Where Aza parks, writing to herself, waiting for the journal delivery.

Which arrive about half a candlemark later, delivered by another stressed and preoccupied-looking Herald who introduces herself as Keiran. 

:Thank you:

:You're welcome: And Keiran hurries off again. 

The journals are carefully packaged in a box, divided up in chronological order into various folders. They're written on the more expensive and very durable rag-paper sometimes used in Urtho's Tower; there are recent preservation-spells on them, done in a different style than the one Azabel learned but skillful enough, and also traces of much, much older magic. 

They're dated, in a familiar calendar. The first one is from a couple of years earlier than her sudden departure; the year she Ma'ar and began her mage-classes. 

Well, she might as well begin at the beginning. She will apologize to Urtho if there turns out to be a sense in which he has not been dead for two thousand years.

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 a boy of fourteen, old to be only starting his training in mage-craft, and he does not speak the Tantaran or the Kata’shin’a’in languages, we have only trade-pidgin in common. Two challenges that I face. 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. 

He will not speak of it to me. I suppose 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. 

It is not true that he has had no training. Despite his youth, he served a mage-warlord in his travels before he came to us. His skills and potential were sadly under-utilized; he tells me he was a petty clerk, and helped with the ledgers. I am sure he was very good at the job, but nonetheless, what a terrible waste of a brilliant mind. 

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. 

It seems to Aza that if you are Urtho writing in your diary about how you are concerned about your new student Ma'ar you might want to bother to write down that you suggested to your other student Azabel that she go make friends, but apparently he skipped it. The rest is characteristic vague ethics rambling, classic Urtho. Next?

In the same sheaf of ancient papers, held together with a clip, are a few pages of purely rambling about gryphons and his various travails with their complicated medical problems. Urtho's pride and delight comes across clearly. 

The next excerpted entry is from three years later, nearly a year after the day Aza walked into Urtho's office and touched an artifact that should absolutely not have been left sitting around. 

...

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. 

We spoke in our seminar today of compulsions, and why this is dark magic. 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. 

At least it is not so bad as the incident of the blood-magic debate. I encourage debate among the young scholars, it is a way to stretch our minds, but Ma’ar debates as though he is fighting for his life. I thought it might be an interesting exercise to debate the potential merits of blood-magic, in the abstract of course; I should have predicted that Ma’ar would take it entirely too seriously. 

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. Others have told me that he speaks to them of dark magics that prolong life. There is still a desperation in him, it seems, and for more than power alone. 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. 

Nonetheless, it is a pleasure when he comes to my office. His mind is so quick, and he places no limits on his thoughts. It has been a very long time since I have felt challenged by one so young. 

I would like to invite Ma’ar to my next salon, though he is not yet eighteen years old; he is the equal of many of my Adepts already, though he falls behind in concert-work. Trusting in others is still such a struggle for him. A weakness that I hope I may help him remedy. After all, Great Workings are the most transformative innovation of our recent age. 

I hope also that he will learn to make friends. He spends little effort on those small courtesies that would smooth his way, and it will not make his life easy if he continues to baffle and offend his classmates as he does now. I think he is coming to understand this, and perhaps making efforts in this direction, but of course he thinks of it in his usual frame, in terms of allies and power. I wish he would see the value, not simply in trading favours, but in loyal 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. 

She doesn't remember Ma'ar having a particular deficit in concert-work. Or... ever visiting Urtho's office. Is Urtho not aware that he has a friend? Maybe he thinks he should have more of them.
But perhaps he fell behind later, picked up the habit later, never got over Aza and found another friend. Or these journals were falsified by someone seeking to narrativize the Cataclysm better, maybe, though they're pretty good at the handwriting mimicry.

This entry, too, comes along with an additional several pages about gryphons. 

There is absolutely no mention of granting them the right to control their own reproduction; in fact, half a page is dedicated to fussing over two lovestruck gryphons who Urtho thinks are a poor choice for mating purposes. 

