On the Nature of Magic, and the Laws by Which It Operates
Among all that I possess, Your Grace, there is little I hold more dear than the knowledge of magic. There is an older word for it. In Samarskand, they called it Ustaadi: the affinity, or the mastery of the supernatural. To be called an Ustaad, in those times, was to be respected, feared, and reviled in equal measure until death, and for some, even beyond it. We use the word magic now, as one uses a dull knife when the sharp one has been misplaced; it serves, though imperfectly. What follows is offered not as philosophy, but as counsel, so Your Grace may govern those who wield it rather than be governed by them.
Of Authority, Which Is the Root of Power
The first thing Your Grace must understand is this: that every person possesses, to some degree, the capacity to impose their will upon the world and make it do what it would not otherwise do. A farmer has some of it. A farmer of long experience, whose instincts have been sharpened by forty harvests, has more. A ruler whose entrance silences a room has considerably more still. What distinguishes the magician from ordinary men is not that he possesses something no one else has, but that he can wield this capacity with conscious intent.
I raise this not to flatter Your Grace with implications of greatness, but because a lord who does not understand this principle will be forever mystified by why some men obey and others do not, and why certain figures radiate a quality of command that no title can manufacture. It is the same force.
Of the Sutras, Which Are the Laws of Such Power
All magic is subject to certain rules. These were most completely set down by the Temple of Eighteen, and they remain the standard account. I will describe them plainly, because a ruler must be well-versed in the constraints upon her most powerful servants.
The first is the Fire Sutra, which states that every magical act, because it works against the ordinary chain of cause and effect, carries a cost. This cost falls most often upon the magician himself, which is why those who practice magic in quantity tend to acquire, along with their abilities, a certain instability of body and temperament. This should not surprise Your Grace; those who carry heavy burdens walk unevenly. Thus a magician of great power and years is rarely also a magician of great equanimity, and Your Grace should reason accordingly: deploy such persons for their purpose, and do not mistake their gifts for reliability of character.
The second is the Water Sutra, which holds that magic moves as water does, by the path of least resistance. The danger this presents is that a magician who has not thought carefully through his working will find that even if it arrives, it may do so by uncertain paths, often at cost to others. Those who issue orders without anticipating their unintended consequences will recognise in this a familiar problem. Your Grace should take care that the magicians she confers with are of a wise temper; boldness, while being key to greatness, can be disastrous unless tempered with thoughtfulness.
The third is the Iron Sutra. Magic has an affinity for natural things and is repelled by the artificial. Living wood, bone, natural metals — these form ready channels, but many alloys, unless specially treated, dull or stop it entirely. This is why a heavily armored knight, whatever his other limitations, remains an effective figure against the lower sorts of magical practitioners. Your Grace’s Charter Knights should bear this in mind when they are deployed; an enemy who is not merely dangerous, but strange, is perhaps well-met with steel plate, however arduous it may seem.
The fourth is the Heart Sutra, which holds that magic responds to a compelling story, and that the power to move hearts may itself be a form of magic. I note this for completeness, but urge caution: the mechanisms are widely disputed, even by those who hold it to be true. The nature of stories is one that has been contested time and time again, and often changes according to the time, the place, and other circumstances of their telling. Moreover, it places too much power in the hands of those flippant bards of the Hasselbad School.
The fifth is the Mirror Sutra: what a magician believes and understands shapes what his magic can accomplish. A man raised in forests who has spent his life attending to plants will do better with that kind of working than a novice reading about plants in a library. This is not so different from governance: the administrator who has walked the districts understands them as the one who reads reports cannot. The implication is that a magician’s power grows where his understanding goes deepest.
The sixth is the Wheel Sutra. The universe has a natural tendency of motion, and magic is easier when it follows that tendency than when it opposes it. Fire likes to burn; making it burn hotter is of no concern. Living things resist death; killing directly through magic is difficult. Dead things resist return; reversing that condition is, of all workings, the most costly and most likely to end in catastrophe. The lesson for Your Grace is this: those rulers who accomplish great things through the deployment of magic have profited from considering the nature of the world and asking for changes that are in accord, rather than against; certain tasks are best approached laterally. In this Your Grace will note that magic is not too dissimilar from the task of politics and administration.
These six sutras constitute the walls of the room within which all magic operates. Most practitioners cannot overcome them at all. The few who can are generally beyond the human; they are gods, daemons, or beings of another order. For the purposes of governing Daub, Your Grace need not concern herself overmuch with such exceptions; they are problems of a different scale, and by the time they present themselves, the response required will be beyond what any policy can prepare.
For decades, the Taprobane Imperial University has worked diligently on a grand unified theory that ties these principles together. However for now, it remains the province of scribblings by professors and students and heated arguments among faculty; in the practical world, in which Your Grace resides, it is safer to use the old and the well known and reliable.