Zorea drew the strange longsword that she always carried from its sheath. Brand gasped, but Saul just smiled.

From the moment he’d first seen it, he’d known there was something special about that sword. It gleamed with an odd light, and she used it in a way he had never seen before. There was a power in it that he could feel, and a way of carrying it that told him she had been trained in a fighting art that was not standard here in Xorn.

He of course knew a range of longsword techniques, which he’d trained her in. That had been very helpful to her, but a flavor of the ancient style remained in her bladework. There was always a feeling of significance around her blade that he could not pin down.

“A Soulstone sword,” he said. “That explains a lot. And I’m guessing that your teacher, Nala, was more than just an itinerant healer, then.”

Zorea nodded, her eyes distant as she remembered the woman who had taught her. “Nala was a healer, that’s for sure. She was a great healer, and she taught me well. But yes, she was more than a healer.

“She was the heir to an ancient knowledge, to an understanding of the subtle magics of the world that are not tied to the influence of the gods, or to power derived from the channeling of others. She was heir to an ancient magic that came from an older time, and she held stories and knowledge from that time, too.”

Zorea held up the blade. “Nala was the heir to this blade, and she was a master at its use, but she died before she could teach me all but the rudiments of the techniques that are needed to wield it properly.”

She sighed. “There was much that was lost when Nala died. I believe there are others out there in the world, others who hold the secrets that she held, but I don’t know where they are. The holders of old world knowledge are few, I think, and they are widely dispersed and sworn to secrecy.”

Saul was amazed. When Zorea fell silent, he said quietly, “In my old timeline, I had never heard of such an order. I thought that all the magic in the world worked through the gods, and through the channeling of power through anchor mages, or through sigils. There were always rumors of an older magic, but I never saw any evidence that anything of those older times had ever existed.”

“Well, it exists,” Zorea said. “And I guarantee that it continued to exist in your old timeline.” She smiled suddenly. “I wonder what happened to me in your old timeline? I’m twenty-two now, the same as Brand. If it’s ten years until your birth, then I would be nearing my fifties by the time you and Baraz Karak began hammering out your empire. I wonder how that works? I wonder what role I played in the world in that timeline?”

“Perhaps one day we’ll be able to find out,” Saul said, “but for now, I’m very keen to hear more about the curse-breaking powers of that sword of yours.”

“I had almost given up the idea,” she said, “because I suspect that there were enchanting techniques in Nala’s lore that she never managed to teach me. She became ill and died very suddenly, you see, and neither of us expected it. We both thought we would have many years of learning and teaching ahead of us, and she was careful not to rush the teaching.”

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“But then you saw that Saul has the ability to enchant a weapon,” Brand said.

“Exactly. That made me realize that perhaps there is a way after all. A way for my Soulstone Sword to combine with Saul’s System magic to create the enchantment that will lift the curse from Jillin.”

“What will we enchant the sword with, then?” Saul asked. “I don’t know how it works, but looking at the options…”

He called up the System’s options.

“Ah, yes,” he said after a moment. See, it’s as I thought, the enchanting options are based around the different Schools of Magic that I have unlocked. I can enchant a weapon with Fire, Earth, Stone, Air, or Glade. I suppose that the way the enchantment manifests will be dependent on the nature of the weapon, and probably on the skill level I’m at, too.”

“How permanent are the enchantments?” Zorea asked.

Saul shrugged. “There’s no way of telling for sure, but my instinct says that they are probably pretty permanent. There’s no obvious way to remove them that I can see, so I think we should work on the assumption that once a chosen School of Magic has been applied to a weapon, there’s not going to be any way to choose a different one.”

“We need to choose carefully, then,” Zorea said. “I have no idea what kind of enchantment is required for breaking curses, but I think it’s going to depend mostly on the nature of the curse itself. Different curses are likely to have different strengths and weaknesses, and a lot will be based on the focus point of the curse itself.”

“What do you mean by the focus point?” Saul asked. “You said earlier something like that, you said that a curse needs someone to be actively focused on keeping the curse going?”

She nodded. “Yeah, I’m afraid I’m a bit unclear about the details, but I think there’s either a mage who actively maintains the curse, or someone who does it on the mage’s behalf.”

“That’s a lot of work,” Brand mused. “And it follows that there’s someone out here who’s not only proficient enough in the lost Old World magic to do the curse in the first place, but also who cares enough about Jillin to keep the curse going all this time!”

“There must be some very good reason for that kind of effort to be going on here,” Saul said. “And I think that whatever the reason is, we’ve arrived in Jillin just in the nick of time.”

“Let’s see that map,” Zorea said suddenly.

Saul did as she requested, conjuring up the map that they used to access the portal back to the real world when they were in the Workshop, or to access the portal from elsewhere.

Saul had not studied this map for a while. He was happy to see that their explorations in recent weeks had developed the map, growing larger as their travels had revealed new areas. The map was the same size as it had been, but it now was as if they were looking from higher up so that they could see more territory.

There was something really pleasing about looking at the map, and Saul found himself smiling as he gazed down on perfectly rendered trees, mountains, hills, and rivers. There was the city of Blackrock with the castle in the middle, here was the lowland villages with the creature breeders, and here the small image of Harkin’s Holdfast up in the north.

The areas where they had not been were shadowed, with no suggestion of what might be there. With only a little exploration, they found that they could focus in on certain points on the marvelous map, bringing their view closer so that they could see in more detail, or pulling back again to get the broader view.

All three of them could operate the map, and Saul let Brand and Zorea experiment with this for a bit before he brought their attention back to the task at hand.

“Let’s have a closer look at Jillin,” he said. “We have a curse to break, and now we have the tools to do it.”