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static.”
He nodded. “Yet suddenly I was having explicit visions about events that were, at that point, three months distant, and some of them six months or more. I could only find one explanation for this abrupt explicitness. The future had been artificially constrained. I realized that an extremely strong patterner was manipulating events, forcing a single channel through which events flowed. Once I understood this, I consulted Sherry. You know that her coven observes node action throughout the nation through a simulacra map.”
Lily did know that, even if she was fuzzy on what a “simulacra map” might be. She nodded.
“We’d hoped she could reconstruct what was done through the node used to imbue Friar with his Gift. So far she hasn’t been able to. In the process, however, she discovered that virtually every node in the nation is being drawn upon by what appears to be a single, albeit untraceable, source.”
“Every node? But that’s not possible. That’s . . . don’t practitioners have to be in physical proximity to—”
“So we’ve always believed. But it would take a great deal of power for a single patterner to influence events across the entire country.”
Fagin spoke up suddenly. “They call it the Gift of the gods, you know. Patterning is the most subtle and dangerous of Gifts. I think you encountered a patterner once.”
Lily shot Ruben a hard glance. Apparently he’d been sharing a lot with Fagin, some of it highly classified. “I’ve run across a couple of them, actually.”
“Oh?” Fagin’s bushy brows shot up. “The one I was thinking of was named Jiri. You had some difficulty overcoming her.”
“I didn’t overcome her,” Lily said dryly. “I managed to stay alive. She didn’t, but that’s because she only cared about one thing. And she got that.” Her daughter’s life. Jiri had not been a good guy by any means, but she’d given her life so her daughter would live. The child had been adopted by the Leidolf Lu Nuncio.
Fagin steepled his hands on his belly. “You have some understanding of the Gift, then. Patterners are rare, for which we can thank the good God. When the Gift does appear, it’s almost always in the weak form. A weak patterner senses event patterns unconsciously. He may learn how to control his Gift so that his effect on events is less haphazard, but he doesn’t sense the patterns directly. A strong patterner does. A strong and experienced patterner can manipulate those patterns in subtle ways to bring about what he or she wants.”
“I thought all patterners did that.”
“They all affect events, though the weak ones affect them only slightly and often unpredictably. A strong but inexperienced patterner . . . I descend into theory now,” he said apologetically. “Strong patterners are so rare we have no hard data on how their Gift operates, but there is anecdotal and historical evidence. A strong but untrained or inexperienced patterner will generally be adept in one application of his Gift, but not others. Napoleon is a good example.”
She blinked. “He is?”
“Certainly. He’s often lauded as a military genius, but his real genius—and the way he used his Gift most effectively—lay in the social interplay of politics. He was eventually defeated on the battlefield, after all, but never politically. Had he taken the time to become more adept at patterning before plunging his nation into war, he might never have been defeated at all. I suspect Jiri was both a strong patterner and fairly experienced. She was not, however, a fraction as powerful as Friar now is.”
That was so not good news.
Fagin smiled gently. “Patterning is called the Gift of the gods because we believe—and by ‘we’ I mean fusty old academics like me—that some of those who once were worshipped as gods were real beings, adept-level patterners of great power. They were able to influence such a multiplicity of events simultaneously that no single unraveling of
He nodded. “Yet suddenly I was having explicit visions about events that were, at that point, three months distant, and some of them six months or more. I could only find one explanation for this abrupt explicitness. The future had been artificially constrained. I realized that an extremely strong patterner was manipulating events, forcing a single channel through which events flowed. Once I understood this, I consulted Sherry. You know that her coven observes node action throughout the nation through a simulacra map.”
Lily did know that, even if she was fuzzy on what a “simulacra map” might be. She nodded.
“We’d hoped she could reconstruct what was done through the node used to imbue Friar with his Gift. So far she hasn’t been able to. In the process, however, she discovered that virtually every node in the nation is being drawn upon by what appears to be a single, albeit untraceable, source.”
“Every node? But that’s not possible. That’s . . . don’t practitioners have to be in physical proximity to—”
“So we’ve always believed. But it would take a great deal of power for a single patterner to influence events across the entire country.”
Fagin spoke up suddenly. “They call it the Gift of the gods, you know. Patterning is the most subtle and dangerous of Gifts. I think you encountered a patterner once.”
Lily shot Ruben a hard glance. Apparently he’d been sharing a lot with Fagin, some of it highly classified. “I’ve run across a couple of them, actually.”
“Oh?” Fagin’s bushy brows shot up. “The one I was thinking of was named Jiri. You had some difficulty overcoming her.”
“I didn’t overcome her,” Lily said dryly. “I managed to stay alive. She didn’t, but that’s because she only cared about one thing. And she got that.” Her daughter’s life. Jiri had not been a good guy by any means, but she’d given her life so her daughter would live. The child had been adopted by the Leidolf Lu Nuncio.
Fagin steepled his hands on his belly. “You have some understanding of the Gift, then. Patterners are rare, for which we can thank the good God. When the Gift does appear, it’s almost always in the weak form. A weak patterner senses event patterns unconsciously. He may learn how to control his Gift so that his effect on events is less haphazard, but he doesn’t sense the patterns directly. A strong patterner does. A strong and experienced patterner can manipulate those patterns in subtle ways to bring about what he or she wants.”
“I thought all patterners did that.”
“They all affect events, though the weak ones affect them only slightly and often unpredictably. A strong but inexperienced patterner . . . I descend into theory now,” he said apologetically. “Strong patterners are so rare we have no hard data on how their Gift operates, but there is anecdotal and historical evidence. A strong but untrained or inexperienced patterner will generally be adept in one application of his Gift, but not others. Napoleon is a good example.”
She blinked. “He is?”
“Certainly. He’s often lauded as a military genius, but his real genius—and the way he used his Gift most effectively—lay in the social interplay of politics. He was eventually defeated on the battlefield, after all, but never politically. Had he taken the time to become more adept at patterning before plunging his nation into war, he might never have been defeated at all. I suspect Jiri was both a strong patterner and fairly experienced. She was not, however, a fraction as powerful as Friar now is.”
That was so not good news.
Fagin smiled gently. “Patterning is called the Gift of the gods because we believe—and by ‘we’ I mean fusty old academics like me—that some of those who once were worshipped as gods were real beings, adept-level patterners of great power. They were able to influence such a multiplicity of events simultaneously that no single unraveling of
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