Ask Luna #23

From: john

How do mages control magical creatures

Mind and charm magic and binding rituals.

From: Ted

Hi Luna,

First of all, thank you so much for taking the time to expertly set up this “Ask Luna”, and for your never-ending patience in responding to the seemingly endless questions we normal people bombard you with. Hopefully that little bit of appreciation and flattery will entice you to answer some of these questions I’ve been holding onto forever, and I apologize if they get long. First of all, how do Light mages know who the Dark mages are, and how do the Light mages keep the Dark mages out of the council? Couldn’t a Dark mage just say that they were a Light mage, or is there some list of all Light mages somewhere? I’m just thinking that since it seems like a lot of Dark mages don’t really advertise their history, they should be able to become part of the Light council without anyone knowing the difference, as long as they acted the part and made some effort toward the politics. And a hopefully quicker last two questions: did you ever find out if the enchantress that you grazed with your curse and that chick that blasted you after you beat her dueling ever got what was coming to them? If so, what happened?

Flattery is always appreciated. Definitely makes me much more likely to answer.

Light mages don’t necessarily know who all the Dark mages are, and there isn’t a register of all the Dark mages. There IS a register of the Light mages, though, and you need to be on the register to join the Council, so that’s how it works. It’s not “you can’t join if you’re a Dark mage”, it’s “you’re only allowed to join if you’re in the club”. But you’re right that they don’t necessarily know that much about who is and isn’t a Dark mage – there’s a blurry line between independent and Dark ones, and the real hardliners on the Council don’t see much of a difference anyway.

As for THOSE two . . . ugh. As far as I know Meredith hasn’t gotten anything like what she deserves, but Natasha did get some delayed payback eventually. After what happened in Fountain Reach Alex had a talk with her master, and ever since then Natasha’s been avoiding me like her life depended on it. That probably would have been the end of it, except that even after everything that had happened she was dumb enough to think it was a good idea to keep trying to bully Anne in her spare time. Eventually she pushed Anne a bit too far, and . . . yeah. Wish I’d been there to see it.

From: Gordon

Hi Luna,

How is Alex viewed overall in the magical community these days? He’s a diviner, but he came up on top or at least survived several major incidents now. It sounds like people taking more notice of him these days, but does the community for the most part still kind of see him as an underdog or is his reputation overcoming that, for better or worse?

More specifically, how do the adepts and sensitives view him now, especially after the Nightstalkers incident? Is there a noticeable drop in the number that stops by the shop for help/advice?

I’d say his reputation’s gone up amongst mages and down amongst adepts, for pretty much the reasons you’ve already guessed. So he gets more apprentices stopping by his shop, and more mages coming with job offers or wanting to trade, but there’s been a definite drop-off in the number of adepts who stop by.

There are still a few mages who don’t take him seriously, but a lot fewer than there used to be. The weird thing is that it actually rubs off on me. I get treated with WAY more respect in the apprentice program than I used to. In my first year I kept getting bitchy comments from other apprentices about how I wasn’t a ‘real’ mage. Then the thing with the Nightstalkers happened, and all of a sudden they shut up real fast. Kind of an extreme way to do it, but whatever works I guess.

From: Dave K

Hi Luna. Big fan of Alex. Quick question for you. Do you know if it’s better for Alex to either purchase the audio book or read his novels in Ebook/paper format?

Thanks much!

Ebook, I think. Paper and audio books have much lower rates. Glad you like ‘em.