Since his brother had begun speaking about the preparations for a war, the Secret Room had become Seth’s haven against reality. He hid there to avoid anything connected to the conflict, and the responsibility they gave him without the chance to complain. Since Prince Charta died a month ago, it all turned much worse.
He knew what dreams led Rani down this road, and Seth didn’t want to deter him. This war had to happen for the good of Seiran, even considering the drastic measures - at least that’s what Rani told him. It was an impossible goal, unachievable by any subtler means. For the betterment of every soul living among the dunes.
Still, Seth would have preferred if it blew over on the surface while he spent his time discerning the unimaginable secrets the Room held. At least this portrayed him as busy, working towards something that could benefit the campaign.
“It will all end happily, right?” he asked his only company.
The half-inaudible spirit voice just crackled like a broken cartwheel. “Unkno… zzzzzz… omman… zzzkhss”
“Right,” Seth said, giving up on the answer. The noises taking up much of her words had gotten better during the years of tinkering, but it was still a major issue. She was connected to some metallic tablet ordained with lines of gold, yet how they affected each other was still a mystery.
Seth was sitting under a metallic box with one such tablet laying on his lap, following the golden lines with the tip of his finger, paying so much attention to their details that the familiar voice coming from the entrance startled him.
“How goes the study?” Idranil asked.
He was leaning against the steel frame housing the sliding door, arms folded on his chest, trying to look carefree. His eyes were narrowed, trying to peer through the semi-darkness, but Seth could still see they were lacking the usual confidence and authority.
“So-so,” he answered. “I’ve learned about the pieces creating the Foremagic, but the structure still eludes me.”
“How about some help?” Rani said, without a hint of joy.
Seth emerged from under the strange machine, avoiding the sharp corners of an opened cabinet door, and dusted his pants off.
“That would be a kind gesture, Rani, but I doubt anyone could be of use. I have the whole Secret Circle. If none of them could be anything more than a hindrance, who could?”
Idranil seemingly only waited for this exact sentence, at least taken from the grin on his face. He pushed himself away from the frame and started walking up and down among the blankets of weird objects Seth collected, rummaging through the room. Rani always did this when he thought the subject was important, no matter the location or the audience.
“I have someone in mind. A few hours ago, the palace gate was breached by a girl. She burned two of my guards to a crisp with a cape you mentioned.”
“The Flamefeathers?”
“Yes, that. They weren’t just set aflame, they actually turned to ash and bone in an instant. She didn’t seem aggressive, only too quick to retaliate, so I agreed to see her. Only, she wasn’t here to see me. She wanted to meet you.”
“Me? For what reason?”
“She said…” Idranil suddenly stopped, taking a deep breath and clearing his throat. “That sapling of a girl said it was none of my business.”
The air got stuck in Seth’s throat. His brother was the most powerful of all the Seir princes, the Golden Light, according to some the avatar of Shardeen herself – and a sassy mejai girl just dismissed him.
Seth pressed his lips tight and tried his earnest not to burst out laughing, masking the urge with a modest cough. “I… I see. Where is she now?”
“Having tea with my wife.”
“Mhm.”
The situation was so odd that neither of them knew how to handle it. Rani seemingly only wanted to be rid of this murderous, sharp-tongued girl, letting Seth handle the rest.
“Well, all right. Send her here, I’d like to see her myself.”
The mighty prince of Shardiz bowed with more relief and gratitude Seth had ever seen, then turned around to see about their new guest.
It must have taken somewhere around ten minutes before two pairs of military boots trod down the stairs, following—yet not touching—a completely ordinary, skinny young woman with ebony hair, two crutches supporting her over only one leg, and an unimpressed expression.
“Keeper Sethar, your esteemed guest,” a guard said, stopping by the door.
Seth only nodded towards them to go, then kept studying the supposed mejai as she shuffled around the many alien machines. She didn’t look powerful, although the scarf across her shoulders was indeed one of the twelve known Flamefeathers, the last remnants of the legendary warrior priests of Inra, from the time of the Old Garden.
He deliberately avoided staring at her missing leg, having a much larger interest in her reactions to the surrounding machinery. She took her time observing everything, even the luminous rods on the ceiling, then hit her crutches against the floor, sending a clank echoing through the Room. Whatever she discovered turned her expression from bored to curious, but she stayed reserved and turned to Seth.
