“Look alive Evander, we’re about to meet a formidable opponent.”
“Another unethical wizard with like you?”
“No, one who believes his own lies.”
We finally came upon a crystal tower that loomed out of the earth, full of antique and learned imagery etched into its sides. It was an obdurate diamond tower of paused river water, as though the undulating currents of Life’s stream had been molded to hard crystal by primordial sorcery. This was the pulsing sterling star we had seen from a distance. Pale yellow sunlight rippled up the crystalline tower culminating in an intense silver flash at the top. With each flash a cool exhale flowed over us and out onto the statues of pure white marble and the wide green field, brushing the grass back and forth.
As we approached the tower an odd spectacle came into view.
Sitting on a desk was a beautiful, pristine marble statue, as large as Skepsis, but with only half of his face. Next to him sat a small blue dragon with spectacles, a pot belly, and shriveled wings. The dragon was slowly painting a few pieces of white marble and patiently fitting them back into the statue’s head like a puzzle. Behind the studious cleric was a row of life-sized marble statues of the champions gathered to kill us and save the world. They were staged as though at the conclusion of some grand banquet, clasping one another about the shoulders, raising overflowing tankards to a toast, and smiling in jovial celebration. Even as statues their youth and joy and beauty animated them, nearly bringing them to life.
I imagined each toast was to our deaths and each smile resulted from that particular hero’s thought that they were the one who killed one of us.
When the statue saw Scammander, its eye widened with terror and hopped off the desk, running behind the dragon. The dragon painted another piece of the marble, then placed the paintbrush back in the jar before addressing Scammander.
“I’ll never forget that night when I saw you last, Scammander. I’ll never forget the night when I walked in to find Eidos, shattered to a thousand pieces of beautiful white stone. I thought he was dead—just as his assassin must have—until I noticed one of the shattered pieces with an eye on it, staring at me. And then it blinked! O, a great wrath was saved that night, all in the blink of an eye.”
The light breeze stirred the leaves and tossed the thick flowers around, but Scammander said nothing.
“I am the greatest cleric to ever live Scammander, even had he died, did you really think I would not have been able to resurrect him? What? Still no words for your old tutor?” His tone darkened and he leaned forward on the desk. “Your enthusiasm for malice and destruction inhibited your studies from the beginning. Others may call you the greatest wizard of all time, but your failure to master the benevolent magics respected by sorcerers of old will leave you clouded in history.”
“Supposing history is allowed to go on,” snapped Scammander. “Anyways, it appears as though you’ve been unable to resurrect any of the young heroes we’ve murdered,” he sniffed. “Our white sandal collection has grown impressively as of late.”
The old lizard’s eyes snapped down to my feet before darting back to Scammander’s eyes. “He doesn’t walk a virtuous path, they will be of no use to him,” Bertram shot back. “Those heroes didn’t want to be restored to life, only healed of their wounds. I happily agreed to those terms.”
Scammander huffed. “You don’t have a resurrection spell. There’s no such thing as a resurrection spell, it’s a fool’s errand.”
Scammander looked down at the open books on the dragon’s desk. “Still reading?”
“The same poem by the same poet,” the sylvan student said as he looked down at his opened volume. The leaves fluttered as another soft breeze skipped across the vale. “I have been passing the time reading his famous poem on the keeping of bees,” he said jotting something in the margin. “He is a shy poet, and spoke with a rustic accent. Do you remember when I made you read him, to try and discover hidden spells of resurrection?”
Scammander leaned on his staff, then nodded his head reluctantly. “I never found any Bertram.”
The old cleric glowered at Scammander like he didn’t believe him. He idly flipped through a few more pages, then wrote another comment in the margin before laying the pen down and speaking. “I for one am glad he was diffident and laconic and did not waste his time with speech, for his writing is rich and golden, like the honey of the very bees he elegantly eulogizes.” A veiled maiden in a white gown that looked like a wedding dress came forward with a kettle of tea and a small jar of honey. The dragon poured the tea and mixed in his honey then reclined on his wicker chair whose woven wood was dyed cobalt blue and wreathed with pink flowerets.
