33: CYMATICS

A POV chapter following a young scholar named interludes. (This is a POV interlude from a character's perspective new to the main narrative.) While researching in the grand library of the royal archive known as the palanaeum, she reviews stolen sketches of her mentor's magical abilities and encounters a young ardent (priest) attempting to recruit her away from her current faith with a demonstration of "proof" of divine existence. Her mentor then arrives and coldly rebuffs the ardent, revealing she knows his intentions.

In the palatial library called the palanaeum, a spiraling structure of enormous scope carved downward into rock, young scholar approaches a secluded chamber with her parshman servant. She retrieves her drawing folio, within which she has hidden sketches of her mentor performing miraculous transformations of matter via a precious artifact called a "soulcaster"—documentation she believes she needs. Though distracted by the grandeur and knowledge surrounding her, she remains focused on her covert purpose: observing this powerful woman to eventually steal her artifact in order to save her family from financial ruin. Upon returning to study, she discovers the young ardent kabsal waiting with bread and jam. They banter warmly; he expresses the devotary's concern for her soul, being apprenticed to a woman widely regarded as heretical, and attempts to recruit her to his own order instead. He demonstrates "cymatics"—the principle that sound vibrations create geometric patterns in sand on a metal plate—and shows her how the patterns match the layouts of major cities, which he claims as proof of divine design. She finds the demonstration compelling though not conclusive. When her mentor jasnah arrives, she immediately and deliberately humiliates kabsal by suggesting his proof is naive and questioning whether he can replicate patterns for the legendary city of urithiru. After he departs in embarrassment, jasnah reveals to her ward that such ardents always eventually ask her students to steal for them. The ward feels shock, wondering if her mentor somehow knows of her own theft plans.