Death After Death

As time went on, it became increasingly apparent that one of the reasons that Brin was losing was the white cloaks. It wasn’t them directly. While Simon had no inside knowledge in this regard, he was sure that they were fighting alongside their countrymen against the external threat, given the dark rumors that were becoming increasingly common.

If one side was using evil magics and the other was not, then it was like waging a war with arrows against forces that had gunpowder. The odds were against it. Simon knew that better than anyone. Even as an old man who could barely fight three guards at once anymore without a good chance of success, he could fight ten if he used magic subtly, and he could probably kill hundreds if he went all out and used words of power indiscriminately.

It was a troublesome development, and when that news reached the court, it was one of the few times she placed his counsel above those of her generals and even Vizer. “What should I do?” she asked. “To refuse to take sides in a normal war is the right answer, but in something like this…”

Simon believed that she should throw in with Brin directly, but he also knew that as open to that as she was, she would bristle if he tried to tell her what to do. Instead, he offered her advice that would lead to that eventual conclusion. “Send more spies,” he advised. “Dispatch more patrols along the main roads and in the passes. If they truly wield mages in their army, then one or two men sneaking into Ionia could cause as much damage as a hundred soldiers.“

She listened to his advice and did as he suggested, even though her other advisors chafed at it. Some of them had started to advise openly that they should throw in with one side or another before the extended stalemate took that choice out of their hands.

That’s probably what would have happened without me here, Simon thought, realizing that he’d already changed the future in a fairly substantial way. Or maybe Ionia would never have been a player to begin with because of the eruption.

With everything that had happened and all the different versions he’d seen, it was getting hard to determine which event caused or stopped which other event. Even looking at the notes his mirror held at night after everyone else had gone to sleep didn’t clear that up.

One thing that was totally clear, though, was how much magic was starting to shape things. Until now, he’d gone back and forth as to whether or not the mage killers were doing more good than evil with their secretive, murderous ways. On the one hand, almost all of the warlocks he’d met or read about seemed to be pretty awful people. Power corrupted, and absolute power corrupted absolutely, and denying that seemed like a net good if you ignored how they achieved it.

In light of some of the things he was hearing about the war, though, that was less certain. He knew for a fact that the White Cloaks were not a world-wide, monolithic organization. They had power in Ionar and the lands to the south, but to the east, west, and north, they had only occasional dealings with those powers, and hedge mages tended to flourish more there.