The Pilgrimage

Above the desert, the steppe plateau was not hot, but merely warm as summer turned into autumn, and above that there was a chill wind running through the Mountains of Enoch. Every so often, as they followed a winding game trail up into the mountains, Sauhur commanded Yuya stop and listen awhile, hear some teaching of the White Circle and meditate on it for awhile before continuing. Some places he called a stop seemed random, and some seemed chosen for their discomfort– amid sharp rocks or near anthills– but some were serene, breathtaking vistas of the reaching peaks above or the lush valleys below. Looking down on the widest river valley from near its source, the city of Enoch a small line of gray in the distance, the river cutting along its walls as it flowed from a lake below the cliff where Yuya and Sauhur sat, fed by tumbling waterfalls all around them.

“This is a damned fool rush, even for a simple initiation.” Sauhur began, not for the first time, “But, if Cain commands… Yuya, reflect back on our battle against the Bekhites’ summoned frost-spirit. Of all the spells I cast, which do you think was the most important?”

“It is hard to say. It was the spell that engulfed my weapon in flame that allowed us to strike the killing blow. Yet, the barrier spell allowed us to survive long enough to do that. The barrier spell, is my answer.”

“No. You still do not grasp the heart of what the arts of the White Circle are, what most arts are which are together referred to as sorcery. Think about the other sorcerers you have met in your time on Nod. The djinn-invoker of Jalabarta and the demonic shaman of the Bekhites. What did their arts have in common?”

“They… relied on spirits. The djinn-invoker could, well, invoke a djinni to grapple his enemies in a form of air, and the Bekhite shaman transformed into a monster by letting a demon possess him. Does this mean I have to form some kind of pact with a spirit to start casting spells? No ambient mana or qi or whatever I can draw on?”

“Spirits like the demon, or demi-spirits like the djinni. Deals with these are how most perform sorcery, who can. Not exactly so the White Circle, but the principle of what we do is… related. Another way of entering into the battles the spirits and demi-spirits are constantly waging– among themselves, with or against the Lord of Death, and with or against us mortals.”

“So… what is it? Do you call upon the Lord of Death directly?”

“We do, but this does not work as calling upon a mere spirit might. There is a veil in Creation, which separates Man and the material things allotted to him from beings that lead their own existences in parallel. On the other side of this veil are the demi-spirits, creatures like the djinn who are more of the spirit and less of the flesh than Man, but still have an element of the material to their beings, at very least a linear relationship with time. The pure spirits, which do not experience time as we do and are all either pure good or pure evil in a way neither Man nor the demi-spirits can hope to imitate, often hover around the veil itself, sometimes mending and sometimes damaging it. From the way you sons of Seth seem unacquainted with sorcerers, I would assume Earth’s portion of the veil is thicker, more opaque, with fewer tears than Nod’s.”

“Wait, so… you could, in theory, invoke djinn on Earth?”

“In practical terms, it may be impossible, and what messengers the Lord of Death has sent you may well have forbidden it there, but… you never did require an explanation of what the word djinn referred to, did you?”

The actual word that escaped Sauhur’s lips was not djinn, had never been djinn, but the Arabic word that had made the rounds through Earth’s other tongues came to Yuya’s brain as it parsed the word he had truly used, shadim. He hadn’t perceived it as a strange word, when he first heard it, because it pointed to a concept that was already familiar to him. “Djinn, is the word I equated it to in my mind.” He spoke the actual Arabic word. “In other references to demi-spirits here on Nod, I’ve heard other words I’ve equated to troll and yaoguai. Does this mean… all the cultures those words came from on Earth, have had some experience with demi-spirits in their past?”

“It most likely does.”

“This may be… interesting knowledge to take back to Earth, if I ever get a chance.”

“We shall see.” Often Sauhur paused in his speech deliberately, but this time he seemed to hover on his words with uncertainty. “But, as I said, you will not be forming agreements with spirits or demi-spirits directly. The arts of more typical sorcerers seem unnatural because they bring forces to bear on the world other than the hand of the Lord of Death. His power is so ubiquitous, it is hard to recognize for what it is. The downward tug of Nod that draw that river below us to lower gound, is His power. The motion of your chest rising and falling as you breathe, the life-sustaining transformation of living air to dead within your lungs, those are His power. When His power is everything and in everything, the magical is made mundane. What we of the White Circle do, by His leave, is grab hold of the veil and wield it directly, protecting the people of the steppe from the meddling of evil spirits not by trying to impose our will on them or summon other spirits to battle them, but allowing the Lord of Death’s will to flow back into Nod, twist the twisted back to straightness.”

“Wait… so does that mean your magic only works against…?”

“Sorcerers and their spirit-collaborators, for the most part, yes. Sometimes, we can wield it against entirely natural things that have betrayed the natural order in some acute way. But your specialty, as an initiate of the White Circle, will be magic that counters magic. The fire you wielded was able to be created because the frost-demon was present, a correction for its unnatural cold. My spirit-barrier could only block the movements of disordered creatures, like a treacherous spirit wielding a body not its own. And now, Yuya, to answer your first question: the most important spell I wielded in that fight was not the spirit-barrier, nor the flame-wreathed sword. It was the first words I spoke, which opened the channels between me, the world around me, and the Lord of Death for those other spells to work. By calling on His authority, I was able to force a name from the lips of the demon, push it out of the armor all demons wear woven from secrets and lies. Then, I commanded it to be away, and when it did not comply, the floodgates were opened to me to chastise it, using the power of the Lord of Death. What you will do with these arts is a mystical reflection of a property of mundane things. You are pushed down onto the rock where you sit, and the rock pushes back opposite, and so you are both still. A shaman of the White Circle moderates the excesses of magic in a world where it always pushes in every direction, violently.”

“So… the spells available to me at any given moment will directly counter any other sorcerer I fight, but I’ll be useless against ordinary guys with swords?”

“That is why I instructed you to keep practicing your own swordplay, Yuya.”

Yuya nodded. “I have. So, when do I get to the point in learning all this theory where I actually know enough to cast a spell?”

“This is not an intellectual exercise alone. Soon, you will gaze upon the Place of Nightmares, the Great Abyss. If you come out with your body, mind, and soul intact, then you may begin to work the Lord of Death’s will into the world.”