Unbinding

by Eileen Wilks

  “Thank you,” Nathan said gravely. “I apologize for any perceived insult, Cullen. If my Queen were here to safeguard the loan of her information, she could have verified your integrity in ways I can’t. Since she isn’t, I must in all honor do what I’m able to.”

  Cullen’s shields must have come back up, because his colors winked out. He leaned forward. “Her information?”

  “Winter wanted to be sure I understood who and what I’d be dealing with when she sent me to kill the artifact Nam Anthessa, so she explained some things in depth. Some of it I already knew, but . . . eh.” He rubbed his nose. “I’m starting this backward. Best begin with what you know. Where does magic come from?”

  “There are a dozen theories about that, but none that I—wait a minute.” His eyes narrowed. “That’s what this is about? It can’t be. The source of magic has been debated for centuries, but from what I can tell, even the adepts gave up on finding real proof for any of the theories.”

  “Are you not prepared to believe what I tell you, then?”

  Cullen stared at him intently. “It truly comes from the Queen of Winter?”

  “It truly does.”

  “Then . . .” Cullen took a deep breath, as if readying himself to leap from a very high place. “I will believe you.”

  Nathan nodded once. “Magic is the product of the friction between chaos and order. Specifically, it is the friction between the realms, which are ordered, and that which lies between the realms, which is chaos.”

  Cullen stood absolutely still. She wasn’t altogether certain he was breathing.

  Kai looked at Nathan. “I don’t get it. That’s the big secret?”

  His mouth quirked. “I should have asked for your silence, too.”

  “Okay. But why?”

  “There are those who would torture you for that information if they so much as suspected you possessed it.”

  “That’s a great reason for me to keep quiet, but I still don’t get why it’s such a big deal.”

  “Because the information comes from Winter. As Cullen said, there are myriad theories about the source of magic, yet only a very small number of beings in all the realms suspect the full truth. Even fewer are certain. You don’t see what it means. I’m not sure I do, either. But he does.”

  “Son of a bitch,” Cullen breathed.

  “I’m afraid he’s precisely the sort of person my Queen would prefer to keep that information away from,” Nathan went on. “Seeing that—”

  “Addler’s Theorem of Two Spaces,” Cullen muttered. “And gates. By God, gates must be a way of dodging the chaos altogether, not just bridging it, which means—”

  “—he can grasp the ramifications and put them to use.”

  “—they can’t be a product of temporal displacement, the way Perez insisted. Son of a bitch!” Cullen repeated with great satisfaction. “That’s what happened when the realms shifted!”

  Nathan nodded. “Yes, that’s why you’ve more magic here now. Chaos is once more pressing against the order in your realm. The point I want you to think about is what this says about Dyffaya. A god of chaos, you see, has a great deal of power available to him.”

  Cullen’s eyebrows snapped down. “He ought to be bloody unstoppable.”

  “He very nearly was, I understand, before he was killed.”

  “Wait a minute,” Kai said. “I’m not following. Why does being the god of chaos mean he’s got mega-oomphs of power?”

  Cullen looked at her as if just then remembering she existed. “Because a god of chaos must have some access to chaos. If he can bring even the smallest mote of it through to our realm—” He looked at Nathan. “Is there any way to quantify what would happen then?”

  “There may be, but I don’t know it.” Nathan met Kai’s puzzled eyes. “Likely friction doesn’t sound very powerful to you. Think of bringing order and chaos together as similar to what happens when matter and antimatter touch.”

  Kai did think about that for a couple scary seconds. “That would be mega-oomphs, all right.”

  “However, Dyffaya has a problem bringing in that mote of chaos because he can’t enter a realm himself. His body was killed and he can’t enter any of the realms without a body.”

  Cullen’s eyebrows climbed. “And yet he planned to do just that.”

  “Not exactly. He was trying to disrupt the time-stream so severely it would allow him to pull his original body into the present.”

