k_a_webb | The World Walkers: Quiar: The Case of the Counterfeit Enchantments (part 9, 89th continuation)

“More than I wanted to,” Peric replied, looking at each of them in turn, and Lucille could see the worry in his eyes, which, in turn, added to her worry. “The hardest thing about being able to find the truth in someone’s mind is being able to prove that it is the truth. In Sheepshank I’m trusted. Everyone knows me, they know what I can do, and they know how difficult it is for someone to fool me, because created memories are distinctive. When you find them they stand out in such a way that it’s obvious what they are and yet…” He shook his head. “None of the memories within the platypus’ mind appeared to be created, but, considering everything we’ve been through, I can’t help thinking I might have missed something.”

“You’re worrying about nothing,” Bertram said, sounding almost amused. “Peric, you have never missed something before and I don’t know why you’d be worrying that you’ve missed something now.”

“Things have changed.” Peric sighed. “I now know I didn’t know as much about the capabilities of certain magics as I thought I did, if you think about what Kaito is able to do, and I haven’t been able to stop myself from wondering if it might be possible for someone to literally start from scratch. What if everything I saw in her mind was constructed by someone else?”

Lucille studied Peric. Personally she knew very little about memory magic, because it wasn’t something she’d dealt with before, and it wasn’t something they’d known she’d need to understand, due to the secretive nature of the races of Quiar. Once she returned to Athare it was something else she needed to look into, but that didn’t help her much as she sat there trying to work out if Peric might be right. Could all of the memories he’d seen have been fake?

“It’s unlikely.” Meriwether’s voice made her jump. “Not impossible, but very difficult.” He rubbed his antler. “To remove someone’s memories and replace them with an entirely new constructed life is something that only the most careful of people could do, in part because it would be so easy to leave them a vegetable, the way you did when you when hunting for the truth. One of the main problems with the magic that you use, Peric, is that is can go wrong even in the hands of someone who has been using it for centuries. I’ve seen it happen before, sadly, and I don’t doubt there will come a time when I see it happen again.”
Peric nodded. “I have seen constructed memories before.”

“Unfortunately that is one of the simplest things to do with memory magic and even someone without the training can construct a memory, but it’s something that will be very obvious. They won’t know how to smooth it in, to make it seem as natural as possible, while some of the best can, if they need to, hide a memory within the true memories of the person they are working on. I’ve seen it happen before, but I doubt it’s possible that someone here has that ability, because the form of magic you have is relatively new, in comparison to some of your other abilities.” Meriwether smiled. “As we have said before the one thing the fae forgot was that magic evolves and this world is one that Emrys created in such a way that the magic you had was always going to evolve. I have a feeling he might have had the help of a couple of his other selves when he was putting this together, considering how well it works, because even knowing what he did didn’t make the creation of the Web a simple thing.

“When he placed Quiar it surprised us all. The world creators were all rather secretive, even though Emrys said that it would work better if we all worked together, in part because they were scared that someone might go to the fae and tell them what was happening before they had a chance to place the world, which would lead to arguments. He was one of the few that tried to be as open with his plans as possible, until he started working on this world. Maybe it was because he knew we would veto it – due to the races – or because of who he was working with, as we would never have believed in his other selves then. It was before we really understood what it was we’d become a part of, although he had explained to us several times there was more than one Web. I think I remember overhearing part of a conversation he was having with Riordan, where he was talking about there being more than a hundred Webs, and I stopped then, studied him, trying to work out whether he was telling the truth or not.

“There was so little we knew back then. Now, in some ways, we know just as little, thanks to the way that magic evolves, and the problems that have made it hard for the Moonjumpers to be able to do their job. If the fae hadn’t been so terrified of losing control they would have realised that the Moonjumpers were their way of keeping it, rather than hiding themselves away, doing their best to make everything much more difficult than it needs to be, through fear and their hatred of change. For a little while, when the new elders took their position and started pushing for things to be different, I truly thought things were going to work for us, but then… I don’t know how to describe what happened. It was as though the more change there was the more terrified they were of it.” He shook his head. “It didn’t make sense, as they were the ones who were pushing for the creation of the Web in the first place, but then, when we told them what needed to happen in order for it to work the way they wanted it to, they seemed to lose their belief.

“Every one of the worlds we made a part of the Web could have been more than they are – if the fae hadn’t of been terrified of what we created. Now… well, you can see the issues that were created by their fear. We have the counterfeit ring, which would have been found much sooner than it was and not have caused anywhere near the damage that it has, and we have people, like Peric, who don’t have a true understanding of the magic that they have because they don’t have someone to teach them. Having closer connections to the other worlds would change that, and, although it is something that might be happening sooner than I thought it would, that doesn’t change the fact that the fae made a huge mistake.”

“All we can do is deal with the situation we have here, Merry, even though we both wish that things were different. The choices made in the past will always affect us and I hope things will change for the better, but I don’t know if that’s possible now, as they’ve been doing their own thing for so long.” Lucille bit her lip. “You are avoiding the question, Peric. I get that you don’t want to tell us what you found out for some reason, and it’s perfectly fine for you to tell us what that reason is without telling us what you learnt, if that’s better for you.”

“I want to tell you, Lucille, and yet I don’t want to. What I found out will take this investigation in a different direction, one that I can prepare you for in advance, but I have this fear that Hereward won’t believe me when I tell him that I got this information from the mind of someone who tried to kill you and Bertram. He’ll tell me that the memory is false, that it can’t be believed, that I made a mistake, as he won’t want to believe that what I’m telling him is true, the same way I don’t want to believe it’s true.” Peric sighed. “The problem is I’m so certain that his reply will be to entirely disbelieve what I’m telling him isn’t true that I don’t want to tell him at all, but if I don’t tell him and what I found out turns out to be true…”

“You’ll be at fault for not telling him in the first place and you don’t want us to be complicit in that.” Lucille reached out and patted Peric’s paw. “Honestly, I don’t mind being complicit in the decision, if you’d rather not have the entire weight of it on your shoulders, but I do appreciate you trying to protect me.”

Bertram’s beak clacked, as though he’d opened it to say something before thinking better of it, and when Lucille looked at him he was studying Peric. “Did what you found out scare you?”

Mirrored from K. A. Webb Writing.

The World Walkers: Quiar: The Case of the Counterfeit Enchantments (part 9, 89th continuation)

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