Swamped

"Are you feeling better, sir?"

"Considerably, thank you." He smiles.

"Sir, what I did with the book... I don't understand it. Is that how wizardry normally works?"

"When it comes to magic, 'normal' isn't a word that generally comes to mind," he says. He seems a little uneasy now. "Where do I start explaining it..."

"We already had a talk about ether and enchantment," Dominique interjects. "I don't know about much more than that, myself, so you can start from there."

"Ah, yes. Enchantment is a good place to start, then. The most basic form of it is casting a spell on an item to give it special properties. A flaming sword that never stops burning... or, more practically, boots that won't wear out for a good long while. But it's possible to do more than that."

Long pauses, as he seems to be thinking how to demonstrate. After a while, he pulls off his gauntlet, and picks up a small sheet of paper off a nearby table.

"Let's say I want to use this paper later," he says. "I can put it in my glove, and then when I need it, I can take it out and use it then. Or, if someone else finds the glove, they can use the paper."

You nod along.

"So imagine that the paper is, instead, a spell." He holds the gauntlet shut. "The same idea applies, except that I can put a 'lock' on the spell, so it only activates under the right circumstances. It could be a keyword you speak, or a physical item you have to hold near it. But regardless of the method, only a wizard has any chance at using it."

"So... that's what the book is?" you ask. "It had the desert fever spell stored in it? But why? Did my father store it in there?"

Long shrugs.

"Rider would know more about that than I would," he says. "Regardless, it was rather common for wizards to use books for that purpose. I'm not sure if it was just tradition, or simply that it was easier to put clues in the text in case you forgot what the key was."

"Why prepare it in a book, though? Why not just cast it when you need it?"

"Some spells take quite a bit of effort to cast. If you needed them in a hurry, it was a good deal easier to have them in storage. In some cases, though, the whole idea was allowing somebody else to cast the spell."

You need to mull over that explanation for a bit. Is there anything more you need to know?