  “You’re joking,” Kai said. Only clearly he wasn’t. “But if he yanked his still-living body out of the past, wouldn’t he be bringing his former self along with it? And then his body wouldn’t have been around when whoever-it-was killed him, so he wouldn’t have died after all, so—”

  “I don’t pretend to understand it. I’m telling you what Winter told me. He needed Nam Anthessa to do that. Without the knife, he’s limited to acting from outside this realm. Cullen? Are you listening?”

  With a visible effort, Cullen dragged himself back from whatever fresh thought had held him enraptured. “Sure. Go ahead.”

  “Just as chaos disrupts order, so order destroys chaos. This is why the chaos energy set loose by Nam Anthessa’s death is not pure chaos, but an amalgam of chaos, arguai, and magic. When the knife was whole, it held chaos bound up in spirit to protect it from the order in our realms. When the knife shattered, that chaos came into greater contact with order, which means—“

  “Of course. Of course. Freshly minted magic, and tons of it.” Cullen paced three quick steps, stopped, and turned. “Think of what this tells us about nodes! Node magic is the most powerful because it’s freshly created, and so is the least ordered. Do you see what that means?” That was more demand than question.

  “Not as clearly as you, I suspect, but—”

  “That’s why it’s so much harder to work with node energy, slightly easier to work with ley lines—not that you can’t blow yourself up that way, too. It’s why plant-based magic is the safest and the weakest. Living things are complex, which means they’re highly ordered, so their magic is, too. Although that doesn’t explain why living things like you and me can possess a great deal of magic—”

  “Because of our kiths,” Kai put in, getting into the spirit of discovery. “Somehow our grounds filter the magic in a way that doesn’t order it as completely as a plant would.”

  “That makes sense. And the ramifications go on and on. Intent is a key component to every spell and the hardest to master, but I think . . . yes, by all the gods, that’s why Gifts are so much stronger than spells! It must be! A Gift lets us impose intent on magic without any other components, which means no power is lost through the additional ordering those other components impose. My God, this is huge!” Cullen’s eyes glowed with a zealot’s joy. “Then there’s the so-called lunar limit on charms—not that I see how exactly that ties in, but it must. When I think of—”

  “Don’t,” Nathan said firmly. “Not right now.”

  “—the implications for the way we classify magic—”

  “Cullen.”

  “Take mind magic, for one. That has to be highly ordered, doesn’t it? While fire is closer to chaos, so it—”

  “Cullen! There’s a god who wants to dabble in your realm, and while he’s at it, he’d like very much to kill Rule Turner and harm or kill Lily Yu. I’d like you to pay attention to that particular ramification for a moment.”

  “Right.” Cullen drew in a slow breath. “I see that this Dyffaya has beaucoup power to sling around because the chaos energy creates it for him. He didn’t before because that power was bound up in Nam Anthessa, but he does now. Yet he can’t enter our realm, so he’s limited to the power generated by the bits of chaos energy set free by the knife’s destruction. Or so we think.” He frowned thoughtfully. “Eventually those bits will be used up, won’t they?”

  “I’
d think so, but how long is ‘eventually’? A week, a century, several centuries? I have no idea, and no idea how we could find out. Then there’s the arguai, the spiritual energy. Dyffaya is a god. He can use that.”

  Kai said, “But no one here worships him.”

  “Not him, no, but chaos is important here as it is everywhere. Anarchists celebrate it, the mad are trapped in it, and artists and creators of all sorts draw upon it. As does everyone who works with magic.”

  Cullen blinked. “Shit.”

  “None of those ties to chaos means that those people actively worship Dyffaya, but their connection to chaos matters to the spiritual side of things.” Nathan paused and frowned. “Not that I know how, exactly.”

  They all fell silent, contemplating the possible resources of a god tied to magic in such a fundamental way. After a moment, Kai spoke slowly. “There’s something I don’t understand.”

  Cullen’s eyebrows lifted again. “Only one thing?”

