Hill frowned and searched his memory... Damn it! His memory was excellent and he never forgot anything, but this still happened now and then.
When something had happened long ago and hadn't seemed important, it took him a while to find it in his mind.
At last, as his thoughts passed over Central City in Telashir, it came to him.
The notes Falan had shown him, written by Draculus, president of the Mage Association.
Some of them described how Draculus and his students had exchanged information they didn't want the God of Nobles to know, right under his nose.
But those were stopgap methods from long ago, before mages had demiplanes or the formidable defenses of Legendary Mage Towers. They had woven the words they wanted to convey into metal pages made from all kinds of wire. Different weaves meant different things, as did the proportions of silver and iron in a single strand. It was a method they had learned from the elves.
Elves liked using woven objects of various shapes to express their origins, identities, and even moods.
Mages, on the other hand, had used them to pass along intelligence—or to curse the God of Nobles, who was so fond of hurling lightning. Fortunately, even if someone copied the pages, they were unlikely to reproduce the exact composition of every wire.
So misunderstandings were rare.
Draculus had later handed those notes to Falan without a second thought, and hadn't minded Falan showing them to Hill. By then, hardly anyone in Telashir still communicated that way.
Most of the students who remembered those methods had long since left Telashir for the stars.
As for the students Draculus had taken on later, they had all sorts of Mage Towers to help them. A little caution was enough; there was no