Chapter 214 - Tales of the Past

Gaius Nezzar stood in the kitchen, hands wrapped around a mug of tea. He’d reactivated the illusion so that one of the walls looked like Mirian’s childhood home. 

“Where is this house?” she asked.

“Ten miles or so northeast. Not too far from Falijmali. Deep enough in the desert I thought it would be safe. But your mother was right. I should have never let those Baracueli scum get away with the first treaty violations. All it ever did was encourage them to keep doing it.” He sighed. “But who would have renewed war alongside me? By then, all my allies were dead. Ground to dust by war or time.”

She had so many questions. “You said you hid your true name. Were you always Atrah Xidi to them, or did you have another name before that?”

“You’ve read the histories of the Unification War?”

“Several, by now. Well, skimmed most of them.”

“And what did you think?”

“I’d burn half of them if they wouldn’t come back in the next loop anyways. Riddled with contradictions and what sources I did investigate didn’t say what the author said they did. Atrocious scholarship.”

The necromancer nodded. He held the teacup, but hadn’t taken a drink. Mirian was pretty sure he didn’t actually eat or drink anymore, but he seemed to like the ritual of tea. One question at a time, she told herself, though she was burning with so many. “Before I was Atrah Xidi, I was no one. I never needed another name. Gaius was good enough. I was, for most of my life, a historian. One who dabbled in necromancy not for power, but for answers.”

“That’s right,” Mirian said, a pang running through her. “I have this memory of saying I wanted to be a historian, just like you.” Only, Westerun had taken that from her. How much had warping her memory changed her? At least I kept my love of math, she thought. “I want to know your story,” she said.

Her father smiled. “Probably best not to tell the whole thing in one sitting.”

“The short version for now, then.”

He nodded. “I’ll try to keep it brief. Highlight the important parts, the parts that might be important to your mission. I was born, from what I remember, in a small village upriver of Alatishad.” He shook his head. “It was so different back then. Different in ways people don’t understand, can’t understand anymore. There were no spell engines, so there were no spellwards. Every able bodied man or woman in the village was required to do guard shifts in the watchtowers or maintenance around the palisade. Despite the precautions, myrvites killed someone at least once a month. Usually, in the farms along the river, but sometimes a river creeper would snatch a child from a room at night. And magic… it wasn’t the same. Now, they ship myrvite parts around Enteria. Every ink and organ is available, and alchemistry makes it so easy. In my time, spellbooks were worth more than gold. Collecting spells was the work of a lifetime. Getting the materials was only half the problem. Mage guilds and wizards’ towers kept their spells and artifice methods secret.”

“How old are you?” Mirian asked.

“Three hundred. Give or take. But I don’t feel a day over two hundred and fifty!” Gaius smiled. “I know, it’s a pretty poor historian who doesn’t know his exact age, but in my defense, the village I was born to never kept census records, and had no tradition at all for celebrating birthdays.”

“So how did you become a necromancer powerful enough that Baracuel still fears you?”

He snorted. “Doesn’t fear me enough, it seems. We’ll have to change that. Well, it happened slowly. When I was young and foolish, I figured out that I could sneak out into the desert and visit the old Persaman ruins leftover from the Triarchy, and that visiting arcanists would pay a fine price for some of the relics. Eventually, a wizard noticed I had a knack for finding the good stuff and not getting myself killed. She hired me to work on collecting old artifacts for her full time. Eventually, I realized that some of the libraries in Alatishad had old Persman records and maps, and if I used those, I could quickly find the best things. At first, I was only interested in the artifacts. Fragments of alchemistry equipment. Old spellrods. Extinguished glyph pieces. But then, I became fascinated by the history itself. I began to wonder, first about the Persaman Triarchy. How could an empire that had endured so long fall so far? I quickly realized that understanding necromancy was crucial to understanding the history.”

Mirian nodded. That was the historical consensus. “But you wanted to know the mechanism,” she guessed.

“Precisely. It was taken as axiomatic that necromancy was so terrible that its use destroyed the Triarchy, but that didn’t explain why such a civilization was able to rise above all the kingdoms around it, subjugate half the continent, and persist for over a thousand years. All the while, using necromancy.”

“So you started learning it.”

“Indeed. I had picked up a bit of arcane magic from serving the wizard. But it was in Mayat Shadr that I found a spellrod with a focus incorporated into it. I became obsessed with learning all I could about necromancy. I scoured libraries for books, scoured ruins for old scrolls and tablets. Eventually, one of the old restorationist cults got wind of what I was doing and recruited me, and then I had proper teachers.”

“Restorationists?”

