At first, Liv couldn’t help straining against her grandmother’s magic physically. It was a natural instinct to shove her hand toward her wand with every bit of strength she had, even though she knew the effort would be useless.

Fighting back against a powerful Authority had nothing to do with muscles, but it was difficult to resist when she was fighting off a wave of raw panic at being utterly unable to move. What made it worse was that her grandmother continued to pace a circle around Liv, slowly counting as she went. She realized that, at some point, the blade of ice she’d summoned had been destroyed by the older woman’s magic.

Liv couldn’t even close her eyes or use the breathing exercises that Master Grenfell had taught her so long ago. By the time Eila had reached a count of twenty, Liv felt like a captured animal, desperately and ineffectually scrabbling at her cage. It would be one thing if she could shut out the world and concentrate, but that calm counting just went on and on, as her grandmother paced in and out of her sight.

She tried to recall what it had felt like when she’d defeated Calevis at the Foundry Rift, but there was no desperation to power Liv now. She knew that her grandmother wouldn’t hurt her: this was only a test. A test that Liv wanted to pass, but she wasn’t battling out of pure need to save the lives of her friends. The worst that would happen if she failed was that she would need to withstand the disappointment of the two women watching her.

Breaking Costia’s ancient, lingering magic in her bones had been comparatively easy. That was just the empty shell of a long-dead intent, with no living will behind it. Now, Liv was faced with the practiced and honed Authority of a mage who had been practicing for longer than she had been alive. Expecting her to fight this off – to actually win such a contest – was completely unreasonable.

And yet – if Liv ever wanted to be an archmage, she needed to master her Authority. She’d made progress, true, or she’d still be suffering under the warping of her own ribs, or dead at the hands of Calevis. But when Liv compared her few successes to the near-instinctual way she was able to conjure a blade of ice into existence, at the slightest threat, it was clear that she truly hadn’t achieved mastery yet.

“One hundred,” her grandmother called out, continuing the count. Fully half of Liv’s time was wasted, and she hadn’t made any progress at all. It was maddeningly frustrating. Again, she searched her memories for how it had felt to face off against Calevis, to break the spell on her bones –

When Liv had woken up, her bones whole, she had been surrounded by a layer of frost, creeping out across the ground. “She’s cold. It’s like touching ice,” Arjun had said, though Liv had hardly taken note of the words at the time. And when she’d thrown her own magic against Calevis, his Authority had felt hot, while hers had felt crisp, like mountain air in winter. Like the coming of a snowstorm.

Cel woke and stretched at Liv’s summons like a satisfied cat, arching its back beneath her hand. Frost cracked out across the dirt at Liv’s feet – only a few inches, at first, but it was something. Liv let herself feel the pressure of her grandmother’s magic, a strange sort of stretching and pulling that distorted everything it touched.

A puff of breath emerged from Liv’s mouth, a faint fog suspended in the cold air that now surrounded her. As she had in the foundry, Liv pushed – not with her body, but with her own stubborn determination. And Cel, eager to help, roared through her.

Without her grandmother’s magic to support her – to prevent her fall – Liv found herself on the ground. She didn’t have enough attention to spare to keep her body upright. Instead, she closed her eyes, slowed her breathing, and extended the small bubble of winter out from her. With her right hand, she patted around her waist until her fingers found the pommel of her wand. She gripped it and drew.

“One hundred and seventy-six,” her grandmother counted out, and then stopped. The older woman’s authority retreated, no longer battering at Liv’s magic. With a shuddering breath, Liv allowed her Authority to dwindle. She found herself gasping for breath as if she’d just run three times around Whitehill.

“Impressive,” Aira Tär Keria called out, and Liv looked up. Both women now stood side by side, regarding her as if she were a particularly plump duck that might be suitable to be served at the high table. “You still need practice, of course,” the elder continued. “It took you far too long; you need to be able to shield yourself with your own Authority as easily as you cast that silent spell earlier. But using it effectively in training is a beginning. When you go to Mountain Home, tell Ilmari ka Väinis kæn Bælris that I sent you to him. He can help you practice, for as long as you stay.”

Liv nodded. “I will. That’s Keri’s father?”

Aira nodded. “Yes. I promised to teach you something before you leave, and I will – but first, I believe your grandmother wants you to try something.”

“That’s right,” Eila said. “I’d like your first use of Dā to be under my supervision. I believe you know the word for sword, given you can conjure one?”

Liv nodded.

“Go and get a practice sword from the weapon racks,” her grandmother commanded.

Liv took a deep breath, sheathed her wand, and hauled herself to her feet. She strode across the yard and chose a blunted blade at random. Unlike the rapiers she was used to from her training in Lucania, these were all of older styles: longswords, for the most part. It felt awkward in her grip.

“Go and thrust it into the center of the practice yard,” her grandmother called to her. Liv did as she’d been asked, and left the sword wobbling there, pommel up at about chest height.

