Chapter 4
“Things weren’t always like this, you know. This used to be just another peaceful little town.”
Varello sits across from an old woman wearing a tattered dress and a nearly threadbare apron. The table, hewn from thick slabs of oak, gives the room a timeless quality. She pauses, waiting for him to take a sip of tea, and then continues.
“The trouble started when the Mus showed up.”
“The Mus?” he asks.
“Vasker and Trina Mu. He was an engineer fresh out of the Universitorium, sent here to build a mill so that our town could have its own supply of flour. She was the niece of some duke, and his wedding present to the couple was a nice little house on the edge of town. Things were going so well...until she got pregnant.”
Varello nods. “Pregnancy does strange things to women.”
“No, not Trina--her child. A baby girl they named Desa. The night she was born, the midwife brought Vasker into the room to see his daughter, and he wept and wept. Said she was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.”
“A prophetic statement, to be sure.”
She gives a grim smile. “Of course, the people of the town were thrilled by the new arrival. They visited the couple to see the child, and they brought presents, as they would for any new baby. But it was the strangest thing--they kept going back, and kept bringing more presents. Cribs, baby clothes, toys. It got to the point where the Mus were so overwhelmed they stopped allowing visitors. But that didn’t deter the townsfolk, they just kept leaving things outside.
“Those who hadn’t seen the child couldn’t understand what their fellow townsfolk were doing. They thought their friends and neighbors had gone mad. They just kept going on and on about Desa, about how cute she was, about her smile, about how she was just about the bestest thing they’d ever seen. Eventually, it got so awkward that Vasker and Trina took their baby and moved out to a tiny cottage in the woods to avoid the unwanted attention.
“Sometimes Vasker would come to town for supplies, or to fix something at the mill, but for the next dodecade nobody saw much of the Mus. Until Vasker died.”
Varello gives the old woman a confused look. “How did he die?”
“Nobody’s really sure. It was around the time of Desa’s twelfth sunspin when Trina showed up in town one day screaming and crying, saying that Vasker was dead and Desa was missing.
“A few days later, a young girl, naked as the day the Gods made her, comes wandering down the road--that was the day this sleepy little town died. One by one, as the men saw her, they just stopped. Literally, they just stopped. The women fawned over her, starting their own cult to worship her and please her. At first, her mother was happy that she was okay, but when she saw what happened to the town, she was inconsolable.”
“And you were unaffected when all of this happened?” Varello asks.
“Myself, I never saw what the big deal was about Desa. Then again,” she taps a finger to her temple, indicating her milky eyes, “I guess I never could see much of anything at all.”
Varello rises to leave. “Thank you for the tea.”
The old woman grabs Varello’s wrist. “I might be blind, but I can tell you have a certain way about you. That might keep you safe when it comes to Desa, but it won’t protect you from the others. They’ll do anything for her--anything.”
The Quester of Righteousness darts between the walls of flame, zigging left, then right, attempting to get closer to the source of the high-pitched prepubescent screams.
Moments before, the flaming inferno was merely a maze of walls were created from blocks of hay, one of many amusements at the village’s Ogrefest Feastival. However, one stray spark from one stray firework was all it took to turn a celebration into a potential tragedy.
As the screaming ceases, the Quester of Righteousness realizes that the smoke must have finally gotten to the child. Rather than continuing to dart around through the maze in a time-consuming search, he thrusts out his shoulder as he charges through the dry cubes of flaming death in the direction of the last scream he was able to hear.
Grimacing as he bursts through one, two, three scorching walls, he finally comes across a bundle of clothing wrapped around a miniature person passed-out beneath the thick, black smoke. He scoops up the child in one arm as he dashes back through the walls of flame towards the entrance of the maze.
The Quester of Righteousness, victorious, hands the child to his hysterical mother. She holds him to her bosom and he opens his eyes, blinking at first at the shock of his ordeal and then at the shock of being unharmed.
The child is handed to a physick for observation, and the mother makes her way toward the Quester of Righteousness, wrapping her arms around him.
“You saved my child, oh Quester of Righteousness. You deserve a fitting reward.”
“Your gratitude is reward enough.”
