The shore along the south-in arm of the continent consisted of cliffs that loomed far over the sea. Gnarly seawood clung to the sheer rock, thriving in the harsh environment where the waves crashed into stone. Hardy sea folk cruised up and down the shoreline, harvested the wood, and returned to their seaside villages carved into the cliffs. The seawood was tough but buoyant, making it perfect for the ships of the Zonne empire. Indeed, late in the evenings, the old sailors would tell their children a legend of how, to defeat an invading armada, a Zonne princess and her love sacrificed themselves on the cliffs to grow a navy from the seawood forests.

            Thoughts about that legend did not occur to the lovers as they looked out over the water. Instead, they were impressed by the boom of the water against the cliffs in a far more turbulent display than in the bay at Tagerden. Arva dismissed their awe with the casual disdain of a world traveler. The shores directly exposed to the Spout had far more spectacular waves than these in the Southern Sea, he explained.

            They had come to the shore to reach one of those villages carved into the cliffs. These villagers did not harvest seawood for a living. Instead, they maintained and sailed a small group of ships for the Cheldeans of Mt. Clero. To avoid the restriction against neutral vessels in the eastern inlets, they had permission to fly the colors of the Zonne Imperial Navy.

            There were a few buildings at the top of the cliffs, because the bulk of the village consisted of paths and caves carved into the stone below. As they preceded their antelopes down the slopping paths, the villagers nodded pleasantly in greeting.

            “How long will we be here?” Celeres asked.

            “Not long. From what I was told at Mt. Clero, there should be three of our ships in port, unless some Tiran-shattering crises came up during our side trip. They try to keep at least three ships ready to sail at all times in case a Cheldean comes pounding in. We’re not quite in that big of a hurry, so they’ll probably take a bit more time to round up a crew and fine tune the supplies they need for this trip. The precession of the Spout will bring a high tide in a few hours, so we’ll probably go on that,” Arva said.

            Down near the water, the travelers turned and entered yet another cave. The entrance for this one was huge, wide enough for three wagons at a time. The antelopes did not complain too much about being led inside.

            Beyond the aperture, Sanura was surprised to see an entire cove. There were buildings along the back wall, mostly storing the goods necessary to repair and fit the ships for travel. There were a dozen berths jutting into the water, but only three were occupied. Off to one side, a fourth ship had been lifted out of the water by a complicated system of ropes and pulleys. A small crew of people tended to the hoisted vessel, scraping and painting its hull.

            Sanura’s examination of their work was diverted by Celeres. “Those lamps are the same ones that were in the Yudoko’s cave,” he said, pointing toward one of the many magical lights that lit the dock.

            “Mt. Clero doesn’t have many artificers,” Arva explained. “The Yudoko adore building proxies from material things, so it’s easier for us to trade with them when we need such items.”

            The next few hours were chaotic. Arva excused himself briefly to talk to the harbormaster. They boarded one of the ships when he returned, settled their mounts in a stable in its belly, and took their own things to a couple of very cramped cabins. By then, sailors had started to swarm over the ship, checking ropes and hauling bundles of supplies on board. Arva showed the lovers a relatively quiet spot on the deck where they could watch the activity and start to adjust to the bobbing of the ship in the brine-tinged air of the cave. The Captain came onboard, briefly conferred with Arva, and then bellowed orders to his crew. It did not seem to Celeres that his orders made any of the sailors change their tasks or even acknowledge the Captain’s presence, so the young man wondered just how effective those commands actually were.

            Sanura found their launching rather discomforting. The push away from the dock was not too bad, but the lower egress of the cave constricted the ocean as it washed in, creating turbulence and eddies that pitched the ship in unusual directions. The sailors fought back to the rhythm of a beating drum, their oars dipping into water in slow synchronization and forcing the ship through the wild waters. The soldier found the entrance itself unnerving, a bright spot of sun and blue water against the darkness of the cave. It seemed far too small to actually allow the ship to pass through. But the Captain knew the true nature of the exit and guided his ship through the troubled waters and a hole that was actually large enough to handle four such craft at a time with barely a ding to their wood.

            The sailors pulled their oars for twenty minutes, until they were at a comfortable distance from the cliffs. Pleased with their labor, the captain ordered his people to stop rowing and raise the sails. Soon, the cloth billowed with the wind and the ship was smoothly sailing.

            They slept that night in their tiny cabins. Sanura woke frequently, disturbed by the unfamiliar lurching of the vessel on the waters. Wore out from his encroaching illness, Celeres slept like a dead man.

            In the morning, Sanura left him snoring to slip out and get some breakfast. She was not particularly impressed by the quality of the cooking and wondered what her husband would have to say about that. The sailors certainly did not seem to notice, diving into their food and hurrying out to their duties. Arva emerged from his cabin and sat down next to her to break his fast. If the food bothered him, he did not show it.

