Beautiful young women with black wings that were sent by Heaven.”
Dilorè, possibly reacting to how Ceria and the other Braysians were acting, noted, “But don’t you believe that they’re gone? You believe that mortals are being punished for killing them all, correct?”
Talene chuckled. “Well, perhaps if we find this ‘valley of clouds’ we can find a celestial maiden to lead us. Right now, I don’t even know where that valley is.”
Although she still had a speculative glance for me, Allia nodded. “Right. Let’s let the innkeeper know we’re done with the place and get some lunch. Bruna, help me up. I still don’t have the strength back in my legs.”
On our way back to the inn, Ceria immediately gravitated to me, as usual. She curled her arm around mine and said, “Welcome back, Lady!”
I smiled over at her, and then at Melione, who had joined us on my other side. “It’s good to be able to stay a while this time.”
“You’ll stay overnight?” Ceria asked, sounding happy.
She’d curled up beside me every night on the trip up from Dausindiu, but apparently still didn’t have enough of me.
“If things go well,” I temporized, since it depended on how Sidis was doing.
“Mm,” she said, squeezing in. “So…”
She put her face close to my neck and took a sniff, then smiled. “I think we have something to talk about?”
