4.58: A Theory

I had a theory.

It wasn’t an important theory, in any practical sense. It wouldn’t save the world. But it was bugging me. I’d skipped potion class thinking about it (I didn’t really feel like seeing Saina at the moment), and found myself struggling to focus on Instruktanto Ahuja as he explained our latest Ido assignment.

Ahuja didn’t like Ido, or at least, didn’t think it was a good candidate for a universal mage language. He’d made this clear way back during my initiation semester, when he’d been my English teacher. But he knew the language inside out (as well as about half a dozen others) and was very thorough in teaching it. I watched him dart about the room, gesturing with his wiry arms and long, spidery fingers, while he discussed the advantages and disadvantages of the Latin alphabet, and idly drew runes in the corner of my work. Runes had to be drawn. Or carved. Or something. It wasn’t enough for ichor to be in the right shape; the rune itsef had to be created, like a potion had to be brewed. People had tried to mass produce runes by printing before; it didn’t work. You couldn’t just etch a stamp with a runic circle for illumination, wet it with stored ichor, and start mass producing; each one had to be made, with intent, as its own thing.

“Of course,” Instruktanto Ahuja was saying, “next to the phonemes favoured by the language the alphabet is supposed to represent, the other factor important in a phonetic alphabet – and a pictorial alphabet, for that matter –  is the writing implements available to the culture. Sumerian writing is time consuming to reproduce on paper, because it was impressed into clay. Alphabets designed to be etched into stone often contain uniform flat strokes and sharp edges; those written in pen contain more round shapes. What’s interesting is the subtle differences between languages developes with a pen or quill, and languages deveoped with a brush. Now, Ido, being based on several Western languages, uses the Latin alphabet, but it’s worth noting just how much of our student body comes from countries that not only use different alphabets but use entirely different methods of constructing the written word – pictographic alphabets. Ido’s universality is – ”

I nodded to myself, and doodled some more runes.

After class, I cornered Instruktanto Ahuja.

“Hey,” I said, “that stuff you said about an alphabet being dependent on its society’s writing instruments. That would apply to runes, too, right?”

“Oh, yes. Of course, the issue is more complicated for runes, because simple geometry is a factor. We draw runes in circular patterns using perfectly even lines, which is certainly not the easiest way to use a fountain pen!  But it is favourable for the flow of magic. So runic languages need to compromise.”

“Fair enough,” I said, “but we don’t draw runes with a pen. I mean, we do, but don’t most people who use runes a lot end up etching or carving them? Making enchantments and stuff? Even lines do work better for that… but then, curves and circles are even harder…” I was getting off topic. “Anyway, I found some ancient runes, and I was want your opinion on them.” I handed him a sketch of some of the runes that Max had been studying at Duniyasar.

“Hmm. This looks nothing like our runic language. Not just in symbols, but the shape… more a cobweb than a circle…” he handed it back. “I’m no expert in runes. I’ve never seen these before; perhaps your runecrafting teacher would be more use?”

I didn’t want to bring this to anyone who actually knew a lot about runes. That wasn’t what this was about. “It’s part of a runic craft used in Duniyasar up to the later part of the Purity Revolution. I can’t find any evidence of it being used recently; it seemed to die out a little while after Refujeyo was established.”

Instruktanto Ahuja grimaced. “That does seem to be the way of things. We gave up a lot for universality. Many runic languages were lost.”

“There don’t seem to be any records of it in the library,” I said. “Isn’t that weird? That there aren’t any books about it?”

“Not really. You found, what, artefacts with this on it? Not any modern practitioners?”

“That’s right.”

“A lot of ancient magical practices were… closed… before Refujeyo. Oh, there have always been magical schools, small groups that openly teach the craft to select students, but most of the most powerful, most accomplished, most ‘cutting edge’ mages were always members of long-standing magical lineages, and they kept their cards close to their chest. Many magical practices were passed from master to apprentice, never being written down. For a runic language, there probably were records somewhere – there may still be, in fact – but there’s no reason for them to have ended up in Refujeyo’s library. If record exist, they may belong to the Surya family. Or possibly some runic historian. Again, you’d have to ask runecrafting specialists; this isn’t my field. Refujey was established with the goal of looking to a modern, unified future; a single magical rune system, a single magical language, a single magical culture, a single magical st of laws and governances. The widespread interest in looking to the past for the wisdom we may have lost is embarrassingly recent. Much of it is already lost.”

“And probably weaker,” I said. “Potions operate on belief. There’s chemistry involved, of course, but the magic gets it instructions from how humans conceptualise their world. Runes have to be the same, right? The geometry matters, the ichor matters, but it’s the human idea of what shapes and symbols should indicate that tell the rune what it is.”

“I suppose so.”

“So, if all of mage society adopts a single runic language and only thinks of symbols in relation to how they’re used in that language – ”

“Well, I think it’s a little more complicated than that. Yes, there probably is a self-reinforcing effect – the holding rune becomes more stable the more people know and immediately recognise it as the holding rune – but the power of runes is not based on widespread knowledge of that rune, just the shapes and symbols it seems to evoke. There’s a whole world out there of people who have never seen a rune but are still contributing to their force and stability due to how they subconsciously categorise symbols.”

“Right, right; and a lot of that is going to be based on their culture, the stuff they do, the symbols they make. Right? Like, some ancient Sumerian who spent all day writing on a clay tablet with a wood block is probably going to conceive of symbols in a different way than someone who uses a pen, who’s going to conceive of them in a different way than someone who’s illiterate. Because the symbols we see are connected to the kinds of shapes we see in a symbolic context, which is shaped by the kind of activities we do and the materials and tools we use, especially the ones for writing and art. Right?”

“Well… yes, I suppose so.”