  She ignored that. “He’s the god of chaos, so that’s what he draws on. But if intention supplies order, then isn’t he acting antichaos every time he uses his power intentionally?”

  Nathan beamed at her. “That is very much what Winter told me. Yes, he is, and that’s an important limitation. Every time he acts toward a goal it imposes order, which drains some of his spiritual power. He’s done a lot of that, so I think he must be spiritually depleted. He’s more likely to use magic against us than spiritual attacks. Kai and I can’t be compelled, but—”

  Cullen broke in. “Listen, I need to get a look at chaos energy.”

  “We can try to arrange that,” Nathan said. “But first I have to stress that you are not to try to touch it or use it yourself.”

  “I’m not an idiot. It would be as hard to control as node energy, so only as a last resort—”

  “Not as a last resort. Not under any circumstances. Three components to chaos energy, Cullen: magic, spirit, and chaos. And basically, the spiritual part is Dyffaya.”

  “You think he would take over my mind if I tried to handle chaos energy.”

  “You can’t use it without touching it, can you? And if you touch it, he’d have you. Your shields won’t work against a spiritual assault. Unless you’ve the sort of soul-deep faith that might allow you to resist . . ? I didn’t think so. Then there’s that kernel of chaos at the core. Try to bring it under your control and you expose it to order.”

  “And—boom.” Cullen huffed out an impatient breath. “I get it, okay? No messing with the chaos energy.”

  “Good. Now that we’re clear on that, I’d like you to figure out how to destroy it without destroying half the state.”

  Cullen stared at him. “You just finished explaining why I can’t. Pretty damn convincingly, too.”

  “Destroying it wouldn’t be the same as trying to use it, now, would it?”

  “In the sense that destroying it may be possible without connecting with it, which would let Dyffaya take me over? Nope, not the same. In the sense that destroying it will release a catastrophic amount of power? That part’s pretty much the same.”

  “That’s how it looks to me, too. Which is one reason I told you what I have. Cullen, when I told you about the source of magic, ideas began fizzing and popping around in your head. You saw what it meant in all sorts of ways that had to be explained to me. You’ve got a chance of figuring out how to destroy the chaos energy released by Nam Anthessa’s death. I don’t. And we need to destroy it. We can’t get to Dyffaya, so we have to make it impossible for him to get to us.”

  Cullen’s eyes went unfocused. He shook his head, muttered something Kai didn’t catch, then suddenly paced right up to the edge of the circle, stopped, and glared at it. “I can’t even figure out how you did this.” He waved at the invisible ward. “And you want me to come up with a way to safely dispose of chaos energy?”

  “Well, hell,” Kai said. “You’re doing it, too. Even you.”

  He turned the glare on her. “What the hell does that mean?”

  “It’s what I saw in almost all the humans in the Queens’ realms—this damnable assumption that elves know more, can do more, than anyone else, so the only way to get ahead is to get hold of their knowledge.” She shook her head. “Elves do not like change. Their whole system works against it. What they know now is pretty much what they’ve known for centuries. When you offered to trade Nathan a spell or two in exchange for learning how to set a silence ward, you said they were spells you’d come up with yourself. You do that a lot? Come up with new spells?”

  “Sometimes, sure, but there’s a wee bit of difference between coming up with a magnification spell and safely disposing of the most volatile energy in existence.”

  “The point is that we don’t need someone who already thinks they know everything worth knowing. We need someone who’s used to banging his head up against all that he doesn’t know in order to come up with something new.”

  Cullen was silent for a long moment. When he spoke again, his voice was mild. “Nathan is not an elf.”

  “What?”

  “You thought I was coming over all insecure because of exposure to Nathan, but your argument was about elves. Nathan isn’t an elf.”

  “You pick every nit you find, do you?”

  “Damn straight. All right.” He faced Nathan again. “I’ll do what I can, but like I said, I need to see chaos energy. We’ll have to figure out a way for me to do that. Also, you’re going to have to ante up information when I ask for it.”

  “Blank check?” Nathan said dryly.

