Summoning

“Could you summon her?” she said suddenly.

“Which her?” asked Jodah.

“Varchild,” replied Jaya, “or Gustha, or even Avram Gunnarson. If you could summon them, then that would prove they were dead, wouldn’t it? And you could find out how they died.”

“A good idea,” said Jodah, “but one that would not work, knowing what we know at the moment. After careful research, I could call into being a Kjeldoran general right now, I suppose, but not Varchild, though both would have properties of the ideal general. I could call upon a royal mage, an archetype of that type of wizard, but not Gustha’s spirit herself. If I wanted to access Gustha’s spirit, to call into being a duplicate of her form, I would have to do a lot more studying about her in order to distill down the basic core of her.”

Jaya was silent for a moment, then said, “It was just a thought.”

Jodah added, “Even then it would just be a shadow, and a shadow fed by everyone else’s beliefs in her. She would not even need to be dead for me to do it, though that is usually when legends truly grow and spread.”

Jaya thought for a moment, then said, “You wouldn’t ever think of summoning a duplicate of me, would you?”

Jodah smiled broadly. “To do that, I would have to know you to your core. And I don’t think anyone knows you that well.”

***

The Shattered Alliance, Chapter 7