26 Senessay

It’s definitely a pouvra. If I hadn’t had ten years of experience learning pouvrin from ancient, barely legible texts, I wouldn’t have recognized it. I had to go to the refectory for a glass of that bitter pink juice that I hoped would clear my head, because my brain kept trying to cling to concepts it could barely understand until it just whirled around like a dust devil, whipping up a storm that only made things worse.

This is what I know so far:

1. The book is nothing but speculation about magic. If I were a Castaviran mage, I would dismiss the author as a madman.
2. The madman who wrote the book had access to other fringe texts, some of which pointed him in the right direction.
3. The madman believed that pouvrin shaped what he called residual magic, something thrown off by kathanas.
4. Completely by accident, he worked out a pouvra that conceals the user from sight.

I had to get up and pace the room again after I wrote that, because I’m so excited I can barely breathe. It’s not invisibility, more of a powerful suggestion that the observer not see you, but how can that not be the most useful pouvra I’ve ever learned! When I think of all the times I was caught, or nearly caught, because I stepped into the light at the wrong time—there, I had to take a pacing break again.

All right. I’m calm again. Not really, but calm enough to apply myself to this book. I only made it about a third of the way into the pouvra book before I got to number 4 up there, and then I had to tell someone. Sai Ced This is just ridiculous. I can’t just keep writing “he.” I’ll have to get used to calling him Cederic, at least when I’m writing. Anyway, Cederic was busy with one of the groups, so I collared Terrael and made him answer my questions. His answers:

1. Yes, there are other books in this vein, and yes, Castaviran mages think the authors are insane, because nothing they write of has ever been proven effective.
2. Terrael had heard of one or two of the texts the madman refers to, but has never seen them. Still, he estimates the book is well over four hundred years old. Which is impressive, since it’s barely faded or foxed, though the pages are too brittle to be handled easily.
3. There is no such thing as residual magic. Terrael was emphatic about this. Magic is constrained by th’an and either flows into an object or is consumed by the th’an or kathana. He offered to show me proof, but I declined on the grounds that I wouldn’t appreciate it.
4. Upon being shown the relevant passages, Terrael admitted that what I said hinted at a pouvra was meaningless to him, but the way the madman constructed th’an was unusual and bore further examination.
5. There was a bit of a tussle that ended with me rapping Terrael on the knuckles and telling him to find another book to examine, because he couldn’t have mine.

I decided to write all this up before going back to studying, to give myself time to calm down. Later, I have to tell all of this to Sai Cederic. I think he will have a better idea of why the madman came to the conclusions he did—whether it was coincidence, or whether he really did stumble on some secret we might be able to use. And tonight I’m going to start learning that pouvra.