“Wanted the Triarchy back, necromancy and all. Largely culled by Prince Fariba and her Great Guilds a hundred years later. Most of them moved north to hide in what would become Baracuel, then got purged by the Luminates. Anyways, that was all to come. At the time, we figured we could both help each other. The years passed, and I began to understand something of the nature of the fall. And here’s where you might be interested. The Ominian is dead, and yet, They live. The last Triarchs sought to resurrect Them. Whatever ritual they prepared, whatever method they thought to do so, all I can tell you is it involved mass sacrifice on a scale that chills the blood. They thought, perhaps, with enough souls, it could be done. Except, the necromancers at the time perhaps knew more about that soul than we do today. They knew a soul cannot be simply switched around. No amount of falcon souls could ever animate a person.” Gaius shrugged. “Most of the records around then, including of the magic, were deliberately destroyed. Whatever those Triarchs did, it caused a collective horror that changed the culture of the land for generations to come. The exile of what would become the Luminates. The rise of the Isheer. Mass rebellion, war, and the near-complete destruction of necromancy. I never did quite solve the history, because I became obsessed with another question.”

“The fate of the Ominian?”

“Not quite. The question I wanted to know was: how far could I trace humanity’s history?”

Mirian paused at that. Even a few years ago, she would have thought, ‘to the Cataclysm,’ because too much had been destroyed during it to say much. But then she’d seen those soul fragments beneath the oasis of Mahatan. “There are tales told in the remnants of souls. Tales in the stones of ancient ruins. Tales in legends,” she said.

“Yes. I began to seek them all out. It all led to more questions. That all non-Elder creatures share common ancestors is ancient knowledge, passed down as common sense for generations. But where did the idea originate? It is easily seen in the variations of birds and lizards, or the traits of flowers. But where are the creatures like humans?”

Mirian found herself nodding along. Talking of humanity’s origin had triggered an old memory. “Xylatarvia’s Great Ship. She descended from the stars on a boat made of vines.”  Priest Kier had given a sermon on it that she’d heard many times in the early cycles. There had been a strange reference to that it in the Grand Sanctum. She closed her eyes, trying to remember. Down this hall, in this room. “There was as cult of Altrukyst that had a secret room in the Grand Sanctum of Palendurio. It said Xylatarvia sailed her ship through a hole in Altrukyst’s chest. She then emerged from the moon. The strangest tale. It sounds like a fable for children.”

“Fascinating. I had not heard that one, but yes, I began to wonder about Xylatarvia’s great ship. I began to wonder why ancient texts never specified which moon they talked about. I began to travel the world, searching for texts and ruins. Torrviol was one such place you might be familiar with.”

“Indeed.”

“Someday, I’d love to tell you the full scope of my research and discoveries. The Praetorians destroyed some of my collection when they stole you away, but I still have some of the texts and notes. Suffice to say, all my journeys led me to one place: the Jiandzhi.”

“The Land of Spires. The only place as dangerous as the open ocean.”

“Yes. When I traveled, which was often, I usually took work as one of the mages guarding the caravan to earn a bit of coin, and so I’d done a lot of fighting. But to traverse the jungles outside the trade routes, I found myself in need of gaining power, simply so I could survive my explorations. As the years went by, I started to feel my age. I turned to necromancy to extend my life, which required new studies I could apply to my mastery of the arcane. Finally, I discovered something fascinating. Some of the spires in the Jiandzhi are of simple rock. Others, of steel and hewn stone.”

Mirian’s eyes went wide. “Structures from before the Cataclysm?”

“Yes,” he said. “But there was one thing I could never understand. If you map out the history of a thing, say, building architecture, since that’s what I found the most of, you can see iterations and advances. Modern Persaman architecture is based on Triarchic designs, which in turn were based on melding at least seven distinct pre-Triarchy styles found in the surrounding kingdoms. Go back farther, and you can see these kingdoms were in turn adapting Zhighuan geometry to local materials, which then slowly evolves into its own distinct style. The monuments in that era combine practical, cheap techniques with practices that were clearly imported. Travel to Zhighua, and you can see some truly ancient structures. Several of them copy pre-Cataclysm techniques.” He paused for dramatic effect then said, “I could find no examples of precursors to the Viaterria structures.”

Mirian considered that. “The Cataclysm wiped them out.”

“That’s what most historians will say, if you back them into a corner. But I’ve never been satisfied with that. There’s a discontinuity in the history. Pre-Cataclysm people had marvelous technology. And not Elder technology, either. My greatest discovery was a group of artifacts, hidden in a collapsed structure in the Jiandzhi. I hesitate to call what I found ‘necromancy,’ because that does a disservice to how carefully it melded the many arts. It wasn’t just soul magic and arcane magic, but some amazing technique that harnessed small amounts of electric energy to do things I still don’t understand. I also found the largest treasure trove of the Viaterrian language—Lorcadian—that anyone has yet discovered. I was then actually able to translate the instructions on and understand how to operate several of these ancient devices.”

