“Tell me about the reality of sages in this era,” I say. “What do I need to do to enable you to live your life fully?”
Teren doesn’t respond immediately.
“Am I correct that you’re the Sage of Comfort?” I press.
That startles him. “How can you tell?”
“Because of how your magic responds to the world,” I say. “Intervening socially on my behalf centered you. Serving ice cream centered you. Believing you had made me uncomfortable made your magic rebel.”
Teren tenses. “Great. Then the priests will be able to figure it out, too.”
“Most priests do not have the training to,” I tell him. “I don’t know much about this time yet, but it’s a specialized skill that not everyone can acquire.”
“That’s still true,” Zan confirms.
“It doesn’t matter, does it?” Teren says, leaning away from me. “If a priest finds me, knitting him a blanket isn’t going to save me.”
“Not on its own, of course, but you’re a natural host,” I point out.
Teren grimaces. “Yeah. For all the good that does.”
I tilt my head, momentarily baffled. “You... believe your power has no strength? Am I understanding correctly?”
“Serving ice cream isn’t exactly going to change the world,” Teren says wryly.
“Itcan,though,” I say adamantly, and turn to Zan for help. “What am I not understanding?”
“Yora, he hasno training,” Zan emphasizes. “There are an... unusual number of sages in the world right now, and they’re all like this.”
“How unusual?” I ask sharply.
“More than there have been at any time in the last five hundred years,” Zan tells me, eyes narrowing. “There was an almost barren period after you created the Quiet, which people took as a sign the gods had forsaken the Order. Now the priests flaunt the sages’ numbers as a sign of their righteousness. I assumed it was just happenstance, but are you telling me the number of sages is significant?”
“Yes,” I say seriously. “There can only ever be one incarnation of a given god at a time, so no Sage of Wrath could be born while I still lived. But gods don’t always choose to be born into a time—only if they believe their power might be needed, and able to help. Atwhat,is a matter for the sages themselves to determine, in theory.”
And for so many to be present now, at the same time I’ve awoken...
I wonder if that is why the gods decided to place so many of us on the board.
“In practice, the priests tell them,” Teren says cynically.
“Yes.” I look back at him. “But it means you aren’t the Sage of Comfort for no reason. And there is no such thing as a sage power that can’t change the world. We are the incarnations ofgods,Teren.”
Heatedly he replies, “And how much good does that do me, when my options are to channel my power into priests’ spells—which, since mine isn’t a battle power, they’ll have minimal usefor me and will be happy to drain me dry in hope of a more useful sage coming along to replace me—or to bind myself to their will in order to earn the right to learn more?”
I startle. “Bind yourself—they use the binding spell on any sage before they train them?”
Zan’s focus turns to me intently. “You know of it?”
“Yes, of course. All sages used to learn a version of it—for emergency use, to contain an out-of-control sage, in order to give a cohort of priests time to get the structure for the longer-term binding spell in place until the sages could be rehabilitated.”
“Was it always addictive?” Zan asks.
“Addictive?”
“Sages who choose to bind themselves don’t believe they can leave once they have.”
Ah. Insidious. “I imagine the priests aren’t using the binding spell as a stopgap to help the sages learn better control themselves, so that makes sense—with the priests controlling them, I assume the sages are permitted to use their full power and thus their power grows—but with the binding spell in effect, their own control does not likewise. And there is a... rush, using your full power, that would be hard to lose. It takes time and labor and consistency from both sides to extract a sage from the binding spell, but it can and has been done.”
