After dinner, Yan finally came to find Corenn, a knowing gleam in his eye. The Mother followed him, filled with curiosity. She had imagined many ways this encounter might go, but she had never dreamed that her student would teach her a lesson in magic.
Bowbaq couldn’t help but blush as he watched Corenn take her place across from him. He was convinced that last night’s discussion between himself and Yan had been very impolite.
Corenn had been hoping that she would find the room where they had been hiding out, but this one had no special or unique furnishings, other than the cat, Frog. Bowbaq and Yan hadn’t spent all that time just talking, had they? What could they possibly talk about for an entire day?
The young man confessed to the Mother that he had let his mind focus on Grigán’s, without explaining his reasoning. It was best he kept that explanation secret, because the Mother was sufficiently shocked by the first part of the story.
“That was stupid and thoughtless, Yan,” she said, without anger. “What were you playing at? If you had tried to manipulate his spirit, even just temporarily, you could have killed him! You have so much to learn . . . And, you tried to perform magic on a human, something even I have never tried!”
“I’m sorry. I regret it,” the young man confessed sincerely. “I know I was wrong, but don’t we say that mistakes lead to discoveries, and the mad make history? Well, I discovered something,” he said with a smile.
The Mother held back the rest of her lecture, saving it for later. For now, she wanted to listen to his story so she could better choose her words at the end.
“As I was concentrating, I saw something,” Yan said. “It was no longer Grigán, or rather, it was him, but in symbolic form. It’s a bit difficult to explain. Until now, when I trained with a coin, I perceived a shapeless mass, like a pile of sand I could modify at will. With Grigán, it was much more complex. You could almost say it was a . . . a kind of sphere.”
Astonished, the Mother stood up. If she hadn’t known Yan so well, she would have thought he was lying. “What are you saying?” she asked.
“Um . . . yeah, a kind of transparent sphere. Did I do something wrong?” The young man’s face showed a genuine fear.
“What was in this sphere? What did you see?”
Yan hesitated before responding. He couldn’t tell if his story was making Corenn angry or joyous. The sphere was only the introduction to his revelation!
“It’s a bit bizarre. I think I must have imagined most of it. There was a kind of pyramid, made of ice on sand. Flames leapt from the sand and were melting the ice, which created a fog at the top of the sphere. I thought I must have been seeing the four elements. Or, rather, my interpretation of the elements.”
“And the sphere represented the recept, the degree to which any object will receive magic,” the Mother exclaimed with a smile. “You are exactly right. You saw the Sublime Essence!”
Yan breathed a sigh of relief. Luckily, he hadn’t been speaking nonsense. The exact opposite, in fact; it seemed like excellent news.
The Mother paced around the table to calm herself and gather her thoughts. Yan could tell she was disturbed.
“What does it mean? You never brought it up before,” he asked.
“I would have in some future lesson, but it wasn’t anything pressing. It is only a theory. Some of the greatest mages of ages past described the Sublime Essence exactly as you just have. It took them their entire lives to reach this spiritual level. Their entire lives, Yan.”
The young man opened his eyes in surprise. It hadn’t seemed that difficult to him. What would Corenn say next?
“The Sublime Essence is only a mystical interpretation, with no logic to the average person. But for the rare magicians who perceive it, all describe it in the same way, which speaks to its importance. It’s the greatest proof of the power in your Will, Yan,” the Mother said with clear admiration.
The two magicians stared at each other for a moment, each one feeling gratitude, hope, and some fear at such power.
“Sorry, I didn’t understand all of that,” Bowbaq interjected. “So, is Yan erjak or not?”
“What!” exclaimed Corenn.
“I tried to explain to him how I do it,” the giant explained. “And I tried to explain how he uses his magic. But neither of us dared to try it. Do you think it’s possible, Corenn?”
“What are you talking about!” the Mother cried, not ready to believe it.
Yan responded, “About Will, of course. Bowbaq, in his own way, is a wind specialist. You could certainly teach him how to work with earth, and he can equally teach us how read minds and spirits!”
Corenn looked at the young man’s face, then sat trying to concentrate. Yan had just disrupted all of her understanding of magic, her domain.
“I had the idea when I brushed Grigán’s Sublime Essence,” her student continued. “It seemed to me that I touched his mind. If I had gone any further, I could have seen his thoughts. I could have traveled in his dreams.”
“He asked me to explain how I work. It was very difficult for me to find the right words, but Yan said that he had done something similar. Corenn, do you think he is an erjak?” asked Bowbaq.
The Mother’s gaze flitted from one to the other. They looked like two oblivious children, playing with a new toy.
“Do you even realize that you may have just revolutionized magic?” she responded, smiling.
Bowbaq worried that it might be impolite, that it would bring him misfortune. Yan, confident, waited to hear his teacher’s words.
“The element of wind has always been the least understood. It is the most complex discipline. Who would boast to understand human emotions, the soul, the wandering spirit, dreams, death? Until now, most magicians claiming to be masters of the wind have been illusionists. They interfere with the mind to temporarily deform perceptions. At this small feat, they excel. I was going to teach you how to accomplish this small task, Yan. But you, you have gone much further. You saw the Sublime Essence. You are strong enough to completely grasp the mind in its entirety. So, by logical extension, you must be an erjak,” Corenn said.