“The bull should show some respect and lower his hood,” the senescent cleric said after finishing a sip of tea. “Nothing here can die or come to harm.”
That confirmed my suspicions that this place was worse than the unicorn vale.
“What’s in the tower?” I said, shielding my eyes and looking at it.
“My library,” the old cleric said. He then looked back over to Scammander. “What brings you back to me? I’m no servant of sedition.”
“A book,” Scammander replied. “I left a book here, a very long time ago.”
“I think I know the one you are looking for.”
“An Algebra of a Sunset,” Scammander said, a little too eagerly.
“No, I don’t have that one.”
At least not anymore, I thought.
Scammander frowned for a moment, which caused the old dragon to smile. So he wasn’t too noble after all.
“The book you gave me was a great improvement on the problems outlined in that excellent, though ancient, folio. You left me with The Algorithm of the Sunset.”
“Ah yes, the one that contains the Aurelius Algorithm. I’m inclined to let you keep it,” Scammander sighed. “But if you have no need for it, I will return it to my family’s library, since my studentship with you has long been over.”
“Clever, but you won’t be going in to my library ever again Scammander.” The old wyrm nodded to one of the veiled maidens. She slowly glided along the soft grassy path to his library, stopping every now and then until the wind blew. “Who are you stealing books for these days? Is Simon still after his books about the color of unicorn manes? Is Stertinsius still seeking Fate’s folios?” He sank back smugly in his chair. “Or perhaps you are once again in the services of Bonneville House? Or some other ancient family I suppose.” The ancient dragon gazed lazily down at his text for a moment. “Maybe you and that bard are still hopelessly looking for a book that doesn’t exist—Of Mutability.”
Scammander’s silence seemed to bother his old master, who turned his head and looked up to his tower where all his books were safely out of reach. “I imagine it is the most complete library in the world, due mostly to the fact that I don’t like the likes of Scammander into it…anymore.”
I saw a small white wyvern crawl across Betram’s open book with a gold amulet hanging from its neck. He stopped when he saw Scammander and rose up on his back legs. He opened his mouth so wide that he almost fell over, and fluttered his wings in a fit of fury as a tiny stream of fire shot out of his maw.
“Bah Scammander! Foul! I ban thee!” it chirped. “I ban thee! I ban thee!”
Bertram smiled and stroked the immature wyvern with a scaley finger. “They always learn the bad words first,” he said.
“Well then you should let him pronounce my full name,” Scammander jeered.
Bertram chuckled. “Come now Scammander, you don’t actually believe that your mother really named you after a doom word.”
“It’s probably too good to be true,” Scammander said, glaring at the small wyvern, then pointed to it. “Is this your newest student?”
“This is Vercingetorix, my finest creation. With him, I have stepped outside the laws of Nature.” There was a pause. “I bore him on my own.”
I began to slowly realize that all the ot
her statues must have been failed attempts.
Scammander looked like he had unknowingly bitten into a rotten fig. “You’ve given birth to an ornery runt, I’d hardly call that an accomplishment.”
“You could never know the miracles of life Scammander, and how beautiful and rich it is to do benevolent acts.” The dismayed wyvern sighed and slumped in his chair. “Scammander you really are something new and bold in our world, and I had such great hopes that you might even excel me in learning. And you showed immense talents, until you joined that School of Night, that cult of ‘sans everything.’”
He took another draught of his steaming tea. “Is this your newest pupil then?” he said looking over to me. “If you have met Scammander then you must have also met Johannes Dubitandum,” the old wyrm said, “which means you must know why he was hanged.” He narrowed his eyes and took another sip of tea. “And his wife also.”
“His wife wasn’t hanged,” Scammander said. “She was beheaded.”
