“I can see from your expression that you doubt, but it is true. My wife was from the island of Tainiou, and her family keeps up their contact with the old mainland states, if only on an irregular basis. We hoped our children would be magical, but alas, none of our four proved to be sorcerers. At least none of them died in the testing process.” He paused. “Hence my agreeing to train my sort of nephews. Actually, in truth, one is only the son of a second cousin on my father’s side, and the other is the grandson of my maternal uncle’s brother-in-law. Not even real family at all.”

This seemed to dispirit him considerably. Jason left the old man to his ruminations while Jason considered the information he had been given.

“So, am I right in saying that everyone on your world is a little magic, but the descendants of sorcerers have a higher chance of being affected by this broth?

“Yes.” Urasmian nodded. “It was only in the last thousand years that this effect was noticed, but it is true. The more magical antecedents one has, the better a person’s chances of becoming a sorcerer. And the chance of them dying seems to stay much the same so proportionally the magical families give rise to far more sorcerers than the ordinary population does.”

Jason nodded. Perhaps it was genetic. He supposed that the broth of the plant could contain some enzyme or something that alters a person’s genes, although he had never heard of such a thing on his Earth.

“Right. So, what about my world? Nobody here can do real magic stuff, at least as far as I am aware, but is that because we simply can’t or because we don’t have access to the broth?” Jason cocked his head a little to the side as he waited for the old man to reply.

Urasmian closed his eyes and mumbled something. Then he opened them again and smiled at Jason.

“It would seem that the people in this world are no different from those in my world. Well, you, at least, are no different. You have a very low magical glow, just like an ordinary person on my world would. That seems to indicate that if we gave the broth to enough people here, sooner or later, we’d find a sorcerer. Or at least someone who could be trained to be a sorcerer.”

Jason thought about this. He gathered from the names and the description that Urasmian had been referring to Santorini as the island where the plant grew. That island had blown up in a huge volcanic eruption in antiquity. On Urasmian’s Earth, people had discovered the plant before the volcanic eruption, whereas on Jason’s Earth, the magical features had not been discovered before the eruption, and the plant was presumably wiped out. Damn. Jason decided he was looking too glum and changed the topic.

“So, what’s next? You zap back there and surprise them?”         Urasmian glowered at him. Jason wasn’t sure whether it was from Jason’s glibness or, Jason suddenly realized, to his embarrassment, the fact that if it took two sorcerers to get Urasmian here, there was little chance the fellow could ever get back! But then Urasmian’s focus shifted to some point in the distance over Jason’s right shoulder for a few moments. Jason nearly held his breath as he refrained from saying anything to disturb the old man, who was obviously having an insight of some description. The man’s attention snapped back to Jason.