Murder by Magic (47 page)

Rosemary Edghill’s first professional sales were to the black & white comics of the late 1970s, so she can truthfully state on her résumé that she once killed vampires for a living. She is also the author of over thirty novels and several dozen short stories in genres ranging from Regency Romance to Space Opera, making all local stops in between. She has collaborated with authors such as the late Marion Zimmer Bradley and SF Grand Master Andre Norton, worked as an SF editor for a major New York publisher, as a freelance book designer, and as a professional book reviewer. Her Web site can be found at
http://www.sff.net/people/eluki.

¹
Deni Tavaet sus-Arial: For Teliau’s original readers, the names in this passage would carry a considerable weight of implication. The “sus-” prefix to the family name indicates birth membership in the higher nobility—either the old (and at the time of the story, still powerful) land-based aristocracy, or the newer, and newly ascendant, star-lords. Inquestor-Principal syn-Casleyn is himself identified by the “syn-” prefix as a member of the lesser nobility; the prefix could also serve (though not in Jerre’s case, as other tales in the series make clear) as an indicator of adoptive membership in a hypothetical sus-Casleyn family.
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²
Etaze
is the traditional title accorded to one of the ranked Mages in a working Circle—those who are, in the vulgar usage, “Magelords.” The title is loosely equivalent to “Master” or “Mistress” among Adepts, though not all Mages will carry the rank. Rasha Jedao of the Center Street Mage-Circle is Jerre syn-Casleyn’s regular consultant on cases involving Magecraft.
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³
Teliau’s choice of setting here can be taken as an indication of his political sympathies. The Court of Two Colors, in its heyday perhaps the best, or at least the most notable, hotel and restaurant in downtown Hanilat, would have been in operation for perhaps five years at the time of this story. For Teliau’s readers, the Court—having been largely destroyed by an incendiary device in 1142
E.R.
as part of the ongoing power struggles among the star-lords—would have signified nostalgia for the older regime of land and merchant aristocracy, and would have stood as a covert rebuke to the ruling fleet-families.
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⁴
Rasha Jedao’s family ties and Circle life are explored in depth in the second Jerre syn-Casleyn novel,
An Unkind Corpse,
which introduces the Center Street Magelord to the series as a continuing character.
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⁵
Aiketh
(pl.
aiketen
): Prior to the pacification of the Mageworlds in
A.F.
980, the people of the Eraasian Hegemony made extensive use of these robotic servitors. The
aiketen
relied upon quasi-organic components rather than silicon for their computational power, making them difficult to mass-produce but capable of handling instruction sets of great subtlety. Whether or not an
aiketh
could achieve true sentience remains unknown; no
aiketen
have been made or instructed in the classical manner since the fall of the Hegemony, and even the savants of Eraasi’s own golden age disagreed on the theoretical possibility.
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⁶
Uffa:
a mildly stimulating herbal drink, similar in its effects and social uses to cha’a, and like cha’a, usually served hot; it comes in dark and pale—or “red” and “yellow”—varieties.
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⁷
Of all the practices of the Mage-Circles, the raising of power through ritual combat—always real and sometimes fatal—is the one most alien to the rest of the civilized galaxy. It is a common misconception, even today, that those Mages who meet their deaths in this fashion are unwilling sacrifices. In fact, such duels for power are consensual and (as Jerre syn-Casleyn obliquely points out in this passage) one of the known hazards of life in a Circle.
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⁸
Once again Teliau’s unstated political agenda makes itself apparent, this time in the attention paid to the autonomy and strong local focus of the Lokheran Circle. Teliau wrote during the Early Transitional period; he would have been a witness (perhaps even a participant—see Hithu and Bareian,
Survey of Eraasian Literature,
for a good summary of the arguments pro and con in the Teliau-as-Magelord controversy) to the struggles out of which came the Classical and Expansionist tradition of hierarchical structure and of shared and subordinated power.
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⁹
Mages in the pre-Transitional period for the most part dressed in the garments customary to the region or community they served, donning the already traditional black robes only for Circle meetings and group endeavors. Nor did the Circles yet work masked; the
geaerith,
or full-face hardmask, did not become universally worn until well into the Expansionist period. Then as now, however, a Mage and his or her staff were inseparable, and the black wood cudgels—formidable weapons even without a Circle’s intention to add strength to the blows—were worn even with everyday garb.
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¹⁰
The so-called great workings—those endeavors and intentions where the combat results in the death of one or more participants—are much less common than popular opinion in the Adeptworlds (and sensational fiction on both sides of the interstellar gap) would have us believe; available statistics (see, once again, Hithu and Bareian for a concise summary) confirm that a Mage in an ordinary Circle could reasonably expect to see only one or two such workings in the course of a lifetime.
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¹¹
Domestic and financial arrangements among the Mage-Circles have always been subject to considerable variation. Even in Circles tied to a particular area or institution, it was and is not uncommon for individual Mages to have occupations and business interests of their own, separate from the affairs of the Circle proper. Some Circles, of which the fictional Lokheran Circle was apparently one, live communally; others have only a meeting place in common and—in this latter day—may never have seen one another unmasked.
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¹²
Much of what is known of Circle practice in the pre-Transitional period comes from passing references made by outsiders. Then as now, working Mages preferred to pass on their teachings through personal instruction, and entrusted very little to the written word or to any other archival medium. (As inconvenient as their reluctance may be for interested scholars, it should come as no surprise to anyone on this side of the interstellar gap; the Adepts’ Guild has always been similarly unforthcoming about its own history.) The reliability of popular fiction as a source of information on the subject remains a matter for considerable debate.
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¹³
On Eraasi and elsewhere, Mage-Circles interact with the universe through the manipulation of a complex of quantities and characteristics for which “luck” is the simplest and most usual (though perhaps not the most entirely accurate) translation. The luck is most commonly described, by those Mages willing to speak of it to outsiders, as complex patterns of silver, gray, or iridescent thread, which they call
eiran;
Eraasian philologists trace the word’s origins to an unattested pre-Archaic root
ei
or
ai,
meaning, roughly, “to live.”
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¹⁴
The typical meditation chamber, as described here by Teliau, has changed little over the intervening centuries. Similar circles were in use aboard Eraasian trade and exploration vessels, and in the hidden bases that made possible both the First Magewar and the Second. They are not, however, indispensable. During periods of conflict and repression—such as the Occupation following the end of the First Magewar, or the long struggle in the immediate pre-Classical period between the so-called Old Tradition and the rising power of the New Circles—Mages have often done their work without the use of these obvious and betraying diagrams.
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¹⁵
Such deaths, according to statute law in most of the modern Eraasian Hegemony, still count as “by natural causes” provided the deceased is truly a Mage. Since the end of the second Magewar, the precedent has also been applied elsewhere; see
Citizens of Gyffer v. Calentyk,
1009
A.F.
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