A Practical Guide to Sorcery (Books 1 & 2)

Chapter 54 - Commission to Investigate (Part 2)

"Because people who come to her are desperate, and have no other options?"

He huffed in exasperation. "There are plenty of thaumaturges selling illegal services in Gilbratha, Sebastien. Liza is trustworthy, competent, and her skills are well-rounded. That is a difficult combination to find. I won't give away what few of Liza's secrets I happen to know, but it seems like you are severely underestimating how lucky you were to receive her help. Liza is one of the few people I know of who could have created that ward, even in a city that hosts the University."

Sebastien nodded slowly to show that she was properly impressed. And she was. Maybe, if things had gone differently, she could have paid the University tuition fee to Liza and had an apprenticeship under her instead. Still, she preferred the more well-rounded education she was currently receiving, and nothing could replace access to the library.

"But back to the point at hand," Oliver said, "the coppers don't know where you are exactly or how strong your wards are, and yet are still pouring resources into finding you. They must at least be prepared for their spell to reach the whole of Gilbratha and its outskirts, as well as overwhelm your wards. Do you see? Having the high ground makes things significantly easier"—he pointed to the white cliffs—"though I don't remember the details of how that works, but all it means is that their base spell comes at a more reasonable cost."

Sebastien frowned. Something seemed wrong about this. Her study had been narrowly focused, as she had neither the resources nor the desire to become an expert diviner. However, it seemed that she might have missed some rather important elements of understanding. "If this is right, the volume of the search field is increasing way faster than the power requirements." She scribbled on an invisible paper with her fingers, trying to hold the rapidly increasing number in her mind. "Either the spell becomes more efficient over greater distances, or it becomes less effective."

He smiled approvingly at her. "The latter. Divination is an imprecise art. That's a large part of why it's not more widely used. With a very low-powered base spell, it might take weeks or even months of casting to receive accurate information if the edges of your search are very distant. When I was young, the diviner in my hometown took ten days to find my father's stolen prize horse because it had been transported multiple towns away. It had already been sold by the time my father arrived to take it back."

Sebastien was intrigued by the hint of Oliver's history, but he continued. "I've always imagined it like this: A divination spell sends out many little tendrils—strings, if you will—and those strings come into contact with relevant pieces of information and return them to the caster, filtered through whatever translation and analyses method the spell is set up with. The initial number of strings stays basically the same, even if they must reach farther, and so at greater distances they take either more time or more power to gather all the data, and are less likely to be one hundred percent accurate. Caidan's Theorem isn't based on volume, but on distance. I assume there are other equations that would deal with calculating the base cost of an area-effect spell of different shapes, or the accuracy of a divination at certain distances after certain investments of time." He flipped his pencil around awkwardly. "I hope I'm making sense?"

It was strange seeing Oliver unsure, especially while in the role of a teacher, as he was normally so confident and smooth. But even she wasn't so tactless as to point it out. Sebastien nodded absently. "Mostly, though it seems like this would be a rather imprecise method of estimation, what with all the possible variables and caveats." She wondered how accurate Caidan's Theorem really was. As Professor Lacer's class had shown, through training to be more efficient, different people could get entirely different results with the same amount of available power.

Sebastien eyeballed the map of Gilbratha, gauging its proportions. "The diviners needed to reach all the way from the University through the Mires. The white cliffs are a circle with a diameter of about twelve kilometers, and the Mires spill out to the south." That math was a little too much to do in her head, but she understood the point.