by Alia Luria
“Figures,” she muttered. “I should have guessed that blockhead has a family entry.” She opened the book to SainClair. The family crest was an owl sitting on a lotus flower. “That crest looks very familiar.” She turned the book over in her hands. “Ha!”
The author must have rather liked the SainClair crest. After flipping back to SainClair, she looked through the list of names. She didn’t think anyone had ever told her SainClair’s first name. Could any of these dusty old names be his? The very last line caught her attention.
“Jayne!” She exhaled sharply.
One of the SainClair ancestors had Jayne as a first name. How much would that irk SainClair? Jayne SainClair had a sibling named Thaddeus. That was where the line had left off in the description. It was odd that no dates appeared by any of the names, but there was a lot about this book that was odd.
Between the dank cell, her bout of crying, and her inadequate access to a handkerchief, Mia’s nose was running unabated. A tickle hit it just then, and before she was able to cover it with her sleeve, a large sneeze erupted, spraying indelicately across An Exhaustive Genealogy of the Families of the Realm.
“Oh, blast me to the Core!” she yelled, and patted at the page with her damp, nasty sleeve.
Brother Cornelius wouldn’t be happy if she ruined this archival tome, boring topic or not. Fear gave way to full-on panic when the phlegm of her sneeze soaked into the page and the ink started to fade and change.
“No, no, no!” Mia flipped through the book, but words were fading all over the place. “What in the name of…”
She turned back to the title page and with continuing horror looked at the fading text. The ink shifted, melting into a puddle and reforming before her eyes. She blinked, mouth agape. The title now read Compendium.
Below that, she read aloud, “Alpha Level activation coding complete. Please state your name.”
As she spoke, the text changed again, and an invisible hand inked in additional words below the ones she’d just read aloud.
“Affirmative,” she continued to read. “Please state your name.”
She paused for a moment. “Mia Jayne,” she said, suddenly embarrassed about speaking aloud.
It was one thing to talk to herself, but it was something entirely different to talk to a book. If she wasn’t going daft before, this very well could be proof of an acceleration in her deteriorating mental state.
The book’s text updated itself again. Name acknowledged. Welcome to Compendium, Mia Jayne. Your profile has been created.
“What is this daffy book?” she asked, still staring at the title page in disbelief.
The text in the book obliged her question. Compendium at Alpha Level is a voice-activated knowledge acquisition and storage tool coded to your current profile. Please proceed at your convenience.
“What do you mean by ‘knowledge acquisition’?” she asked, dubious.
Compendium has access to a collection of information that can be searched at your command. It is ready to assist at your convenience.
“What kind of knowledge?”
She probably had gone insane, alone in the dark, but even if she could believe her eyes—and if this book really was doing what it appeared to be doing—if it was an ancient volume, how much could it know about anything current? It had to be archaic and full of misinformation.
Compendium has access to information pertaining to history, politics, engineering, botany, literature, genealogy, and many other topics. Please specify your desired criteria at your convenience.
“Can you stop doing that?” she asked.
To what are you referring? the booked wrote back with an elegant flourish in its script.
“That ‘at your convenience’ thing. It just seems cumbersome. And please stop referring to yourself in the third person. It sounds condescending.”
The phrase “at your convenience” is appended to certain responses to create the feeling of politeness and understanding.
“Well, it irks me,” Mia said. How embarrassing that her first conversation with a book was to complain about its attitude. Its tone was really bothering her, though.
Please confirm that I am correct when I state that you are requesting that I not be polite, the book wrote.
Mia would be blasted if that book wasn’t just a tiny bit snarky. She smirked a little.
“Be polite,” she said. “Just don’t be overly polite.”
Please provide more specific parameters, the book printed out.
Well, it wasn’t being polite anymore; she would give it that.
“Never mind,” she said. “Tell me the history of the Order.” Trick question! She congratulated herself mentally. After all, this book predated the Order.
Accessing the Network, Compendium wrote. This may take a moment.
Yeah, right. To her shock, the pages began to populate with information, including a timeline, cleric roles, bylaws, branches, major players, and many other subjects related to the Order, the scope of which encompassed surprising detail.
“How is this possible?” she muttered to herself.
Please provide additional detail in your query, Compendium responded.
She rolled her eyes then decided it might not be a bad idea to ask the book.
“How is it possible that you have information about the Order when you’re older than the Order?”
Compendium reconfigured its text again, and the information about the Order receded into its pages. I am Compendium, the book scribbled out.
Mia rolled her eyes again.
I am an information resource. The timing of such information is irrelevant.
“How do you learn this information?” she asked.
My apologies, Mia Jayne, Compendium jotted in its elegant hand. You haven’t unlocked sufficient access to that information.
What in the Core did that mean?
“So can you can tell me information that hasn’t happened yet?” she asked, her mind reeling with possibilities.
Negative. My data is based entirely on factual information in existence as of this moment. I can provide information of the present, but I cannot foretell the future. I can make projections based on past information, but these are inherently speculative in nature.
