The Cathedral of Known Things

by Edward Cox

  ‘But would you be as sure if you first considered the bigger picture, Samuel?’

  The first syringe filled, Hamir prepared a second and began drawing more blood.

  The necromancer continued. ‘You assume that Fabian Moor is on the inside looking out – that he has created a portable shadow carriage to send treasure hunters to the doorways of the Great Labyrinth, undetected. But what if he created that device to collect a delivery that is already en route to one of the doorways?’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Who can say? A weapon, a message, instructions from Spiral himself? And yes, maybe terracotta jars. Perhaps a detachment of soldiers, for all we know.’

  ‘Soldiers?’ Samuel pulled a dubious face.

  ‘I’m merely speculating.

  Samuel shook his head. ‘It’d never get past Lady Amilee.’

  ‘Fabian Moor did.’

  Hamir began filling a third syringe.

  ‘Consider the possibilities, Samuel. If that device is a shadow carriage, then it was created with thaumaturgy. There’s no telling how big a thing it could transport from the Great Labyrinth to Labrys Town. In my opinion, I would be highly surprised if there was no one out among the Houses standing ready to send aid to Fabian Moor. The Genii obviously has a plan.’

  Samuel thought for a moment, and then shook away an icy feeling. ‘It doesn’t matter now,’ he said. ‘We have the device, and it’s no good to him while he’s in there.’ He motioned to the Genii floating in the purple light of thaumaturgy. ‘Whatever he was up to, we stopped him.’

  ‘I wish I could be as certain,’ Hamir countered. ‘I have been spending time in the cellar with Moor’s little creation. For the life of me, I cannot remove the metal mesh and power stones that surround it. The glass sphere has been toughened by higher magic. And the substance inside it might look as harmless as dirty water, but let us not forget that it was formed from harvested shadows.

  ‘I cannot tell if that device is useless, or if it will spring into action at any time. That is a very real concern to me, Samuel.’

  Hamir placed the third syringe alongside the others in the metal cylinder. ‘There … three should do it.’

  ‘Have you told Gideon about your concerns?’ Samuel asked.

  ‘I have indeed. But Gideon says he won’t send a report to Lady Amilee based on theories alone. He wants facts. He wants proof. And there is only one way we are going to get that.’

  Hamir closed the metal cylinder, then packed his paraphernalia into the black medical bag. He then took the big leather-bound book off the table and walked over to Fabian Moor’s prison, stopping at the edge of the thaumaturgic symbols carved into the floor. The Genii’s naked body was slowly turning again. His eyes remained closed.

  Hamir looked back at Samuel. ‘You can leave now. Be sure to eat and rest.’

  But Samuel didn’t rise from the crate. ‘If it’s all the same to you, I’ll stay put,’ he said resolutely.

  ‘An interesting decision,’ Hamir said with a frown. ‘Are you offering to help me with the interrogation?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I see.’ Hamir raised an eyebrow. ‘Samuel, I understand how the death of Gene has affected you, but retribution is such an ugly desire. It can be quite damaging to the mind. I really do not believe that you want to witness what I am about to do.’

  ‘I don’t care,’ Samuel growled. ‘For what this bastard did to Gene, I need to see you hurt him, Hamir. So get on with it.’

  The necromancer sighed. The green of his eyes darkened as though ink had been dripped into them. ‘As you wish,’ he whispered.

  Van Bam stood naked before the giant, upon the huge boulder in the cavern of glittering jewels, with his eyes closed. Body tense and teeth clenched, the illusionist tried not to flinch as Bellow used a sharpened wooden scriber to scratch the symbols and glyphs of blood-magic onto his skin.

  ‘The story of the Nephilim begins a thousand years ago,’ Gulduur Bellow said as he worked. ‘The Timewatcher had completed her grandest creation – the Great Labyrinth – and the Houses of the Aelfir were united. It was the dawn of a new age.’

  The illusionist’s mind raced. Hybrids, Bellow had said – the Nephilim were hybrids of Thaumaturgists and humans.

  ‘During that time,’ the giant continued, ‘there was a creature of higher magic, whose true name was never known to my herd, though it is said that the Thaumaturgists still whisper it as a curse. The Nephilim call him the Progenitor.’