I handed the sketch back. “You’d make these with a different tool than what we use, right? You can draw these kinds of straight-line diagrams with a pen, if you’ve got a rule on hand, but it’s far from the easiest way to do things.”

“Indeed. How were they written? The ones you found?”

“They’re carved into the wells in Duniyasar. But, from context, I think that’s more a necessity than a normal way of writing them. The normal way of writing them appears to be weaving.”

Instruktanto Ahuja’s eyes widened. “Weaving?”

“Or maybe mebroidery? I don’t know, I’m not a… cloth making person. But I’ve found them woven into tapestries and braided into rope; its like anywhere it’s possible to put cloth to make them, they’ve done them in cloth.”

“Yes, yes,” Ahuja mumbled. “If you wanted an alphabet – and presumably a runic alphabet – for weaving or sewing, these are the sorts of shapes you’d expect. And of course, cloth tends to have a much shorter lifespan than stone, so most examples of it are probably lost.”

“Here’s the part I’m interested in,” I said. “The Purity Revolution. I’ve got some friends, some witch friends, who, well, one of them, Hua, has this theory. She thinks that the reason that there was such an uptick in witch persecution at that time, or one of the reasons, there were probably a lot… anyway, she thinks that it was because witches stopped being needed so much. Like, all throughout history, witches could be dangerous, but also useful, you know? You have someone who can make ten kilograms of stone weigh one kilogram and carry it up a hill. Or you have someone who can enchant a spinning wheel and a loom and go to bed, and the next day she’s woven about ten day’s worth of cloth from raw wool for the community. But at the start fo the Purity Revolution, they were getting steam power to do that. She likes to say that calling it the Purity Revolution is latching onto a symptom – that it should be called the Industrial Revolution.

“Anyway. Refujeyo was established during the Purity Revolution, and yeah, that probably had a big effect on runic languages dying out, but Duniyasar was and still is owned by the Surya family. They would’ve had the pull to incorporate as many of their traditions as they wanted. Maybe it wouldn’t be the universal runic language, fine, but it should be in the books! It should’ve left its mark! I think that the main reason it was abandoned was that it simply lost most of its power. Because spinning and weaving fell out of common everyday practice, and fell out of the public consciousness. Not completely – people talk about weaving stories and the threads of fate and whatever – but it used to be a core activity of the lives of a huge proportion of the population. Until the Purity Revolution. Anyway, does that sound… logical, to you? As something that could have happened?”

“Hmm. Possibly. One way to investigate would eb to test the runes themselves, I suppose. If you could decypher what a portion is meant to do, an then test whether it still functions with enough power and stability to – ”

“Oh, no,” I said. “They’re working again. That’s why I’m looking into this. There was this big period of time where Duniyasar was just kind of… tucked away, like something embarrassing, by the Surya family, neglected and abandoned, and yeah I know most of their power is wrapped up in Refujeyo now but that just didn’t make sense to me. Unless their ancient power was weakened by more than just the loss of their hereditary spell. But if th specific magics built on their place of power were also faded to almost nothing – beyond just being a Place of Power I mean, that’s not dependent on any runes – then I can see why they’d want it to be out of the way. But if the power is coming back – ”

“If this runic language is working fine, then the whole theory holds no water,” Ahuja said. “There’s no reason for the power to come back now. There has been no sudden reintegration of weaving in general life to return people’s modes of thought to conceiving of these kinds of symbols.”

“Yes, there has. Advanced, modern weaving.” I tapped the paper. “When I first saw these symbols, I didn’t think, ‘wow, that looks like something you could weave or sew’. I thought, ‘wow, that looks like an electronic circuit diagram.’”

Instruktanto Ahuja opened his mouth. Closed it again. Frowned at the diagram.

“I suppose,” he said. “But the general public don’t – ”

“Yes. They do. Have you hung out with nema – with commonfolk lately? They learn circuit diagrams in high school phhysics. They teach toddlers to program using flow charts that are laid out n awful lot like this. Sure, only the nerdiest nerds buy microprocessors and start soldering their own networks, but people know what circuit diagrams look like. They know what computer chips look like, and they understand that power moving through them and going down the right lines is how they work, and they use computers every day. I don’t know anything about computers, but I look at something like that and think, ‘oh, drawing one of these is like making a microchip to do something’. Am I right? Who knows? But most people will look and think the same thing. Max… uh… Max once tried to explain how spells ‘think’ to me, and used the metaphor of training an AI, because that’s the kind of metaphor basically everyone in my generation understands, or can be taught to understand really quickly. Anyway. Does that make sense?”

Ahuja frowned at the diagram. “Well, it’s theoretically possible,” he allowed. “But without any evidence that such a reduction in power occurred, it’s all rather pointless speculation. There’s not really any reason to believe that either the decline of home fabric making or the increase in the importance of electronics have affected the useability of this runic language unless you can show some change in its useability. Again, I’d recommend an expert in runes for that. I only really know languages.”

I nodded. I had no intention of bringing it to any rune people. I didn’t want anyone with the capacity to find my investigation suspicious to know about it. It probably wasn’t important, anyway; just… interesting.

But I’d like to know about it. Weird stuff kept catching me off guard, and if there was a chance for any weird power fluctuations at Duniyasar or something, for anything to be stronger or weaker than it was designed for, then I wanted to know.

If my experiences so far had taught me anything, it was that anything we didn’t know was definitely going to screw us over in the worst way possible.

Usually, I’d have an appointment with Doctor Peterson in ten minutes or so, but I’d cancelled it. He’d probably want to talk about Max, and I didn’t want to. I headed back to my room instead, pushed open the door, and stopped short.

Talbot was in our room. That was pretty surprising in itself. What was even more surprising was how Kylie had him pushed up against one of the bed forcefields, hands buried in his hair, and was kissing him deeply.