Geomancer (Well of Echoes) (84 page)
Read Geomancer (Well of Echoes) Online
Authors: Ian Irvine
Tags: #General, #Fiction, #Fantasy, #Science Fiction & Fantasy
Nunar assembled a team of mancers utterly devoted to her project (no mean feat) and set out to answer these questions. Mancing was traditionally secretive – practitioners tried (often wasting their lives in dead ends) and usually failed alone. Only the desperate state of the war could have made them work together, sharing their discoveries, until the genius of Nunar put together the
Special Theory of Power
that described where the diffuse force came from and how a mancer actually tapped it, drawing not through the earthly elements but via the ultradimensional ethyr.
The ultimate goals of theoretical mancers are the
General Theory of Power
, which deals with how
nodes
work and how they might be tapped safely, and, beyond that, the
Unified Power Theory
, which reconciles all fields, weak and strong, in terms of a single force.
:
The use of magical or sorcerous powers (mancing).
The principal city of the Aachim of Santhenar, constructed within Mt Tirthrax, in the Great Mountains, the tallest peak on the Three Worlds.
An Aachim concept to do with the reverberation of time, memory and the Histories. Sometimes a place of death and rebirth (to the same cycling fate). Also a sense of being trapped in history, of being helpless to change collective fate (of a family, clan or species). Origin sometimes thought to be a sacred well on Aachan, sometimes on Santhenar. The term has become part of Aachim folklore. ‘I have looked in the Well of Echoes.’ ‘I heard it at the Well.’ ‘I will go to the Well.’ Possibly also a source; a great
node
.
The Well is symbolised by the three-dimensional symbol of infinity, the universe and nothingness.
An Aachim device, powered by an
amplimet
, to create a
gate
. Also called ‘port-all’ by Tiaan.