Note: having completed Cathy’s arc we now return to Armand and Amelia.

Armand’s First Letter. Amelia’s First Letter. Cathy’s First Letter.

10 October 1024, Bois-de-Bas

Dear Amelia,

I have good news! Not only is Cathy Gamble now Cathy Montjoy (and radiant with it, may I say, and many thanks to you) but her brother John has at last produced something of interest. I had begun to despair.

Though I suppose it is worth supporting John Gamble’s hobbyhorses to gain your brother Jack’s lasting happiness. In fact, I am sure it is.

But I digress.

Two years ago you wrote me of your research into the Iturian Relay, the spell that allowed the Iturians to move their troops rapidly around their empire, and the catastrophic effects if the relay were to remain unbalanced…as it clearly was. You have written little of it since your return to Toulouse, but I am in regular contact with Jérôme Lavigne and I am well aware that he and Dr. Tillotson have continued to work on ways of balancing the relay so that it can be used safely.

If one used the relay to travel from, say, Bois-de-Bas to Mont-Havre, magic would flow from hither to yon, and remain in the node at Mont-Havre. If one only traveled from Bois-de-Bas to Mont-Havre, eventually the accumulation of magic would overwhelm the node at Mont-Havre, which would explode to catastrophic effect and great loss of life.

Jérôme has described the problem to me as one of making the unpredictable predictable and of making the irregular regular. To put it in the simplest possible terms, if every trip from Bois-de-Bas to Mont-Havre were balanced by an equal trip from Mont-Havre to Bois-de-Bas, there would be no concern. The magic would be carried back and forth and, if not precisely in balance, would at least not accumulate in one node or the other.

But why do folk travel from Bois-de-Bas to Mont-Havre? Most usually to purchase goods that are not available here in town. Folk would go and return a day or so later, but the trips would manifestly not be equal for the folk would return with their purchases. Now we are looking at an accumulation of magic in the node at Bois-de-Bas!

Jérôme suggests that one might balance such trips by means of what he calls “ballast”. For example, on returning from a weekend in Mont-Havre, heavily laden with new books from M. Fournier’s shop, I would send back a weight of stone or wood equal to the weight of my purchases. This is a promising idea, until one considers the practical aspects. In the situation I have described, Bois-de-Bas would be transferring a great deal of this ballast to Mont-Havre on a regular basis. Where does it come from? What does Mont-Havre do with it? For it would surely accumulate and need to be disposed of, for there would be no easy way to transport it back to Bois-de-Bas for reuse.

Do we rely on each each traveler to balance their own trip? Surely not! It would need to be carefully managed. And then, 

One could attempt to balance each trip from Mont-Havre to Bois-de-Bas by immediately sending an equivalent load (Jérôme calls it “ballast”) from Bois-de-Bas to Mont-Havre. But the flows of people and goods are naturally irregular, which means that ballast would accumulate at Mont-Havre with no easy way of transporting it back to Bois-de-Bas for reuse.

And how do we know how much ballast to use? Does a person take more or less magic to transport than the same weight of stone? Jérôme’s research suggests that people might require more magic than stone, but how much more? And does it matter which kind of stone? He remains hopeful of solving these things and devising a set of protocols for how to safely operate a relay of a given number of nodes, but it seems to me that the potential for catastrophe due to mis-management remains high.

Master Luc suggests a different approach, following John Gamble’s creation of a device he calls an “arcane whirligig”. Simply put, it is something like a child’s whirligig, though heavier and more solidly built, and made to spin by a magical spell, the spell being powered by an appropriately formed node. It is a simple (and, in John’s hands, colorful) demonstration of the integration of the former’s and wizard’s arts. Properly designed and formed according to my methods, such an object could be placed anywhere without risk to other formed objects in the vicinity.

Now, suppose that instead of balancing the flows in an Iturian Relay so that magic does not accumulate at any node, we were to add a whirligig to each node to “burn off” (in Luc’s colorful phrase) the accumulation? Rather than trying to control the naturally erratic flows of people and goods around the relay, we simply remove accumulated magic at each node before it becomes a problem.

There remains much to be done to prove this notion, but it strikes me as much easier than balancing the flows of commerce, travel, and whimsy…and ultimately far less likely to blow up in our faces.

I have also written to Jérôme, who I am sure is capable of recreating John’s work. I am equally sure that he has not thought of whirligigs, for he is a very serious man.

Your pleased and excited cousin,

Armand

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