BECMI Chapter 160 – I Wish I Knew...

“Lady Edge, a moment of your time.” It was not a question.I paused, as one didn’t turn down the chance to speak with a Prince while in Zanzyr. “Your Highness?” I asked of Prince Mahar Tilian cordially, stepping aside as others exited the lecture chamber around me, including my inadvertent entourage. Many of the students sent me dirty looks for being able to stir the interest of a high noble, be it for good or ill. Anything that got one’s name out there was good in Zanzyr.

“Your tale of the Office of the Forever Wish smacks of more than a bardic yarn,” the fiery-haired, copper-skinned, and golden-eyed archmage said shrewdly, fixing his burning gaze, a trademark of gaining the Fourth Circle of Fire Elementalism, upon me. His arrogance was overriding his distaste of dealing with elves. “I do not believe you conjured the tale out of nowhere as a warning to fools, so where did you hear of such a thing?” he inquired pointedly.

“Ah, of course. Your knowledge of Wishcraft is based on the written experiences of your ancestors, recording what did and did not work, and careful recording of your experiences requesting such things of the efreet, I would assume?” He was just shy of being able to access the raw power of himself, but did not have the required insight to do so, regardless, and so dealing with efreet in his superior position was a far more efficient course of action.

“That is… fairly true,” he admitted carefully, his Aura of fire flickering over me, and not disturbing me in the slightest. If anything, it only made my Void Phoenix Bloodline flare slightly in reaction, something he was startled to notice. “The efreet can be both cunning and coy when dealing with mortals who are requesting ...”

“The efreet are innately hostile to mortals, and deal closely with devils and other beings of Tyranny, happily trading in souls and other Damned goods with relish and zeal. The other genie races, particularly the djinn, are more open and honest in their dealings, and not so hostile with mortals. As you know, nobles of the djinn are also capable of granting , and they are not nearly so circumspect with humble and respectful mortals who do not want to overstep their bounds when dealing with such powerful magic.

“In short, the efreet will not speak of the Office because they take great delight in mortals falling prey to the power of the Office and out-smarting themselves, while the djinn will quietly talk of it to honest and respectful mortals who deal with them to mutual benefit.”

The prince’s eyes flashed as he bridled at the thought, harkening back to the ancient rivalry of Fire and Air that had destroyed the Delphan homeworld and forced the Freir and the Delphans into mutual exile and wandering.

“I see,” he said coolly. “I will be bringing such a matter up with an efreet I have long done business with.”

“I believe among them it is called ” I met his eyes without flinching. “How prone are your people to arrogance and thinking they can outsmart the genies with their wording, Your Highness?” He blinked at the effrontery of my question. “I note the numbers of the Freir have not grown over the years like they should have, very unusual for aggressive humans. It is a side-effect of the Office that memories of those taken by it are wiped away from mortals, so that none remember them and so could for their return, annulment of their attempted , or something similar. I would not be surprised at all if dozens of Freir who had mastered the Third Circle of Fire were caught up in their own power and mystique, and the Office claimed them in their cleverness, with no one remembering them to them free.”

He was trying to steel his expression, but the light in his eyes was rippling with suppressed emotion, aghast and at the same time basically convinced of the truth of it. The pride and arrogance of the Freir and House Tilian in particular were bywords, and the sort of belief that they could outsmart others so readily struck home at the Prince.

Had they been gutting the power of their own House for years?

I believed it to be true, but the only way to find out and neutralize the effect was to use … that it was quite plain that efreet weren’t going to be granting, which he realized without me even saying anything. Being a Fire Elementalist did not make you automatically friendly with the denizens of Fire. It instead tended to make you feared… something Prince Mahar had to be very aware of.

It was likely going to take one simply to learn the name of someone trapped, and then another to nullify their oh-so-clever and see them returned. He was the strongest member of his House, and didn’t have the power to do so. Indeed, in Zanzyr, only Grandmaster Jean-Arc and Prince Jaggenfel had the raw power, with only the former with the required insight. Without my help, Brittabelle wouldn’t have had the insight needed to use , either!

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Once she did, however, a big, big door had opened up, and she knew it. The upgrading of her friends and Vassals was going to be entering a virtuous cycle that none of the other Princes could emulate, mostly because Prince Jean-Arc had nobody to so bless, and didn’t care enough to do so.

In economic terms, were extremely valuable, things to be traded for favors and gold. In real terms, they were just a Valence IX spell slot. If you were willing to spend those Slots for your friends and followers, you were directly injecting economic value into your people.

Belle’s next magic item was going to be a Pearl of Power for IX’s, just so she could Cast an additional IX a day. That could be a , or an extra , as needed. She needed to be able to use three IX’s a day on to get someone to an 18 in a Stat, which took up all her IX’s. There weren’t many ways to gain more of those Slots, the Pearls being about it.