“I don’t know or see any of those things,” Bowbaq reminded her, “and yet my power works just the same.”
“Yan’s is infinitely stronger,” Corenn explained, her tone turning serious. “In theory, he could do much more than read minds. He could control them.”
A heavy silence followed the Mother’s response. The idea hardly filled Yan with enthusiasm. Magic doesn’t put you above others, Corenn had told him; it makes you responsible for them. On the heels of this revelation, his responsibility had just grown immeasurably.
“This means that you also can become a magician, Bowbaq,” the Mother noted. “I can teach you, if you would like.”
“Do I have to?” the giant asked shyly.
“No, of course not!”
“Well, I would prefer not to, friend Corenn. I’m scared I wouldn’t understand it. And it seems far too dangerous.”
His companions didn’t need to lie to him. With even half of Yan’s power, any error could be fatal.
The door swung open suddenly. Hulsidor stuck his head into the room and rudely warned that anyone not outside in two millidays would stay in the mansion tonight.
The heirs gathered their things and left the room. Sapone’s hospitality would extend no further. Nonetheless, Corenn took the time to counsel her student. “So much power brings an equal amount of risk, Yan. Promise me, you won’t try something like that again without me?”
“Don’t worry, Corenn, I’ve learned my lesson.”
“Another thing, did you actually read anything in Grigán’s mind? Or did you just think you could do it?”
He hated to lie. But despite his youthful naïveté, he knew it would be a bad idea to reveal Grigán’s thoughts.
That he had been thinking of a woman. Not Corenn, but a Ramgrith.
The librarian had scribbled intricate, mysterious symbols all ove
r his face, hands, and arms. He wore the upper half of a mail coat under his clothes, along with a steel cap held on his head with a chain. Lastly, he strapped to his back a broadsword nearly twice as long as Grigán’s scimitar.
“Do you really think you’ll need that thing?” Rey asked, letting his scorn show.
“Of course I will,” Hulsidor responded seriously. “How do you propose a librarian get any serious work done without a long sword?”
“Of course,” the actor said, trying to take him seriously.
The librarian shrugged his shoulders and left the manor out the back door, as Sapone had asked him to. The heirs followed.
“This Rominian is crazy,” a smiling Rey whispered in Lana’s ear.
The Maz couldn’t understand why this so amused her friend. She checked to make sure the belts on her clothes were firmly tightened. It was the first time in fifteen years that she had worn anything other than her priestess’s robes.
“It’s foggy,” Hulsidor mumbled to himself, as he waded through the rising mist. “It will be easier to get through the city, but the scare-shouters will love it.”
“Are those ghosts?” Bowbaq asked, already fearful.
“One type only. There are also the stranglers, the moonshiners, the skull-crunchers. Oh, and the screamers. I hate the screamers. Try not to disturb one.”
The giant wanted to offer to watch the door. Human adversaries, he had learned how to deal with, even the Züu, but to face ghosts—that was another thing entirely. The murky air enveloping Romine did nothing to comfort him. The same was true for his companions, who were speaking loudly to hide their fears.
“But why do the dead gather there?” Rey inquired, trying to lighten the mood. “They have nothing better to do?”
“Why don’t you ask them?” spat the librarian. “It’s said that they infested the library when my ancestral colleagues dug so deep into the Deep Tower that they found the old Romerij library. When they first opened the old library, they were joyous, and crowds tried to enter. Shortly thereafter, people started to go missing. Bodies vaporized in the hallways. If you ask my opinion, that’s when they should have closed off the cursed hole. Instead, they waited two years and had to wall off the entire building.”
Grigán and Corenn shared a knowing glance. All of human knowledge . . .
Lana asked timidly, “Are these ghosts actually dangerous?”
Hulsidor stopped and stared at her for a moment. “If you don’t believe me, we will not go down. The Tower is not a library like any other, you know. We’re not taking a leisurely stroll down there. We might even have to fight.”
“Really?” Grigán couldn’t stop himself from saying it, before he diplomatically assured Hulsidor, “We will do our best to stay out of your way, Master Librarian.”
The Rominian started to walk again, sulking; he wanted to keep arguing but was smart enough not to try a Ramgrith warrior.
“What can a weapon possibly do to a ghost?” Yan asked. “Since they are already dead.”
“It does enough damage to keep them at bay,” said Hulsidor. “It’s usually fine if you keep an eye peeled for them. Except for the leeches, of course. You better hear them early enough to flee. On the fifteenth floor they’ve already lost three men. And the farther down you go, the higher you have to climb to escape. Sometimes I envy my first-floor colleagues, but their books are useless.”
“What does this ‘leech’ look like?”
“I have no idea. You only have to hear them scream to form an image of their fangs. If I order you to run, trust me, and run to the exit without looking back. Some curiosities are best left unexplored.”
Yan nodded thoughtfully at this wise advice. He had been thinking about it a lot recently.