“Good. Now step back a few paces,” Eila told her. “Destroy the sword using the incantation I gave you. You can consult your spellbook, it’s alright if you haven’t memorized it yet.”

Liv turned, hurried over to the bench, and fetched the book. Her grandmother had written three incantations out for her, but she knew immediately which one Eila meant for her to attempt. She read the words, repeating them silently in her head, and then set the book down on the ground halfway between the bench and the sword which would be her target. Then, she drew her wand again, pointed it forward, and spoke, allowing the words to vibrate up from her belly.

“Dāet Aiveh Ais'Sekis Senic,” Liv said, and for the first time, Dā woke in the back of her mind.

The blade of the practice sword began to rust and corrode in front of her, so rapidly that it was as if years or decades passed in only the space of heartbeats. The leather cord wrapping the hilt rotted away first, and then the sword collapsed under its own weight, leaving only rusted fragments on the packed earth of the training ground.

“Good,” Eila said. “Again.”

“Are you going to have the girl destroy every one of our practice swords?” Aira complained, though to Liv’s ear she did not truly seem angry.

“Twice more?” Liv’s grandmother asked, and the other woman nodded. So Liv found herself carrying two more swords over from the rack of practice weapons, shoving each point first into the ground, and then performing the spell twice more under the observation of the older women.

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“Good,” Eila said, nodding her head after the third cast. “You’re wasting a lot of mana, but that’s to be expected until you’ve had more practice with the word. The wand helps, somewhat. I wouldn’t recommend the first incantation until after you feel more confident with this one. It will be substantially more draining.” She turned to Aira. “I’ll hand her over to you, then.”

“Excellent. Come along with me, child, we’re going to the waystone,” Aira said. “Come and take my hand.”

Liv frowned, but did as she was asked. Instead of walking toward the street, the elder simply held her hand for a moment.

“Nesēmus,” Aira said, and the world was obliterated in white light.

With utter shock, Liv realized that she was in the darkness between waystones. Yet more strange, she could feel Aira at her side, connected to her in some way, as if they were still holding hands.

The white rock of the Al’Fenthia waystone appeared beneath Liv’s boots, and she stumbled. She hadn’t been ready for the transition at all. “How –” Liv swallowed, turned around, and looked over the encampment that surrounded them. It had shrunk, somewhat, with troops moving over to Varuna now that the eruption had passed. “How did you do that? Is there a waystone buried beneath the training yard?” It would be a clever trick, and Liv mentally tucked the idea aside for later.

Aira shook her head and released Liv’s hand. “No. There is a function of the waystones that has been forgotten completely in Lucania; even among our own people, there are very few capable of holding enough mana to cast a word of return. For the most part, only those of us with strong Vædic heritage.”

“A word of return,” Liv repeated. “A spell that lets you journey to a waystone, without one on the other end.”

“There are a great many limitations,” Aira said, before Liv’s excitement could run away with her. “First, you can only use a word to return to a waystone you have previously visited. You must prepare the waystone in advance, connecting a portion of your own mana to it to create the tether. So long as the word of return has not been used, that portion of mana will remain unavailable to you for any other use.”

“So there’s a practical limit to how many you set up,” Liv reasoned. “Too many weakens your ability to cast other spells.”

“Or even to use the word of return,” the elder explained. “You need to be able to fuel the entire mana cost of the waystone’s activation yourself. No one else can help you, and there is no stone on your end that might have built up a charge of mana from a nearby rift. It is quite possible to prepare enough words of recall that you cannot actually cast any of them, if one were to be particularly foolish.”

“It requires physical contact to take someone else along?” Liv asked, though the answer was obvious.

Aira nodded. “Normally, everyone and everything standing on a waystone when it activates will be moved. That is not the case when using a word of return.”

“It’s still incredibly useful,” Liv said, her mind racing with the possibilities. “If I’d known how to do this at Coral Bay, I could have just vanished from Genevieve Arundell’s office, and appeared in Whitehill, or at the Tomb of Celris.”

“That is why I am going to teach it to you now,” Aira said. “Can you guess why I did not use this spell to take us all back from the Garden of Thorns? Or to get there in the first place?”

Liv felt like she was back in Master Grenfell’s study, or in the library at Coral Bay with Archmagus Loredan questioning her. “I can think of a few reasons,” she said. “For one thing, I don’t get the impression you’d been back there in quite a while. I would guess you didn’t bother to keep a – tether, you called it? – over the course of decades or centuries.”

“I did not,” Aira confirmed, with a nod.

“And then as far as coming back,” Liv reasoned, “we’d already been moved up to the ring and then back down. I doubt you had enough mana left to move all of us.”

