Pyke had grown used to the Voice using strange, arcane terms to express calculations and probabilities. By now, he understood what was meant by the Voice’s ‘uncertainty’ being nearly as high as its estimate: it meant the Voice was guessing.
That’s a rather large margin for error.
Pyke witnessed a vision of a hundred-odd humanoid figures rushing, weapons held high, toward a mansion of similar style to the Last Spellbound House. In a flash, they vanished like words torn from the page of a book. The scene shifted, and the Voice showed him a group of short, squat humanoid beings with no hair or eyebrows. They wore leather coveralls, and were dumping refuse from wheelbarrows into a swirling portal in a rock wall.
“Pyke?”
Pyke shifted his attention to Jenna. As he did, the visions turned to wisps in the corners of his sight. “What?”
“Why do we call some things of magic ‘fiends,’ and others just… ‘Oddities,’ or ‘Relics?’”
“I’ll answer that, and another few questions. But if I do, you’ve got to tell me something for each question I answered. Do we have a deal?”
“Sure.”
“Simplest first. Relics are objects of magic which aren’t alive. They’re tools designed to transform the user’s Res, their life force, into an effect known as a Working. Oddities do the same, but are living beings, and can only use their own Res. A fiend is a convenient descriptor, which the Church and their Fiend Hunters define however they choose. Thanks to their use of the term, the most generally accepted meaning is that a fiend is any non-human creature with powers of magic, left over from the time of the Ancients.”
Jenna leaned forward, causing the floorboards she sat on to creak. “Then the stories are true? Before humanity ruled the world, there really were hundreds of species of people, all under the control of the Ancients?”
Pyke chose his words carefully. “Outside of the comet’s trail, there still are other kinds of sapience. Humans only rule here, in our little island of sunlight amid the Void.”
“Why don’t the priests allow questions about the Ancients, Pyke?”
Pyke stood, breaking eye contact with Jenna. “For the same reasons I won’t tell you anything about them. Some knowledge is dangerous to possess… and the danger isn’t just to oneself, it’s to all of humanity.”
Jenna pushed herself to her feet as well and glared at Pyke, placing her hands on her hips over her apron. “Why do you get to be so mysterious, with your magic serpent and your strange eyes and your secrets? What can you tell me about who you are, Pyke?”
Pyke sighed. “Nothing you’d want to know. I’m not the hero you think me. The assistance I gave you on the Old Road helped me almost as much as it did you.”
Jenna squinted at Pyke, evidently trying to narrow her eyes imposingly. Then, relenting, she sighed as well and let her features shift into the amused smile which seemed to come so naturally to her. “Well, if you’re sure. But you said it, not me: you’re a poor liar. And I reckon that doesn’t change even when it’s yourself you’re lying to.”
I suppose you agree, Pyke thought acerbically at his Voice.
Then why trust Jenna’s opinion? It’s not a stretch to guess she’s grateful enough to be overly optimistic about my character.
That’s a different kind of perception.
“It’s my turn to ask a question,” Pyke said, dismissing the Voice’s irritatingly reasonable attitude.
“Okay, go ahead,” Jenna said, lifting the lantern and raising the hood a little. The room grew brighter, and by the added light Pyke saw that the young woman’s gaze was focused intently on his eyes.
“First off, why are you staring at me like that?” Immediately, Pyke felt foolish for wasting a question on a moment’s curiosity.
Jenna maintained eye contact, but she was smiling. “Because they do strange things when you’re thinking. Do you know, I think the colour changes back and forth with your mood. Earlier, I’d swear they were glowing with moving colours.”
I should invest in a mirror after I’m paid for this rigmarole, Pyke told his Voice. And no more visions in others’ company.
“See, you’re doing it again! Your eyes just went blue-grey, and now the brown’s starting to show through again.”
“Thank you, I’ll keep that in mind. Have you heard anything about people disappearing from the House before now?”
“Well, I mean, there were always stories. But just tales. I never actually knew somebody who disappeared.”
“I need the details of these stories.” Pyke’s voice was sharper than he intended. “Imagine for a moment there’s truth to everything you’ve heard, and tell me when and in what parts of the manse— that is, the House— these disappearances are supposed to have occurred.”
Jenna’s expression changed from curiosity to trepidation. “You’re concerned. Your entire career is based on knowing things about magic, so if you’re worried, then I should be, too. Not a reassuring ask, Pyke.”
“It’s not intended to be. It would be wrong for me to try to reassure you about this House— I’d say fear is the most appropriate response to a place like this.”
