Run for your life.
And that is what I started to do, until I saw the two skeletons with bloody shovels emerge from the gloom a few bookshelves down from where I was standing.
I backed away and ducked behind a bookshelf and froze when my heel landed on something.
I spun around and pulled my foot off of someone’s head, then squinted in the darkness until I realized who it was.
Tarantulas were swarming over Tiberius’s bloated countenance.
Another thud.
Hopefully it was the poet.
I inched away from the spiders and peered around the corner of the bookcase. The two small skeletons were standing idle, like they were waiting to be found. Or serve as bait.
Pale green mist slowly threaded itself through their animated bones, unweaving the dark magic that held them together. The tiny skeletons crumbled into two limp piles of bones.
One of the witches stepped forward from the shadows to inspect her efforts. I suddenly felt like I was going to throw up then winced and covered my mouth just as I heard the witch wretch on the floor. I opened my eyes just in time to see Demonax pull the witch off the floor by her tangled black curls and jam two fingers into the side of her temple. Her brains blew out of her head and splashed across the bookshelf, knocking some old volumes onto the floor. He flashed away and I heard another wretch followed by another thud.
I tabulated all the corpses, thuds, and boney remains.
It was just the two of us.
I tucked myself away in the inviting shadows amidst the bookcases—until one of them pointed a sword in my face.
Demonax slipped out of the shadows and peeled his own skin off, unveiling the visage of a mad warlock who had looked at the moon for too long, pondered too many riddles, and had murdered more wizards than anyone else still casting spells, including me.
“Johannes Dubitandum,” I gasped. I crawled back as he moved closer with the shimmering cutlass.
“The last words of many foolish sorcerers,” he said with a dark music to his speech.
Just then a lute crashed over his head and a book tumbled out of the instrument. Its golden strings wrapped and intertwined with the noose hanging from his neck and began choking the wizard.
“I should have let him kill you for stealing my boat,” the bard snarled.
“Stunt!?” I exclaimed, then looked over to the writhing wizard.
“Don’t worry he can’t hear a thing,” Stunt said as he swept the prized volume off the floor and tucked it under his arm. He peered around the blue gloom for a moment before setting his eyes on me. “This is a dark lair and a dark path you are setting out upon. Kill him and plead for your return to the academy. This is unfitting sport for a neophyte magician. Especially one with a last name like yours.”
“And if I don’t?”
“I’ll seduce your girl.” I saw him turn the small ring from the desk on his finger and he vanished.
I looked over to the vulnerable magician and bounced to my feet. Now was the time to strike.
But how to do it?
I grinned as my sleeves shot back and a slender jet of ruby fire smote the floundering wizard. The stream fractured into a thousand red stars, like tossed gemstones that cascaded all around the warlock.
“With my own spell!?” Johannes roared as flung the lute away and leapt to his feet, enraged.
“Wait!” I screamed even as I wove a thin orb of protective wards. When no destructive magic ripped across my body, I spoke. “The real treasure of this sunken mansion is that it used to belong to Augustus Apuleius Apennine’s parents.”
“Hooder,” the other wizard whispered.
I nodded. “Julian and Maddalo took notes here; this is a tomb of ancient learning.”
The other magician began to peer around the room before fixing his eyes on me. He didn’t seem to be trying to figure out if I was lying or not, but whether or not he should kill me.
“How do you know of this? How do you know of Apuleius?”
“I read about it in the Academy. It was some of the only reading I did,” I said remembering how worthless most of the academic syllabus was.
“A bachelor,” Johannes said squinting and turning on me. “I’ve slain many of you young geniuses.”
“So have I,” I retorted.
“I love to watch the way they die,” he said, trying to unnerve me. “There is a moment when I’ve got these ‘students’ of magic writhing on the floor of a tavern, or an ancient home, or in a cold and lonely field, and they are missing limbs and memories and every last bit of magic has streamed in futile ribands from their thin finger tips, and they have lost enough blood to be light enough sink to the gates of death—and—and I ease off my assault so that their mind has a chance to collect itself and comprehend that someone is better; much, much better than they ever were at this wild art we call sorcery.
“Because while they were reading books and wearing robes at high table and talking about more books and the books they wrote and the books their ‘professors’ wrote I was dying for magic. I died every day for it. I died every day for magic the academy said no longer existed. I died every day for magic that was forbidden to be read about. I died every day for magic that was forbidden to be practiced. Then I started killing others with it.”
Weapons.
I needed weapons fast.
“So what did your magical degree teach you about how to defend against opponents like me?”
“I don’t have a degree, so I would have to guess. They rusticated me.”