“Can you only show me text?” she asked, pondering the cryptic responses the book was giving her.
Negative. I also can provide drawings and schematics.
“Show me a map of Lumin.”
Mia expected a tiny ancient map to appear, but instead a grid manifested with numbers running across the top and letters running down the side.
“Where is Willowslip?” she asked.
It spans E4 to E6 on the grid, Compendium replied. Would you like me to enlarge those tiles?
“Please do.”
The ink blurred against the page as if it had been doused with water, and the image zoomed in. All of Willowslip was mapped out in the small drawings. The alphanumerical system returned as well.
“Please enlarge D1.”
Compendium complied, enlarging the image further, until the little hammock islands of her home in the tropics to the southwest resolved in ink before her eyes.
“It’s so far away,” Mia whispered with longing in her voice.
The location you have designated is precisely 547 kilometers from your present location.
Compendium knew where she was located in relation to other places? Interesting.
“Do you have the schematics of the Compound?” she asked. Those might come in handy. She was still getting lost often, even after a full month as an acolyte.
Do you wish to view a topographical rendering or a planar outline of the level where you are currently located?
“Topographical.”
An intricate drawing simulating the elevation inside the mountain was rendered on the first page. Again there was an index allowing her to call out any section she wished to see in greater detail.
“Please provide a greater description of
my location,” Mia said, instead of bothering with the letters and numbers
Compendium shifted again and sketched out drawings of the cellblocks and the tunnels leading to them. You are in the upper cellblocks of the brig, Compendium wrote.
“There are other cellblocks?”
Affirmative. A maximum-security dungeon is located three levels down.
“How many levels are there in the Compound?” Mia had firsthand knowledge of four separate levels but suspected there were more. It was hard to tell because of the way the passages were situated.
The Order’s facility has fifteen separate elevations, Compendium replied. It then qualified its response. Some levels overlap in elevation, so I have elected to respond in terms of elevations rather than levels per se.
The Compound was much larger than Mia had suspected.
“Show me the schematics for the chamber containing the elders,” she said, itching to see how the Order harnessed the power of such massive trees so deep inside a mountain.
A complex diagram drew itself onto the pages of Compendium. A grove of trees stood in the center, their trunks very large and containing many heavy branches heaving skyward. The trees were so large they actually tunneled up through the mountain just as Cedar had speculated in their earlier conversation. A massive cylindrical shape had been cut in the center of the mountain, through which the arboreal elders grew. They stretched right up and out of the top of the mountain. They also branched out into various smaller tunnels like a honeycomb.
“That’s amazing,” Mia said, in awe of the drawing. “It’s like the entire Compound is situated in a volcano with the elders grown up through the crater.”
That is precisely correct, Compendium chimed in helpfully. Thousands of cycles ago, where we sit now, an active volcano existed. It is now dormant, and after the last eruption, it filled with mineral-rich water that seeped into the crater bed and created layers of moss. For 656 cycles, the Order has been cultivating this mountain and the elder trees growing through it. Over hundreds of cycles, the people of Willowslip have forgotten that the mountain was ever a volcano, and it appears, for all intents and purposes, that the Compound is like any other flora-covered mountain in the near vicinity. Its Crater Grove remains a secret, except to those trusted among the Order.
And now me, Mia thought. “That’s really amazing,” she repeated. “I have to see it for myself.”
Compendium composed a map from the cells to the Crater Grove’s entrance.
“Thank you,” Mia said, and yawned. In the excitement of discovering Compendium, she had almost entirely forgotten that she was a prisoner in a cell in the Order’s brig and that she not only had missed the Gathering but also likely would be questioned as a spy on the morrow. It was ridiculous, but she took comfort in the stilted words and arcane language of Compendium’s text. An ancient artifact gathering dust—or not actually gathering dust at all—on a bookshelf for who knew how long had sprung to life in her hands. Now active, it hummed almost inaudibly and remained soothingly warm to the touch.
“How long has it been since you were last active?” Mia asked, the strain of the day finally catching up to her.
Six hundred fifty-four cycles, replied Compendium.
“Wow, you must have been really bored” was all she could think to say in response.
It was the last thing Mia said, and she promptly fell sound asleep on the cold, smelly cot in the brig with Compendium resting open on her chest.
13 The Network
Lumin Cycle 10152
“So it finally happened?” asked Dominus Nikola Draca. He rested a hand on the large console and felt the energy pulse through its thick surface. “An unknown device has accessed the Network?”
Nikola and Moritania stood in the bowels of the Compound, below the living quarters, below the kitchens, below the Crater Grove even. The room was dark and damp and warm, with vines curling among the roots that covered the walls and snaked along the ground and up along and under the large console. Its smooth surface was etched with faintly glowing blue lines displaying symbols, text, and numbers, most of which Nikola didn’t directly concern himself with. This was Moritania’s purview, the Deep Compound.