She presses her body against his. “Oh, but my lips can do much more than form words to express my appreciation.”
The Quester of Righteousness sighs as he allows her to lead him by the hand.
The village of Krassen lies four thousand man-lengths to the east of Arcania. It’s a buffer between the lands of the wizards and the lands of the mechanists, and as such, it has become a trading point where the discriminating shopper can acquire the strangest, most useful relics produced by each land.
Walking down the main street, one might see a wristwatch capable of keeping its time for the next dodecade without so much as a single winding. In the neighboring stall, one might find an amulet capable of keeping a person completely dry in a rainstorm.
Being such a prominent trading hub, the town is usually filled with the bustle and hum of commercial activity, and today is no exception. The rattling sound of dodeckas hitting a wooden table, the smell of yafbeest kabobs, the glistening sweat on the neck of a San-torusian prostitute. Everything in sight can be bought for a price, and for the right price one can buy everything in sight.
The only thing not for sale in Krassen today is a reprieve from the imminent death preparing to swarm through the city gates.
Two philosophers, on a sabbatical from the Universitorium, stand in front of a stall selling bugbuzzard prepared teriyaki-style. The taller philosopher takes a bite of his burnt bird and washes it down with a gulp of beer.
“The sky...it’s always such a lovely shade of green,” the shorter one says.
The taller philosopher looks up at the sky. “I’ve never seen the sky turn completely green like this.”
“Your previous inability to pay attention to the color of the sky does not have any bearing on how the sky may or may not have always looked, nor does it necessarily detract from the validity of my original assertion that the sky is always a lovely shade of green.”
The taller philosopher takes another bite of his bird. “Let me tell you a little secret: I only became a Professor of Philosophy because it was the best-paying job in the Universitorium. I don’t believe anything any of you guys say, and most of the time I wonder if you’re not all out of your skulls.”
The shorter one exhales deeply. “Oh, thank the Gods! I’m not the only one.”
The taller one smiles. “That was a test--and you failed.”
“Was it really a test?”
“No,” he smiles, then, turning serious, “Or was it?”
“If it was a test, I was just playing along as a means of testing you.”
The shorter philosopher gasps as a steel machete erupts from the chest of his travelling companion, spraying him with blood. An instant later, the tall philosopher is tossed into the air by the mechanickal beast attached to the machete. The other arm of the automate is a gatling powderblast, which is now being leveled at the face of the shorter philosopher.
“It’s entirely possible this is just a nightmare from which I will soon awaken.”
Screams fill the street as hundreds of automates cut their way through the fleeing crowd. A rapid successio
n of shots ring through the dry air, and the shorter philosopher either does or does not awaken from the reality which may or may not have been his nightmare.
“The difficulty,” Novanostrum says, “is realizing that your life is not just a linear path through time, but a series of moments which you can return to and interact within at any point.”
The Crucifer soldier nods at Novanostrum’s words as he takes a sip of his own beer. The three of them are sitting on drab, thickly-cushioned chairs in a dim parlor in the corner of the vast basement level of the Deus Palatium.
Zanther looks up from his glass mug, foam stuck to the tip of his nose. “So what you’re saying is, I can go back in time to this morning and save Hernaldo simply by altering my memory of how the event played out?”
“Not your memory of how it played out,” Novanostrum corrects, “the reality of what occurred.”
Zanther smiles. “That’s ridiculous.”
Novanostrum takes a deep hit from his longpipe. “I’m not saying it isn’t. I’m just telling you how it works.”
The Crucifer soldier picks this moment to interject. “But if you’re changing the past, wouldn’t that alter the present?”
“The present isn’t some static concept, it’s the constantly-changing sum total of all the events that have preceded it.”
“Do you have any proof that you have ever successfully done this?” Zanther asks.
Novanostrum smiles. “Check your pocket. I tranced back in time and wrote a message on a scrap of paper and tucked it in there when you were taking a nap after digging Hernaldo’s grave.”
Zanther reaches into his pocket and pulls out the folded note. “It says, ‘There is no proof, only faith.’ Hmm.”
“Have I proven my point?” Novanostrum asks.
