A Higher Price Than Death.....

[wolf_wizard]

What if you combine them? and then the LP makes you do something, and then you have to live forever (without being able to do anything, mind) and be forced to watch the results and of what you had done, and what other people had done to make the worlds slowly fall to the LP... you would see victories; but also losses, and the times people lose to the LP, you would feel it twice as hard as you would feel victory. THAT WOULD BE TORTURE. and probably worse. And, you wouldn't have Timeheart.

[alla]

Hmmm... the more I think about the ideas we have come up with in this thread, the more I begin to believe that I think we're on the wrong track. I guess the thing to do is to analyse the parts of the story that we have up until Deep Wizardry (the reasons why this price must be paide), and then start to think about the things we can rule out, based on what we have learnt about wizardry in the books following Deep Wizardry.

Firstly, what do we know about wizards and wizardry (summarized, because I am sure that there will be things I miss out what is the price that must be paid (from both Nita and Kit) and, why must it be paid?

During So you want to be a Wizard Nita and Kit use a 'blank-cheque' spell to get the power necessary to disalign the 'dragon's' lair (and I can't remember exactly what DD called the dragon-like creature, as it has been some time since I read the books, and I do not have the books on hand at the moment). Now, as I understand it, this spell required an enormous amount of energy, and this energy had to be paid back, at some stage and in some way to the Powers. This 'pay back' is what we are discussing in this thread, essentially, or where we must start to discuss in order to be able to try and guess what the mentioned higher price is.

We learn from Carl in Deep Wizardry, that the price that Nita has to pay for this blank cheque spell is her life, and that there is only one higher price that can be asked [of a wizarddirecthurts. I think that this places high on the scale of payment.

Third, Losing/Giving up the ablity to go to Timeheartwill

[seabiscuit1009]

Alla states what I want to say perfectly, I just want to make a comment or two about it, if that's alright.

I went through this same thing early in 2007-losing a best friend who was so close she was practically my sister. It really is more horrible than many people realize; just seeing her there, with her new friends, it hurt...and still hurts. I mean, I had to go see a shrink because of the whole thing. It messes you up a lot. I'm still messed up by it, and it's been a year. Personally, that was one of the events in recent history that has drastically changed my life. Every day, I see her in AP Government, sittng on the opposite side of the room, or I look at my keyring, which still for some reason has her housekey on it, and it hurts a ridiculous amount to know that she's "gone" and can never be replaced.

Basically, what I'm saying is that while I'm not sure if this is what DD meant by a higher price than death...but in my experience, it's pretty close, and I'd like to thank Alla for bringing it up.

[wolf_wizard]

It is hard. I'm serious. I move a lot, in case anyone hasn't noticed, and so I recently moved bacck to the place where i spent the 1st 5 years of my life. I used to have a REALLY close friend from here. They still live here; and I used to see them when they visited the place I lived at the time. and so, I was still really close to them. Like almost siblings close. and then they just... ignored me. I mean, they didn't snub me or anything to my face, but they just started hanging out with different people. people who didn't really like me. and so I think that they have adopted that sort of mentality, and are just entirely ignoring me. I mean, i was their friend all of our lives, and then they ignore me, and trade me for some other friends. it's been 2 years. and it really hurts. I'm suer it dosn't hurt as much as other things people here have gone through, but it hurts a lot. I guess that a friendship like that isn't really worth having; but it doesn't mean it doesn't mean it doesn't hurt.

[Garrett Fitzgerald]

Alla, I think you've hit on it exactly. The highest price to pay is to watch someone else pay lifeprice for something you assisted in.

And re: "Death is something final" -- I vaguely recall Diane mentioning something about saying that a character was dead, to which Peter (Morwood, not Murray) responded, "Dead dead, or Duane dead?"

[Nathan]

"There's no higher payment that can be made." Redivivus!

As Alla correctly remembered, there was quite an extensive and probing thread on this subject on the forums (with the above title) that is now archived here. (You can see my 'advertisement' of it here—if you find this particular avenue of speculation as fascinating as I do, this thread alone seems more than worth the price of an archive subscription, never mind the wealth of other fascinating topics that are also archived, some of which I also advertise in the linked post.)

