by Andrew Smith
“The Vestal language?”
“Yes. It only exists here, in our world, and it is only spoken by the virgins, the followers of Vesta, and of course, the goddess herself.”
“So Vesta just invented her own language?” Leila inquired, fascinated.
“So it would appear,” said Suki. “It is related to Latin, though there are only formal tenses, and there is a great tendency to elide. Sometimes whole sentences are strung together into single words.”
“So if you wanted to speak informally to someone, you would have to speak in another language?”
“Just so,” said Suki.
Leila got the vague feeling she was making fun of her for saying ‘so’ so much. She shrugged mentally. If she was teasing, it was obviously good natured. “How long have you worked at the Mulhoy?”
“So long ago that we were housed in a semi-sedentary lean-to,” Suki replied, and Leila had to laugh.
“This is fascinating. What else have you worked on?”
Suki paused to think. “One of my old favorites. Well, as I’m sure you know, there is Cantonese and then there is Mandarin. There exists a volume, it is kept in your museum, as a matter of fact, and it is written in a form of Chinese called Taiping. It was discovered in the nineteenth century. In the normal China, there was a rebellion that involved a rather strange Christian sect who had named themselves the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. I believe that the volume was written here, by their leader, and returned here upon his death.”
“Murdered?”
“Illness, actually. The museum showed me the volume when they could make no sense of it. It took me ten years to finally decipher it. Both the alphabet and the language itself is the strangest blend of old Mandarin and ancient Hebrew.”
“That’s bizarre. Incredibly cool, but bizarre.”
“I agree.”
“So what’s in the book?”
“The leader of the Heavenly Kingdom believed himself to be the second son of God.”
“Of course he did,” Leila interjected.
“That much he revealed to his followers, but the book, which I have dubbed the Taiping Manifesto-”
“Great name.”
“Thank you,” said Suki and resumed her original sentence. “-Is full of his further revelations about the nature of God and Jesus and some very creative doomsday prophecies.”
“Fun.”
“Yes,” Suki smiled.
“You know, that reminds me of something I’m working on now,” said Leila, who had been very preoccupied with the Standard of late. “There’s this thing called the Standard of Uruk.”
Suki’s smile froze and fell away. “Dear lord,” she said. “How did you hear about that?”
“Wait, you know of it?”
“Of course I know of it. I wrote an entire dissertation on it!”
Leila’s jaw dropped. “Go ahead and explain that, please.”
“I’ll assume you know something of its purpose,” Suki began
“That it was an attempt by the early Uruk neighborhood of the city to gain power and influence.”
“Right. It was the first attempt at written sorcery. Unlike attempts since, something about the Standard’s construction kept the sorcery contained, unless someone used it.”
“What? How?”
“I don’t know. But do not forget: the sorcery contained within the object is not only ancient, but one of the ancient Alta-Signas. It is quite possible that it chooses to contain itself.”
Leila swore under her breath.
“The Standard was stolen by the Ur neighborhood when they learned of its existence. I suppose that the people of Uruk expected this, because they did not use the symbols of any language that existed.”
“They invented one,” said Leila slowly.
Suki nodded slowly. “They could not read it, and so they hid it, buried it in fact, right under the noses of Uruk, so to speak.”
“Jericho?” Leila asked.
“Yes. How did you know?”
“Just a hunch,” Leila replied, thinking of the conversation Mme. Rumella had told her about with the Jericho cattle spirit.
“It remained below the wall for many years, until it was discovered by the monks of St. Jerome’s.”
“Oh no,” said Leila.
“Oh yes,” said Suki. “They were being pursued by the faction vying for control of the Alexandria Library, and so they fled to the edges of the city, and burrowed beneath the wall to hide. They found the Standard hidden there, and they came to me. I told them I could not read it, but I would work on it. It was not long before I confirmed their suspicion, that the symbols were in fact the words of ancient Alta-Signa.”
“And they believed that if such powerful magic could be contained safely in the Standard, that they should be able to write down some of the old sorceries that were being lost in the post-Roman chaos.”
Again, Suki nodded. “You seem to know how that affair ended.”
Leila nodded mutely.
“I continued work on the Standard for some time, careful to translate as much as I could, while writing as little of the spell down as possible. It was a few years before the Crusader came.”
“Wait, Crusader? Big, nothing-in-shining-armor type?”
“Yes. Now how did you know that?”
“He’s back in town.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, but continue.”
“There is little left to tell. The Crusader came, demanding the Standard be turned over to him so that he could take it somewhere safe. If you have seen him, you know why I did not argue. He never told me where he was taking it, or for whom. So why is he back?”
“You’re probably not going to like this...”
* * * *
Mme. Rumella had received little more information, though she had given out many more cookies. She was on the lookout for someone brazen. She scouted through the offices and old classrooms, making her way to the Extinct Languages Wing, until she found her target: a blond woman sitting with her feet on the desk, drinking coffee from a cup that informed the world ‘I’m blond, I’m angry, and I translate’, and poring over a piece of parchment that looked as if it had been assembled from scraps. Mme. Rumella found the mug extremely distasteful, but thought this woman was likely to talk to her.