“That’s because she didn’t die the first time, when she was hanged,” Bertram countered. “Oddly, her body disappeared—to be profaned by horrible magic, no doubt. But the body snatchers were never able to recover her head.” He paused and ran his finger down Vercingetorix’s slender spine. “It must have thwarted many necromantic spells.”
“Any idea where the head went to, Bertram?” Scammander shot back.
The pot-bellied wyrm sat back in his sylvan chair of woven wicker. He locked eyes with Scammander, then let them casually meander like a drowsy mayfly to the flock of young maidens in white gowns.
Scammander cringed and stepped back in horror. He had clearly not expected an answer, and certainly not this macabre answer.
I squinted and examined the idle, veiled servants before coming to the same terrifying realization as Scammander. They weren’t maidens, at least not every part. By some strange, unnatural magic the cleric had managed to preserve the head of Johannes’s wife, duplicate it, and fasten it to marble bodies.
I still wasn’t quite sure how we were going to assassinate an immortal healer, and I didn’t think weapons or magic were capable of completing the task. To make matters worse, he had an army of undead concubines at his disposal. I had two crossbows, an inconstant sword, and a wizard who didn’t know any magic.
“He should have never sent the love of his life to try and steal a spell from me.”
“Well, it seems since you put the love of his life to death, death has become the love of his life,” Scammander quipped.
“To the few who know about this place, the punishment of entering is clear. Part of my penance was to teach the sons and daughters of the noble families the ancient and rare arts of magic. He sent her. She was not noble. She had to die. The blood is on his hands.”
“I would say that Johannes has gotten everyone’s blood splattered all over this world. On the leaves, mixing in the streams, spilled across the beaches, cooling in the snows, drying in the fields, and dripping down tree bark. Soon all he’ll have left to kill is the animals.” Scammander stopped speaking. “Oh and dragons.”
That riled the lizard. “You know as well as I do that it is time for another Migration. The dragons are leaving this world, just as they have left countless others. They will voyage across the stars and find another realm to colonize and improve with their noble wisdom,” he said placing his cup on the desk. “Most have already left. That’s probably the only reason you are still alive Scammander.”
“Worry about your own life Bertram. You’re not even flying up to the clouds with those shriveled wings, let alone some far away world.”
The old dragon looked like he was about to scream at Scammander, but just then the maiden returned with a book wrapped in a soft white cloth. Bertram calmed himself and motioned her to set it on the table.
“There you go,” he said slowly unfolding the pure cloth. “Just as you left it.”
Neither archmage seemed eager to take the tome, though I couldn’t understand why. The book itself was slim and radiant. The cover was the color of an antheming dawn: the kind that appears on the morning when a king is to be murdered or a great battle is to break out. It was the color of young sunlight—tumultuous and lucent—the kind that crashes across the clouds, burns the frost from the grass, and cuts the sticky, nocturnal shadows from the earth. It was the kind of sunlight that illuminates streaming banners of revolutionaries through canon smoke and warms the cheeks of those forsaken youths who disagree with their age.
“Pick it up Evander,” Scammander said without looking at me. “But be sure to wrap the cloth over it first.”
Bertram scoffed.
With a trembling hand, I folded the cool white cloth, which was as soft as vernal flower petals, over the slender golden volume. I noticed an orange symbol that seemed to be burnt into the book sitting above the title. “What is it?” I said pointing to the glyph and looking at Bertram.
“The shape of life,” Scammander said.
The senescent wyvern sat back in his chair of osier and grinned. “At least I taught you that much.”
As I folded my fingers over the book I could feel the soft fire drifting across my palms in lazy waves.