“So, you’re Sethar Osirei, the greatest mejai of Seiran.”
“I am indeed Sethar Osirei,” he said. “The rest is debatable, after what I’ve heard about you.”
There was something about this girl that made Seth feel gawky and ungraceful, prompting him to compensate by acting charismatic–something he was never good at.
The girl just laughed. “If you compare me to other mejai, I’m way beyond them. But I’ve yet to reach my potential,” she said, her eyes wandering back to the machines. “You have quite a hovel.”
“More of a workplace than a hovel,” Seth said. “Can you recognize anything?”
“Not recognize, but things look familiar. Chairs, needles, some cogs and bolts like they use in siege machines… Almost like the interior of an oversized trinket.”
She had a keen eye, spotting the same similarity that had kept Seth awake for years.
“This is a Secret Room, from before the Old Garden. These machines are part of a curious structure, inoperable by mejais–or anyone else for that matter. I call it Foremagic. It’s my life’s work to study it.”
“I’ve never heard about anything similar,” the girl said, limping towards the chair that almost killed Sethar when he discovered it as a child. “If not magic, what makes it work?”
“Lightning. At least a power source oddly similar to lightning, but more precise and less wild. This power circulates along the golden lines drawn on the machines, changing something along the way. But the ideas behind it are even more fascinating.”
Seth walked up to a tablet on a wall, smooth yet brittle to the touch, caressing it with the tip of his fingers. He never figured out what material that was. Definitely not metal or glass, and no mineral had such a texture.
“Magic is, in essence, a ray of sunshine shooting through a hole, painting an image on a canvas. The painting only changes with the brightness of the Sun and the outline of the hole. Foremagic, however, is something different. It’s a mass of small building blocks, creating a different effect as you rearrange the structure. Breaking a line or connecting others creates different results, almost like… like a language.”
“Interesting,” the girl said. “Is it for the military or your own amusement?”
The question shattered Seth’s enthusiasm. Of course, that was the first thing she thought about. That would have been his duty, to take this room apart and salvage anything he can for the coming war.
“I heard you were looking for me. Why?” he said in a much colder tone.
“I have several reasons,” the girl said, unfazed by Seth’s change of mood. “I’m looking for the most powerful teacher, and that is you. In addition, before my accident, I was promised an exceptional mentor, which is also you, although my mother tried her hardest to hide it. I’m here to collect that promise.”
That was news to Seth. He had never had any pupils, had never asked for them or wanted them, for obvious reasons.
“I’m not a very good teacher,” he said, folding his arms.
“Don’t worry, I’m an exceptional student. I’m not interested in tricks; I need a wider view of the world. After seeing all this…” she said, gesturing at the machines. “I don’t think that’s unreasonable to hope for.”
“This is not the view,” Seth said, shaking his head defiantly. “This is the mountain to climb for it, and it’s impossible to reach even for me. But taken from the fact you cremated two innocent men, you already juggle with powers beyond imagining. Why would you need more?”
The girl just shrugged, sending a shiver down Seth’s spine. “Nothing exact. I’m just curious about that mountain you mentioned.”
Seth couldn’t answer, nor did he want to. He just watched as she walked around the Room, followed by more and more menacing knocks of her crutches, eventually stopping at a half-dissected metal box. “What’s inside this?”
“Cords,” he said. “Indistinguishable, thin cords that have provided a path for the lightning in the past. Now the current of power avoids them. I suspect their connection broke, but I can’t do anything about it.”
The girl sat down and leaned inside the box, unsatisfied by Sethar’s brief explanation. She kept fidgeting with the cords for a while, even pulling them out into the shimmering white light. After choosing two at random, she touched their naked ends together, expecting something to happen. Nothing did.
Before Seth could rear back in horror, she started scraping the cords with her nails, ridding them of the strange elastic sheath. She did this until her scanning eyes spotted an unknown detail, touching another pair of cords–but this time, something happened.
There was soft drumming and the crackle of lightning, followed by an ancient line of lamps lighting up, replacing the dim darkness with a steady light.
“Tertia… ksst… reserve power source act…zzzz…ted,” the voice of the Room said. Seth just stood in the middle, spinning around like a child in a fair, marveling at the novelty.
