“The manner of our survival.” Brother Qown looked back toward the refugees in case anyone was close enough to eavesdrop.

“That’s not so mysterious. You saved us from the smoke.”

Brother Qown blinked, left open-mouthed for a moment. “I—uh…” He found himself near to blushing. “Yes. Well. I’m going to assume you know nothing about magic.”

She gave him a sideways look that might have set the forest on fire.

“That’s what I thought.” Brother Qown cleared his throat. “Without boring you, let me say this: the symbol I drew saved our lives, but I don’t understand why it worked.”

The count blinked. “I don’t either, but I admit I assumed you would be more knowledgeable.”

“All objects have … energy … in them, which people call tenyé. It’s the vital essence of you, me, that tree over there. There isn’t any difference between a god’s tenyé and a sorcerer’s tenyé except in quantity—”

“Brother Qown, talk like that is why your order is heretical in half the empire.”

He coughed. “The problem with heresies is they are named so because they touch on uncomfortable truths. My point is this: art has no tenyé.”

Janel blinked. “I don’t understand.”

“A superlative drawing only has as much tenyé as the materials used to make it. Paper, paint, ink. There is no difference in tenyé between a doodle and a masterpiece. Symbols in a book convey information, but they don’t contain extra tenyé. And magic is only possible with tenyé to fuel it.” Brother Qown gestured behind him, toward Mereina. “What I did back there. What Dorna did. That shouldn’t have worked. I only did it in the first place because I hoped to link the symbol I’d copied from that woman—Senera—to her spell. If it worked, I hoped to insert myself into the same category as those soldiers under its protection. It was a desperate, impossible long shot.”

“And yet you hit the target. It worked.”

“No, no, it didn’t. That might explain why it worked on me, but what about Dorna, who used the glyph while I was absent, with no idea what spell I had tried to cast? It shouldn’t have worked for her. And if I grab Ninavis or Dango or Tanner and have them draw the glyph, it still works. This symbol is inherently magical—which is impossible.”

The count thought over the matter as they walked. “But what of demon summoning? That requires specific symbols. Aren’t those symbols inherently magical?”

Brother Qown blinked. “That’s … very astute.”

“But am I not right?”

“No. No, you’re wrong, but it’s an easy mistake to make,” Brother Qown said. “The symbols used to summon demons have no intrinsic magical nature either, but we—humans and demons both—have agreed to give them significance. They symbolize the treaty between our races.”

Janel stopped again. “Treaty? We have a treaty? Xaltorath never—”