I could see what Six was getting at. He wasn’t talking about wounds and injuries caused by weapons or other external forces. He was talking about physicians and internal medicine. Such practitioners and their herbal remedies were mainstays in locations without mages, and this had been true of Conrad in the past too. In any case, magic was useless against disease.
Well, mostly useless, if we’re being pedantic.
Healing magic could easily close a person’s external wounds, but it did so at the cost of the patient’s magical energy. My sense of it was that magic worked to boost cell production, thus closing any outside wounds. Now, let’s take an extreme example of this idea—a young person falls ill, and all signs point to cancer. Fortunately, the cancerous area is easy to locate, so healing magic is applied.
The result?
If you’re thinking it’s a full recovery, then unfortunately, you’re mistaken. The magic would actually work to boost the cancer cells, thus ferrying our patient to an expedited death. Do keep in mind that this was a worst-case scenario, however. It was possible that certain diseases were, in fact, curable by way of healing magic, but remember that this world had nothing in the way of X-ray technology, nor even the very concept of cells at all. It was anything but a simple case of “cast magic, heal disease.”
In any case, the heart of what Six wanted to get at was the following.
“This is a conclusion I’ve come to after many long years of observing the imperial capital,” he said. “There’s a magical drain at work. It affects anybody of an especially weak constitution, and especially the elderly, who are in their natural decline. Put simply, they don’t recover. They simply continue their decline, and while it’s not exactly unnatural, the majority simply die that way.”
I wanted it to be a joke, sick or otherwise, but the mage was serious.
“And you’re sure?” I asked.
“It’s an extremely subtle sense of something amiss, and ordinarily you wouldn’t pick up on it at all. But I’m me, and I did. There’s no way you’d notice it unless you started accumulating data to develop statistics. In any case, heed what I’m telling you—the ill do not last long here in the capital.”
“You keep saying that. ‘In’ the capital. So if the sick leave, then they’ll be fine?” I asked.
“The effects only stretch as far as the lake around Gnodia,” replied Six. “Leave the area, and outside of especially serious illness, you can expect a full recovery.”
This was not a matter that could simply be ignored.
“This is the first I’m hearing of this,” said Reinald, leaning forward. “Why did you keep it from me?”
“I already told you. Because you can’t do anything about it even if you do know. This is not Karl’s doing, and I doubt that any of the emperors before him ever had any idea about it either. Any who did deserves a medal. And it’s not that capital that’s the problem, but the underground ruins.”
“The ruins... You mean the box?”
“Correct. Haven’t you ever wondered about that piece of shit construction that to this day has robbed me of my freedom? I have. We talk about the box like it’s just an extension of my being, but until I was trapped inside of it, it was part of an ominous, disquieting relic.”
In short, Six’s own magic—which he could put to use through the box—and the magic of the ruin itself were entirely different things. It was Six’s belief that the “energy source” that kept him sealed within the box was still functioning, and it sucked away trace amounts of energy from the capital’s citizenry.
“It was not really my intent, but I merged with it. I’m in the box. I am the box. But I’m trapped.”
Six admitted that this was all still hypothesis on his part, but he was certain he was right. And while you might have thought that he and the box being the same thing would allow him a clearer answer—he now being the source, so to speak—the truth was still hidden.
“I’m trapped inside of it,” said the mage, shrugging. “Think of the ruin as a prison warden. You think it’ll happily dish out information that might aid my escape? I can’t get anything out of it, no matter how much I try.”
“So basically, you can’t use any of your own powers to aid in your own escape.”
“Bingo. My powers cannot be turned on either the imperial family or the ruins. Anything else is fair game. I’ve tried. Lord help me, I’ve tried. But it’s like I’m bound by invisible, unbreakable chains.”
Whoever had constructed the ruins was long dead, and they hadn’t left behind any helpful documentation. The frustration on Reinald’s face made me think he was worried about the capital’s residents—that this was a problem the crown prince could not just idly stand by and watch, but actually...
“Just to be completely and utterly certain,” he said, “this phenomena you speak of has no effect on ordinary, healthy people, yes?”
“Of course it doesn’t. People still live here. A whole country has been built around the place. I’m strictly talking about the sick and the elderly. The ruins drain a small amount of magical energy from the people around it—it takes a small amount of their life force, in other words. As long as you are healthy enough to withstand that, you’re fine—it’s just those who don’t that are in danger.”
The effect of that energy drain went as far as the lake around the capital, which Six marked as safe. Lord Gerhard’s home, for example, was beyond the lake, and so he was fine. The same could not be said for the two elderly men living here with us. And while Whateley had shown some signs of a recovery, as for Ben...
“Are you hiding anything else from me?” asked Reinald.
“Hiding...? Oh, come on, don’t make this into a big thing.”
“Because if I find out that you are, I’ll happily recommend that the emperor make more use of you in the immediate future.”
This was not what Six wanted to hear. Reinald leveled a cold stare at the mage, a sign that he was very unimpressed to learn that Six had been keeping secrets. Six tried a number of excuses, but they got him nowhere.
“Ugh... Fine,” Six said finally. “I’ll be more open if anything else comes up. That’s what you want, isn’t it?”
“You don’t get to decide if a situation is truly helpless. I do,” said Reinald.
And that was that, as far as Reinald was concerned. And though it seemed like Six could have been hiding yet more, Reinald didn’t push further, even though he had just learned that the box was sucking magical energy from the capital’s entire citizenry.