  Bellow was quiet as he scratched what felt to Van Bam like a triangle upon his chest. Although the illusionist kept his eyes firmly shut, he could feel the giant’s huge form looming over him, and he tried not to think about the blood Bellow was using as ink.

  ‘Little is known of the Progenitor. Some say he was a mighty warrior who fought in ancient battles, long before the creation of the Great Labyrinth. Others claim he was a madman who respected only chaos. But what is known for certain is that he formed an unhealthy obsession with the first humans who settled in Labrys Town. And the day the humans met the Progenitor was a day to regret.’

  Drawing a straight line and a series of slashes to connect the triangle on Van Bam’s chest to the illusionist’s abdomen, Bellow began creating a new pattern of swirling shapes. He worked fast, and his use of the scriber was surprisingly delicate.

  ‘The Progenitor went to the humans,’ Bellow continued. ‘He made them trust him – and why wouldn’t they? He was a Thaumaturgist, one of the Timewatcher’s favoured children. But once their trust had been gained, the Progenitor betrayed the denizens. He stole one hundred human women from the Labyrinth, and with them he disappeared without a trace.’

  Having finished with the abdomen, Bellow was quickly painting script over Van Bam’s right hand, and up his arm. His story had gained the illusionist’s full attention now.

  With his eyes still closed, Van Bam said, ‘Why would he abduct denizens?’

  ‘Well now,’ said Bellow. ‘They say that it was resurrection that intrigued the Progenitor – a fascination with creating life from death. Some say he was a scientist. The one hundred women he had stolen from the Labyrinth – who had trusted him completely – did not realise until it was too late that they were to be the test subjects in the Progenitor’s experiments.’

  ‘Experiments?’ said Van Bam. Bellow had begun decorating his shoulder with the symbols of blood-magic. A bad feeling rose in the illusionist’s gut. ‘What did he do to them?’

  ‘He used them to raise the dead,’ Bellow stated hollowly. ‘They say the Progenitor had collected the souls of one hundred fallen Thaumaturgists. With higher magic, he impregnated each of those human women with one of those souls. He forced death into their wombs, Van Bam, and they gave birth to life.’

  Van Bam flinched as Bellow drew a diagonal line from his right shoulder down to his left buttock.

  ‘That was how the Nephilim came into existence,’ Bellow said.

  Appalled, confused, Van Bam opened his eyes to find he looked straight at the giant.

  On his knees, with one hand on the ground beside the bowl of blood, the wooden scriber held in the other, Bellow paused in his work to meet Van Bam’s stare. The bright blue orbs of his eyes glared, perhaps challenging the illusionist to dare judge him.

  ‘Are you beginning to understand why my people are regarded as abominations?’

  ‘I … I do not know what to say,’ Van Bam admitted.

  ‘Then say nothing, and listen.’ Bellow dipped the scriber into the blood and proceeded to decorate Van Bam’s leg. ‘Who can say for sure why the Progenitor forced those women to give birth to the Nephilim? Perhaps he considered himself a scientist, after all. Perhaps he created us merely to discover if he could, and results mattered to him over the abuse he perpetrated. The Progenitor’s reasons are now lost to time.

  ‘However, there is
one legend that says the one hundred souls that he had collected had once belonged to creatures of higher magic who were dear to the Progenitor. He sought to bring them back from death, desperately, at any cost, and the creation of the Nephilim was the result of his failed attempt.’

  As the giant began scribing upon Van Bam’s left foot, there was defiance in his body language, anger and sorrow in his voice.

  ‘The Progenitor’s experiments came full circle, Van Bam. He used death to create life, but, in turn, that life brought death. Not one of the Nephilim’s mothers survived the birth of their children. We were not born as human babes are. We tore free of their bodies as abominations, part human, part Thaumaturgist, the lowest of all creatures of higher magic.

  ‘From their mothers’ abuse and agony, the Nephilim were delivered to the realms. Those poor women never stood a chance. The origin of my people is a horrific legacy.’

  Van Bam looked around the cavern, at the jewels and veins of metal shining and glittering like stars and nebulae. He looked at Bellow, still decorating his foot. In the light of the magical fire burning at each corner of the boulder, the scars on his skin were pale. Bellow could obviously see distaste on the illusionist’s face.

  ‘Don’t look at me,’ the giant said, shame and anger filling his voice as it hissed through his clenched teeth. ‘Keep your eyes shut while I work.’

