(But seriously. Sierra, absolutely do not ask him to fetch a stick for you. Don’t do it.)
Can Nariel help me enough to make working with him worth the risks? I’m not going to get another shot at magic, and I know better than to trust that anyone else will have my back if it’s not convenient for them.
But I have to assume that if he could have reversed what the angels did to Dark Earth, giving him access to a deep pool of magic again, he would have. He’s interested in me because he needs me for something.
“Did you know the angels would exile you?” I ask abruptly.
The hand extending the stick to me lowers. “No.”
“Would you have still objected if you had?”
“To the genocide of an entire world, whatever the crimes of a portion of them? I’d like to think so.”
Angels and spirits have a greater capacity than humans to hold magic, but they alsohaveto hold magic to live, while humans don’t. Draining Dark Earth would have flat out killed most of the inhabitants.
But Nariel’s look turns sardonic. “But the answer is no. If I had truly understood what it would be like to lose the magic I once had at my fingertips, to come so close to true death as a being who is immortal unless killed, to scramble merely tosurvive, broken and with nothing, in a world that considered me the enemy, I don’t think my morals would have held up. You call yourself selfish for wanting magic at any cost, but at the first real opportunity you are already preparing to share magic with others. I assure you it would have taken me many more years after my exile to be willing to do the same.”
Now he’s matching my honesty. “And are you now?” I ask. “Willing to share magic.”
“That’s the wrong question,” he purrs.
I raise my eyebrows. “If I’m giving you a front seat to bringing magic back for a bunch of humans you would then have easy access to, the answer to whether you’re interested in throwing all of us over to feed spirits is actually pretty relevant to me.”
Nariel rolls his eyes skyward, like he can’t believe fate has brought him into this conversation with me.
Probably because if thatiswhat he wants to do, he absolutely won’t tell me so, no matter how open he’s being generally. If I assume he is.
And, you know, that’s fair, but I still want to know how he’d actually answer.
“The right question,” Nariel says instead, “is whether you’re willing to risk associating withme. You don’t know yet that the angels will target you, but if they learn I am with you, they will target you for certain.”
Ah.ThatI’m actually not worried about. “They can’t easily intervene in our world, since Bright Earth is on the opposite end of the diamond. They won’t go through Dark Earth, since there’s no magic for them there, so they’d have to go through High Earth, who won’t want to bring them in unless you’re actively opposing them. Especially since I revealed to Evram that angelic magic was the core causing the plague, but also because they won’t want the angels to think they’re too weak to handle a Low Earth wizard.”
“And if they do regardless?”
“I’m not much into genocide either. I am still waiting for you to tell me that I don’t need to worry that you’re planning on sacrificing Low Earth for your own purposes to save Dark Earth, though.”
“Or out of selfishness? No.” Nariel holds the stick out to me again. “I agree with you. Everyone should have free access to magic. I unknowingly staked my life on that once, and now I do so on purpose, every day.”
Aha! “Youhave a plan.”
To my surprise, not only does he confirm this with a nod, he actually, succinctly, tells me what it is: “My plan relies on convincing a host of spirits to sacrifice themselves to power a spell. I would prefer a plan less costly in lives.”
“Yikes. No kidding.”
“If you can bring magic back intothisworld first—“
“I can.” My mind is racing. If we had magic back in Low Earth, and spirits could absorb more here to power themselves up—
I thought I was ambitious trying to save one world, but I can see the same gleam echo in Nariel’s gaze.
Both of us are mad.
But both of us are willing to dream big, and put our actions where our words are.
That’s why he stepped in when he did, before. At first, he was curious, but then when my back was to the wall I didn’t give up my ground and told a grand magus with all the power in the world he had no right to keep magic from this world.
Nariel was testing me, and I passed.