            “How’d you sleep?” he asked.

            “Fitfully.”

            “Yeah. Sleeping on open water can take some getting used to. At least you’re not throwing up.”

            “True.”

            “How’s Celeres?”

            “Sleeping. All this travel is wearing him out. I hate to think what he’d be like without your healing proxies.”

            Arva tore off a hunk of hard bread and chewed it slowly. “I don’t think the magic is actually helping him at all,” he submitted hesitantly.

            “What?” Sanura asked, alarmed.

            “The proxies we’ve been using should keep him in better shape than he is. I’m beginning to doubt they’re having any effect on what’s happening to him.”

            “So-so, are you going to stop casting them?”

            “No. If he thinks they’re doing something, I don’t want to change that. And if they are doing something for him that I can’t detect, stopping them could be immensely dangerous.”

            “Could they be hurting him?”

            “No. The proxies I’m using either heal people or do nothing. Different proxies would have to be sung to actually risk hurting him.”

            Sanura sighed.

            “We’ll spend most of today working with your second-sight, if you don’t mind,” Arva said, changing the subject.

            “Sure.”

            “You said you think the not-colors have been strongest when a proxy was being directed at you?”

            “Yes.”

            “But you have been able to see them when they were directed at others?”

            “Sometimes.”

            “Have you tried to look for not-colors in normal objects?”

            “No. Is that even possible?”

            “I suspect you’re only noticing them when the not-colors are changing around you. You’re probably so used to seeing the not-colors objects normally carry that you don’t even realize you can see them. Plus, proxies are usually easier to detect than true names.

            “While I’m casting Celeres’ healing proxy today, you’re going to watch to find as many details as you can.” Arva popped the last bit of breakfast into his mouth and stood up. “Are you ready to begin?”

            They made their way to the lovers’ cabin, where they found Celeres lying indolently on the too small bed. He smiled wanly as they entered. “Morning all. Did I miss breakfast?”

            Sanura frowned at his condition. The alien brown bruises has spread all over his body, making him look like a monstrous version of a child’s polka-dotted doll. She quickly recovered her equanimity, smiled, and kissed him. “You didn’t miss much, beautiful. The food onboard would force a gourmet to die of starvation.”

            “The kinds of food that store well enough for a ship to be ready to leave on a moment’s notice are not the most enticing in the world,” Arva said. “I did make sure the cook would keep something ready so you could eat whenever you finally rose.”

            “Thanks,” Celeres said.

            “Do you want to eat now, or shall I cast the healing proxy?”

            “The food can wait until I feel more like getting up. So, the magic, please.”

            The Cheldean nodded and composed his thoughts.

            Sanura brought her own into focus, trying to bring out her second-sight to look at her surroundings. She could see the not-colors shifting as Arva began his song, flowing away from their old shades, propelled by the force of the notes. The intensity of the not-colors were not as strong as they were during the Cheldeans’ reading of her, but they were clearly visible now that she was looking for them. She could even dimly see the proxy reaching into Celeres, tugging at even fainter not-colors within his body.

            Eventually, her eyes tired of straining to see every detail of the Cheldean’s work. She squeezed them shut and stretched, unkinking the muscles in her back. She was surprised to realize she could still see the not-colors dancing to Arva’s tune with her eyes closed. Bemused, she continued her study.

            “I saw more that time, I think,” Sanura said when the Cheldean finished. “There were very faint not-colors that were being changed by the song.”

            “Good. Those faint not-colors are the important part for what we’re working towards. We’ll work on bringing them out in a few minutes.

            “Do you feel any better?” he asked Celeres.

            “Well enough to start the day,” Celeres sighed.

            Arva nodded, his expression neutral. He turned to Sanura and asked, “Shall we take the lesson up on deck? I hate being in these cramped quarters when the weather is nice.”

            “Sure.”

            “We’ll see you after you’ve finished breakfast,” the Cheldean told Celeres.

            They stopped just long enough to collect a few things from Arva’s cabin, then made their way up top. The breeze across the waters cut through Zonneshin’s pounding heat, delivery a temperate day that the sailors basked in. Gulls floated near the shore on the horizon, their insistent calls floating clearly to the ship.

            “So, you’ve watched several proxies being cast, but no one’s really told you what exactly we Cheldeans do to cast them,” Arva began. “What’s generally thought by outsiders is that the Cheldeans utter true names to create magic. You may have already gathered from things that have been said that this isn’t true. A true name actually only manifests as the object or attribute itself. However, it is possible to artificially create things that come close to approximating a true name, which summons a crude likeness of its attributes. These approximations, called proxies, are unstable. It is much easier to create a brief spark to light a bonfire than it is to create the entire bonfire from nothing. Or the peal of a bell instead of an entire bell tower. It’s not impossible to do the more complicated things. It’s just very difficult.

