“Strange how?”
“I spoke about this with some of the other members of your delegation, but if you look at the history, it’s really the other way around.”
While Kudo and the rest had been off rescuing Utsuwa, Seth and the remainder of the delegation had spent some time exchanging information. It had all been fascinating to the merchant: the existence of the Academy of Magic, the difference between magic and sorcery, all of it.
Given the course of the Forbidden Land’s history, this encounter with the place they called the New World was bound to advance their technology by leaps and bounds. It would advance their understanding of the concepts of magic and thaumaturgical devices by a thousand years.
“What do you mean, the other way around?” asked Kudo.
“According to our histories, the Forbidden Land was a place where sorcery supremacists were isolated.”
“Sorcery supremacists…?”
“People who believed that the secrets of sorcery must be concealed, and that those who know those secrets should rule the world. They rejected the ‘wizardry’ that made sorcerous power available to the public, they loathed it, thought it should be destroyed. The place they chose to settle was the Forbidden Land. The texts say it was especially abundant with mana.”
“And then your people shut them in there?”
“Whether we shut them in or they shut us out, at this point no one knows. But personally I believe the latter─and the more I speak with the people of the Forbidden Land, the more sure I am.”
“From where I’m sittin’, though, the New World sure looks more prosperous than our neck of the woods.”
Seth laughed at that. “Any such prosperity is thanks to the efforts of our predecessors. This may surprise you to learn, but here in this land you call the New World there remains not a single practitioner capable of creating new sorcery.”
“…What do you mean?”
“We perform the rites as they’re written in our ancient texts and can reproduce the sorcery recorded there, but nothing more. All we’re doing is arranging and rearranging the cards we already have in our hand, somehow managing to develop new thaumaturgical devices in the process. That’s why the Exinov who control the towers are called Grand Magisters, not sorcerers: because they transmit the teachings of sorcery that already exists.”
The New World had survived this long by eating into its inheritance from the past─but now it had reached its limit.
Seth remembered well the day Utsuwa had brought Kudo to his store. When he saw the mana recovery potions Kudo carried, he knew instantly they would change the world…though he never could have imagined that this was the form that change would take─
“What’d Professor Los say when you told her that?”
“Professor Los?”
“Tiny, blond, flashy outfit.”
“Ah.” Seth recalled meeting the witch with the huge staff upon his arrival. “She seemed delighted.”
“Yeah, I’ll bet.”
“The upshot of all this is that our world is almost dead, and I want to change to a new model. I’m fed up with the Exinov, desperately struggling to maintain the status quo by bleeding the Nurabehn dry, unable to see the destruction that awaits us all. It’s we Ignas, existing in the space between the Exinov and the Nurabehn, who are best placed to recognize the truth.”
“An’ that’s why Har Bell came to the Forbidden Land in the first place.”
“If she’d held off another year, someone else would probably have attempted the journey instead. I believe Lady Utsuwa’s presence here will also work to the free district’s advantage. It demonstrates to the whole world the strength this place possesses.”
“Then wouldn’t it’a been better to just bring her here in the first place? You had a chance to do it without causin’ any trouble, didn’t ya?”
Seth gave a wry smile. “It wouldn’t’ve worked if she was crying to go back to her mother. Lady Utsuwa had to want to come here of her own accord, had to decide for herself to fight against Danna Ryl. The Exinov lost a great deal of face when that gatekeeper was brought down, so they rushed the rite of rebirth to recover some of their authority. And we snatched Lady Utsuwa away smack in the middle of it. Right about now they’ll be grinding their teeth and stomping their feet in rage. Makes me smile just thinking about it.” Seth’s vulpine eyes, which gave a ruthless and calculating impression, narrowed with mirth, his tinkling, graceful laughter somewhat at odds with his strapping masculine build.
“You try to picture it at all?” asked Kudo.
“Picture what?”
“How a ten-year-old kid might feel, cryin’ coz she’s terrified of being devoured by her own mother.”
“Oh, I pictured it. That fear is precisely how I thought to explain to a young, innocent girl the necessity for war.” Seth looked down for a moment. He was a little worried whether he was mustering the appropriate facial expression for a merchant. “If your people win this war, the Exinov’s authority will collapse. But if there’s an Exinov fighting on the side of the Forbidden Land─an Exinov who’s a half of the Keybinder herself, no less─that might alleviate the resulting chaos a little. There must always be a leader. Most of the people wouldn’t even know how to put one foot in front of the other without someone to tell them.”
“And you think a ten-year-old’s gonna be ready to take on that role?”
“We’ll make sure she is.”
Kudo turned his back on the smiling Seth and stomped away in irritation.
“…I wonder if he hates me now.” Seth couldn’t hide his true intentions from Kudo, however; he had told the other members of the delegation the exact same thing. I didn’t come here to make friends. I came here to survive. He was reminded anew of just how fearsome these Forbidden Landers were, though. Seth had expected to fail, but when he asked them to save Utsuwa’s life, they hadn’t hesitated for a second, nor even asked for much in the way of details. They had extracted the bare minimum information they needed, then, with a group of just three, had flown off on their dragon and successfully brought Utsuwa back with them.
Har Bell was an incredibly talented wizard, skilled in the use of all manner of thaumaturgical devices. Her reputation within the Ignas community was such that her presence alone served to hearten all and sundry. In addition there was the dragon-rider himself, and a lizard beastservant─no, in the Forbidden Land they called them beastfallen─who could heal all manner of injuries and illnesses.
Even so, after they had left, Seth couldn’t help but ask the other members of the delegation whether they could really pull it off with just the three of them.
─Do they think they need only demonstrate the attempt to save her, and that we’ll be satisfied even if they fail?
Seth’s question was so unexpected that it stunned the rest of the delegation into a silence which was in turn broken by peals of gentle laughter.
─Thou shouldst understand that each of our valiant friends is worth a thousand men. We have just sent three thousand soldiers into the fray.
The grinning witch of the staff fixed her strange, glittering rainbow eyes upon him─but it wasn’t just her. It seemed none of the delegation had any notion that the mission could possibly end in failure.
At the time I had no idea. I thought they might all be fools, overconfident in their own strength…
But when Utsuwa had returned unharmed, that had settled it.
Seth looked around at the city of ice, created by the sorcery of the Forbidden Land─it looked so much more refined than Kuravanu- luox, city of the Keybinder.
“It doesn’t seem our ‘New World’ has any chance of victory.”