  Van Bam closed his eyes immediately. ‘I do not wish to cause offence,’ he said quickly and carefully, ‘I only wonder at the cruel methods by which the Nephilim were born. You say the Progenitor was a Thaumaturgist. How could the Timewatcher allow this to happen?’

  ‘She didn’t allow it,’ Bellow replied, painting a series of circles up the front of Van Bam’s left leg. ‘The Timewatcher did not know of the Progenitor’s actions until after my people were born. And She was horrified at his barbaric treatment of the humans and to discover that their children had arrived with the wisdom and power of the souls that had created them.’

  Van Bam winced as the point of the scriber dug into thigh muscle.

  ‘It is said that the Timewatcher, in Her fury, punished the Progenitor in ways that all Thaumaturgists dread.’

  Van Bam stayed silent, waiting for Bellow to continue.

  ‘The Timewatcher called the Nephilim perversions of life. We were born with the gift of thaumaturgy in our veins, but cursed to cut our skins to release it. Blood-magickers. Giants. Fiends! The Timewatcher turned Her back on the Nephilim, but the Nephilim remembered their true mothers, Van Bam, all one hundred of them. Our first memory was of the agony and death we gave them. We cannot – will not – forget the price they paid for trusting one of the Timewatcher’s favoured children.’

  Bellow’s strokes were quick, angry, as he moved the scriber over Van Bam’s left hip, and began connecting new symbols and glyphs to those he had already drawn on his abdomen. Van Bam dared not open his eyes.

  ‘So the Timewatcher made you outcasts,’ the illusionist said, trying hard to keep any trace of an opinion or judgement from his voice. ‘The Aelfir shunned you, and you were left to roam the Houses, searching for the Sorrow of Future Reason.’

  ‘The atrocities of the Progenitor were buried, hidden. Over the next thousand years, the myths and legends grew up around the Nephilim like weeds in a garden, while behind the lies the truth was much more terrible.’ Bellow ceased drawing upon Van Bam’s skin in blood, and snorted a sad laugh. ‘What do you think of my story, Van Bam?’

  ‘It … It was certainly enlightening.’ Van Bam cleared his throat. ‘But given that the Nephilim’s origin begins in the Labyrinth, I am surprised that I have not heard this tale of the Progenitor before.’

  ‘Details are easily omitted from records,’ Bellow replied. ‘Truths that the Timewatcher and the Thaumaturgists deemed embarrassing were lost. And memories fade. But who knows – perhaps in a dusty corner of a library in Labrys Town, an accurate history still exists, hiding in plain sight, waiting to be discovered.’

  Bellow sighed, whispered a word that Van Bam didn’t catch that might have been a curse, or a plea.

  ‘There was a time,’ the giant said, ‘when the Nephilim prayed that the Timewatcher would forgive us our existence, and deliver us to the Sorrow of Future Reason. But over the centuries, our search began to feel more like tradition. I think we lost faith in the journey ever ending.

  ‘So imagine our excitement, Van Bam, when, quite unexpectedly, Lord Spiral, the Timewatcher’s most favoured son, summoned the Nephilim herd to the Falls of Dust and Silver.’

  Van Bam opened his eyes in surprise. He started as he found Gulduur Bellow’s huge face no more than a foot away from his own. The giant was bent over, his blue eyes studying Van Bam’s features. In one hand he held the bowl of blood, in the other the wooden scriber.

  ‘The Falls of Dust and Silver?’ said Van Bam. ‘The House where the war began?’

  ‘Precisely,’ said Bellow. ‘The story of the Nephilim is always growing, my friend.’ He used the scriber to stir the blood in the bowl. ‘Do you recall that I told you I was lost? That I had been separated from my herd?’

  Van Bam nodded.

  ‘It was because of the trick that Spiral played on my people.’ Bellow tapped the scriber on the edge of the bowl, shaking off excess blood. ‘Please keep your eyes closed, Van Bam. The script I am about to paint on your head and face is intrinsic to this spell.’

  The illusionist closed his eyes. He felt the delicate touch of the scriber upon his cheek.