So if that’s what it took, that’s what we’d do. It was just a lot of gold and devoted time, but happily supplies of neither were going to be a problem in the near future…

The Prince looked quite perturbed, and I was sure he was going to be acquiring some independent in the near future just to look into this problem.

“Well, then, I suppose I owe you a debt for bringing this matter to my attention,” he finally said grudgingly, his pride not allowing him to dismiss my words, even if I was an elfin. My Transyvian accent probably assured him I wasn’t Sidhe in blood, at the least.

“Easily settled, Your Highness,” I informed him, earning another glance.

“Oh?” he asked.

“Young Hanvol of Federyn is an associate of mine, and extremely talented in pyromancy. He is a fine credit to your Tradition, and if you could remove any opposition to his learning the skills, that would easily discharge any such debt. The slightest amount of research into his character and nature will confirm he has no ambitions upon your position, and he will give your Tradition a better face than most of the, ah, fiery-natured members tend to present.”

He considered that, and then nodded magnanimously. “I will look into the particulars,” he assured me, promising nothing else, and I inclined my head and bowed in a proper curtsy to him, which he had to appreciate regardless of his personal feelings about elves, judging by the faint smile he tried to hide.

Hanvol’s talent would already have been noted, but he wasn’t of Zanzyr, and definitely did not engage in the politics and scheming here, as would be easy enough to verify. Elementalists living in other lands encouraged the (potential?) wizards there to emigrate here, growing the power of the nation of Zanzyr, and yet themselves usually stayed out of the messy Zanzyran politics.

A win-win from the Prince’s perspective, and it gave his family a connection to the wealthy merchants of Federyn. Perfect discharging of a debt, costing him nothing but influence and gaining him substantial benefits.

Did I need him to do so? Not at all. The entire Tradition of Fire was laid out in the Twilight Libraries, and Hanvol was already undergoing the training in private with a Sim helping him through particulars. However, he would also need to undergo the training ‘in public’ to gain the official position, which he would naturally sail through given his -maxed Intellect, talents, and in-depth knowledge the Elementalists would kill for.

I was fully aware of the Prince’s hypocrisy regarding the elves, too.

In the back of the Tilian estates, wound about with thick undergrowth and trees to conceal it from visitors, rested a single crystalline tomb, one made for an elfin Wizardess… an elfin who had been there when the Freir arrived from off-world, and who had shared secrets of Fire with the fire-loving immigrants that had astonished even them, claimed and turned into their Tradition of Pyromancy.

That elfin had once been one of my Sims, and had called herself Firerose after she gained her soul.

There were fifty-seven Runes of Fire upon her crypt, and seven of those the Freir had never been able to comprehend. Indeed, a few of the elders of the Tilian family had even tried to destroy her tomb and any evidence that elves had been here before the Freir , or that the Freir had gained their knowledge from an elf… and all of them had died, burned to ash by flames descending from the sky that none of their magic could prevent.

House Tilian owed me and mine everything, not just a favor, and there would be a price for their hypocrisy in the future if they opposed me.

It helped having an intimate understanding of their own Tradition I could use against them, and being a Child of Ice and Fire together…

“Lady Edge, Edge!” I heard Isadora call out in the rolling brogue she was trying to moderate somewhat, or at least twist into something that could cut like a proper knife when used.

I turned to look back at the tall Caergard native, human immigrants from the same world as the inhabitants of Verdain, and supposedly responsible for accidentally collapsing the Portal to get back to there, making them enemies of the Grandmaster’s House. They tended to kilts and tartans and floppy hats and bagpipes and claymores and all that stuff, suspiciously so, and indeed there was a rather stoutly-built fellow following behind the robed young woman, black of beard and proud of it, in the same tartan pattern as her own shawl, a full-on kilt and boots, and a jaunty mashed beret with a white toorie atop it. He looked a bit naked without a big arse sword slung behind him on an obvious weapon sash.

“Isadora,” I greeted her calmly. “Did herbology go that excitedly today?”

She flushed at my dry words about a very bland and boring class. “Oh, no, Lady Edge, I am sorry. It… do you remember returning the remains of a member of my House some time in the past?” she skipped past other explanations.

I flicked an eye past her at the intense gaze of the green-eyed young man there. “I do. The men I delivered it to seemed to expect the remains to clamber out of the coffin and start attacking them at my command, or something. They seemed almost affronted I’d brought him back.”

Both of them looked abashed, the younger man even coughing in embarrassment. “Well, there’s often a problem with the unquiet dead of our elders coming up out of their graves,” Isadora admitted hesitantly.

“I see. And this has something to do with your companion?” I asked her.

“Yes! This is my cousin, Miklan McMikal. It was his father, my uncle, that you brought home.”