The young master woke. The soldiers called him Young Diarch, though none of them understood the word. Their ignorance was no matter to him. All they needed to understand was that Gor the Gentle bowed to him, which was enough to command their respect, their admiration, and a certain bit of superstitious fear.
They said he must be the High Diarch’s son. Some thought that he and the High Diarch could very well be the same person, as one was always cloistered in his tent—or in his chariot, when the army was marching—and the other never removed his helm. Those who spread such rumors learned to regret it when they were bound to the wheel. The High Diarch heard all rumors.
The young master stood and slowly walked toward the concubine encampment. His friend was calling him. There was no need to send a messenger. They spoke as they always had—mind to mind. Despite the distance, a single voice rose above the din of thousands more.
Two gladores of his elite guard followed him at a respectful distance, having learned long ago to stay out of his way. Speaking to the young master was forbidden, and he returned their silence in kind. It was best for the gladores to make themselves as scarce as possible, erasing themselves almost entirely. Their presence was useless—no one would dream of attacking the Young Diarch. The gladores were there only to lend him an air of prestige.
The bodyguards became aware of their destination only as they arrived, and they watched silently as the young master entered one of the last buildings left standing after the army’s most recent attack. A new set of slaves were housed inside. Some would be added to the ranks of the High Diarch’s concubines. The others could only rejoice. As slaves, they could hope to survive many more moons, with any luck from the gods, whereas most of the concubines killed themselves after a dékade or two.
The atmosphere was heavy with sweat and fear. Inside the chamber, six women were huddled along the farthest wall. Two had already died, while a third lay on her side, her eyes frozen in place, drool running down her cheek. Their rape was as much mental as physical.
The High Diarch, Saat, stood in the center of the room, ignoring the women’s pain, insensitive to their shattered lives. He was simply waiting for his creature’s judgment. So the young master probed the survivors’ bodies. It only took an instant. And he shook his head. No.
Saat lost his temper and unleashed it on the madwoman, who died instantly. The High Diarch had only pointed his finger, but that was all he needed to extinguish her spirit forever.
Violence alone was not enough to appease Saat, and he handed the other women to his creature, the Young Diarch, who prolonged their agony for more than a deciday. The gladores saw three slaves writhing in agony under the young man’s gaze. Saat admired the power seething from his creature, power already ten times stronger than his own.
He shivered in delight at how its power grew—and that it was completely under his control.
“We’re here,” the librarian announced, to no one in particular. “Try not to make too much noise.”
“Why? Do you think the ghosts are sleeping?” Rey said tauntingly.
“The ghosts? I’m not sure, but definitely the guard,” an irritated Hulsidor responded. “We are about to walk right in front of his house, so be quiet!”
The heirs crept past the guard’s dark and quiet abode without a word, each step drawing them closer to the Deep Tower. On the horizon they could see the structure. Only five stories tall and in a state of neglect, it was hard to distinguish from all of the other fog-engulfed buildings in the neighborhood.
Yan watched closely as the librarian approached the library. The Rominian kept his eyes fixed on the walled-in windows and seemed ready to flee at the slightest sound.
“Can the ghosts come out of the Tower?” the young man asked.
“I have no idea, actually,” Hulsidor admitted. “They have never done so during the day, but does that prove anything? At night, they are bolder. Maybe a leech is waiting for us, right behind that door!”
Corenn asked, “How do you know they become bolder at night?”
“They throw my floor into chaos. They can throw around more books in a night than I could put back in a dékade,” said the librarian, a hint of scorn in his trembling voice.
“Well, won’t
that be great for our research,” Rey commented.
The main door was decorated with the crowned eagle of Romine. Hulsidor stepped to the right of this entrance and led the heirs to another door, less imposing and more discreet.
“The grand entry is completely blocked off,” he explained. “Even if someone found the key, I’m not sure they would be able to open it.”
The other entryway was more practical. It was a simple wooden door with a small stair, leading directly to the floors below and the Deep Tower’s caves.
“It’s an entry meant only for librarians,” Hulsidor clarified. “I mean to say, that it used to be, before.”
“What’s written on the door?” Lana asked.
Even though the script was perfectly written, the Maz had a hard time with the complicated Rominian alphabet, as did most visitors to the Old Country. Hulsidor translated for her without looking at the text.
“What do you think it says? It’s a ban, by royal order, doubling as a warning. I suppose that, despite this, you won’t change your mind?” he asked, with little hope.
Corenn shook her head after looking at the script. She knew enough Romine to confirm their guide’s translation.
“Too bad. Then we will descend,” he said. “I will go first, but you won’t want to block my exit. Think of the ghosts as a pack of wolves: If you show them your fear, they will attack. If you are aggressive, they will attack. Don’t speak, whisper. Don’t run, walk calmly. Avoid them if you can, but don’t look away if they catch your eye. If one is bothering you, walk away slowly. If they continue, come find me and then come back up. If they start to sing, or if there is a funny odor, it’s because they are hungry. Watch your back while you are in the Tower. They sing to signal a group attack.”
Shadow of the Ancients Page 6