Chapter 536 — A Dangerous Signal
Blade of Dawn · Page 1 of 4
The Month of Keen Cold.
The coldest month in Anseth had arrived.
The Giant Sun climbed into the sky with slow solemnity; across its vast disc, ringed by a halo of mist and cloud, drifted tawny bands that resembled the grain of wood, and the shifting of those colored streaks foretold a single thing: the greatest cold snap since winter's onset would soon be upon them.
The sun—the largest body in the heavens and the one most intimately bound up with human life—could be read by experienced farmers, who from the changing bands upon its disc could estimate the coming cold snap's date and severity; scholars, for their part, had built from those same changes a method for deducing the climate of the year to come. Observation of the Giant Sun had always been an essential part of daily life in this world.
In Saint Sunil, within the mages' district.
With a faint grinding of stone, the Sun-Chasing Platform atop the Astrology Tower opened its massive, ponderous skylight, and the magic-driven lift came to rest squarely above the passage at the platform's center. Morgan Hugo and his assistants stepped down from the lift and took their places for observing the sun-disc, ready to begin the customary work of observation.
"Open the filter plate—Filtration Mode III."
The aged royal mage gave his orders to an assistant at his side, and at the same time beckoned toward a bookshelf not far away; quill, parchment, and inkpot came flying at once and hung steady before him, while the assistant who had received the command ran to a control node nearby and began channeling magic into the rune pillars.
Seeing the somewhat reckless way his assistant moved, Morgan could not help calling out, "Careful! Those runes are worth a fortune!"
The assistant hastily moderated the flow of magic, and as one rune pillar after another around the Sun-Chasing Platform brightened, a thin film of radiance began to shimmer across the skylight used for observing the sun-disc.
A moment later the glow of magic condensed into a layer of light-crystal seemingly solid, filtering the sunlight beyond the skylight into a mode better suited to the naked eye. Morgan Hugo nodded slightly: the magical apparatus, built a hundred years ago, still served well to this day, and as the most senior astrologer-mage in the tower, the privilege of commanding it had always been his proudest possession.
The old mage took his stand beneath the filter plate condensed from magic radiance and, tilting back his head, studied the sun-disc beyond the skylight, watching the change in every colored band upon its surface, while quill and parchment floated at his side, writing swiftly without pause, setting down every figure and diagram for the record.
The other assistants had taken their observation posts as well, recording the data each was charged with, and a quiet, solemn air settled over the top of the Astrology Tower.
Yet the mood did not last long. A low, puzzled exclamation from one assistant broke the calm of the observation platform: "The red band at the base has shifted three degrees east?"
Morgan Hugo shot his assistant a glare at once: "What nonsense are you talking?"
"It's true! Master!" the assistant said quickly, and as he handed his own notes to his teacher he produced the record of the previous observation. "Look here—this is the last record. You confirmed it yourself."
Morgan Hugo took the few sheets the assistant handed him and ran his eyes swiftly over them. He froze for an instant, then read through them once more with greater care, and then raised his head again, staring unblinking at the Giant Sun in the sky.
"That can't be..." the old astrologer-mage murmured. He waved a hand and conjured the illusory spell used for calibrating coordinates, setting a broad array of reference marks around the image of the sun-disc upon the filter plate; but the calibrated result only deepened his shock. "No... impossible... a shift of this scale... never seen before..."