He didn’t seem to care at all. “Now you get to die for it Scammander.”
“I’ve heard so many legends about you Johannes,” I said even as I began to cast. “But the only one that anyone will care about is the one that relates how I killed you, and that’s only if I think you’re important enough to even bother telling.” I grinned before the release. “I might even turn you into a bed time story.”
Suddenly the magic thrumming between my temples stopped, and the entire mansion ignited.
I screamed because I knew he lost control of the spell.
Johannes’s shoulders began heaving with laughter as the fire spread throughout the library. I broke out in a soaking sweat as the inferno swept across bookshelves and up the walls. I watched, helpless and horrified, as sacred books filled with rare learning burned, each a candle, then only another flame in the brilliant blaze; I watched as books that were my only way back to the feral, pristine magic dissolved.
And in front of me, in the center of the brilliant, untamed, masterless fire was a sable flame shaking with laughter as aeons of knowledge were destroyed. “We’re going to die together Scammander! I thought I was going to kill you, but the tumultuous mana has decreed it otherwise! But I am going to ruin all these books, all this learning will be lost forever!” he screamed and collapsed to his knees.
I watched as the flames closed in on the insane sorcerer. Nimble, free fire danced across his hair, interweaving glowing firey locks with his dark tresses before spreading down to his face and melting the flesh and bone. He laughed even as he was slowly consumed in the glowing conflagration.
I screamed and screamed and screamed as the heat engulfed me, swirled around me and swept across my skin.
And then all was over.
It was cold and the icy blue shadows of the library returned, with Joahnes Dubitandum staring into my eyes. I glared at him and drew in quick, abbreviated breaths through clenched teeth.
“I’ve seen how you die Scammander,” he said in a slow serpentine susurrus.
I locked my eyes with his, gritted my teeth and shook, and forced quick jets of breath in and out of my nose. Johannes Dubitandum wasn’t done with his mocking. “It was really not too different from the rest,” he chided. “Except that you never stopped of thinking how to kill me!”
“Who’s to say I’m not still thinking about how to kill you?”
The worst thing you can ever do is tell the truth, but somet
imes it’s the only thing that will allow you to create more believable lies.
“Because you’re not a killer, not like me. This was the first real risk you have taken.”
“I’ve slain.”
“Yes, but have you slain these!”
Johannes grabbed me by the collar and jerked me in close, pulling back his sweaty, matted, hyancthine locks to reveal a dreadful tattoo. Across the top of his forehead was the phrase “KILL ALL THE SAINTS. XIII.”
“My own spell,” he growled again and shoved me away.
I think I was going to live.
“So this is your first lesson from me, Scammander. Don’t ever kill people. Humiliate them. Then kill them.”
I nodded. “You’re going to let the bard get away with The Complete Ghost Tales of Alfred von Shudder?” He didn’t seem to hear me.
“My wife loved poetry. We used to set aside the entire first day of autumn and she would read her favorite verses to me in a meadow,” he said gazing out into the darkness. “A different meadow every autumn,” he said smiling with glassy eyes. “Who knew there were so many vales in this world?” he whispered.
It was moments like this that I wished I was better with knives or carried a good sword to simply kill someone the old and simple way: stabbing them in the back.
Johannes snapped out of his recollection and beckoned me to follow him. “Let’s peruse these dark shelves for a while, shall we? Maybe we will find a rare poem or two. I believe I saw a part of the Tales of Prince Galetto, which should get me very close to an oil painting at Hexameter’s.”
I had already pocketed Augustus’s journals, but Johannes didn’t need to know about that. Or that I had An Algebra of a Sunset.
Johannes Dubitandum smiled. “Wynthrope was right about you,” he said.
“And what did he say about me?”
“That you’re not to be trusted.”
Starlight Cantos
“Poetic genius is dead, but the genius of suspicion has come into the world.”
Stendhal
As Scammander’s story of how he met Johannes ended and we emerged from below, my labyrinthic vertigo began to subside and I let the remains of the mechanical man slide off my shoulders. He clanked to the smooth onyx floor as I looked around.
“I thought the Bonheuros would have caught up to us by now.”
“The prison population I so benevolently liberated is probably occupying most of their attention at the moment.”
I looked back towards the exit. “How come we didn’t just go in that way?”
“Most importantly because you can’t; least importantly because I didn’t remember it.”
I trotted back to the exit, which seemed like a clear, gaping hole when we were leaving, but from this side appeared to be an unscaleable wall of smooth obsidian rock. I grinned. Recognizing the wizard trick from the cemetery library I ran straight at it and smacked into the cold dark stone, leaving the side of my face numb. That was also a wizard trick: to make the true appear false and the false appear true.