But the most interesting portion of that old thread is a "veritable [though vague] hint" from DD (to use Tui's term and indulge in a little alliteration of my own) reported from a chat: "It might not be a price human beings can pay." This suggests that all the speculation on this topic might be relevant to that on what the mention of Nita's "becoming far less than human. Or far more..." in the AWOM blurb could possibly mean, particularly as [rather vague WH spoiler:]<span class="ev_code_white"> Nita still has the repayment from the Binding Oath in WH hanging over her (cf. the blank-cheque spell in SYWTBAW and its repayment in DW)</span>.

However, as far as the precise mechanism of the higher-than-lifeprice repayment goes, even disregarding the hint, almost none of the above suggestions seem to actually repay any energy, much less a greater amount than lifeprice. (This, at least, is what my reading of Carl's statement requires, and the consensus of the old thread&mdash;we should discuss any differing readings.) While all the suggestions are quite onerous, that is not the raison d'&ecirc;tre of this price, even though Carl's reluctance to discuss it would seem to indicate that it is extremely severe.

As far as specific suggestions are concerned, even though losing one's wizardry seems an unlikely candidate for this price, particularly given the hint, and the fact that Carl is quite willing to talk about the consequences of losing one's wizardry, I can offer almost water-tight (quasi-canonical) evidence that losing one's wizardry is not the 'price higher than lifeprice,' as DD has clearly said (in this USENET post) that it is possible for a wizard to lose and then subsequently regain her wizardry, although it is not a common occurrence. While one could argue that the wizardry is simply being held in abeyance in such cases, DD does not seem to be making any such differentiation. Moreover, besides the arguments against it aired previously, this proposed 'price' also seems to fail the 'repayment' test (i.e., that it actually be a "higher payment"), on physical grounds. The argument that an ex-wizard would still be fighting entropy in everyday matters and have given up the use of wizardry is not without merit, but such a person seemingly has the possibility of doing much more had she still wizardly power. Of course, as I remarked in the old thread, one should not look entirely to physics for this matter, and ritualistic concerns may be just as, if not more, important than physical ones. (For instance, lifeprice itself is seemingly much more viable ritualistically than physically&mdash;cf. the old practice of the ruler of a country sacrificing herself or himself to ensure a fertile harvest.) However, physical concerns are certainly not irrelevant.

Something that both PK and I suggested in the old thread that I feel is a far more promising suggestion for the price is the possibility of incorporating oneself into a spell to ensure its continued functioning: This seems sufficiently onerous, and has impeccable ritualistic credentials (cf. any number of folk/fairy tales in which someone has to be sealed inside some object for it to be able to be successfully created). However, as partial as I am to this, it doesn't seem to fulfill DD's hint, unless you posit that a human being per se, being mortal, wouldn't be able to incorporate herself or himself into a spell, though that is completely at odds with the ritualistic antecedents. (And if the hint only means that a human couldn't pay the price without first undergoing some transformation, then it's not very much of a hint, and even might be considered rather misleading.)

I also have thought about relating this to what seems to be a common fantasy trope of mortals deriving power from their very mortality, though this doesn't necessarily&mdash;or even seemingly&mdash;satisfy DD's hint. However, [vague TWD spoilers:]<span class="ev_code_white"> "power from mortality" does come up in TWD, with Betty Callahan's "There's a power in what we are as mortal beings that even that One [i.e., the Lone Power; emphasis original] can't match. If we throw it away, we stop being human." in the climactic final scene</span>. In addition, if we're allowed to venture somewhat further afield into the Middle Kingdoms, we have Earn and Healhra's "sacrific[ing] their mortality to undergo that Transformation by which mortals become gods" on Bluepeak from The Door into Shadow, which, incidentally&mdash;or perhaps not *&mdash;was written around the same time as DW. (Note that this quote also makes an appearance [slightly reworded] in "Parting Gifts," which DD has made available for free download here, in case anyone hasn't already noticed.) And while this could be achieved by becoming a Power, that is not the only way: One obvious possibility would be to combine this with the above suggestion, and say that one gives up mortality to bind oneself permanently into a spell, though this runs into the same issues with the hint as above.