  “You have my word that I won’t ask unless I believe the information is relevant to my finding a way to destroy chaos energy.”

  “Very well. If it’s something I know and am not honor-bound to withhold, I will answer you.”

  “Good. We can—no.” He shook his head, then stood frowning off into space. “I need to think. I need time to think. Is there more you need to tell me under my vow of secrecy?”

  “Not unless you’ve a question whose answer might need to be included in that vow.”

  “I need to digest awhile before I know what to ask.”

  “We may as well rejoin the others, then.” Nathan stepped up to the circle Kai couldn’t see and broke it with the side of his hand.

  Cullen watched intently, but shook his head as if unable to figure out what, exactly, Nathan had done. “About how you set that ward—”

  “Not now.”

  Unexpectedly, Cullen grinned. “I’m going to ask again, you know.”

  Nathan’s voice was very dry. “I had guessed you might.”

  Cullen turned away. Paused. “Oh. You need to ask Lily about the godhead. She was there, after all. Not physically, but her experience might offer some information.” He gave Nathan a nod and headed for the house.

  Kai started to follow, then stopped when she realized Nathan hadn’t moved. He was watching Cullen, his expression bemused. “What?” she asked.

  “Just wondering what I’ve turned loose on this world. I’m thinking he’s going to be the first full mage your realm has seen since the Purge. Maybe even the first full adept.”

  A mage wielded a lot of power. An adept, though . . . “You really think he could go that far?”

  Nathan shrugged. “He hasn’t found his true name, but if he does, then yes. He’s brilliant, fascinated by magic, and obsessed with learning more and more—the three qualities all human adepts require.”

  “Only the human adepts?”

  “Well, all adepts are all fascinated by magic, but elves have longer to spend on the learning. Humans need to get there in a hurry if they’re to arrive at all, so there’s more need for obsession.”

  And elves, for all their faults, had evolved a system of checks on the power of their adepts—one largely composed of other adepts and backed up, in the end, by t
he two Queens. Kai thought of some of the stories about adepts that she’d heard. “It’s not like I think Cullen’s going to go over to the dark side, but if he did, no one here could stop him. Even if he just got careless . . .” She shivered, thinking of one story in particular, about an adept who’d made a small mistake once when opening a gate.

  “You’re forgetting the Eldest.”

  True, and that did make her feel some better. Still, dragons did not have the same priorities as humans. The black dragon might do nothing as long as Cullen didn’t interfere with his own plans, regardless of what Cullen did in the human world. He might decide to kill Cullen tomorrow, just in case.

  Maybe not tomorrow. He’d left, hadn’t he? Taken off on some mysterious business of his own.

  “It isn’t Cullen we need to worry about, though, is it?”

  She shook her head as if to dislodge her previous thoughts. “What?”

  “Cullen will never violate his oath to Isen. Whatever power he acquires will belong to his Rho, so it looks like he will be Isen’s problem. Did you know Lily Yu had been inside the godhead?”

  “He yanked her there mentally when she was injured and tried to persuade her she was dead. Apparently he could have trapped her there if she’d been convinced she didn’t have a body to return to. She talked about it once, but I guess you weren’t there. You didn’t know?”

  “It seems I’ve been insufficiently curious.” He held out his hand. “Let’s get back inside.”

  Surprised, Kai took his hand. Nathan wasn’t much for holding hands in public. He loved to touch, but when out in the big, dangerous world he preferred to keep his hands free in case an assailant dropped out of the sky or burrowed up from the ground or whatever.

  She tossed a mage light into being with her other hand, being unable to see in the dark the way he did, and they headed for the lower deck. It felt good to hold hands as they ambled back to the house on this cool April night, but Kai couldn’t help wondering. Nathan kept doing things she didn’t expect . . . like holding hands. And arming Isen Turner with a soon-to-be mage who might even become an adept. Isen was an honorable man, but he was at war. War could bring even honorable men to make choices they’d never otherwise consider.