            “Now, there are a lot of different ways of creating these approximations. Creatures like the Yudoko have learned to use metal, stone, and other materials to create objects capable of casting a proxy for their user. The cloaking necklaces Mangalam gave us are like that. I brought one up so you can take a look at it later.

            “On the other hand, almost all Cheldeans use a system of proxies based entirely on sound with a few hand gestures here and there. There are some limitations, but we’ve found that the advantages far outweigh them. Carrying around the tons of stuff the Yudoko use is impractical, the voice is usually more flexible than carrying a few choice items would be, and it’s awful hard for someone to steal the source of your power. Shards, even if they cut out my tongue, I know proxies to work around the problem!

            “Choosing a specific field of magic limits how close your approximation can get. After all, if you had everything you need to exactly reproduce the true name of a bonfire, you’d have the bonfire itself. To get close to complicated objects or the strongest effects, you need to layer proxies. That’s why we’ve developed the magic that allows us to sing in multiple voices. The greater the complications a caster can create, the more powerful the magic. Many casters working together can create quite intricate effects, like the reading spell we used on you.

            “Let me show you what I’m talking about.” Arva held out his palm. “If you’ll please use your second-sight.”

            Sanura watched as the Cheldean brought forth a simple beam of not-color by singing in a single voice. The magic settled in his open palm, bring forth a ball of light that glowed red in normal sight. Arva stopped singing, but the ball remained behind, cheerfully luminescent.

            “How long will it last?” the young woman asked.

            “A few hours. How does it look in your second-sight?”

            “Basically, the same as it does in the real world. It’s a glowing ball of light. Although it’s closer to not-purple than not-red.”

            Arva nodded and sang a few notes, dispersing the light.

            “Now, let’s look at something more complicated.” Arva sang again, this time splitting his voice into three. A jerky, jittery flow of not-light pooled in his palm, dancing for a few moments before resolving itself into a small ball of flame that crackled in the real world. Arva looked at her meaningfully while continuing his singing.

            Sanura frowned and concentrated, trying to see past the outer light proxy and deeper into the fire itself. “I see not-green and not-purple and not-red. They’re-sort of-twisting around each other. It looks like they start at the bottom and work their way up to disappear at the top.”

            “Good,” Arva said, interrupting the song and causing the ball of fire to flick out of existence. He pulled out a candle and lit it with a brief tune. Arva said, “Tell me what you see.”

            These colors were even dimmer than those in the ball of fire. Sanura had to close her eyes to see them clearly. “They’re there,” she frowned. “The not-green, -purple, -red. But-”

            “Yes?”

            “There are more of them. Instead of a few lines, there must be hundreds of them, all tangled together.”

            Arva noticed Celeres coming on deck and gestured for him to join them. “Okay. Concentrate on a single line and look deep into it.”

            “Oh!”

            Celeres sat next to his wife, looking questioningly between student and teacher.

            “There are more of them!” the soldier announced. “The lines actually have smaller lines of the other colors running through them. How strange.”

            Arva grinned mischievously at Celeres and blew out the candle. Scowling, Sanura’s eyes flew open, disturbed by the sudden loss of her subject.

            Ignoring her discomfort, the Cheldean continued his lecture. “The difference in the arrangements of true names is what separates a proxy from a real object. Proxies tend to be pretty simple constructions. Real objects have true names all tangled together in intricate ways.”

            “Which is why it’s going to be hard to remove the true name the hirudin infected me with,” Celeres said.

            Arva nodded.

            Ignoring the side remarks of the men, several things fell into place for Sanura. “Is that why proxies are brighter than real things? The true names are usually held together by the more complicated arrangements and don’t make much not-light, but the proxies are unstable and leak not-light like crazy.”

            “More or less. From the Cheldean point of view, proxies are a lot noisier than a real object.”

            In Sanura’s mind, the image of a mind-bending wave of light occurred to her. “That’s what the light of creation was about. Virtually all possible combinations of true names had been assembled and the light was caused by the collapse of the unstable combinations.”

            That Cheldean considered her for a long moment, his expression puzzled. “Only one in a thousand Cheldeans come to that conclusions before being taught about the details of the second creation. That you came up with it-” Arva cut himself off and shook his head. “Well, this might work after all,” he said.

            Celeres smiled wanly. “The increase in your confidence is encouraging.”

            “I still need to learn what the true names of the mark looks like, though,” the soldier frowned.

            “Indeed,” Arva said, pulling out a gold coin. “Let’s start with something simple, like this, before moving on to your husband.”

            While his wife resumed her studies, Celeres sat back. Zonneshin’s rays fought off the chill of the sea, flocks of gulls danced across the winds, and the future was beginning to look just a bit more promising.