Date: 7-9-164

  I have now been Nadine’s apprentice for three days, and she has thrown herself into my education with a singular focus. While the Panzean method of learning is grossly inefficient, she quickly understood that I can memorize a word after encountering it once, and that has helped things move along at a decent pace. I’ve had to create yet another spell dedicated to storing and organizing information on Theramancy—I’ve dubbed it Theramantic Recall in order to differentiate it from the actual Theramancy spells I might mention in my writing. Here’s a question, then: should I set aside some of my (all-too-limited) time to create a written record of this new magic that I’m learning? I feel more confident than ever that we’ll find our way home, at which point I can share the spell directly.

  If I’m wrong, however, then all of this newfound knowledge will be lost…

  Ah, but let’s move on from such dour musings. Jacque returned to his own home yesterday, but, to my surprise, he still arrived at his usual time for our tutoring session today. His recovery is a testament to the power of Theramancy; not only does he still have his leg, but he’s already back on his feet. Yes, he is reliant on his cane and it’s clear that the exertion pains him, but a Guntao physician would have consigned him to weeks of bed rest.

  His arrival at the library was preceded by the clacking of his cane against the polished stone floors. It was a slender black rod, roughly as long as his leg, which he held by a handle that curved like a hook. In place of his usual red overcoat was a burnished bronze jacket, not as embellished as his old coat and scuffed in places. (I wonder if he only had the one nice coat, which was likely damaged in the accident.)

  “Good morning, Miss Why,” he said; his voice wasn’t warm, precisely, but it lacked some of the edge that he previously used with me. His eyes drifted to my hands which, for the moment, were perfectly still.

  “Good morning, Mister Ordine,” I said under my own power, carefully enunciating the words. “I hope you are feeling better.”

  He laughed and said something too quickly for me to possibly understand. Having exhausted the entire catalogue of Panzean words I could comprehend without my spell, I resumed my casting. I couldn’t help but notice a disappointed cast to his eyes.

  “I hoped we were over this—” he made a vague gesture to my hands as he walked to his seat— “these [tics] of yours.” As he settled into his chair, he added, “But I won’t hold it against you. After what you’ve done for me, you’re allowed your [eccentricities].”

  “What does it mean, ‘hold it against you’ and ‘[eccentricities]’?”

  “‘Hold it against you’ is an [idiom] meaning to think badly of a person because of something they did or have done. ‘Eccentricities’ are odd, but charming, traits.” He provided the answers immediately and without a hint of his usual sardonic attitude. “And you are very odd, but you already know this, yes? It makes you difficult to teach.”

  I gave a slow, uncertain nod. Fearing I might say something suspicious or attention-grabbing if I commented on the Panzean methods of teaching, I waited for him to continue.

  “At first, you see, I taught you like the small children at the church. I assumed you knew as much as them, and, to my surprise, you knew even less!” He shook his head. “But you learn quickly. You remember perfectly. You think deeply. And because of that, I must ask you: what do you want out of this? Out of these lessons we have together?”

  Ah. This was something I had given a great deal of thought to, in fact. I’d spent weeks in this land and completely overlooked the existence of something as fundamental as magic. My inability to communicate effectively was doubtless a major contributor to this oversight. If my grasp of the language was still so tenuous, then how could I convince anyone, let alone the Lord Governor, to aid me?

  “The way of speaking and reading,” I said. “It’s not enough to learn only words I hear when talking to friends. I want to answer, how do words work? How do they, ehm, pair? I need to deeply understand it.”

  He regarded me with that piercing gaze of his. Before, this same gaze had felt like an attack, but now it held a certain thoughtfulness to it, as though he were seeing me as I was and not as he assumed me to be.

  “I am not an expert of [grammar]—that is, the way that words come together,” he said. “But I know books that can help you. We can work through them together starting tomorrow, if your new apprenticeship does not make you too busy.”

  “Tomorrow?” I ask. “Not five days later?”

  He let out a weak laugh. “Dear Nadine cannot [afford] to see patients such as me for free, but I cannot [afford] to pay for her care. Because I am an old friend, we have worked out an [arrangement]. I will help to, let us say, round out the education of her new apprentice.”

  I sat up straight and gave him a deep bow so that my head nearly touched the table. “Thank you. Please take care of me.”

  I heard him sigh, and I raised my head to see a thoughtful frown on his face. “Eccentric. That is the word for you.” He shrugged. “But if we are saving grammar for tomorrow, is there anything you would like to learn about today?”

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  “I would very like to know, magic.”

  ***

  Jacque spent the rest of the day’s tutoring session introducing me to the Panzean schools of magic.

  To begin, there are four common schools. I asked him why there weren’t eight—one for each of the Panzean ancestors—and he shushed me. It seemed that saving him from being crippled did not earn unlimited patience.

  (I will note that there’s something strange about the Panzean word for “ancestors.” There’s some additional nuance to it that doesn’t exist in Guntao language, though I haven’t quite put my finger on what that nuance might be.)

  He only made passing mention of Theramancy, as Nadine could teach me far more about that discipline.

