The Perilous Sea (The Elemental Trilogy #2)

Iolanthe raised the wand that had once belonged to Titus the Great and summoned lightning, a white-hot flash that lit up the sky.

The war against Atlantis had begun at last.





NOTES


1. THE DOMAIN is the common term for the United Principality of the Pillars of Hercules, so called because the two ends of its territory at the time of the unification, the Rock of Gibraltar and the Tower of Poseidon, a basalt column jutting out of the Atlantic, some thirty miles north of the northernmost tip of the Siren Isles, had been collectively known as the Pillars of Hercules.

—From The Domain: A Guide to Its History and Customs



2. IN REACTION to Atlantis’s restrictions on travel channels, mages in realms under its dominion turned to older, less advanced modes of transportation that had been largely abandoned in favor of the speed and convenience of more modern means. Dry docks made a comeback in landlocked realms. Airframes were manufactured in large quantities in secret workshops. And flying carpets, in resurgence, reached a level of development that surpassed the glories of their former heyday.

—From A Chronological Survey of the Last Great Rebellion



3. A COMMON misconception concerning blood magic involves its original purpose—that it was first devised to force mages to act against their own will. The truth is far more complex: blood magic, since its inception, has been used to hold tribes and clans together and make sure that individual members did not harm the greater good of the group.

Does this mean that sometimes blood magic has been put to coercive uses? Undoubtedly. It is a double-edged sword, as is every branch of magic.

—From The Art and Science of Magic: A Primer



4. I STRONGLY advise caution to mages who intend to visit the Middle Ridges section of the Labyrinthine Mountains. The reasons are twofold. One, much of the section is a princely preserve not open to the public. Two, the entire region shifts and moves with no discernible pattern—a defensive tactic implemented centuries ago by Hesperia the Magnificent to protect her castle—making it difficult for even nearby inhabitants to act as guides.

Once, some twenty years ago, I managed to convince a local youth to take me for a quick excursion. The excursion turned into seven terrible days wandering in the wilderness. Had we not accidentally stumbled upon a way out, we’d have perished in those unforgiving mountains.

But how beautiful they were, the mountains, as pristine and vivid as the first day of the world.

—From Labyrinthine Mountains: A Guide for Hikers



5. LEVITATION SPELLS are some of the oldest achievements of subtle magic. Like all spells meant to imitate elemental magic, no levitation spell has ever come close to the glorious scale of the latter—only elemental mages can move enormous boulders at will. But whereas elemental magic shifts only earth and water, levitation spells have been adapted for a wide variety of purposes.

—From The Art and Science of Magic: A Primer



6. DRY DOCKS were once commonly to be found in landlocked mage realms—with a dry dock, one could launch a ship directly to sea, even if the nearest coast was a thousand miles away. But with the advent of more instantaneous transits that bypassed sea voyages altogether, dry docks became obsolete as a mode of transportation.

—From Mage Travel throughout the Centuries



7. BECAUSE BLOOD magic is so closely tied to the concepts of family and consanguinity, it is subject to the privilege of kinship. For example, a sister can modify certain spells woven by a brother, just as in real life she can persuade him to change his mind on something.

But if the object of a particular instance of blood magic is the brother’s son, then the aunt’s influence becomes limited: a father has a far greater claim on his own child.

—From The Art and Science of Magic: A Primer



8. AT VARIOUS points in the history of New Atlantis, its rulers had tried to install Classical Greek, the language, supposedly, of the mythical Old Atlantis, as the official language of the realm. The last king of Atlantis issued an edict that all official communication, both written and spoken, must be in Greek. The inefficiency and miscommunication caused by this policy played no small part in the fall of his house.

One of the legacies from these assorted bouts of Hellenization was that Atlantean ships, both those of the navy and those of the merchant marine, tended to bear Greek names. Around the time of the January Uprisings, vessels from actual Hellenistic realms had been known to repaint their names in the Latin alphabet, so as not to be taken for an Atlantean craft and sabotaged.

—From A Chronological Survey of the Last Great Rebellion



9. THE REGULATION of magic often lags behind the development of magic. Spells enthusiastically introduced to the mage world and just as eagerly embraced might very well be shunned a generation or two later.