In the old thread, Rowen Avalon dismissed the suggestion of becoming a Power as the higher repayment, arguing that transformation from a mortal that experiences time sequentially into a Power that "lives outside of time" would be endothermic and thus couldn't constitute a repayment of energy. However, this doesn't seem quite conclusive, as one could argue that whatever feats the wizard was able to perform after the transformation would more than repay its 'activation energy.' (I'm not sure that we would necessarily see this in the series, though, if this is indeed the higher payment, as we've already had [HW and WAW spoilers]<span class="ev_code_white"> Peach and Ponch</span>, even though I acknowledge that the parallels aren't exact.) Another far more interesting possibility is to relate this to the peridexis, as some people have done in speculating about Nita in AWOM in this and following posts. Finally, I concur with Alla's conclusions and analysis of why giving up Timeheart isn't a possibility for this price.

Underlying all of this&mdash;both possible 'higher-than-lifeprice' scenarios as well as the question of how exactly lifeprice itself provides an energy repayment&mdash;is the fascinating question of where a wizard's power comes from, physically. I have speculated on this at length in the reply I have been crafting for the old thread for lo these many years, but in the interests of providing this response in a timely enough manner as to make a contribution to the discussion, I shall refrain from polishing any of it up for posting here, at least at the moment. (And this is long enough as it is.) In case you are interested in thinking about this yourself, I offer a pr&eacute;cis of some of my previous arguments in my entry on the "Refrigerator Door" of the Concordance&mdash;the thread mentioned there has now been archived here.

Edited to add:

Well, I just couldn't resist polishing up most of the rest of my old post-in-progress (since I'm no longer replying to the old thread, I have fewer qualms about still not having responded to every point I wanted to), even though the length (and probable impenetrability) of even the previous portion of this post seems to have squelched discussion on this thread, or, in the best case, merely changed it to a longer timescale, more like that on which I write my own responses, though one hopes not quite so dilatory:

First, it seems that I have conclusively established (in the thread I linked above, primarily through an analysis of the moon travel scene in DW and the water boiling vignette in WAW) that all (or, indeed, the majority) of the energy a wizard uses to fuel her spells cannot be biological. In fact, while there are (at least seemingly) contradictory statements about this in canon and the Concordance, it appears that a wizard's biological energy is only one possible 'fueling' source for a spell. For instance, besides the references I gave in the aforementioned posts, the backlash entry comments that a deduction of "available physical energy" is merely the "simplest way in which a wizard is 'charged' the price of a spell," and while Dairine states in WH that "wizardry was not a forgiving art: You got what you paid for, and you paid for result in effort, in power subtracted from your personal ecosystem...sometimes in terms of a deduction from your life span" [ellipsis original], which would seem to indicate that the energy required to fuel a spell comes solely from the wizard (or wizards) enacting it, Carl mentions in Alone that "his [Darryl's] presence here ... is important for the world, because through him, the One channels into the world some of the power we use," implying that at least some of the power a wizard is able to employ is provided externally. In addition, the brainburn entry mentions both the "energy 'throughput' of a spell" and "energy ... invoked into the spell proper," both of which the spell attempts to insulate the wizard's body from, to prevent brainburn; a portion of the "How Wizardry Works" page on YW.com reads "...because the Powers that Be don't hand out the power that runs the Universe to just anybody" [ellipsis and emphasis original]; and finally, the selections from Nita's Manual in the first chapter of SYWTBAW (available on YW.com for those who don't have a copy of the book handy) include "the energy invested in a beginning wizard is too precious to be thrown away." In this last case, it is conceivable that this energy is just that invested in the Manual, though that strikes me as unlikely (particularly as it would seemingly be quite small, in the grand scheme of things, while the energy needed to do the major workings that comprise a 'typical' Ordeal [inasmuch as such a thing exists] would be substantial). And while the penultimate quote could simply refer to the enacture that the Powers vest in wizards (though where exactly one draws the line between 'persuasive' ability and physical power is a vexed issue&mdash;see PK's posts in the old thread for some interesting speculation), these quotes, in toto, seem to imply that at least some external power is provided to wizards as a matter of course.