  The next school we discussed was Phosomancy. Jacque mentioned, with some pride, that Phosomancy was his school of magic, and that he’d be happy to discuss it at great length. I pointed out that his phrasing implied that Phosomancy was his only school of magic and asked if it was common for a person to only have one school.

  He thanked me to keep my questions to myself until he was done.

  Setting that topic aside for now, Phosomancy involves the creation and manipulation of light. Phosomancers are responsible for illuminating most of the city, as well as creating many of the great works of art one might see projected in places such as church. I did at this point interject that it was quite impressive, and Jacque beamed at me.

  Lithomancy is the manipulation of mineral materials such as stone and metal. Nearly everything Panzeans use in their day-to-day life is created by Lithomancers, from their homes to their carriages to their textiles. (Personally, I prefer cotton to fabric spun from gold, but it’s astonishing they were able to accomplish this level of comfort from so rugged a raw material.)

  Jacque wandered down a bit of a tangent at this point. He told me that northern cities like Valia’s Watch were fine, but the true architects of the world all lived in the south, where he and Nadine were originally from. Lecosians—that’s what he called himself, though I’m unclear on if Lecosia is a kingdom or something else—elevate city-building to a high art. He described silver boulevards that twisted into the sky and meandered amongst the clouds; cities sculpted to resemble massive sails made of sapphire and ruby; a great citadel that straddled a lake, with parapets that stretched, root-like, over the water to reach the shore.

  He almost sounded jealous of the mages who could work such wonders.

  Kinesiomancy is the application and direction of physical force. This seems like an incredibly potent ability, and I think I see this magic’s influence throughout Valia’s Watch, but Jacque refused to elaborate on this school any further.

  Having described the four common schools of magic, Jacque dove into an explanation of the three Great Houses.

  He began this explanation by emphasizing that the Great House were the direct descendants of the ancestors. Of course they were descended from the ancestors, I told him—what else could they be descended from? In response, he muttered something I didn’t quite catch.

  I remain convinced that there is some additional meaning to the word “ancestor” in Panzean that I do not yet understand.

  We moved on.

  The first of the Great Houses, House Valia, will of course be familiar to you from my previous entries. According to Jacque, the ancestor Valia held dominion over water and, particularly, the sea. It follows that Lord Governor Valia, as he is styled, possesses this very same power. So this, then, is how we’ll retrieve your body from beneath the waves!

  As I was contemplating this, Jacque pressed on.

  House Jedin is based in the south, in the same Lecosia region that Jacque and Nadine come from. I could tell that this Great House is respected, and perhaps even beloved, from the reverent tone Jacque took when describing it. He said that the first Jedin was the “[Ancestress] of Wisdom.” Unfortunately, he either couldn’t or wouldn’t explain what that meant; I can’t help but wonder if Jedin’s magic is similar to my own Truthbinding.

  It dawned on me that there was something very strange about this idea of Great Houses. In Guntao, it is understood that magic came from the first ancestors, and that it is inherited down family lines. How, then, can the Great Houses maintain a hold on an entire sphere of magic for themselves? If the Lord Governor has three children, and each of his children have three more children, and so on, you have hundreds of Panzeans with the potential to inherit water magic after a few generations.

  Either Panzean magic is even stranger than I at first thought, or else the Great Houses somehow keep their families to a very manageable size.

  I asked Jacque about this, and he told me that my latter guess was indeed the case. As the story goes, the ancestors of the Great Houses placed a curse upon their descendants: in every generation, there would be only one child. In this way, there would never be a branch to split off and spread their magic to the commoners, so to speak. In exchange, the magic possessed by members of the Great Houses is said to rival the ancestors themselves.

  Wouldn’t that put each of the Great Houses in a precarious position? All it would take is a single unfortunate accident to end the family line for good.

  In answer to this, Jacque told me—finally—about the Great House Arix. Arix ruled in the north and possessed the power of the devouring flame. They were fierce and proud, and many times throughout history they had led armies across Panzea. Somehow, they had always survived…until they hadn’t.

  There was a war—they actually called it the War of the Heartless—164 years ago. Its completion marked the end of the previous era and the start of this one. In the last major battle, “High King” Arix led his army against a coalition headed by the Ladies Valia and Jedin of that time. He died without an heir and Great House Arix was extinguished.

  This raised questions that I wasn’t prepared to bring to Jacque. Nadine mentioned this extinguished house to me before, and their ancestor had features that looked vaguely Guntao. If you recall, rumors were starting to form that I was the long-lost Arix heir.

  And remember, 164 years in Panzea is only forty or fifty years back home. There are likely many people alive who fought in that war. Jacque mentioned a Lady Valia to me on the day of his accident. Could he have meant the same Lady Valia who fought against High King Arix in that fatal battle?

  What happens to the magic when a lineage is completely destroyed?

  I added these questions to my ever-growing list. Thus far, Jacque had spoken of four common schools of magic and three Great Houses. That makes seven, but the Panzeans revere eight ancestors. When I asked him of this, he said a word that I didn’t immediately understand. I pressed him on the topic, and he abruptly ended the day’s lesson, claiming that his leg had started to ache.

  Later, after he’d gone home, I looked up the word he used to describe this school.

  The final school of Panzean magic is forbidden.