"He is someone I can work with. Who we can work with. Very well. He...understands us. I would mislike it if I had not seen, myself, that he can be trusted - that he wishes for the same outcomes here..."

Leareth tamps down a fresh welling of confusing emotions. He should really try to figure out what's going on, there. 

Malduoni is silent for a long time. Rebalancing, recalculating. 

"Do you trust my assessment here." 

"You know I do. As though it were my own." A brief, thin smile. 

Leareth smiles as well, just as briefly. 

"I think this will bear weight." 

"And what further weight would you place on it." 

"He would help you cast Contingent Resurrection. If you wished." 

Malduoni is silent for a long time. 

"I will think on it," he says finally. "News of Valdemar?" 

"Not yet." 

"You seem very tired." 

"I will manage." 

"I know. But - make sure you are rested, all right. We must both be at our best." 

"Yes. I am aware." Is he being mother-henned by an alternate-world version of himself. He is, isn't he. 

"Tell me when there is news of your world." 

And Malduoni drops the contact between them. 

Leareth sits on the side of his bed with his head in his hands for a few minutes before jarring himself into motion. Work to be done. Also no more Mindspeaking with gods, his curiosity can wait.

(He is now kind of worried about Khemet, who's apparently talking to Abadar rather a lot these days.) 

Khemet is at this moment reading through diaries of Leareth's first life. The people who retrieved them from Velgarth are welcome to join, of course.

Vanyel will definitely join.

So will the Tayledras. 

Autumn, circa 25 years before the Cataclysm 

It is not often that I meet a student who leaves me both awed and frightened. 

This time, his name is Kiyamvir Ma’ar. ... He is of Predain, to the north, born to one of their nomadic tribes. They are not much like my peaceful Kaled’a’in; his are a violent people, and I fear he has seen much horror and heartbreak in his short life. 

...I have not yet earned his trust. I am not sure that anyone has his trust, and it is a sad thing to observe. He seems the most entirely self-reliant child I have ever encountered, and I am not sure that he calls anybody friend. ... He is intelligent, that much is clear, and I have rarely seen such drive. I think he will catch up with his classmates with no trouble, and perhaps far exceed them. There is a spark in him, a strength of ambition I have missed in so many others. He will let nothing hold him back. 

Perhaps there is a desperation in it. A thirst, not only for knowledge, but for power. Control. This is what frightens me. We know from our past that this thirst for power is what leads so inexorably down the path of darkness. 

He seeks to protect others who are vulnerable, and this does assuage my worry somewhat, though I hope he will learn to do it in a way that does not violate our customs so. I will not tolerate fights amongst my students. 

He does not feel safe here, and it pains me. No one need sleep with a weapon under their pillow, here in Ka’venusho, and yet I suppose he is not yet ready to believe that. 

Yet he did seek me out, and ask if I would be his teacher. I will not turn any student away, and I will do my best to guide him down the path of light. 

Winter, circa 22 years before the Cataclysm

Young Ma’ar is my pride and joy, and yet I swear that he will be the death of me. 

He considers nothing sacred. One might think this uncharitable of me, but I asked him and he agreed! He will say it is a concept that does not make sense, that there is only the world, the cold logic and laws on which it turns, and the lives of the people in it. He has no respect for the gods. I do not know what to say to him on this; I am no shaman, to counsel youngsters in theology. Perhaps I ought send him to one of the shamans, that they might offer the advice I cannot, but I fear he might offend them deeply. 

...Ma’ar, as always, is of the opinion that ‘dark’ and ‘light’ are not coherent concepts, and that we must look only to results. He listed twenty ways that one might use a compulsion, in and off the battlefield, to save lives and improve the situation of people. As usual, his fellow students struggle to find the flaws in his logic, though the conclusions are monstrous, and so it devolves into name-calling from which I must rescue him.

And then, of course, there is the search for immortality. Ma’ar is hardly the first youngster to seek out a fountain of youth, and perhaps his naivety will fade with the years – and yet, there is something different in his approach. Death is a part of the natural order, and yet he would defy it, and I know him well; he would call that defiance good and right. 

...I hope also that he will learn to make friends. ... There is a wound in him still, I think. I look at him, and I see a young man who is desperately lonely, and yet does not know there is any other way to live. 

Spring, circa 17 years before the Cataclysm

I will not ask any to stay in my Tower who is not willing, and so young Adept Kiyamvir Ma’ar has left us today, and returned to his homeland.

