by Cory Huff
The roads leading off of this building went in four directions, including back toward the part of Atania where Liam and Sophronia lived. He could see the gap in the forest ahead where the road led back into town.
He turned to Sophronia, jaw hanging open. Sophronia smiled. “I know. It doesn’t make any sense. It’s right there, and they can’t see it. Nobody could see it. But now we can. Come with me, I want to show you where I found the books.”
She took off at a brisk walk, Liam following, but continuing to glance back over his shoulder, trying to understand how this building could be there.
After another 10 minutes of walking South, passing building after building in various states of decay, they turned into another enormous stone building. The roof had some holes in it, and he saw what looked like burn marks. Sophronia led him into an entry way that was grander than anything Liam had seen outside of the Church of the Creator’s temple. The heavy wooden doors were open, leading into an enormous hall. The high ceilings were 15 feet up, and the floor was lined with a deep red velvet carpet. There were heavily lacquered, overstuffed chairs lining the hall covered in that same deep red velvet. They were made of some kind of heavy wood, perhaps mahogany? There were books. So many books that at first Liam had a hard time comprehending what he was seeing. This had to be the greatest library in the world - and it was rotting.
The books were in advanced states of decay. Sophronia led him down the hall, and as they walked by the books, Liam touched them, and pieces came away in his hands. Water, let in by the holes in the roof, had spawned green and black mold. The combination of moisture and mold had spread up and down the hall. A shelf crashed down when he tried to pull a book down. He jumped back and Sophronia said, “Stop that. Everything in this hall is ruined. There’s nothing here worth reading. All of the good stuff is downstairs in a vault room.”
Of course there’s a basement, thought Liam.
Sophronia led him to the end of the hall, where there was a great big door, made out of shiny grey steel, that hung open just far enough to squeeze through. Liam noticed claw marks on the edges of the velour next to the door jam. What had happened here? There was a grand staircase going up to another level.
They walked down the spiral staircase that was beyond the collapsed steel door. The walls were cool to the touch. As they descended, Liam realized that there was light, and it was emanating from the walls. Something within himself hummed, as if in resonance with the lights.
They came to a landing and another doorway. This time, there was another large steel door knocked off of its hinges. They walked on it to go inside the next room. This room had regular height ceilings, but was also carpeted with that deep red velvet. There were books lining every wall. A large number of them were missing, seemingly at irregular intervals, all over the room. But there were still hundreds of books.
Sophronia turned to him and said, “This is where we will find it. The right information to stop Mindee and the answer to this sickness that comes when we do whatever it is that we’re doing.”
“Great,” said Liam. “How do we find it? Also, I thought you said there was food?”
“There is food,” she responded. She pointed to a wooden barrel. “They left enough supplies of dried meat and biscuits to feed an army for weeks. I’m not sure how long ago all of this was abandoned, but the food is still good. Grab some food, and grab a book. You start over there, and I’ll start over here.”
Liam looked at the enormous number of books, thinking, there’s no way we’re going to find something before Mindee finds us if she knows about this place.
He grabbed the lid off of the barrel, picked out some dried meat, and turned to the shelves.
The dark robed figure, trailing black wisps of power, walked the dark street in Atania late at night. The moon was a quarter full, but the scant light it provided didn’t touch the darkness that radiated as it moved. Striding with a purpose, the figure had felt the surge in the Ogham. Time to find the Amhranaithe and make her tell what happened.
The figure strode into the woods, passing like smoke through the brambles, and saw that there were dozens of humans in the woods with torches. They were searching for someone. For multiple someones. The figure noted they were searching for Thomas and Sophronia. A small breath and with a slight gesture to invoke the Ogham, the figure walked among them unseen and unheard. Rustled branches were nothing more than the wind, and footsteps were figments of the imagination. Misdirection was a easy trick, and used little power. There was barely a twinge of nausea from the gaeas.
There she was. The Amhranaithe, Mindee, was hiding inside a hollowed out tree. She was wounded. A hand held out to her. She nearly yelled out, but was well disciplined. She took the hand, hesitatingly, and they walked out of the woods and into the empty house they kept for just such occasions.
The figure stood there, impassively, while she cleaned and wrapped her leg. She told him that this was the second time she’d been bested by the human woman. She spoke some nonsense about Blasmaigh? Right, the Amhranaithe thought their mission was a holy one. They blamed humanity for their own shortcomings and divisions. The ardor was tiresome, but useful.
The figure realized that she was still talking. There it was. One of the humans had tapped into the Ogham…no, two of them had done so. No wonder. Mindee continually refused to use her gifts, even though other Amhranaithe used the Ogham to fulfill their missions.
There had been too much of this in Atania. The figure turned and left, ignoring her protests of needing assistance. They were well past these kinds of allowances. It was time to take action on the Cumhneantach’s own terms.
The figure stepped outside and was one moment on the street in the city and the next striding through a series of buffalo hide tents on the Thir, the endless plains of grass that ran for hundreds of miles outside of Atania. With the ease of long practice, the figure ignored the nausea that cramped the stomach, a result of using that much power at one time. The wide open plains were home to roaming tribes of nomadic horsemen who followed the buffalo and warred with each other over territory. The wars were encouraged by the Cumhneantach. It kept their weapons and bloodlust sharp for when they were needed as a weapon.