(N.B.: I have suggested this for discussion in the Concordance and/or a WizCast, so we may find out something that is actually conclusive in the context of the YW universe [i.e., canonical] at some point&mdash;probably in the Wizardry, prices of Concordance entry [currently just a stub]. My guess is that the confusion surrounding this subject most likely stems from DD's having to revise her thoughts on this matter over time, when she came to realize the problems, such as those I have raised, with a strictly biological energy source &mdash;perhaps she was even directly influenced by some of my arguments.)

Second, and far less conclusively, I don't think that the supposition that each wizard has a fixed reservoir of power to draw upon throughout her life, as PK suggested in the old thread, is tenable, simply because there is no mention of a wizard ever using all of her power early in life and then being powerless later. (And this would seemingly be an important cautionary tale for all young wizards&mdash;even though older wizards rely far less on raw power, they still need some, and it just wouldn't do to have your energy supply run dry during a major confrontation with the Lone Power!) This concern would be obviated, of course, if, following another of PK's suggestions, all of a wizard's power was derived from 'cashing in' unlived lifespan (about which more later). However, this also strikes me as untenable, for when the use of unlived lifespan as a 'fueling source' is mentioned, it is seemingly in opposition to the usual method of powering spells, and appears to be a 'last-ditch' recourse&mdash;cf. Nita's method of fueling her shield in the climactic scene of HW as well as her [WAW spoiler]<span class="ev_code_white"> offering to sacrifice her life to save the Crossings in WAW</span>. In addition, as mentioned above, the Powers are described as providing power itself to wizards, not just access to an innate source of power. (For that matter, if one's lifespan was the usual source of wizardly power, this fact would seemingly also be something that a wizard would be warned about before taking the Oath, given that the Manual is highly forthcoming about items of this nature, and we see no sign of that [not that we know even a small fraction of the possible contents of the Manual].)

As I have proposed elsewhere, my preferred interpretation is that all wizards have access to an inexhaustible (or well nigh so) source of energy, the price of access to which increases with the amount of energy used. It is this 'activation energy' that is deducted from the wizard's "personal ecosystem" (as Dairine terms it in WH) for all but the cheapest spells (energetically speaking&mdash;i.e., those that could be safely fueled by the wizard's own biological energy).

As far as the issue of how lifeprice itself could work, there's another facet of the Middle Kingdoms universe that seem highly apropos here, also from The Door into Shadow: There it is mentioned that the Fire that all beings possess (and that provides one method of performing magic in the Middle Kingdoms) is "focused" at the time of death, a phenomenon known as DeathFire. This affects all beings, including those whose fire was not focused during their life (so they could not utilize it to perform magic), and "is what gives one's deathword its power." However, magic in the Middle Kingdoms always draws upon one's lifespan, which, as I argue above, is unlike that the YW universe, so the analogy is far from exact, though the (to me at least slightly mysterious) nature of how paying for wizardry with time off of one's life (and by extension lifeprice) works physically in the YW universe offers a fair amount of 'wiggle room.' (I can't get it to work using the physics I know, and indeed don't think that it can be made to work [or at least not particularly well] with 'known physics.') As I indicated on the old thread, I am tempted to assign some sort of 'binding energy' (really inverse binding energy, as it is released upon death) to (conscious) life, though I am treading here on almost theological&mdash;indeed eschatological&mdash;territory that is far removed from my usual 'scholarly stomping grounds.' In such a scenario, using part of one's lifespan to fuel wizardry would be accomplished by removing some energy from&mdash;and thus weakening&mdash;the 'life-bond' between soul and body&mdash;this is very closely related to Herewiss' mother's surmise that use of the Fire draws upon the soul, eventually leaving it so diminished that it is unable to support the body, and I suspect that this may have been in the back of my mind when I made that proposal.

* There are various explicit connexions between the Middle Kingdoms and YW books. (See, e.g., this USENET post of DD's, or, for more information, this archived post of mine, where I also argue&mdash;perhaps unconvincingly&mdash;that DD has forged links between many of her universes.) In addition, (a previous version of) the Wikipedia article on DD mentions: "One interdimensional portal in The Door into Fire appears to open over New York City, presenting the possibility that the Middle Kingdoms are yet another canonical alternative universe within the Young Wizards setting."

Edited to correct various typos.

...and edited again to correct a few more, in addition to adding the rest of my old post-in-progress.