...Learning is not enough for him; he wishes to take it out into the world, and transform it. An admirable desire, and a dangerous one. I worry less for him now than I did once; there is a darkness in him, but there is great light as well... The desire for power and control over so much more than just magic is a weakness in his spirit, and one that I was never able to convince him was a flaw. 

...I reminded him of all we have to offer here in Ka’venusho, and he said that is why he must leave. Because Tantara flourishes, and so that is not where he is needed. 

He tells me that these are dark times outside of my Kingdom... I know this, and yet, I am Archmage to Tantara, not to the world. I would not wish it to be otherwise; it would be entirely too much power to risk placing in the hands of one man. 

I think that Ma’ar looks down on me for this, and I cannot yet explain why that is a mistake; he is still too young, too full of fire, he is not yet tempered by failure and defeat. Some things cannot be taught, only learned for oneself. Someday, perhaps, we will sit down for a drink together, as equals, and he will tell me he understands what I have tried to say to him all along. 

"Cruel of your world, that that cannot be so."

Vanyel is not saying anything because if he does, he's probably going to cry. 

Summer, circa 7 years before the Cataclysm

...Ma’ar has done well for himself, that is certain; he is first advisor to a King, at the tender age of thirty-three, when I myself did not become Archmage until eighty. 

It is not announced which policies are his, of course, yet I would recognize his touch anywhere. The use of compulsion-spells within the armies of Predain is now standard. They say it is for purposes of coordination, that men might work smoothly together with less need of drilling, but I see a darker purpose there. 

...They have declared blood-magic to be legal, taking the lives of convicts to fuel their public workings...they are promised a painless death and posthumous recognition for their service, a hero’s funeral... Ma’ar would say that these are men who would have been hanged anyway, and that the power bound in their blood might as well not go to waste. It is exactly his cold logic, and I do not like it any better now than I did before, but he is no longer my young pupil, that I might lecture on such matters. The time that Ma’ar might have listened is long past.

Perhaps he is too far lost to the darkness. Perhaps he was from the very beginning. 

And yet, he writes to me still, and in the words he pens, I see the light he carries as well. It is with pride that he offers the census-tallies on his Kingdom, year by year – and so like him, to share his tale in tables of dry figures, but he is right that they tell a story. Fewer soldiers have died in border defence since his policies were enacted. Three new Healers’ compounds were built by mages using the death-energy of sentenced murderers, their names marked on plaques by the doors, and he offers a calculation of how many lives might have been saved as a result. Fewer infants die each year; fewer mothers perish in childbirth...

Spring, 18 months before the Cataclysm

Ma’ar is building an empire. 

I might have seen the signs of this a decade ago, had I been looking. His meteoric rise to power and influence with the King of Predain, who they say now only listens to him. 

He has built their army into a fighting machine, well-oiled by the darkest of compulsions. ...His combat mages are trained in the use of blood-power. They say it is for use in exceptional circumstances only, but that is a thin excuse. 

Kingdoms fall on either side, to be absorbed and taken into this monstrosity of his making, and I fear the day that he might see nothing left to the east or west or north, and will march south on Tantara. 

In his last letter to me, he told me that he would not. Tantara is a Kingdom more prosperous and well-run than most, he wrote, and he does not wish for us to be enemies. In his private letters to me, he has floated the prospect of a formal alliance. 

King Leodhan will not stand for it. He is afraid, and seeks my reassurance, which I cannot give. Ma’ar knows no limits, no scruples; he would not hesitate to march on us and tear down everything I have built in seventy years. The fact that I once took him in and taught him would not stay his hand. He claims to have great respect for me, and yet he does not heed my advice, and I am not sure what paths he leaves but for us to be enemies. 

I do not feel as though Ma’ar is my enemy. And yet, perhaps by remembering the boy with fondness, I have blinded myself to the man he has become. Or it could be that all along, I saw only what I wished to see. His clever mind. His noble words. 

Words are cheap. Actions speak louder. 

"Stupid of Urtho, but also of Ma'ar. A - mistake I think he's outgrown, though. He is trying harder, here, not to make it again."

"Agreeing to be Your cleric, you mean."

"Yes. Recognizing that it's not enough not to start things, you also have to actively build peace to get peace. Wars happen halfway by accident. I think these people were all owed better counsel by their gods, though I suppose they may not have listened."