Jenna shivered despite the warmth of Pyke’s coat under her apron. “The first story I ever heard when I started working here was about the Founders of the Last Spellbound House, the ones who discovered and explored this place some fifty cycles ago. They say there used to be five of them... but only two are ever seen now, and the story goes that one of the five disappeared on the day they arrived here. Everyone tells it differently, from those who say the House took one of the Founders as ‘payment’ for a century of safety, to others who whisper that the lost Founder fell prey to dangers… ones which still lurk in secret cellars or in the walls of the House itself.”
“Are there such cellars?”
Jenna shrugged. “Not that anyone I’ve talked to knows of. Of course, those of us who work in the dining hall, we’re... discouraged from going exploring.”
Yeah. Then Pyke realized he should echo the opinion out loud. “I consider that decision sensible. What other rumours are there about this place?”
“Just that people will occasionally go missing.” Je
nna’s gaze drifted to the ceiling as she tried to recall details. “The most popular stories say it happens when explorers go poking about the attic, or when they visit the corner of the House farthest from the dining hall. Aside from that, the tales never mention a specific place, just ‘somewhere in the least travelled parts.’ Every few cycles, an old myth resurfaces that a group of eleven Fiend Hunters once approached the House, and one just... vanished when no one was looking. But I’ve been working at the House for almost seven cycles and I’ve never seen a Fiend Hunter, so if that happened, it was before my time here.”
Pyke turned his attention inward. Thoughts?
“Umm, if you’re thinking of where to look first, maybe I can give you a suggestion?” Jenna’s eyes were on his again, Pyke noticed.
“What kind of suggestion?” Pyke tried to keep his expression guarded enough to hide his discomfiture at being read through the behaviour of his eyes.
“This place is more than a restaurant and inn. People come here all the time to study old things. You know, the kind of folks who look at ancient furniture to see how it was put together, search for secret passageways… or try to read from the books written in the old language.”
Pyke hoped his surprise didn’t show on his face. “Books in Old Ancient remain, even after a hundred-odd cycles of pests and mould?”
Pyke frowned. “And people come here to study what they understand poorly or not at all… that’s concerning. Why hasn’t the Antiquities Guild learned of this before now?”
“Because of exactly that question,” Jenna shot back, scowling as well. “Nobody wanted the Un-Guild turning up and telling them they can’t study any of this because it’s ‘forbidden.’”
“So there are secrets here I’m not meant to know.” Suspicion prickled at the back of Pyke’s neck. His usual intuition about threats or dangerous secrets was silent, and that bothered him. “Why did you really follow me, Jenna?”
“I wanted to come to you and tell you there are people working here whose job it is to give tours, gather information, help people find the knowledge they’re seeking. You’d have had trouble finding that out. The Founders make secrecy from your guild a condition of study.”
“Your superiors know? And they keep this hidden in spite of a Royal decree? Why are you telling me this?” Pyke’s mind was already racing to determine what ulterior motives Jenna might have. After all, she worked for people who profited from the Antiquities Guild’s ignorance. Then he did a double-take as he noticed tears running down Jenna’s face.
“Because I wanted to help you,” she said, her scowl dissolving into a look of dejection. “I just wanted… wanted you to feel as warmly about me as I do about you. You saved my life, and then you gave me your jacket, and you acted like it was nothing… and the whole time, I was too frightened and weepy and useless to make a decision! So I… I wanted to make it up to you, Pyke. And when I finally got up the courage to do it, you just… you just brushed me off, and told me I was in your way, and…!”
She buried her face in her hands and sobbed miserably, turning away from Pyke.
Pyke stood rooted to the spot. How do I handle this?
That’s not just useless, it’s discouraging. If you can’t calculate a response, how could I hope to?
Pyke cleared his throat and stepped a little closer to Jenna. He placed a gentle hand on her shoulder so as not to startle her, but she shrugged away his touch with an angry noise in between sobs.
“Jenna… I want to understand, but I don’t know how to figure you out,” Pyke admitted, with nothing to fall back on but helpless honesty. “I’m not used to dealing with people, and frankly, I’m not any good at it. Tell me what I can do.”
Jenna looked up, still sniffling in between ragged breaths. “Just tell me why. Why did you have to be so… so awful back there in the dining hall?”
Pyke’s stomach churned with a kind of regret he had never felt before. It wasn’t the floor-falling-out-from-your-stomach regret of realizing a botched attempt to repair a Relic had caused a minor catastrophe elsewhere in the city: he was familiar with that one. Nor was it the seeping regret of having closed a door too soon in one’s life: Pyke often felt he had joined the Antiquities Guild too early in his career. At such times, he wondered what his life would have been like without the Un-Guild’s ill reputation, not to mention its restrictive rules.
No,this was a new type of regret, one which told him he’d already risked ending something new and unknown before it had ever begun.
