"He's not really the type. Fharlanghn is our god of travel, he teaches that it's good to visit new places and see what they have to teach you, he doesn't have much of a church beyond that."

"I suppose that's reassuring. Many places, however, you will find you regret visiting. And not simply for the time expended."

"I've gotten that impression here," he agrees. "It's true at home, too, but less so. I expect a cleric of my tier to be safe most places anyway, though, as long as I don't go charging in thoughtlessly."

"Perhaps. I advise staying out of Eleutheria and the Blue Kingdom either way. Tier?"

"Our spellcasting gets more powerful with experience, in a way that makes it easy to sort us into groups with about the same level of power. I'm fifteenth tier, so lots of my spells have effects that last fifteen minutes or fifteen hours or can affect fifteen people or things like that. There are twenty tiers altogether but very few people make it that far, even fifteenth is rare."

"What a sensible way for things to behave! I approve. The Correspondence is not so neat and tidy. And probably more likely to set your hair on fire."

"That's the magic language, right? I've been meaning to look into that, I have spells for translating things."

"I don't know much of the details of it... Mostly just enough to know when I need to run away."

"Fair enough. I'm sure I'll run into a scholar who knows more sooner or later."

"It's not very good practice to try to write from memory, but I would be willing to explain what I do know if you tell me more about 'tiers'- It sounds like you know nothing at all about the Correspondence other than that it exists, as it stands."

He can explain about tiers! The term actually refers to two different things, spell tiers and caster tiers; a spell's tier is how much magical power is in it, more or less, with the effect being determined by the type of magic and how it's shaped, with higher-tier spells with more magic available to them having stronger or more complicated effects. A caster of a particular tier will be able to prepare a certain number of spells of each tier; for example, as a fifteenth-tier cleric he's able to cast one eighth-tier spell and two seventh-tier ones each day, plus increasing numbers of each lower tier of spells. (It's also possible to prepare a lower-tier spell in a higher-tier slot, though the extra magic is lost unless the caster knows specific techniques for making use of it; he knows one for doubling a spell's duration and another for making spells' effects harder to resist, and the ones allowing spells to be cast silently or without gesturing and for making offensive spells hit harder are also popular.)

Caster tiers, in addition to determining the number and strength of spells a particular person can cast on a given day, determine how efficiently that caster's spells use the magic they're made of; the effects of that vary by spell, but in general a higher-tier caster's spells will have stronger effects at a greater distance for a longer time, or be more accurate or less likely to fail, or have its effect more times - for example, he can cast healing spells that affect one person per caster tier of his, all with the same spell, and he can raise the dead with two different spells, one of which can raise people who've been dead one day per caster tier and the other of which is much stronger and can reach people who've been dead a decade per caster tier.

Other things can also affect spell strength or function - the main one is the caster's mental capability, in different senses for different casters, which affects how many low-tier spells they can prepare every day and how hard their spells are to resist; species or bloodline, special training, local conditions, special reagents, and certain magical items can also affect it.

She raises an eyebrow when he mentions resurrection, but doesn't comment.

"And tiers are always discrete? You don't get spells lasting five minute seventeen seconds? Thresholds on a continuous process, I wonder, or sudden metamorphoses..."

"Tiers are always discrete, yes. Some spells do have aspects that aren't affected by tier - I don't think any of them have durations that short, off the top of my head, but I have a weather spell that can last anywhere from four hours to two days, and the only control I have over that is that I'm a bit lucky in general."

"It seems - designed. Can people from this general area of existence pick it up, do you know? I imagine I am rather intelligent."

"I'd expect so, but I don't know enough about wizardry to teach it at all, and everything else has other prerequisites."

"Alas. Hm. One thing to know about the Correspondence is that each symbol is a phrase of considerable complexity. Fractal, even - It encodes many deep layers of context and nuance, and translations into English must by necessity lose much of that. One can translate sigils into glib phrases, or entire paragraphs. Say, 'A good deal' versus 'An exchange of knowledge/skills/services made freely and without coercion, in which both parties gain more value than they give away' versus that but also context about what was exchanged and how much the people trust each other and so on. And those that have a natural understanding of the language speak it fluently and can - seemingly invent new sigils on demand, and have them be understood perfectly by those with a similar ability. The meaning is inherent to the Correspondence sigil."

"Fascinating. I bet between the kinds of translation magic I have I can get somewhere with it. Maybe not to write it, but I have something specifically for reading magic that should work even if it's not a language the way we think of them."

"I do think it's not a language in the way we think of them." The cadence of her words changes as she switches to a different one. "Language is a mapping of concept to expression and each is limited and specialized in different ways."

"Mmhmm. Well, it comes down to what my translation magic thinks of it, I won't know that until I try it."

"I suppose not. Things should follow from logical principles, really, but that's not world I live in..."

She checks an immaculate pocket watch. "...I shall go get settled into my cabin now."

"See you around, then."

He'll go up to the bridge; that seems like the place with the best view, if he won't be in the way there.

Captain Abernathy will allow him on the bridge whenever he himself is there, if he stands near the back. He'll have to stay out during the other shifts.

He can abide by that, sure.

Anything interesting to see?

If you like wide, sweeping landscapes of rock and cliff and the occasional bit of jungle, with stars visible both below and above, sure. They pass another locomotive going the opposite way a while into the journey. Captain Abernathy says that some time tomorrow morning they'll pass the Memorial to the Unknown Rat.

It's novel enough terrain that he'll hang around for a few hours to watch it, at least. (It's really too bad that it's not safe for him fly over to have a closer look at any of it.) The memorial sounds interesting - what's it memorializing?