The warlike nomads, keeping a sharp watch against their enemies, didn’t see the figure, any more than the hapless humans in the dark forest saw the figure. The guards were misdirected at the tent of their shaman and the figure strode through the tent flap. The shaman, a hard, cunning deceiver in the prime of life, was lying asleep in his buffalo and fox furs, next to a woman.
The figure spoke. It's voice was mid-range, deep for a woman, but high for a man. It had a distorted, otherworldly quality. “Awaken.” Despite the voice being no more than normal volume, it resonated with power and the shaman woke up. He saw the figure and immediately woke his companion. He told her to leave, and she fled the tent, confused, her dark, waist-length black hair streaming behind her as she clutched her gold jewelry and ornately embroidered clothing to her chest. She was someone important, but she was not allowed to view the black raven god.
The shaman saw the figure as a man covered in a shiny, black feathered coat, with cool blue, flat eyes filled with wide pupils. The figure looked at the chieftain sideways, much like a bird does. As the shaman left his furs and stood, a tattoo of a raven was visible across his back, its spread wings covering his entire back, from shoulder to shoulder. He knelt down, naked, in front of his raven god, surprised beyond words that the being he had preached about for so long had appeared in his tent. He shook with his surprise and suddenly very real piety.
The shaman had been preaching vigilance and the superiority of the Black Raven tribe for 10 years, like his father the shaman before him. Their job, his father taught him, was to use the promise of the Raven to keep the tribe together, to prepare for when they would go back to their ancestral home - once they discovered where that was - and take back what was theirs.
The magical figure knew all of this. The
line of shamans had been installed years before at the hand of the Cumhneantach as a contingency plan. Kept sharpened by war with the other tribes, the Black Ravens were a weapon held in ready against those who pierced the gaeas.
The shaman buried his face in a prostrate position, wild eyed, rethinking his life and what he thought he knew. He would be a true believer, a zealot, a useful tool. Time to put that tool to its first test.
“You have preached for years that your people would find their ancestral home and claim a shining city full of riches and gold. The truth is that you have only used this vision as a way to manipulate the people into supporting your lifestyle.”
The shaman nodded and babbled about dedication and worthiness.
“Another truth is that you do in fact have an ancestral home. Your people were among the first to settle Atania, the city on the ocean in the Southwest. You have an enormous estate in the woods in the Southwest corner of the city. That estate has a house that is decorated throughout with the symbol of your tribe, the black raven. Go and claim it, and slaughter any who try to stop you.”
The figure barely heard the shaman swear that it would do so as it turned and left, applying the Ogham and stepping from the Thir back to Atania, to the house. Mindee was brooding. She noticed the figure enter and awkwardly tried to stand. She started trembling at the effort it took her to stand as the figure loomed over her, staring.
“I won’t fail you again,” she said, through gritted teeth.
That otherworldly voice spoke up again, “No. You won’t. I’ve sent help. Tribal warriors will sow chaos. Use it to your advantage.”
Mindee trembled. Sweat poured down her face at the strain of standing with her wounded leg. She nodded. “How will I know where to find them?”
The figure was already out the door. Mindee knew better than to chase into the street, and didn’t think she could do any chasing anyway. Caile sighed as she again forced herself to invoke the Ogham and the mental anguish it would cause her.
Liam sighed in frustration. He laid back, sure to gently set the tome in his lap on the ground lest Sophronia yell at him again. He stretched his back on the velvet carpet and let out a long, noisy sigh.
They had been inside this underground vault for three days. On the first day Liam had been careful, reading in detail. But he had quickly grown overwhelmed. The first book he picked up, a thick, leather-bound set of pages was full of detailed drawings of machines. It was titled, Machines for the Deconstruction of Barriers In Times of Conflict. These machines were built for war. They tore down walls and broke open gates. Liam found them fascinating. When he had spare time, Liam liked to experiment with pulleys and levers, making primitive machines in his workshop. He was sure that he had seen the remains of massive gears and machinery like this around the walls of Atania. There was writing explaining how the siege engines were built, and additional markings of some kind accompanying that writing. The markings all had a central line going down the page. There were little hash marks along the line, in groupings from one to four. Some of the hash marks were at a diagonal to the central line.
When he had shown the hash marks to Sophronia, she had blanched and sucked air through her teeth. Liam was learning this was her habit for when she was frustrated and unsure what to do.
“Those hash marks are Ogham. The first books I found that explained the magic have simplified versions of this. The hash marks represent letters in an alphabet that symbolize trees and plants. Invoking those trees and plants are what allow us to access the power in the earth,” she explained.
Liam looked at her blankly. “How does that work?”
Sophronia asked, “Ok, when you threw the elf woman down the embankment, what did you think of? What went through your mind?”
Liam just looked at her blankly again. “Nothing. I’m not thinking of anything. I was terrified and trying to stay alive.”