“Hello, dear,” said Mme. Rumella, as pleasantly as she could, and gave her pretext for being there.
“Nice. Don’t suppose you brought any coffee with you? The stuff in the break room isn’t fit to burn. Actually it kinda is, which is even more worrying.”
“Combustibility isn’t a desirable trait in coffee, I hear. But no, sorry, I didn’t.”
“Ah well,” said the woman, taking another sip of her swill. “Cookie’s good though.”
“Well, I thought you could all use some comfort food,” said Mme. Rumella for the fifth time. “You must all be on edge after the abduction.”
“Oh yeah, it’s terrible,” said the woman through cookie. “Actually, I feel kinda guilty.”
“Oh?” Mme. Rumella said, unobtrusively.
“Last week, there was this Count Dracula type in a big cape outside, asking me if I was an expert on the ancient Near East, which I am, right? But I was creeped out cos he was all creepy, so I’m like ‘no, I do western Europe’. So the guy asks whether I know anyone who is, and I’m like, ‘sure, that guy in there,’ cos you can see Clem’s office from the road. I just want him to leave me alone, and I could swear Clem slept at his desk. I said the first thing that popped into my head. So I leave, but creature of the night sticks around. I thought it was weird, but I never thought the guy would kidnap Clem.”
“Of course you didn’t, dear,” Mme. Rumella murmured sympathetically, handing her a stack of cookies. “You take care.” She turned to leave, but then asked, “Could he do it?”
“What?”
“Could this man, Clement, translate something of a Near-East origin?”
The woman chewed thoughtfully b
efore replying. “Maybe. I mean, he is pretty bright, and basically every language in the eastern hemisphere is related on some level or another. He’d have to be here though. There’s nowhere else where he could get enough reference materials, since he’d pretty much have to teach himself the new language.”
“I see. Thank you,” she said, and exited.
Mme. Rumella headed back to the center of the building. The receptionist respectfully requested more cookies, which Mme. Rumella gave. Grace and Van walked in from the depths of the building. They were talking quietly. Van remained impassive, but from the distressed curl of Grace’s mouth, Mme. Rumella deduced that they had little luck. They greeted each other, at which point Mme. Rumella declared she would wait for Leila to announce her findings.
They wait wasn’t a long one. Moments later Leila came rushing up the hallway from the Imaginary Languages Wing.
“We should watch the building,” she said breathlessly
“What?” Grace and Van both asked.
“I said I think we should watch the building. Especially at night after everyone leaves.”
“I was having the exact same thought,” Mme. Rumella interjected. “Another of the linguists described the kidnapper as a ‘Count Dracula type’.”
“Lionel,” Leila said plaintively.
Mme. Rumella nodded.
“Did she inform the police?” Grace asked.
“Why bother?” Leila asked.
“She also said,” Mme. Rumella drew them back to the subject, “that he could translate the Standard if he could use the resources here. That is why I was going to make Leila’s suggestion.”
“Oh, it’s worse than that,” said Leila. “I met this woman downstairs, Dr. Marion, who wrote an entire paper on the Standard. It’s still here in the archives. If he had it, it wouldn’t take long at all.”
“Oh my.”
“You girls go home. I’ll take the first shift,” said Van.
A Return to Old Haunts
The women agreed and dispersed. Leila and Mme. Rumella returned to the shop to find Mary pulling on the door frame
“You’ll never get it out, dear: it’s attached to the wall.”
Mary looked to the pair. Her eyes were strangely wide, and watery. She blinked twice, much slower than normal. “I’m trying to locate your safeguards. I wanted to see whether I couldn’t add to them. Impressive as they are,” she added
“And you’re doing that by jiggling the door frame?” Leila asked
“I’m in an Incantrance,” Mary told her. “It allows me to see spells, but only spells in motion.”
“Oh. Wouldn’t it be more useful to see all spells?”
“Yes, and when you find someone who can do it, be sure to tell me.”
“Oh.”
“Mary, let’s go inside. We’ve much to discuss.”
“Alright,” said Mary, shaking off her trance. She led the way into the shop, where Mme. Rumella prepared a round of coffees while they told her of the revelations gained at the Mulhoy Institute
“Lionel? I knew he was up to something,” Mary steamed.
“I feel like such a fool. Perhaps the Standard of Ur was an unrelated incident?” Mme. Rumella suggested. “Because I still believe that Lionel no longer possesses the resources to hire underlings, especially ones that are actually good enough to pull off a normal-world robbery.”
“He could just be working for someone else, you know,” Leila told them.
Still, they both discarded the idea, saying it was a matter of pride on Lionel’s part.
“Then again, if he where getting something spectacular enough for himself,” Mme. Rumella mused.
“Since he’s back in the game,” Mary submitted, “perhaps we should check on-”
“By which you mean break into,” Leila interjected.
“-his old haunts,” Mary finished.
“He mainly worked out of that fortified temple,” Mme. Rumella recalled.
“A temple? He must have been powerful to hold on to a temple, right?”
“Well, it isn’t huge, and it’s rather remote.”
“It’s no Versailles,” Mary added.
