A follow-up to 'City Hobgoblins' in all but name
– same setting, most of the same characters, essentially the same setting. My hope was for a more mature work in a
Graham Greene / Paul Scott sort of style. It didn't really work out like that,
however. What you've basically got is
'Hobgoblins' with less energy. Regardless, the full novel can be bought from lulu.comMagic is many things but above all else is strange. Its origins are mysterious - no-one knows if humans have always been able to cast spells and, if not, when and why they first began. Its workings are baffling. The question of why it operates less effectively on Teraf than on other continents is one which has launched a thousand theories, none of them agreeing. Its consequences are also ultimately unpredictable, however sophisticated the spell to channel it.
And magicians are strange as well. The Academy is both the most famous and the most opaque institution in the world. It is a miasma of secrets, hidden motives and inexplicable actions. One basic contradiction lies at its heart. Despite its theoretically unchallenged authority, despite the tentacles which stretch to every corner of the continent, it has very little actual power. Its threats are a bluff which is all to easy to call, as it is limited by its own strict rules of when it can and can't use its limitless powers. In practice the Academy has always had to rely heavily on the voluntary co-operation of local governments and people in order to meet its needs. The needs of the Academy are many. It needs to quickly detect anyone born with the Gift of the Gods and bring them into its exhaustive training programme before they can do any harm. It needs to keep a very close eye on the assorted Academy-trained wizards who have gone freelance and check they are still playing the game. It needs a free hand to take what reprisals are necessary against those violating regulations. It needs to monitor the numerous and potentially dangerous magical artefacts which circulate Teraf. It needs to ensure that all of its taxes and subscription dues on magical activities find their way into Academy coffers. It needs to constantly encourage voluntary contributions so that the great institution can continue its work. Magic alone cannot achieve a tenth of these goals. Instead it relies on a network of senior and middle-ranking wizards who operate from the regional bases across Teraf. These representative wizards, whilst continuing their sorcerous work, also act like ambassadors from a foreign nation. They deal with the local authorities, state Academy directives, report developments back to their superiors and take direct action when they can.
Given the aforementioned need for co-operation it might be expected that the representatives are selected because they are tactful, diplomatic, sagely and venerable. Most of them are haughty, inflexible, indiscreet, small-minded bullies. They irritate the authorities, scare the local people, meddle with the merchants and pick fights with the priests. The result is that the Academy has most influence in nations where fear alone can guarantee assistance. This isn't a fear of direct Academy reprisals, more timorousness that one day magical assistance will be needed and it will be refused. Wizards most commonly help in engineering projects and in alleviating the effects of plagues, droughts, floods and other natural catastrophes. The reliance on magic is therefore less in countries which are rich, secure and have sufficient technology for minimising disasters. Countries like Christoté for example. In a nation where Academy not only has minimum bargaining power but many of its values (foreign interference, limiting personal freedom, old-style patrician authority) are at odds with local culture, it's obvious that especially careful diplomacy is needed. Accordingly, it is to Christoté that the Academy sends its most conservative and opinionated aristocrats.
The decline had started a long time ago. The Confederacy of Christoté, formed in 967, rapidly grew in pride and prosperity. Before long it was flexing its muscles, shaking off the chains of traditional authority and defining its new culture. In came its four-tiered democratic system, its progressive taxation and its liberal crime laws. Out went much of the rights of unelected foreign bodies. The Academy whined, the Christotan government and people alike told them were to go and the Academy whined some more. The considerable egos of each side helped worsen the relationship and stretch it to its limits. The situation can be summed up by saying that formal diplomatic ties have never quite been broken off, and hearing this fact always astonishes people. In the process the Academy has almost completely lost control of magic in Christoté. It has little legal right to force the Gifted to submit to its training and certainly no right to chastise sorcerous wrongdoers. None of its cherished registration systems (which ought to operate from full wizards down to herbalists) are enforceable. Senior magicians regularly give grave warnings about the box of evils Christoté is allowing to be opened. Christotan politicians wince at the sight of a pointed hat, and when the Cities is feeling restless the Academy building in Yaleth makes a fine target for stoning. Occasionally gestures are made towards reconciliation, usually gestures whose sweeping, public nature make it all the more embarrassing when they end in disaster and acrimony.