“You’ve proven that you’re a better magician than you are a wizard.”
Varello spies the girl on the other side of the field. She is hanging sheets on a line strung between two trees. Her supple curves flow with the movement of her body. Two other women, clad in simple dresses, wash laundry in wooden tubs a few man-lengths away from her.
Above, Varello notes that the sky has turned a sickening shade of green, something along the order of a thin bowl of peapod gruel. The women seem not to notice.
The melody he begins to play is gentle, so soft that to the ears of the ladies on the other side of the field it is almost completely muffled by the breeze. Still, this does not prevent the notes from penetrating the ears of the two women crouched over their tubs. It only takes a few bars for them to succumb to sleep. Turning from the line, Desa glances at her slumbering accomplices, then focuses her gaze on Varello.
He calmly slings the instrument over his back and begins walking across the field toward her. She doesn’t run. She stays rooted in place as he draws closer and closer.
Standing in front of her, his dagger drawn, she shows her first reaction to his presence: fear. Her eyelids quiver as she releases a few tears, waiting for the fatal thrust.
It doesn’t come.
Varello, poised to strike, finds his left arm frozen in place. His eyes flash with anger.
“Fight back!”
Reading his lips, she shakes her head nervously.
“Why not?!” he demands through clenched teeth.
Carefully, she backs away from him toward one of the sleeping women. Watching her reach into a satchel on the ground next to the woman, Varello prepares to land the killing blow at the first glint of a weapon. She produces a trunkchar pencil and a scrap of paper, crouching down and using her thigh as a makeshift desk. Desa then hands the paper to Varello.
Why are you here? it says.
After riding hard for a few bellchimes, Novanostrum and Zanther slow down to a trot to allow themselves and their horses a rest.
“We can make it to Claustria in two days if we keep up this pace and don’t sleep in too late when we stop to make camp.”
“I don’t like it,” Novanostrum says, glancing upward.
“Well, then, you’re in luck,” Zanther says, “the great thing about the weather is that it’s always changing.”
“Yeah, well, this is just unnatural. It reeks of magick.”
“I’m surprised you can smell it over your own thick stench.”
“I was being figurative, Zanther.”
“I was not. When was the last time you washed that robe?”
I’m happy you are not affected by my ugliness, she writes on the sheet of parchment and slides it over to Varello. Sitting across from each other at a small table in Desa’s humble shack, she has a quill and a stack of blank pages.
“Your ugliness?” Varello asks in bewilderment.
She reads his lips and his expression and continues writing. Why else would people react to me the way they do? Ever since I was little, my mother kept me locked in my room. She was the only person I saw, until one day she let me outside to play while my father went to fix the mill. He came home early, saw me playing in front of the house, and then his eyes went dead. My mother told me it was because he was so disgusted by my appearance that he had a heart attack.
“She lied to you. It’s actually the complete opposite. It’s your overpowering beauty that renders the men insensate.”
Her expression grows dark. The women, my captors, tell me the same thing. Really, though, what does it matter? The effect is the same. I will never have the love of a man or children of my own, and it’s because of my appearance.
“Your captors? I thought they worshipped you.”
They never let me out of their sight, and they wish to be with me every moment of every day. To you it may seem as if I command them, and though it’s true they would do almost anything I ask, the one thing they refuse to do is simply leave me alone for a few bellchimes. This time I’m spending with you is the longest I’ve been without them since I can remember.
Varello sighs, and decides to change the subject. “The people of Claustria are terrified of you. The Queen herself sent me here to eliminate you because of the threat your beauty poses.”
So what are you waiting for?
“I used to be a Professor at the Universitorium. I lectured on everything from biology to songspells. Men from all over Upper Kleighton respected my intellect, my capacity for rational thought. The more I get to know you, the more I feel that there must be a logically sound alternative to shedding your blood.”
You could leave us here and have the Queen forbid anyone from entering the Willowood.
“That was my first idea, too. The problem is that the news has spread about you. After what happened with Marchand, that fellow who was with me the first time we met, just about everybody in Claustria knows about the girl in the woods whose beauty drains the life out of men. Curiosity will drive more people to come out here. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were also those who would wish to capture you and use you as a--”
Before he can complete his thought, Varello hears the distinctive snap of a twig being stepped on. In a single fluid motion, he rises from the chair and spins toward the window, only to see perhaps three dozen women, all of them holding weapons and braced for a battle.
