Chapter 109 — E=1.66

They never realized how heretical this mode of inquiry—approaching truth through formulas and calculation—appeared in the eyes of orthodox mages, who believed in pursuing truth through personal power.

Meanwhile, on another front, Jennie's "mentor," that mighty mage, soon discovered that her magical gift was in truth pitifully slight. This sickly creature crawled out from among the experimental materials had only the barest shred of magic-sensing ability; with her spiritual gifts, she would likely never master more than a few apprentice-level cantrips in her whole life, and would never join the ranks of formal mages.

So he quickly ceased investing in her and was eager to recoup his costs. He gave Jennie a potion and a diagram of a magic circle, telling her to drink the potion, force her advancement into a first-rank mage, and then begin training as a rune master.

Ravenkess, who had already drunk such a potion himself, secretly stopped her and offered a bold suggestion: why not trust what the notebook said, trust the formulas they had derived and summarized from its knowledge in their daily work, and try to control those runes by mathematics and logic alone, without the aid of spells?

Jennie followed Ravenkess's advice and, as an apprentice, completed the reconstruction of the magic circle.

It was, perhaps, the first magic circle in the world to be "calculated out."

But her "mentor" did not reward her for it—he flew into a rage, and soon traced the matter to Ravenkess's "little tricks." Following the thread further, he discovered the notebook's existence. This near-"betrayal" enraged him all the more. That a research notebook full of nonsense, written by a bungling mage of meager powers, could beguile his servants within his own mage tower—to him this was an insult beyond measure.

The archmage, blazing with fury, made ready to destroy the notebook and harshly punish his two "apprentices." But at that moment Ravenkess stepped forward bravely for the first time, meeting his "mentor's" wrath head-on.

He alone accepted the punishment, and at the cost of one eye, a quarter of his soul, and two tendons, he preserved the notebook and Jennie. He tried to make that brutal archmage believe that keeping the notebook and letting his dull-witted apprentices study it was worthwhile—that there might be, in those pages, just a little something worth investing in. He and Jennie could serve as such test subjects, crafting magic circles and runes according to the methods recorded in the notebook. If they succeeded, all results would belong to the archmage; if they failed, the mage would lose no more than two pieces of experimental material.

Jennie's mentor accepted this reasoning and let the two bold apprentices carry on with their research—but he never ceased his constant mockery and belittlement. He held that rune research conducted by people utterly incapable of controlling high-order runes was bound to be absurd and laughable, as foolish as a serf guessing at the king's menu. To lack the ability to sense and control runes, yet guess at the power of those runes out of thin air with a few formulas—what was that if not laughable?

Be that as it may, Ravenkess and Jennie could at last continue their study of the notebook, and they soon discovered that different magic-conducting materials exhibited an obvious "divide" in their properties of magic conduction and the like. This divide seemed to sort all conducting materials into "positive" and "negative" ranges, and a mysterious constant governed how the materials of these two ranges actually performed within a magic circle. It turned out that the various conducting materials affected only the "output power" of the magic circle, while the circle's own stability against interference depended chiefly on the layout logic of the runes, and its relation to the conducting material was governed only by the material's positive or negative polarity and by a single constant...

They began to derive this constant, and gradually drew close to the final result. Yet on the very eve of success, their mentor suddenly gave them a task.

To go to a magic well that had run out of control, and reset the rune array there.

This was utterly beyond their skills as rune masters—and in any case, resetting the rune array of a magic well was not the specialty of rune masters: it was the work of formal mages.

But their mentor's command was absolute, and along with the command came a single sentence:

"Didn't you say all the runes can be fitted into your formulas? Then go and fit them."

Lavenkaes accepted the order. He knew well that the great mage had run out of patience—the man was not one to tolerate his servants acting freely—so he had no choice at all; and adjusting the runes in the magic well would, conveniently, let him verify the single most crucial question.

Jennie's recollections were drawing to a close, and her tone had grown calm, so calm it seemed she was speaking of someone else's affairs: "Before Mr. Lavenkaes left, he told me he would adjust the runes according to the first conjecture. If he came back alive, then it would equal 1.29; if he did not come back, then it would equal 1.66—and he did not come back."

Gao Yang lowered his head and looked at the notebook. The record of the constant was written there in fresh, neat handwriting—Jennie's.