“Fascinating. And you still have them?”

“Two of them. The other was smashed by the Praetorians.” Gaius’s face grew dark. “Barbarous thugs. They destroyed so many things that day. All irrecoverable.”

He sat there, and through the contortions of his face, she could see the hatred he still held. Then he washed the emotions away, his voice steady again. “It was some sort of medical facility, I believe. The healing arts they had—the most advanced soul magic we have still can’t surpass it. One of the devices, the one the Praetorians smashed, was used to preserve living tissue in perfect stasis. Useful for, say, preserving a thumb that was cut off to it could be reattached, or, if the Lorcadian texts are to be believed, transporting a living heart so it could be given to another.”

“I can’t believe I haven’t heard of such discoveries.”

“Ah, well. The crusade against necromancy was quite problematic for me. I never could get people to understand how valuable necromancy could be, and I never could hold my tongue around Luminates or the Isheer when they told blatant historical untruths. After a while, I ignored the wizard towers and academics, and had to stay in the shadows so the priests and mages didn’t purge me as they did so many other necromancers. There was a lot of hiding.” He frowned. “And killing. I don’t remember those years fondly.”

“So was the chthonic needle one of those Viaterrian artifacts?”

“No, that came later. I should say all these things took a long time. Travel took ages back then. No trains or spell carriages, you have to remember, and myrvites preyed on travelers along every route. By the time I returned from the Jiandzhi, I was seventy or so, and by the time I gave up swaying academia and hid myself in Alatishad where I could settle and do my research in peace, I was near ninety. Even with necromancy, I knew I would die soon. But I had too many questions, still. An old Persaman text discussed a device that could extend life far beyond mere spells, but it was only to be found in one place: the Labyrinth.”

Mirian raised an eyebrow. “You managed that. Without a time loop?”

“I did indeed. They didn’t have tri-point meters at the time, but I think I must have been an archmage by then. There’s something to be said about obsessive study. The chthonic needle was my prize from an Elder Vault,” he said, tapping his chest. “I got lucky. It was in the third one I opened.”

“Gods above. That’s impressive. I died a lot opening just one Vault. You know the locations of them? After enough time, the Vaults seem to regenerate their stock. Well, so says one text, at least.”

“I could give you their general area, though the Labyrinth’s no doubt shifted by now. Anyways, I still didn’t have a child at that point. Had never married, never settled down. Only then, at the end of my life, did I suddenly regret that. So I opened up the old Viaterrian device that could preserve tissue and…” He cleared his throat. “Preserved a living sample. For later. Just in case.”

“Oh my,” Mirian said.

“I knew I wouldn’t be able to do it after I bound my soul with the needle. I used what I’d learned from the techniques on the device to preserve as much flesh as I could, but it’s just preserved, not living. But it all worked out. There’s two-hundred or so more years to my story. More studies. A nasty encounter in the Jiandzhi that convinced me it wasn’t worth it to keep going there. Falling in love with this land and its people. Meeting with the Sixth Prophet. That terrible war. How I met Leyun. But I’ve told you what I think is the most important part for you as a Prophet to know—that somehow, these things I stumbled on in my journey—they’re connected to this moment. The Viaterria and their knowledge. The necromancy of the Persaman Triarchy. The secrets still hidden in the Jiandzhi. It’s hard to describe, because it’s a hunch based on centuries of study, but they must lead back to the Ominian. To Their missing Mausoleum. To the story of humanity. To the Cataclysm. To the narrow path up the burning tree the Sixth Prophet spoke of—the same one you spoke of with Ibrahim.”

Mirian’s heart raced at that. He saw the tree as well. I wonder—did it burn as brightly when there was so much time left before the end?

She wanted to know it all. She still had a thousand questions.

Gaius cleared his throat. He was still holding onto his tea cup. “I’ll be honest. I’m quite sympathetic to Ibrahim. I’d like to kill everyone involved in your abduction. Take their corpses and reanimate them, then parade them into Palendurio’s Parliament and explain to them the exact text of the treaty their ancestors signed and what I’ll do if they violate it again.”

A shiver passed through Mirian. He said it so calmly, but she knew he meant every word. He’s friendly to me because he’s my father. But he and Ibrahim are probably the only two people in Enteria who have killed more people than I have. “I’ll make sure justice finds them. Ibrahim uses the blade. In normal circumstances, it would be the right tool. But with the loop, there’s time. I can use a scalpel. Cut away the tumors. No more innocent lives wasted.”

“I pray that you are right. I find myself restless. I don’t get out as much as I used to,” he said, gesturing at the cavern walls.

“I want to learn everything,” Mirian said. 

Gaius smiled. He set his teacup down, the liquid still steaming, and stood. “I always did love teaching you. Then let’s have a lesson, my little lotus. First, let’s see what you know.”