The DreamlandsPreview
Open in TheBrain

Dissonance

Also known as : The Curse, The Taint, Dox, Paradox, the Haunting, The Price, The Cost, Rebound.

as best as it was explained to me, and as little as I understood it

Notes for Apprentice Selwin, who keeps asking the wrong questions at the wrong hour.

Very well.

I will attempt to explain Dissonance, though I must stress that what follows is not knowledge in the strict sense, but a residue of explanations, most of them borrowed, misremembered, or overheard while I was thinking of something else.

First: Dissonance is not a punishment.

At least, that is what the alchemist said. He was stirring something unpleasant at the time, so I may have misunderstood.

He claimed it was more like… a leftover.

Or a smell.

Or perhaps the sound a bell makes after it has already been struck, if the bell resents being used.

Magic, he said, does not vanish when finished. It settles.

Now, where it settles seems to matter greatly.

Apparently, most people carry very little of it. Farmers, clerks, children. They generate some merely by watching, which I found rude, but there it is. The more ordinary they are, the worse they make it. This was explained with an analogy involving carpets and mud, which I will not repeat.

Those who practice the Arts accumulate Dissonance more… deliberately.

Though no one ever means to.

It pools.

That much I remember clearly.

The alchemist insisted this pool is not moral. It does not care if your spell was kind, necessary, or impressive. It only cares that reality noticed.

At small amounts, nothing much happens. Minor inconveniences. A draft where there should be none. Milk turning early. An object misplaced and then found somewhere it could not possibly have been.

At larger amounts—

(this is where he became vague, or perhaps I did)

—things begin to prefer going wrong.

He said that once the pool is “full” (a term he immediately retracted), the Dissonance may suddenly express itself. He used the word flare, though he admitted that was probably inaccurate. Flares imply light. This is often darker.

When that happens, one does not receive a single consequence. One receives a theme.

It may attach itself to the body.

Or the mind.

Or the surroundings.

Or one’s reputation.

Sometimes it fades.

Sometimes it does not.

He mentioned a woman who sweated constantly from the face, no matter the season. Another whose shadow behaved independently. A third who caused mirrors to fog when she spoke the truth. These were not curses, he stressed. They were remainders.

I asked if Dissonance could be removed.

He laughed. Then apologized and said, “Not removed. Only moved.”

Priests, he claimed, could take some of it away, but only slowly, and only if the Dissonance agreed with their god, which sounded suspiciously like theology. Witches, he said, could rearrange it, “like furniture in a burning house.” Warlocks preferred to put it somewhere else entirely and leave before it noticed.

I asked what happens if one ignores it.

He looked at me for a long time and said, “That depends on how much attention you’ve already attracted.”

We did not finish the conversation. Something in his workshop began screaming, and I decided I had learned enough for one evening.

In summary, Apprentice:

That is all I know.

Which is more than I am comfortable with.

If you require certainty, take up accounting.

— Magister H. Rellin, who regrets asking questions