Art Magic
Ahmbren's magic is built on concepts that will be familiar to most fantasy readers: Order and Chaos, and of course, four principle magical elements. As with everything else, however, I spin and twist it to make it uniquely Ahmbren. The most obvious example is that the four elements are not the familiar "Air, Earth, Water and Fire", but are "Time, Dark, Life, and Light." These are the domain of wizards and channelers alike (channelers being Warlocks, Sorcerers, Druids, and Paladins, respectively), and, for the most part, the clerical magic of the runes.
In the first trilogy, there is another system of magic that's shown from time to time but never really explained. It's properly called Old Magic by sages, and of course they capitalize it to signify its great and mysterious beginnings. It is said that it was around before even the time of dragons, millions of years before the humanoid races evolved. Colloquially, it's called "art magic."
In the trilogy, the most prominent wielder of art magic is the sorceress Anuit. It has nothing to do with her sorcery. She's a weaver/seamstress, and can fold mystical effects into cloth. She makes her own clothes, and they keep her comfortable and dry no matter what the weather is. At one point, Kaldor helps her take it a step further, and they make a magic flying carpet. In the book Covenant, we also meet Danry the bard. In Ahmbren, the fantasy concept of the bard is a quintessential user of art magic.
Every craft can be an expression of art magic. Of course, not every artist can do art magic. Such mystics are rare. The books denote the different between the two by joining the words: normal beer making would be brew crafting. Magical beer making would be brewcrafting. Polliver, the magical engineer in Through Rose-Colored Goggles, learns lenscrafting, which he distinguishes from lens crafting.
The first trilogy indicates that art magic weaves all four magical elements into the art. Its implied, and that's what people understand, that it is related to wizard magic. However, this is not really correct. In the second trilogy, we learn that the four elements are sub-elements of Order. Art magic, Old Magic, is Chaos magic. It does affect and shape strands of Order, but its root is in something much less structured and more emotional in nature.
An exerpt from Through Rose-Colored Goggles talks about art magic’s relationship to faith:
“Count Markus seeks the power that made the gods. The power that art touches is in the space between the lines of magic, and there’s something moving in the depths of those spaces. Something that has yet to find us. The Dwellers are coming, and your mother’s folly will doom us if we don’t restore Ahmbren’s faith.”
“Faith in what?”
“Something greater. Something deeper. Something older. Something beyond the gods of the Kairantheum. Or maybe the source of them.”
Joy frowned. Yes, [spoilery words removed], but Keruhn had orchestrated it all. To what end? He had faith in mortalkind. Surely he had considered the Dwellers in his intentions. Had he not? “How is this Old Magic released?”
“There are no rules,” Lassana replied. “Not like the spells of wizards. It comes through passion. Through ecstasy. This is why it’s so prevalent in art.”
“Or faith,” Joy murmured. The gods had lived on faith and used its power to work wonders. Alone among the gods, Keruhn had reversed the flow, putting his faith in mortalkind. In the end, it had made him the greatest of the gods.
I think I might expand on Chaos magic and its relation to Order in the Ahmbren cosmology in a future post.
In the meantime, I have a world to tend.