Sophronia was puzzled, but she went on. “The way I do it is to use these hash marks to spell out what I want to have happen. I spell out the spell with my fingers. See, this mark here next to this…what is this, a catapult? This is pretty complex. There’s like 20 individual characters here, and it looks like maybe these are meant to be carved on the machine itself. A beginning version of this might have just three to five letters. So, using my arm as if it were the central line here, I hold up one to four fingers along my arm while holding in my mind what I want to have happen. Does that make sense?”
Liam just shook his head slowly from side to side. “I understand the words you’re saying, but how does that make magic happen?”
Sophronia nodded. “It’s more complicated than what I just explained. You have to learn how to invoke the Ogham’s power along with it. You have to learn how to feel the power. From what you said happened to you, I think you might be naturally gifted or something, because it sounds like you are already feeling the Ogham power.”
“What is that word? What does Ogham mean?” Asked Liam.
“I’m not sure. That’s the word the books used to describe the power, but I haven’t found anything that explains the history.” She paused, “There’s a lot I don’t know Liam. It took me over a year to tap into that power. I memorized the alphabet and I can read what these books say, but its like I’m a child, sounding out words that I don’t know, and I think that gets in my way.”
There was a long moment of silence. Liam cautiously suggested, “So, there’s nothing in this book that will help us, right? If we’re trying to figure out how to avoid the nausea and find … what, spells, that will stop that murderous woman?”
Sophronia sighed. “Probably not.”
Liam nodded. “I’ll keep looking. If I find something that looks interesting, I’ll bring it to you?”
Now, three days later, Liam had combed through hundreds of books. Some of them had thick leather covers with intricate bindings. Some were just a collection of papers bound together with string between two boards. He had started out poring carefully over what he saw, but as time wore on, he scanned. And scanned. And scanned. The truth is that he didn’t really know what he was looking for. He’d learned to read in the town school as a child, but he did not spend a lot of time reading. It was slow going.
After the first day, when they had stopped to sleep, they discussed their lack of results and made a plan. On day two, instead of poring over anything that looked remotely useful, they decided to make a central pile of books with titles that might be related to using the Ogham without the debilitating effects.
They spent their time piling up titles like A Study of Urban Housing, The Ogham Guide to Agriculture, and A Practical Guide to Traveling the Sidhe. The latter book had been especially interesting to Liam. It described the adventures of someone named Ludwig who was purportedly of mixed human and tuatha ancestry traveling to a place where pixies roamed in bands and a satyr was a court singer. It read more like a work of fiction, but Sophronia said that it described the Sidhe, the homeland of the fey creatures. Liam still had a hard time believing were actually real, despite what he had seen in the woods.
There was a lot about theories of applying the Ogham to various day to day uses, a lot about the lives of wizards and other magic wielders who had lived in Atania. But there was nothing about how to actually make it work. Liam was piecing together clues about a society where magic was commonplace, powering far more than he had ever thought possible. How to do it seemed something that was taken for granted. He was sure he didn’t understand a great deal of what the books were talking about.
There was mention of transportation Ogham, the growth of food, medicine. It was all so much that he could barely comprehend it. But strangely enough, very little in the way of battle. The book on war machines counted, but was of very little practical value for them. But none of it so much as mentioned nausea or passing out from using the Ogham. The text seemed to imply there were practical limits to what could be done, but not the sort of experience that he and Sophronia were having.
At the end of day two, Liam collapsed to the floor and asked out loud, “What happened to this world?”
Sophronia responded, “What do you mean?”
“Where are these people? What happened to them?” Liam breathed out. “As far as I can tell, magic was commonplace and it suddenly disappeared. Overnight, without a trace. There were a lot more people in Atania. Where did they go?”
Liam waved the book in his hand, The Academy’s Role in Planning Atania’s Future by Seamus Finneas. “This makes it sound like the Northwestern corner of Atania was crowded and full of disease and poverty. It’s not like that now. The area near the cemetery was supposed to have been a wealthy area where merchants lived. The only people that live over there now are the leaders of the Church of the Creator and Elder Kaufman. Seamus Finneas didn’t think much of the poor, and wanted the wealthy families to receive guidance from the Academy” he read off of the page, “‘on how to shape the growth of the slums.’”
Liam sat up and looked at Sophronia. “What is this, and what happened?”
Sophronia sat for a while, locking gaze with Liam. “The Hidden Atania, this part of the city was full of even more people. Dock workers, soldiers, seamstresses, tailors, and merchants. And now it’s empty, all the way to the ocean. There is a giant cliff at the edge of Hidden Atania where ships docked. There was trade with Ghealdar and with foreign nations from across the ocean.”
Sophronia had been reading too, and she was just warming up.
“And it doesn’t end there. We think of elves as timid little creatures that curdle milk or whatever, but this book talks about a nation of elves, Tuatha is what they call themselves, based in a place called the Hartland Forest led by a warrior-wizard named Tarkin Songcrest. Supposedly he led the elves and the Thunder Nation, a nation of dwarves, against a great goblin horde that descended from the mountains of Kjeldor. That goblin horde was led by nine generals of the warlord Cyric. Look at this.” She opened a book and showed it to Liam.