...that's very weird.

She flips back through what she's already read and makes a note of everything that seems wrong.

(It's hard to tell if anything in the earlier gryphon section is wrong, since it's from well before she first had a conversation with him about it.) 

The entry at the start of the next folder is dated a full six years after she would have disappeared. 

...

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.

He would be happier here, I think, among his fellow scholars, those who see and respect his mind for what it is, but he has always been ambitious. 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, and in the end none of us can claim to be free of darkness and base desires. 

Nonetheless, out in the world, he will be tempted. Unscrupulous men will offer him great reward in exchange for his power. 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 will miss him dearly. He has been a pleasure in my advanced classes and seminars, in recent years – he speaks so well, he is relentlessly curious, and he has learned to be attentive to the feelings of others. I thought the day would never come! Occasionally he will say something shocking, but we are all used to it by now; we know it is his way, and part of his charm. I would not describe him as popular, exactly, but he is respected. It would be difficult not to respect his skill, when he exceeds many Adepts three times his age. 

I remember the last conversation that we shared, here in this office. I told him yet again that it would please me for him to stay, continue his studies, and teach as he was taught. 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, and I cannot say he is wrong. There has been trouble on our borders for a long time. 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. 

This bit seems totally uninformed by classroom discussions she attended about mages having power... again is sort of weird in not mentioning her...

There are a few more entries in a similar vein, detailing an ongoing exchange of letters that Urtho apparently shared with Ma'ar over many years. Urtho's tone continues to be somewhere between fond and disapproving, but as the entries go on, the disapproval and even alarm start to dominate. 

There is still not one single mention of Azabel. 

...

Sixteen years after Azabel's unintended departure: 

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. 

He is not shy to use this influence. 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. 

It displeases me greatly, but this newest change is worst. They have declared blood-magic to be legal, taking the lives of convicts to fuel their public workings. Only those who volunteer, and they are promised a painless death and posthumous recognition for their service, a hero’s funeral; this is what Ma’ar writes to me in defence; but nonetheless it is not and cannot be a free choice. 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. Few infants die each year; fewer mothers perish in childbirth. The cold logic of numbers, still, but there is a kind of heart in that also. 

...

More entries. Less and less fondness; growing alarm. Apparently, though, Urtho and Ma'ar continue to be on speaking terms.

More mentions of gryphons incidentally attached. There's still no sign that Urtho is giving them any say whatsoever in their choice of mates or timing of children. 

... 

And, another five years later: 

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. He requested the aid of my gryphons, and when I would not offer it, attempted his own Great Working, creating the makaar. It was hasty, of course, and ill-done – it could not be otherwise, when I took thirty years on my Working and he completed his in three – yet surprisingly effective for it, and he now has flying creatures on his side. 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. 

She has the regrettably inactionable desire to march all these papers into Urtho's office and plop them on his desk and ask him what in the world is wrong with him.

Not long after that: 

I have spoken to King Leodhan, and his decision is made. We will not wait for Ma’ar’s armies to move in on us. 

I cannot blame Leodhan for this choice. The advantage is always to the first mover, and we cannot afford to wait. The risk is too high. Ma’ar’s empire is growing too quickly, and I shudder to think what he will do with more power. 

It is my advice that led Leodhan to this conclusion. I have spoken to him of my once-student’s ambition, of the callousness I saw in him, the cold disregard for all that is sacred – and also of his warmth, and how once he risked punishment, fighting to defend another child. 

I tell Leodhan that perhaps Ma’ar cares too much, and it blinds him. He tries to impose his vision of how things ought to be, and does not consider the cost inherent in power and control, in overriding the wishes of his fellow man. I feared for his path twenty-five years ago, and I was unable to guide him to the light, and so now there is no choice but to stop him. 

And yet, I wonder if it something I will come to regret. I am not sure. 

In his heart, does Ma’ar still call me friend? If I betray him, it will surely be too late for that.

...

The entries, after this point, grow sparser and more rushed, the handwriting even harder to decipher.