  ‘Now,’ Bellow continued, ‘when my herd answered the summons to the Falls of Dust and Silver, Spiral did indeed tell us that the time had come for the Nephilim to have their home. He told us that the Timewatcher desired peace and unity, true equality for my people. He said that She no longer held us culpable for the actions of the Progenitor.’

  He began scribing across Van Bam’s chin. ‘You have to understand, Van Bam – Spiral was the first Thaumaturgist to treat with the Nephilim since the terrible day of our creation, and we genuinely believed that the Timewatcher had sent him to us. We rejoiced.’

  ‘But you said that Spiral tricked you,’ Van Bam said as the scriber moved up his other cheek. ‘Why?’

  ‘Spiral regarded the Nephilim as a rogue element in his plans for the war,’ Bellow said. ‘Earlier, Van Bam, you suggested that the Genii are frightened of the Nephilim, and I think there is truth in that. I think Spiral was too uncertain of our power to attack us directly, and he could not predict which side we would choose to fight for. Perhaps if he had asked us, he might have discovered we would have chosen neither side. But like all Thaumaturgists, like the Aelfir, like humans, he decided to treat us with fear and loathing.’

  Bellow paused as he painted a series of intricate glyphs up the bridge of Van Bam’s nose, and then he continued.

  ‘Spiral had a way of settling the issue. He tricked the Nephilim into gathering at the Falls of Dust and Silver with empty promises and lies. My people walked into a trap, a mighty spell that Spiral had cast. He removed the Nephilim – transported the herd to a location far from the Houses of the Aelfir, I suspect. Perhaps it was one of the Genii Lord’s hidden realms that you spoke of, a prison that my people cannot escape from – where they can no longer be a rogue element in Spiral’s war plans.’

  Van Bam tried not to frown as Bellow swept the scriber across his brow. ‘But you escaped,’ he said.

  ‘By the skin of my teeth,’ the giant replied. ‘I alone evaded Spiral’s trickery. I fled to the desert of Mirage, where I hoped to understand the reason for Spiral’s actions – where I could formulate a plan to find my people and free them.’

  ‘I do not understand,’ Van Bam admitted, as the scriber moved over the top of his head. ‘How could Spiral remove an entire race without anyone noticing?’

  ‘Van Bam, I am an elder among my people, one of the Progenitor’s original children. I have seen
the Nephilim herd grow over the years, but after a millennium, we are still less than a thousand. Who among the billions of Aelfir who choose to shun our existence anyway would notice the disappearance of so few?’ Bellow had now reached the back of the illusionist’s head. ‘However, one person did notice. He came to me – here, in the desert of Mirage.’

  ‘Lord Wolfe,’ Van Bam whispered. ‘The Wanderer.’

  ‘Perhaps Baran Wolfe sensed the plight of the Nephilim, and that is what first drew him to Mirage,’ Bellow said. ‘He was most disturbed to hear what his fellow Skywatcher had done to my herd. Spiral’s actions were certainly not carried out in the name of the Timewatcher, Wolfe said. But they did seem to confirm the suspicions he was already having about the First Lord of the Thaumaturgists.’

  Bellow snorted bitterly. ‘From Mirage, Baran Wolfe travelled straight to the Falls of Dust and Silver to confront Spiral. And we both know what happened next, Van Bam.’

  ‘But why would he confront Spiral?’ Van Bam said. ‘Why not inform the Timewatcher, or his fellow Thaumaturgists, of his suspicions?’

  ‘I do not know,’ Bellow replied sadly. ‘But my story convinced Wolfe that everything he had been unable to divine from the skies – including the mysterious cathedral that the skies spoke of but he could not find – was connected to Spiral.’

  The giant stopped painting as he reached the nape of Van Bam’s neck, and his voice cracked, as though bordering on tears.

  ‘Baran Wolfe the Wanderer … In return for my staying here in Mirage, waiting for you, he promised to come back and help to reunite me with my herd. But now he is dead.’

  ‘I … I am sorry,’ was all Van Bam could say.

  Bellow drew a breath. ‘Keep still, Van Bam. I need to scribe glyphs onto your eyelids.’

  The giant continued his gentle work upon the illusionist’s skin.

  Van Bam wasn’t sure what to make of the things Bellow had told him, or its immediate relevance.

  As if reading his thoughts, Bellow said, ‘It is important to me that you know before we part company the tragedy inherent to my people’s story. Open your eyes, my friend.’