The girl carefully put down the cords, keeping the connection between them. “Was that a woman’s voice? Where did it come from?”
“She’s a ghost. I refer to her as Aneesa, but she never confirmed that. She’s somewhere inside the Foremagic machines, but her mind is broken, speaking only tattered sentences and that noise you heard. That was the longest coherent thing I’ve heard from her.”
“A ghost, like a djinn that lives in objects rather than people?”
“Something like that. And she’s just as dangerous if you pick at things blindly, trust me. How did you know which cords to connect?”
“I mean, wasn’t it obvious that green goes to green?” she asked. “They are all colored if you scrape off that cover.”
Damaging the cords—or any machine, for that matter—wasn’t something Sethar ever considered. However soft and controlled, it was still lightning running through these things, and a single mistake could have meant a shocking death.
“Perhaps I judged you too fast,” he said. “What did you say your name was?”
“I never said. But I’m Chai. A pleasure to meet you,” she said, quite gently compared to her earlier expressions. “What use does this Foremagic have?”
“Same as common magic. It may do everything, or nothing until we figure out the thinking behind it. It is more complex and less instinctual than our magic, requiring way more than talent and power. My brother hopes it will create the New Garden. As for me, I… I just hope it changes the world for the better, not the worse.”
“Is this that potent?”.
“I don’t know. People tend to put all their dreams and nightmares into something they don’t know for sure, so either can be true. Or none, since it’s always a possibility Foremagic does absolutely nothing beyond what you see now. It could also tear down the heavens, resurrect the dead, or twist the current of time. Who knows?”
“You lied to me, Sethar,” Chai said with a wicked smile. “Bad teachers can’t make students pay attention, but after this, you won’t have that problem with me. So, can I connect the rest?”
“Feel free. But please, call me Seth. The only person calling me Sethar was my father, and those aren’t my fondest memories.”
Chai duly noted this, turning back to the cords, connecting them at random. It took her some time before the next miracle happened, awakening one of the smooth tablets with a flash and a pop. Eventually, the light emanating from it settled into a broken and slightly shifted symbol in the middle.
“Enerrrrrrgy reser… tzzz …ty per cent… khhhhhhhk …perational time: six rotations,” Aneesa proclaimed.
Seth just stood back and tried to take in all the things suddenly coming alive, box after box, metal arm after luminous tablet, like the whole Room had just woken up from an eons-long slumber.
“That’s something. Nicely done.”
“Thank you,” Chai said. “Six rotations, as in the rotations of the Sun? I doubt it’s the Moons, so I guess we have six days before it goes back to slumber. Aneesa is quite hard to understand sometimes.”
“That’s one way to put it. I think she’s speaking the language of the Forebearers, the builders of this Room. They had a unique way of thinking, both in speech and craft.”
The formless voice must have caught a familiar word from Seth’s modern dialect, because Aneesa spoke up again: “Setha… irei, clarif… Are you interested in the date… khhhts…truction, or the stru… zzzz… of the lab?”
Chai kept muttering the word-splinters for a few times, eventually looking at one of the many directions the voice came from.
“Truction. Construction! The date when this room was built. Ask her!”
Seth wasn’t in the mood to object. “Khm. Aneesa, when was this place built?”
The ghost just purred and buzzed for a while, trying to play something that sounded like a child’s first attempt at a melody before answering. “Seventy-third year of coloniz… tzzz… rthen years.”
“That means next to nothing,” Chai said, visibly unsatisfied. “The word starting with ‘stru-something’ must be structure. Can we ask that?”
“We could, but I don’t think we’d be any smarter,” Seth said. “We don’t have much time to spare, so I’d suggest we stick to easier questions for now.”
“Or go step by step. Aneesa, can we prolong your… ehm… operational time?”
“Reserve poweeeee…source located in three facilities,” Aneesa replied, broken by the sizzling of lightning. “Aaaa…khsss…vating them should create an indefinite recharge cyc… tzzz…”
“Alright, you can stop now. Seriously, we need to do something about that noise before I lose my mind,” Chai said. “Three facilities. Are there more rooms?”
“Sadly, the only one who can answer is her, so I completely agree. We ought to do something about that noise.”
That proclamation would have sounded foolish yesterday, but now, with the feisty mejai girl, Seth’s notions of possible and impossible started to change.
Maybe Rani was right–again.