“I… I can only explain by saying that if I could do it over, I wouldn’t act the same way.” Pyke stared at the ground. “I was too wrapped up in my work, and I let it make me… single-minded, and callous. I lost sight of everything else.”
Jenna stepped closer to look up challengingly into Pyke’s downturned face, her sharp eyes searching his for sincerity. “Do you mean that? Or are you apologizing just to use me, Antiquarian?”
Pyke shook his head, keenly aware of how near Jenna’s face was to his. Unlike every other time another person had been this close to him, he didn’t feel threatened. “I’m as unfamiliar with apologies as I am with lying, I’m afraid,” he murmured, his eyes fixed on hers.
“Good,” Jenna said, and pressed her lips against his.
Her warmth was a surprise, but not an unwelcome one, and Pyke instinctively put his arms around Jenna’s shoulders. He was conscious of everywhere her body touched his: her forearms against his chest, her leg leaning ever so slightly on his thigh. There was a brief flicker of Jenna’s tongue against his lips, then she pulled away to stare up at him.
Pyke blinked.
“Oh.”
“Sorry.” Jenna’s cheeks reddened, but she didn’t break eye contact.
“Don’t be,” Pyke said. “I should be clear, I’m not here looking for…”
“Of course,” Jenna hurried to agree, “Right.”
There was a silence which seemed long, though it couldn’t have been more than a few seconds. Neither of the two seemed able to look away from the other.
“Last question,” Pyke blurted out, one more item of curiosity escaping his lips before he could contain it. “You still wanted to help me. You even followed me, right after I hurt you. Why?”
Jenna gave Pyke a tremulous smile and placed a gentle hand on his forearm. “Because I still have your coat, you damn fool.”
A drift of moving air disturbed the stillness of the hidden room. The draft heralded something new, something this place had not seen in a hundred cycles: wind, and visitors from a place whose air still moved. The book, open to the story of the centennial Gala, sat patiently on its pedestal under the dome of crystal. It had waited a hundred cycles to be read. It could wait a little longer.
The breeze made a slow pass around the room, and though it did not reach through the crystal, the memory of the open sky stirred the book’s leaves. Drawn by that memory, the wind whirled inward to coil about the dome, its sigh one of wistfulness for a time long past. The book flipped expectantly to the first page, as though it were ready for a new reader.
The tome was written in a dialect of Old Ancient designed for stark descriptions and concrete metaphors… yet its contents expanded that dialect, for they spoke little of technicalities. No: this was not a treatise but a storybook, o
ne which told of glory and wonder, of danger and struggle. Its first page was no dry introductory paragraph, but held the first scene of a tale which lay in wait to draw a reader’s imagination into a time long past: a time of war.
The pages near the book’s end had spoken of the Fae’s Gala of Excellence… but the tale’s beginning told of the War Eternal. The Fae, after all, had never been unopposed in their mastery of the Spellbound World and the Places Aside. They were stymied, confounded, and most of all fascinated by the beings they knew variously as the Driven; the Golems; or, most famously, the Dead.
This was the part of that war which was held preserved in the book’s first pages:
The three thousand, eight hundred and first cycle of the Fae Queen’s rule. The Pavilion of Glorious Warmaking at the headquarters of the Alliance of the Fae Courts
Atop a cloud-wreathed mountain, a Regent, two Generals, and an Admiral gathered around a hardwood table in a command tent. The table’s surface was contoured to form a detailed map of a valley river and the mountains to either side of it, and beneath the three-dimensional map spun thousands of tiny copper gears.
Of the four perusing the map, one was a ten-foot-tall Fae who went by Asah and who wore a slender human shape. Asah’s shape bore no indication of sex, the cream-coloured silk of their clothing no suggestion of gender.
Asah’s eyes shifted steadily through the colours of the rainbow as they gestured over the table, their arm trailing a sheer sleeve of iridescent cloth-of-Glamour. The Regent’s mantle of office was so thin as to be nearly invisible, save for a myriad of flowing textures which changed from moment to moment. Their gesture encompassed a collection of illusory four-armed figures which surrounded a bend in the river, grouped around a banner depicting a stylized gust of wind. “The forces of the Dead Lord Enviselas have destroyed the Many-Arm cohort guarding the ford. Marquis Swifter-Than-Wind calls upon the Alliance for aid.”
As soon as the Fae finished speaking, clockwork whirred within the table, and the contents of the map began to change. The four-armed illusions wavered like candle flames and vanished, to be replaced by the enemy: larger, green-skinned figures in heavy armour. The wind banner shifted as well, its design replaced by a skull with a ruby in one eye socket.
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