“Still pursuing such a ridiculous hypothesis Scammander?” The dragon turned to me. “Evander, I’ll elaborate on the foolish quest you’ve undoubtedly been manipulated into,” he said, leaning back as the wicker stretched and squeaked. “A certain tale, when read backwards during the autumn under a full moon will summon the ghost of Alfred von Shudder, a very formidable paladin, to do the sorcerer’s bidding until the next full moon,” he chuckled. “Scammander’s sect tampers with the geometry of the universe in hopes of creating an eternal night, so that this invincible wraith will never die.” When I didn’t say anything, Bertram returned his gaze to Scammander. “If you’ve come back for An Algebra of a Sunset, that means you’ve already stolen the Complete Ghost Tales of Alfred von Shudder and you think you can reverse the Aurelius Algorithm to create a night with no end.”
“So stop us,” I whispered.
Like most creatures in this world, the old sage ignored me and kept right on speaking.
“Two have looked into Scammander’s eyes and seen past that iridescent storm of obfuscation. I am the only one to live, since he killed Wynthrope. Do you presently know the evil you are aligning yourself with, you obtuse cow? Do you know how many lives will be ruined, how many cities—our great achievement of civilization—will be sacked?”
“I’ve never entered a city I haven’t wanted to destroy,” I said marblely.
“Have you ever stopped to ponder what it means to be good? Don’t you think you should be able to answer a question like that before going out to do these deeds of horror? What is the good life, Evander?”
“The evilest one,” I sneered.
Bertram scowled and waved his hand dismissively. “That Circle of Friends, the Bonheuros, will slaughter both of you fools. I only hope I get to look at your severed heads before the flies consume them.” He took a sip of his honey and tea before continuing. “You’ve unsettled the world this time, Scammander. And it’s going to come crashing down upon your brow.” He took another deep sip. “What you did—what you did to your own home—” He set the tea cup down and looked worried. “You have lost your way young wizard; there really is no hope for you.”
While Bertram had been talking Scammander had slid around to the edge of his desk where Vercingetorix was curled up, sleeping. Scammander narrowed his eyes, then placed his staff behind the ornery wyvern like he was playing a game of billiards, and began sliding the staff between his fingers in mock practice strokes. He paused for a moment, and everything was still. Suddenly, he punched Vercingetorix with his staff like he was striking a billiard ball, sending the drake flying off the table. The immature wyvern unfolded in mid-air and screeched, belching forth a small burst of white fire before tumbling into the grass. I saw Vercingetorix pop up out of the tall grass, cartwheeling and screeching and
spitting flame, until he finally disappeared in the grass at the end of his fall, leaving a trail of smoking grass tips.
“I didn’t come for a book you stupid worm,” Scammander said skipping around the side of the table. “I came for you,” he said tapping his fingers and pinching Bertram on the neck.
The senescent dragon shrieked as he shrank and writhed. “You’re too late Scammander! A magician king has been born, a human of better stock than our world has made! A benevolent child prince will come to save us all!”
He kept shrieking and shrinking until his voice faded and as he disappeared from sight the only thing that could be heard was the wind as it rushed through the grass.
Regarding the Cavalcade of Dejected Gryphons (Or, On Leaps of Faith)
“Few men know death: we do not usually undergo it deliberately, but unthinkingly and out of habit, and most men die because they cannot help dying.”
La Rochefoucauld
Being hurled out of a magical zone is perhaps less horrifying than being hurled out of life, but that doesn’t mean I ever want to experience it again. Apparently Vercingetorix had learned some other words besides Scammander’s name, and one of them was what threw us out of the secret vale. I had fallen down after our expulsion and was perpetually dizzy, perpetually exhausted, and perpetually sick. I didn’t know what day it was anymore, only that it was evening.
Scammander was staggering around cursing as he rummaged through his pouch. He finally produced the writhing marble man Eidos who grew to his normal size as Scammander released him.
“Try to flee and I will kill you—a second time.” The statue’s head drooped.
Despite my vertigo and exhaustion, I stood up. “You should put his mouth back together so we can ask him about the prophecy of child heroes who are going to save the world.” I wondered if Johannes had a child in secret and had managed to hide the child in some other world.
Splatterism: The Disquieting Recollections of a Minotaur Assailant: An Upbuilding Edifying Discourse Page 22