Not long after Tantara invades Predain, Ma'ar plans a counterattack, and takes the capital and the Palace. Almost without bloodshed, apparently; he uses some sort of obscure mind-controlling artifact, one that gradually generates more and more fear and panic in anyone within the spell's range. Overnight, every unshielded person in the Palace flees; with no one left in authority, the rest of the city offers little resistance when Ma'ar's troops are Gated in. 

Urtho is absolutely horrified; he sees this as proof that Ma'ar is truly too far lost in the darkness for anything to be salvaged. He describes agonizing over whether to explosively disable the permanent Gate-terminus in the Palace, releasing its energies and blowing up Ma'ar's prize before he can find any use in it. He decides against, it would only be matching one atrocity for another; he shuts it down, before Ma'ar can figure out the keys to use it, but non-destructively. 

Only a handful of months later, when a different Gate-terminus is captured, this one he does use to trigger an explosion and kill everyone within ten miles. 

It isn't enough. The war is moving fast, now, and going very badly for Urtho. 

He mentions that Ma'ar is still trying to send messages, to propose talks, to de-escalate the war he claims never to have wanted. Urtho is apparently not answering them. He writes that they must be some kind of ruse, and that in any case it doesn't matter; Ma'ar is too far gone, monsters cannot be bargained with. 

Ma'ar's army draws nearer to the Tower itself. Urtho plans a frantic evacuation. (The entry describing this is very short, hurried.) 

In the final note, his handwriting wanders up and down the page, barely legible at all. 

...

I wish there were magics that might let one take back the past, and do it over. 

There is no such spell; this is my bed, I have made it and I must lie in it. 

I think now it was a mistake to let Leodhan push for war. Perhaps it would have ended so all the same, and with Tantara in a weaker position as the unprepared defender – and yet, I sometimes think that if it had, it might have been over more quickly, mercifully, and with less bloodshed on either side. 

What is wrong with me? War has left me so weary, I catch myself wishing that my worst enemy might have won sooner. 

I never wished to call Ma’ar my enemy. 

Perhaps I made a wrong turn sooner, and in some other world I might have salvaged my young student, and guided him to a kinder and less destructive path. Perhaps in some other world, we work together now, as allies and friends. I long to step out of this world and into that, and of course I cannot. 

I am a sentimental old man, it seems, and unsuited to commanding an army. 

This is not how I wished it to end, and I am sure Ma’ar did not wish for it either. Even now, he sends letters, and tries to broker an alliance that I can no longer offer him. He has strayed too far. The atrocities of this war are unforgivable. 

No matter what comes, he must not take the Tower, and the powers that lie within my sanctum. I am glad beyond measure that I never spoke of this to him, though I revealed far more than I should have. I trusted him more than I should have. 

And so it will end as it ends, as we tear apart each other’s armies in fiery destruction, and perhaps history will remember a foolish old man who misjudged his greatest enemy. 

I wish it were otherwise. 

WHAT THE HELL, URTHO.

Urtho's journals do not have any further answers on the question of what the hell he was thinking. 

A few minutes later, Dara reaches out with Mindspeech. :I'm headed to bed. Do you need anything else first?: 

:I'm fine but these journals are inconsistent with what I know and I'm concerned they may have been extensively falsified. Either that or the artifact didn't just time travel me but rather erased me from existence before depositing me into now:

:I - what - but who in all hells would've falsified them and somehow gotten them into Urtho's private basement? I don't...: 

A pause. 

:This seems important but Rolan says I should sleep first and we can talk about it tomorrow, does that work for you?: 

:Yeah:

Aza doesn't go right to sleep herself, but she organizes her notes again a little pointlessly and sits up staring at them for only a little while before turning in.

Nothing disturbs her overnight. 

Dara reaches out with Mindspeech again shortly after dawn, touching her shields gently enough that it shouldn't wake her if she's still sleeping. 

Aza's awake, though not up. :Mm?: