"So when you find someone, you teach them how to do magic?" Orin seems to sense that this is a conversation the acolyte has had innumerable times and she moderates her voice, but the boy still remains good-natured about answering - he even seems a bit flattered by her attention. Something that doesn't escape Harthor's notice either.
"Not really," he shakes his head, that funny smile appearing again, "it's more like we teach people how to release it without doing harm. And by the way, it's not called magic, it's called glyf." He tweeks his turban, "see - as in glyfic."
"Is that what you're doing?" Ruric observes, "you're doing all these, tricks, . . to waste your magic?" He sounds somewhat appalled.
"Yes," the boy nods, without hint of irritation, "to release glyf." He looks at the uncomprehending faces and purses his lips.
"I'll show you."
He places his palm on the wet table, closes his eyes and then lifts his hand upward, slowly. Then he draws his hand away, leaving a sparkling crystal shard, like a small irregularly shaped bead, sitting in the wine on the tabletop.
"Orin, we're not saying that uncontrolled glyf can hurt its wielder just through accidents, like a tree-branch giving way at just the wrong moment - most Anarchs actually succumb to a plague more commonly seen in the borderland along the Barrens. It's not a good way to go. The disease isn't really a sickness, it's comprised of hundreds of changes both big and little within the glyf-holders own body. You can die, say if an organ decides to suddenly turn over, or. ."
'The agent discovered skulking in the poor Quarter confesses to be a high ranking member of the Endish Church. This would, we assume, make him quite magically powerful - yet he accepted arrest without a fight. He then went berserk when we tried to chain him but even then demonstrated no intent to harm us with his powers. He made similar claims again and again and I record one here verbatim, to illuminate the later occurrences:
where a woman or man's glyf is not released and is allowed to reach its critical potential, it causes the glyf-wielder to flash. Binding me risks yourselves -
the flash - it effects terrible changes to the glyf-wielder and to their surroundings, you condemn us by what you do not understand. .
We were understandably unwilling to unbind the agent and allow him to use his magic, but as time passed and his ravings continued along the same lines, we discovered that merely chaining the man was not enough to restrict his powers. At one point he somehow brought about the collapse of the eastern wing, the cells and their occupants underneath it apparently disappearing overnight as though they'd never existed, causing massive subsidence. During a separate and terrifying incident my own colleague was dissolved before my eyes as used his tools upon the Prelate. He was one moment a man, and the next a pile of bloody mucus - like birth fluid.
Thanksbee claims the 'flashing' he fears acts like an instantaneous compression of different possibilities and outcomes. He says a person standing in a flash might experience events that have, are, or will occur at different times both past, future and present. They might pass through versions of themselves which were, could be and might have been. And these transformations could well be occurring at the same time [i]to different parts of their body. [My emphasis S]