“I did not,” the elder admitted. “If you survive the current crisis, my dear, you will find that at a certain point your mana capacity begins to shrink again. As your body begins to fail, and your endurance fades, you are simply unable to contain as much power as when you were young and strong. Now, come and watch what I do carefully. I imagine that Aluth will help.”

Liv followed the old woman over to the center of the waystone, to a blank place equidistant from the dozens of sigils that lined the rim in a gentle curve. There, they knelt together.

“The enchantments you need are in a layer beneath the surface stone,” Aira explained. “They were left unmarked, because the Vædim did not consider this a function appropriate for their servants, no matter how favored. In fact, they kept the capability a secret as much as they could. That is the reason Asuris was able to escape from Esvara back to Corsteris, even when mortally wounded.”

Liv had to pull her thoughts away from that particular bit of information, as fascinating as it was. She wondered whether the Vædic Lord of Night had been wounded at Duskvale, where Sidonie had been sent for her first culling. Instead of asking, however, she forced herself to watch what Aira was doing.

She roused Aluth, but did not cast. Instead, Liv simply allowed herself to feel how Aira sent a portion of her mana out through her hand, just as was done to activate the waystone normally, at one of the sigils. When the magic touched the center of the stone, however, there was no immediate response like Liv was used to. The expanse of white stone did not wake like a hungry animal, drawing power out of the old woman.

Instead, the mana hooked or attached onto something beneath the stone. Without being able to see what was there with her eyes, Liv could somehow still feel it. A place, an enchantment, that was designed to hold. To attach. When Aira stood again, the thinnest strand of mana stretched between her and the center of the waystone, barely perceptible at all - like a single thread of spider silk. Liv guessed that about a ring of mana had been used during the process.

“There’s no complicated spell to make the tether take hold,” Aira told her. “The enchantments beneath the stone are designed for this purpose.”

“Is there a limit to how many people can connect to a single waystone?” Liv asked. She looked for other tethers, stretching out to who knows where, but if any were present, she couldn’t find them.

“If there is, I don’t know it,” Aira admitted. “There are few enough of us powerful enough to do this, anyway. We’ve never found a limit. The private waystones in the remaining residences of the Vædic will not permit you attach a tether unless you already have a key to control the entire rift.”

Liv stood up. “And the cost to me would be the entire cost of the particular waystone I’ve attached a tether to,” she said, working it all out. “Bald Peak would be less of a burden than this stone, for instance.”

“Correct. I’m certain you’ll find uses for this, but that isn’t the only reason I’ve shown you the trick of it,” Aira said. “Can you guess the other?”

“You wanted me to understand that Ractia can do this,” Liv said, immediately. It only made sense. “And you wanted me to know exactly what the limitations were. Elder, you grew up with your mother. The Lady of Thorns. Can you tell me how much mana one of the Vædim would be able to hold?”

“In the measurement of your mages guild,” Aira replied, “Keria was able to contain just under one hundred rings of mana. I was under the impression that there was a certain degree of variance - some would have a bit more, some a bit less.”

“A hundred,” Liv said, unable to prevent herself from sighing. That was nearly four times what she could hold. “We can’t defeat her in a long battle, then. She’d outlast us easily.”

“Or escape,” Aira confirmed. “Any waystone she’s visited since her return is a potential escape route.”

“We have them marked on a map, at least,” Liv said. “Wren and the two hunters she captured gave us that.” Her mind fluttered through the possibilities, the ramifications of what she’d learned. If they took every rift Ractia had visited, and fortified it, they could have an ambush waiting wherever the monster fled to.

“Is there a way to cut a tether?” Liv asked. “Using Aluth, maybe?”

“If a spell exists to do so, I am unaware of it,” Aira admitted. “And yes, my guess is that the word of your guild would be the correct tool for the job. Perhaps your Archmagus Loredan has an idea: he’s spent decades studying that word of power.”

“Does he know how to tether himself to a waystone?” Liv asked.

Aira shrugged. “He is an extremely intelligent man, and very observant. He visited us here in the north, ages ago. I did not teach the technique to him, but I would not be surprised if he found out somehow or other. Only someone very foolish underestimates that man.”

“Thank you,” Liv said, turning to take the old woman’s hands in her own. “Truly. I feel like you’ve taught me so much, in only a few days, and – to be honest, you didn’t have to.”

“Don’t be too grateful, child,” Aira said. Liv thought that her eyes looked sad. “You’re a talented young woman, and you’ve turned up just when we need you. Before you think that I’m being kind, consider that I’m also crafting a weapon. A weapon that I intend to turn on Ractia.” She gently removed her hands from Liv’s. “It’s been too long since the last war,” she admitted. “All of us that remember it are old and weak, now. We won’t be able to defeat her this time, so we’re going to send you and your father, and whoever else we can find.”

The old woman turned and walked off the waystone, headed back toward the Elden districts of Al’Fenthia. “To be entirely honest, it makes me feel ashamed,” she called back to Liv.