"That makes sense, I imagine it's a very skill intensive thing to learn and apprenticeships tend to be the most effective way to teach most things if you have enough teachers."

"Doing magic is, as I understand it, not that hard. Doing it safely, much, much moreso. Everyone does it by apprenticeship, and I suspect that's as much to have sharp eyes to watch anyone trying the easy way as to teach the skills for the hard one."

"Doing it safely sounds pretty important from what you've said so I very much approve."

"It's hard to love a system where the penalty for slacking in the wrong way once or twice is execution, but yes, it's hard to argue it's unwarranted so on the whole so do I."

"Oh, I suppose I should have guessed that from some of the context."

"Also most boys who turn up with the talent are executed, due to the prophecy I think I mentioned about a male Ice Witch destroying Ice Magic entirely, though nobles and wealthy merchants near the border send them south to the imperial colleges instead." Ones further north might beg Hag Witches, he's pretty sure that's not just him.

"That's... not ideal. Uh... should we be moving on? I assume they don't offer tours?"

"It's not. ...The guards don't mind us being here, I've been inside myself, but if you want a tour of some of the lower levels, while that can probably be arranged in the future, I'd have to talk to Lady Kajetana. Probably we should head east to the gardens."

"Sounds good to me." He knows he and Rodney are under guard but uh... being near people who explicitly execute their own students for what sound like small if significant mistakes is not a comfortable thing.

When they're a block or so away, Teodor says, "They've tried other things, but for everything that's permanent, most of the men they affect choose death of their own volition within a few years. The Lady Witch explained it to me as being like bricked into an isolation cell forever, even as all your other senses work. Some of their factions have supported ferrying even peasant men south, but the others argue one might find his way back half-trained and become the one they fear."

"Are prophesies generally reliable or is this all a sort of better safe than sorry thing?"

"Mostly reliable, but they're also very rare. One of the Winds - Azyr, the wind of the heavens - gets short-range prophecy more regularly, I think, and that can be more conclusively averted by acting on it. I believe this particular one was received through the Ancient Widow."

"I see." He really doesn't but it's not something worth arguing or asking for more details about.

"There is only one other specific long-term prophecy I've heard of coming to its conclusion; it was widely thought that an old Ursunite prophecy about a tzar who would renew the church and the land meant the tzarina's father, Boris Bohka Ursus. He claimed the greatest ice bear anyone's ever reliably seen and then certainly did a great deal of both of those things, but then he died after a fairly short reign. Since then some people say that he's the first tzar reembodied and he'll return again when we need him, but while his body was lost in an ice river and never found I'm pretty sure interpreting the prophecy that way is just wishful thinking."

"It does sound a bit like that yes." In his opinion if the future can be changed like that then it's quite possible the guy who was prophesied to destroy ice magic has already done that and they're just killing a bunch of people for no reason... it doesn't sound tactful to bring that up though.

It is quite possible but see previous discussion about Ice Witches and ruthlessness.

They pass along a large boulevard and see what is either a modest palace or a very large and fancy mansion, with a grassy park laid out in front of it once they pass. Some unmelting ice sculptures decorate the park, but mostly it's mundane.

It's pretty, there's a slightly different tinge to enjoying ice sculptures given the givens though. "Nice sculptures."

"The Ice Maidens come over here and practice their fine control sculpting, occasionally. The palace we just passed is the royal residence for visits to Erengrad, so it's a good place to show off. The Gardens of Ursun are a little farther on."

That does actually make it better. "So, about how often do things like the mess that brought us here happen?"

"Someone trying to summon daemons and coming at least that close to succeeding? Once or twice a year across all of Kislev, if it got much higher we would get worried Chaos was planning something big and burning reserves they couldn't easily get back to do it. Higher in the Empire, I think, but if you measure per person instead of per acre probably not much higher. Most of those attempts, but not by much, succeed in getting something small; most failures just backfire and kill everyone involved and most nearby. Summoning that starts a ritual but fails much sooner, probably triple that rate, and triple again for those who start planning but are caught before they start." If they 'start planning' but not in such a way that produces a success below the Night Wind's notice or draws it, he doesn't know but also expects that he doesn't, particularly, care. He did run into that once when a chekist stumbled on it.

"If you mean going wrong this weirdly, much less; I haven't heard of it but it wouldn't shock me. If you made me pick a proportion I'd guess once in a hundred failures but I wouldn't dare place a bet on that either way." He should ask the Verenans to consult their southern counterparts, actually.

"The first was closer to what I was asking. I think you said you didn't expect anything to come up for another couple weeks but I imagine from how you just elaborated that whatever would be coming up is less of a crisis?"

"Well, usually. But if there's something looking dangerous in Praag, for example, that needed a serious response, I'd hear in the afternoon, pack that night, and be off on a storm-hooved horse at first light to get there by dusk, because it probably isn't this bad but they won't know yet. The Lady Kajetana's agents handle almost all of these, and there aren't that many of us who are skilled to both track down the site quickly and fight what comes out if we're late. And that's happening around once a month except during the winter."

Sheppard thinks for a moment. "Is it more in winter because of desperation or less because it's harder to do anything?"

"Less. Harder to do anything, much harder to hide it. Some of them out on the oblasts plan to try things in the winter because it's harder to get to and stop, but Ice Witches are more powerful then, and Storm Witches on their horses can gallop through blizzards to stop them anyway without even the horses getting chills."

Sheppard nods. "Mobility isn't always the most important thing on a battlefield but most of the time it helps a lot. And if you can see and move while your opponents can't. Well, I can see why they aren't nearly as threatening."