“How remote?”
“Seventh, B.C.”
“What kind of temple is it?”
“It’s Greek. The Temple of Poseidon, if I’m not mistaken.”
“The Sanctuary at Isthmia? Oh my gosh, you’re joking! I didn’t know that was here in that city. I have to see it! Let’s go. Let’s go now.”
“Do you think she specialized in the Mediterranean area?” Mary asked, cheekily
“Something tells me yes,” Mme. Rumella remarked.
“But you said mainly,” Mary noted. “Did he operate from anywhere else?”
“There was a large house, very old. Well, not Hellenic old, but still, I would say it was British, somewhere not long after the fall of Rome.
“A temple and a mansion? That sounds a bit excessive. Hey, I don’t suppose King Arthur was born there?”
“No, pet, I believe that he was born in a castle.”
“That was joke, y’see...” Leila trailed off.
Mme. Rumella and Mary exchanged a look. “We don’t get it,” Mary said to her
“I take it King Arthur isn’t fictional then,” said Leila.
“Oh my no.”
“He used to live out in that part of town,” Mary expounded, “but he disappeared some time ago.”
“Not that that means he isn’t still alive somewhere,” Mme. Rumella added.
“Of course not,” said Leila.
“Which do we check first?” Mary inquired.
“I say the temple,” Mme. Rumella said. “He did only use the mansion for the one thing.”
“The thing you stopped him doing?” Leila asked.
“The same. It had immense safeguards on it, and may still. In which case it would be frightfully dangerous, but we ought to check it.”
“Um, why?’
Mary decided to field the question before Mme. Rumella could reply. “Because that’s where he went to perpetrate his last ancient-power grab and it appears that he’s working on a similar scheme now.”
“Can we go to the temple first?” Leila asked.
* * * *
Hunter Blue and Voz walked through the forests. They were at the very edges and could still see the city. It was the furthest that anyone even mildly concerned with living would go. Hunter and Voz had both been further. Today, right now at least, they were not looking for a fight, so they stuck to the rim. The forests were arranged much like the city: patches of land from here and there, all forest, all older than the most ancient buildings of Uruk or Ur. A pine forest fell away behind them and was replaced by something more deciduous.
The moving-walkway effect of the city didn’t exist in the forests. It was one careful step after another through all eight hundred miles of foliaceous diameter for those who would travel it.
“If Suerte is really as dangerous as you say,” Voz argued, “maybe you should get extra help.”
“No-one needs more help than you,” Hunter replied
“Come again?”
“I meant that with you as help, no other help would be necessary,” Hunter clarified.
“Oh. Still, I think you should talk to Mme. Rumella. You haven’t seen her in centuries: I think she’d want to hear from you.” Hunter shrugged. Voz pressed on: “Even if she is already busy on some other caper—”
“Which she probably is.”
“—she could still help. You said it yourself, that you still don’t know what he’s up to with this mayor thing. Mme. Rumella is practically famous for getting in the middle of things like that.”
“Maybe,” said Hunter.
“Come on. She’s your friend. You know you want to talk to her.”
Hunter had a particularly low tolerance for pestering. With a lot of people, he would have opted to break their nose with a quick back-fist to the face, but this was Voz. He only just met her,
but already it felt as though she were his favorite niece. That and she would just hurt him back, really badly. “Alright, we’ll go.”
Voz smiled girlishly. “Come on,” she said and grabbed him by the arm.
* * * *
Mme. Rumella had collected Benny and the four of them had set off purposefully for the Temple of Poseidon. Leila desperately wanted to see the intact temple, but still insisted on being neither first nor last should they ever have to walk single file. At the moment, they were walking two-by-two, with Mary and Mme. Rumella in the lead. Their Foci were already drawn, even though the were just crossing through the nineteenth. They had started out in the same century, but the temple in question lay in the city’s Third Quarter and they had to cross forward in time before they could go back.
“You notice who’s been conspicuously absent from our lives the past few days?” Mary asked. Mme. Rumella waited for her to answer her own question. “Delilah Runestone.”
Mme. Rumella paused and thought of the events of the past few days. “True,” she finally said.
“You would think that if she were serious about our not getting involved in this, she would do more than warn us once.”
“She did show up in that ridiculous disguise the next day,” Mme. Rumella pointed out.
“Alright, but it’s still not a great follow-up, is it?”
“No, and in fact I’m beginning to think that she was exercising a bit of reverse psychology on us.”
“You think she wants us to get involved? Why wouldn’t she just say so?”
“If a dark sorceress came to you and asked you for a favor, would you grant it?” Mme. Rumella inquired.
“I see your point. I just wonder what her part is in all of this.”
“Perhaps she knew of Lionel’s plan, and wanted to set two of the city’s notorious trouble-makers onto it,” Mme. Rumella suggested and they shared a smile.
Leila glanced briefly into the lowering autumn sun. She had paid to have her glasses enchanted so that they changed tone immediately depending on the light. Much quicker than normal-world glasses, but then it could be disconcerting when your field of vision kept getting brighter or darker depending on where you looked.
She and Benny walked a few paces behind the other pair.