Whether Christoté actually gets the worst representatives out of the whole bad lot is debatable. However, the ultra-modern bent of the Cities makes the archaic, authoritarian wizards jar particularly with the culture. The most reactionary of kingdoms are still able to find presentable ambassadors who can knock off a speech on the rights of man to send to the Cities. What does the Academy offer? For example, take Pol Fannian who managed to spark off widespread panic in the early 1200's by forecasting an imminent apocalypse, incorrectly as it happens. Or Ghalag the Green, convicted of murdering at least half a dozen unlicensed magicians. Or Uhan Elcco, who took it on himself to criticise Cities women for being morally lax, not subservient to their husbands and daring to take paid employment outside the home. Every time a new supremo arrives people say "Well, at least he can't be as bad as the last one", and he's usually worst.
Then in 1330 something very strange indeed occurred. Calli Brenton became part of the Academy entourage in the Cities.
At first few people noticed and fewer still cared. 1330 was also the year Chela Tatel was first elected Chancellor. The Chancellor is the supreme head of the Confederacy of Christoté and they're only elected once a decade; it is fair to say that the event attracts a certain amount of interest. By contrast, no-one put much significance on Calli Brenton's arrival. The fact that she (like Chela Tatel) was a woman astonished nobody. For all its faults the Academy trains male and female Gifted alike. Women wizards had been sent to the Cities before, usually in the sort of junior role which Calli Brenton seemed to be taking. That she was a Christotan returning home raised no expectations that she'd be anything of an improvement. Wizards have to endure a minimum of nine years training at the Academy's campus in northern Erenland. Whatever their nationality, their tuition usually manages to bleed all traces of culture out of them. That Calli Brenton wasn't in fact replacing any of the five wizards already in the Cities, that she was taking up an entirely new post... well, this should have attracted some attention but didn't. Who knew what the Academy thought it was doing at the best of times, when did it ever obey logic? Many people doubted that the silly old sods could even count as far as six, so the swelling of their staff was overlooked.
But the Cities was quickly alerted to the fact that Calli Brenton's posting did mean something. A week after her arrival she stood on a rostrum in Rand Park, the public gardens lying between Jalkin and Yaleth. She gave a long speech which mentioned fresh starts and the need to forge close relationships and ending the long years of mistrust. Wizards rarely give speeches at all and when they do it is to chastise Christoté for rolling dice on humanity's future; a puzzled audience wondered if they were listening to the right orator. Calli then threw herself into an unbelievable array of speeches, meetings, consultations and question-and-answer sessions. She walked the streets freely, she talked to people and she even seemed to be listening to them. The Cities couldn't quite believe what it was seeing. A wizard who was open, friendly, sympathetic, witty even - it seemed like a very welcome blasphemy. Before long Calli Brenton's warmth and accessibility was being compared favourably with the public appearances of local politicians, never mind the rest of the crew at the Academy. Even the newsheet Huwdone Times, which usually reserves its energy for withering lampoons, was moved to comment that Calli "throws a shining light of hope and candour onto the unwholesome shadows of the Christotan-Academy relationship".
Elsewhere Huwdone Times mused "Calli Brenton's appointment may smack of tokenism but we can at least hope that it is something else. Brenton just might have been sent because someone in the Academy noted the atrocious standing they have in Christoté. They realised that the only real victim of this is the Academy itself. They understood that not only were the characters of their representatives deeply flawed but also the remits they were issued with. They judged that neither could be altered without a major struggle and the opening piece of that struggle is someone who can actually act like a spokesman and answer our questions. They spotted a young wizard at the Academy with the character and ability to fulfil this new role. Fellow citizens, there's just a chance that Calli Brenton is in the Cities because somebody in the Academy had a very good idea."
If that was true, then magic is a strange lore indeed..