“Yes,” said Moritania. She frowned and rubbed a finger across the surface of the console, as if lost in thought. “But we don’t know what it is. Its identification signature is locked. See here? Something is drawing energy.” She gestured to a blinking blue ideogram in a line of identical but darker ones. Nikola could almost see it sucking energy from the Network as it pulsed steadily.
“How can that be?” he asked. In his many cycles as head cleric, nothing had accessed the Network except the Compound itself and certain other devices known only to a select few clerics, and those few clerics were Moritania’s engineers down here in the Deep.
“We really don’t know,” said Moritania. She rubbed her eyes in frustration. “As you’re well aware, nothing has accessed the Network in more than six hundred cycles. How this device was able to do so is a mystery.”
“Well, is this good or bad?” he asked. He had his opinion, but he wanted to hear Moritania’s.
She laughed oddly, as if he had made some terribly funny jest. “We’ve waited so long for something to happen, for the Network to show new signs of activity. But now that it has, I’m terrified. What if a hostile device has infiltrated us? Gamma Protocol was supposed to end more than one hundred fifty cycles ago, but we’re no closer to understanding why it hasn’t ended and what to do if it does. We’re severely handicapped without the key!”
“I understand your fears completely, Moritania,” he said, and frowned. “We can’t rule out any theory at this point, including that Clavis has fallen into the hands of the Druids.”
Moritania frowned as well and made as if to speak, but Nikola held up his hand.
“However,” he continued, “we must remember that no living person has ever seen the key, and its very description has been locked in the lost Network logs archive for six hundred fifty cycles.”
She sighed and nodded, her hands returning to the console before them. The blue light continued to blink in the dank dimness of the Deep Compound. “I’ll continue to research the matter,” she said. “In the meantime I can’t prevent this device from accessing the Network, but I can at least monitor the access logs.”
“What has it accessed so far?” Nikola asked.
Her frown deepened, and her brow furrowed. “A history of the Order and maps of the Compound.”
Nikola patted Moritania’s hand but turned his head away to hide his worry. “We’d best not tell SainClair of these developments. He carries too much guilt and anger as it is.”
14 The Dominus
Lumin Cycle 10152
Mia Jayne woke from a sound sleep to heavy footfalls advancing toward the door to her stone cell. Still groggy, she opened her eyes slowly. The quality of the light was unchanged, and she had no sense of the time. The footsteps came to a stop, and the heavy lock to the door unbolted with a hollow thunk. SainClair stalked in.
“Well, what do we have here?” he sneered. “Have we been doing a bit of night reading? Enjoying our leisure time?” His body was rigid, and his eyes glinted coldly at her prone frame.
Mia sat up quickly, trying to simultaneously close and stow Compendium in her sash. SainClair moved with speed that belied his age. He snatched the book from her and held it away from her grasping fingers. Bile rose in her throat, and she tried not to let him see her panic. He took a step back and leisurely flipped the pages.
“An Exhaustive Genealogy of the Families of the Realm,” he said, reading from the title page.
Only after she realized she was holding her breath did she emit a long sigh.
“What are you doing with this?” he asked.
She tried to think of a plausible excuse. Telling him that it was warm to the touch and that she’d felt compelled to take it probably wouldn’t elicit a positive reaction. She was initially relieved that C
ompendium had reverted to the relatively mundane tome on genealogical history, but she quickly panicked once again. What if she had gone daft? What if her entire experience the night before had been a feverish hallucination born from stress? Or worse yet, perhaps she had contracted the purple spores from Father and was now doomed to die a slow, horrible death as a prisoner in this Compound. She almost had worked herself into a full frenzy when her eyes slid back to SainClair’s angry, expectant face.
“I never knew my mother,” she said. It wasn’t a lie. “So I was trying to learn more about my family.” That statement also was true, even if not entirely so.
Mia hadn’t known her mother, and Father had almost never deigned to talk about her. She had used Compendium to try to look up her family. SainClair didn’t need to know that the effort had led nowhere fast. What sounded like a perfectly reasonable explanation, however, only enraged him further. His tall frame towered over her as he shook the book in a meaty fist, his pale face sallow in the backlit glow of the gourds set in the hallway. He laughed then, the sound malicious and cold and not at all jovial. He spat on the ground near the bed. Mia had no idea what had caused this reaction.
“And what did you learn about your family?” His question was more than a little sarcastic.
“Not much,” she squeaked. “The Jayne family name apparently isn’t all that illustrious.”
Her self-deprecating remark did nothing to quell SainClair’s rage. His face reddened in anger. “Well, I have my own theory,” he said, grabbing the shoulder of her robes and dragging her to her feet.
At least, he doesn’t have me by the neck, she thought. As it was, it still hurt to swallow, and she suspected she had some bruising.
SainClair dragged her from the cell into the tunnel that led back to the living quarters. He didn’t return Compendium to Mia’s possession, instead stashing it in his own sash.
“I think you were learning as much as you could about all of us, hoping to find some weakness that could be used to exploit the Order for whomever you have allegiance to.”