It occurred to her that to use the Cup for a specific purpose, she had needed instructions. To do other specific magics with it might require similar, and the temple might provide guidance on how to shape an unimaginable amount of different magics. Recently the Prince Bishop had seemed to Solène like a puppy running on a frozen pond—its legs a furious blur of motion though it was getting nowhere. Her conclusion reminded her how clever and dangerous he was. Perhaps he knew more than he was letting on and his aims were far more focussed than she had recently assumed.
It was amazing how quickly contempt could creep in when you didn’t like someone. She resolved to consider him more carefully in future, as she initially had. She could see his plan now. It had taken the Imperial mages centuries to perfect their art, learning new magics through trial and error, slowly advancing their skill and power over generations, while expanding their numbers to the force that became feared throughout the Empire. The Prince Bishop didn’t have the patience for that. He wanted all that power within his lifetime. The Cup alone hadn’t done that for the Imperial mages, and it wouldn’t do that for him, either. He would have power, and with time, he might have control, but he would not have a particularly large knowledge base of magic to draw on. That was what he was searching for—what he had Solène searching for.
It was a dangerous appetite to have. Solène had learned the danger of too much power the hard way, very nearly with fatal consequences. It took a long time to learn to properly control magic, she was discovering. Even now, Solène very much feared she’d never be able to acquire the mental discipline required to completely handle the raw power she could wield. She feared that she was a danger not only to herself, but to others. What would similar power mean for the Prince Bishop? It was a concerning thought, particularly if her efforts brought him closer to realising his goal.
Perhaps it would be better to not find anything about this temple. She knew failure would draw the Prince Bishop’s ire, but better that than burning down half the city by trying to shape magics he had no business meddling with. Then again, perhaps locating the temple would give all mages the key to controlling their magic, her included. If they were going to be delving into the long-forgotten magical arts, the secrets contained in this temple might save a great deal of heartache. If she found anything, she could choose whether or not to share it with the Prince Bishop. What would the consequences be?
A dark thought occurred to her. She had the power, and possibly even the control, to stop the Prince Bishop right now. Feeling sick, Solène pushed the idea from her head. She had resolved that once all the tumult was behind her, she would learn to become a magical healer and devote herself to becoming the best. She could not begin that by killing. Or, rather, by killing again.
That brought her back to her initial problem. How could she find the temple if the Imperial mages couldn’t? The information in the archive was merely a small part of their knowledge. Perhaps it had been nothing more than a legend even then, not worth searching for, and the Prince Bishop had become convinced of its existence from a fanciful mention. Perhaps by the time they were large and powerful enough to look for it, they no longer needed what it contained?
As she paced the aisles, she let her mind work its way back to where all of this started, with the Fount, the great magical energy of life that filled and surrounded all things. If she were to build a magical temple, where would she place it? Surely somewhere the Fount was particularly strong.
The Fount was a strange force, and the Order’s understanding of it was limited to say the least. Beyond it existing, powering magic, and being both created and required by life, they knew little. They didn’t know why it behaved the way it did—for instance, solid stone and water prevented its flow, which was why it was so weak in the archive, which was deep under stone, and why she always tapped more heavily into her internal reservoir when she used magic down there.
Living things created it within them and used only a little of it, so it was found in stronger concentrations where there was a large amount of healthy life. There were deeper pools of it in cities—the larger the population, the stronger the Fount was. Vellin-Ilora, the long-deserted Imperial capital, had been the most populous city ever known. The Fount produced there had fuelled the College of Mages and allowed them to create incredible magics. It had also allowed them to unleash enormous destructive force when the wars tore the Empire apart.
Knowing this was all well and good, but in a time of sparse population, when Mirabaya was inhabited only by barbarian tribes—and, it seemed, these enlightened, whoever they were—where would the Fount have accumulated? Solène shut her eyes and reached mentally for documents dominated by discussion of the Fount. She had refined her skill a little and no longer pulled ancient books and scrolls from their resting places, dumping them on the floor. Now she simply drew them far enough out of position that she would be able to see them when she walked past. She held the thought a moment longer, then took the small wheeled book trolley the Prince Bishop had appropriated from the university’s library, and went to gather her haul.
The archive was large, and it took a little while to check every aisle, but she eventually turned up a half-dozen old, leather-bound tomes that would keep her busy for the next day or two. She didn’t know if this progress would make the Prince Bishop happy, and she didn’t care all that much. So long as she was seen to be making a genuine effort, he couldn’t be too critical.
As she prepared to dig into the first book, she realised that even if her theory that the temple was located where there was a strong accumulation of the Fount was correct, the Imperial mages would almost certainly have come up with the same idea. Either she was wrong or it hadn’t helped them find the temple—if it even actually existed. She thought it over, and decided that her logic was sound.
Perhaps the Prince Bishop was incorrect in stating that the Empire never found this temple. Just because there was nothing to say so in the archive didn’t mean it hadn’t happened. Likewise, a single text saying that the temple hadn’t been located couldn’t necessarily be relied upon either. The writer might have been working on misinformation, or might simply not have known.
Leaning forward, she let her forehead bang lightly on the table. The impact didn’t do much to ease her frustration. It felt as though she was stumbling around in the dark, looking for something that might not actually be there. When did you give in to good sense and stop? She supposed that was the Prince Bishop’s decision to make, but until then she had little more than rumour, theory, and second-guessing to guide her.
Pride took hold—she couldn’t bear the idea of not doing a good job. With that in mind, she sat up, took a deep breath, and opened the first book.
It was a treatise on the Fount, much as she had expected. She looked for any indication of when it was written, reckoning something written later in the Empire would represent a more developed understanding of the subject. This book was from the thirteenth emperor’s reign. Writers of the time conveniently seemed to always dedicate their work to the emperor of the day, making dating one of the few easy aspects of her research. She checked a few other books, found one written in the days of the penultimate emperor, and started there.