The sound of hammers rings throughout the port town of Arcania, the hub of authority in the lands of the wizards. Scaffolding clings to buildings damaged in the most recent horrific tragedy, the sacking of the city by many of its neighbors.
However, despite the explosions, fires, and flaming debris which rained upon the city when the Darrinian skyship fleet exploded overhead, the realization that most Arcanians have come to is that it could have been worse. The number of casualties from the attack ended up tallying in the low thousands, rather than the tens or hundreds of thousands.
Citizens walk between stalls, finally able to freely purchase goods again, and men with tall hats and long robes stroll from structure to structure, wizards overseeing the reconstruction effort.
A girl sits on a bench, screaming as her mother tries to console her.
“Calm down, honeypie.”
“I’m scared! It’s scary! Why is the sky so green, Momma?”
In the back of their minds, everyone within earshot silently echoes the exact same sentiment, but nobody says anything. The walkers continue walking, the shoppers continue shopping, the wizards continue wizarding, and the workers decide to break for second lunch.
Meanwhile, deep within the Knot, that monstrous half-castle, half-tower, half haphazard stone behemoth, the newly-installed Wizard’s Council wastes no time calling its latest meeting to order. A clean-shaven young wizard, Rahvik, the commander of the bruised and battered Arcanian Defense Corps is the first to speak.
“I realize you are all busy with reconstruction efforts, but I summoned you here because the next great test of Arcanian courage has decided not to wait until we catch our collective breath. If you will turn your attention to the map on the wall behind me, you will see that I am pointing at a town which used to be called Krassen.”
They watch him intently, but one older wizard decides to liven up the meeting a little. “Yeah? Well, what are they calling it now?”
The commander gives the older wizard a disappointed look. “Nothing. Nobody’s calling it anything, it’s been dodecimated.”
He punctuates his comment by taking a piece of trunkchar and crossing out the name of the town on the map.
“Dodecimated by whom?” asks a grammatically-proper wizardess wearing a pink hat.
“Not by ‘whom’--by ‘what’ is what you should be asking,” the commander says, pausing a moment to consider how to word his explanation, “The town of Krassen, according to the reports I’ve received, was destroyed by mechanickal soldiers built in the shape of men.”
One wizard at the far end of the table chooses this point to weigh in. “When I was a child, the Mortesians built intricate clocks, replete with tiny figures which would emerge from behind little doors and dance along these little tracks every bellchime--now these mechanists have turned their talents towards war machines,” he pauses to sigh wistfully, “it’s a shame we’ll have to destroy them, but it seems it must be done.”
Another wizard pounds his fist on the table. “Destroy them with what army? Our forces were halved in the Darrinian onslaught. We can’t defend the city and send them out to battle at the same time. It’s madness!”
A tall, striking wizard, unnoticed until now, clears his throat. The other wizards turn to him and he begins to speak. “So don’t send the rank-and-file. Those Sixth and Seventh Circles can barely light their own campfires. Keep the soldiers here to defend the city and send the Black Robes into Mortesia to wipe out the ones pulling the strings. These murderous boxes of springs can’t think for themselves, so the key will be to eliminate those who are doing the thinking for them, so to speak.”
The commander smiles at the stealthy wizard. “I appreciate your faith in Arcania’s ability to train mystickal wizard assassins, but the Black Robes are nothing but a fairy tale at best and a conspiracy theory propagated by our enemies at worst. I’d love nothing more than to ask those supercharged sorcerers of legend to zap on in here and save the day, but we can’t waste our time on fantasy, we must deal in realities.”
The tall wizard, still standing at the opposite end of the table from the commander, claps his hands together and the lights flicker for a moment. His hood flips over his face like a snake consuming his head and his gray robe turns black. Not the black of black fabric, but the black of a shadow in a dark room. He becomes a form devoid of light.
The shadow speaks to the wizards. “Of course we are a legend, but we’re no fairy tale. We are a sect comprised of those who study the ancient magicks of the gods. Your system of circles and hats holds no interest for us; we draw our spells on a more primal level, a level of--”
“This is ridiculous!” interjects a wizard with a white mustache.
The shadow spreads his fingers, then tightens them sharply into a fist. The mustachioed wizard explodes into his component pieces, showering the Wizards’ Council with blood and bone fragments. Aside from their initial gasps and stifled screams, nobody else feels the need to interject.
The shadow coughs. “Though I did not particularly wish to have to demonstrate the nature of our powers, I will not tolerate interruptions. Now, as I was saying, we wish to aid Arcania in its time of need. Commander, will you be so brave as to suffer our assistance?”
The commander swallows. “With powers such as you have demonstrated, it is obvious that you do not require mine or anyone else’s consent to do as you wish. I surmise that you must require something that this Council has the power to grant you in exchange for your support, otherwise you would not be here.”
A laugh comes from under the shadow’s hood. “Commander, it is clear how you were able to attain your post. You’ve more sense than half the heads under these hats. We do, in fact, have a small request in exchange for our services. You see, there is an object once housed the basement of this twisted castle, a trinket--a bauble, really--in which we have developed an interest. It is a small idol which superstition holds was fashioned from the cape of Thanos himself, stuffed with the dust of his bones.”
The commander nods. “So you wish to be given this doll? Clearly it is more than a bauble if one such as yourself has a desire for it. Still, I don’t know that we are in a position to deny you. I would only ask that you swear it will not be used to harm any citizens of Arcania,” he pauses a tick to turn his head and spit on the floor, “the rest of this cursed continent be damned.”
“Commander, you continue to demonstrate that you are a man of reason. However, the idol is no longer here--the recent attack on Arcania was merely a diversion to keep you all busy while it was taken.”
With their comrade’s blood still dripping down their faces, they gasp for the second time in as many ticks.
“Yes, I realize that news must be surprising. With a structure as large as this, I don’t suppose inventories are carried out very often. Nevertheless, here is what we, the Black Robes, are requesting from you, the Wizards’ Council, in exchange for our services as ‘mystickal wizard assassins,’ as you so charmingly put it: we wish for any book in any of the libraries of this vast monolith which explains what exactly the aforementioned idol is, and how it works. If it contains even a fraction of the power we suspect it does, there may be far more to fear than mechanickal men and their puppetmasters.”
A dowdy female wizard starts to blubber. “Th-there must be half a million books in the Knot! How will we ever find the one you’re looking for?”
The shadow holds out his hand, preparing to deal with her protests, but the commander raises an arm in an attempt to calm him down.
“Please. Forgive her. As a woman, she is clearly not used to thinking about problems rationally,” he pauses to glare at her, “there is, after all, a simple, if not exactly easy solution: we shall ask the Libros Majorum to find the book for us. After all, that’s his specialty.”
The wizards’ mouths drop open. The shadow nods his approval. “That seems like a reasonably suicidal course of action. I approve. Regardless of how you accomplish it, you have twenty-four bellchimes to find me a book regarding that idol. If it takes much longer than that, the clockspring soldiers will overwhelm this city and you won’t have our help defending it.”
“You shall have your book,” the commander says.
The shadow’s head points at each of the wizards in turn, giving the impression that he is looking at everyone present. “Tomorrow shall be a day of destiny. Let us all try to fill our roles admirably.”
With that, the shadow turns and takes a few steps towards the wall, passing through it.
A male wizard wearing a tall fez focuses his gaze upon the commander. “And how do you plan on speaking with the Libros Majorum?”
The commander nods gravely. “We have half a million books here. The Librarians are
constantly borrowing and returning books to the libraries in this megastructure, and they maintain detailed records about our books. If this place gets leveled, the Librarians will lose access to an irreplaceably large chunk of the world’s knowledge. From what I know of the Libros Majorum, nay, what I’ve heard of him, I’m sure he would not like to see these wonderful tomes disappear forever.”
The fez-wearing wizard nods gravely. “From what I’ve heard of him, he doesn’t seem to be a person to make demands of.”
Seductive Silence Page 4