“You’re going to have to run a lot faster at that wall if you’re hoping to snap your neck,” Scammander chuckled, beckoning me over.
I rubbed the side of my face as I walked over and looked down at Neoptolemus. I couldn’t figure out why he was so light to carry, but the metal seemed nearly impossible to damage with a weapon. “How is he nearly weightless, yet clearly made of the strongest metal?”
Scammander looked at me. “His creators are academic philosophers. Their specialty is reconciling seemingly insoluble paradoxes.”
He knelt down and ran his hands over the metal-man’s ornate breastplate. “Do you want it?” he said, admiring the craftwork.
“Something tells me that given my luck, I won’t need it to stay alive, and it certainly won’t help me die,” I said looking up to the sky. “So I’ll pass.”
The air around me grew hot and bright as Scammander began to cut the iron-man’s breastplate out with its laser, so I walked forward on the slick black stone toward the sunless lands.
I looked up at the stars, which seemed to be brighter since we weren’t near any cities. Wherever we were, I always remembered to look up at the stars.
I turned back to Scammander, who had cut away Neoptolemus’s chestpiece but was either wearing it under his oozy robe or had stashed it away in the magical dragon stomach.
“What was that about a reading group?”
“Darker Still?” he said.
“Yes.”
“That’s an abbreviation. It was actually called Dark, Dark, Darker Still. It was the third generation of that group. Each successive generation adds another ‘Dark,’ to the name,” he said. “We used to meet in the crypts of the Academy and read books on black magic all night.”
“Is that where you learned to cast this horrible healing spell on me?”
He didn’t say anything, but he closed his eyes, then peered out across the endless onyx plane.
“Do you not feel it Evander?” Scammander said looking at me with something very rare for his face: sincere wonder.
I shook my head.
“Your home,” he said pointing towards the sunless lands. “It lies that way.”
“Then how was Arcady ever golden,” I said staring into the dark horizon. “I remember an abundance of sunlight.”
“Memory is very strange,” he said tilting his head back towards the stars again.
“Do you remember what it was like?” I said. “Do you remember what it was like to cast a spell? Is it different from the few times you are able to do it now, when only pain, anxiety, and dread summon the mana?”
He looked at his hands for a moment then closed his eyes. There was no wind on the quiescent plane of black crystal. Nothing moved. “I miss it,” he said finally, opening his eyes. “I miss it so much,” he said faintly and feebly, looking up to the sky. He spoke like the fading rays from a star as it gives way to a new more radiant dawn. “I walked away from magic a very long time ago, long before I ever hit the peak of my powers.” Scammander was barely able to finish the sentence and his voice was reduced to a forlorn whisper.
There was a pause as the gnomic quiet of life pooled around the wizard. Then he began to speak in the heavy tones of truth, wreathed with flashing lightning. “To be magical is to feel life and experience great sensations. It is tremendous to sweep one’s fingers across the strings of nature and make wild moments from the loose pool of becoming. To create—to form—to fashion forth—to pull atoms, to feel the dizzy orbs swirl and tumble around your fingertips, giddy with purpose and possibility; yes, to shuffle the geometry of unorganized matter from heterogeneous Chaos to massy presences before unyarning them, spinning them back to galactic thread invisible to unscientific eye. The world pulses with a rare vividness—” he broke off and grimaced and was quiet for a very long time. “But now I sit, lost in my titanic gloom,” he said very quietly.
“I’m taking magic out of the world,” he said louder, gripping his staff and glowering up at the stars. “And I’ve started with the great sorcerers, though as you have seen, there were only a few of them left anyways. Until I find the doom word—well, in the meantime, I have taken a little bit of magic out of this world,” he paused to swallow. “This world, this world,” he hissed like a scythe that cuts the field. “This world, whose big magic already seeps away in slow drops, like heavy blood hanging from the veins of a bathing suicide.”
“This world, the worst of all possible worlds, which itself must meet the worst of all possible destructions,” I nodded. I looked into the black glass at my feet as my darker self gazed back at me. “So the plan is still to find a doom word and destroy magic.”
I loved the thought of it but Scammander scoffed. “Fools make plots and even bigger fools follow them. We will never have a plot, for if we have a plot there is a chance to err. There is no plot Evander, there is only what I am doing.”
I scratched my head for a moment, then asked Scammander somet
hing that had been bothering me for a while. “Why do you think Johannes betrayed us?”
“As though madness needs a reason,” he retorted. “To go seeking reasons for the unreason of this world is the surest way of going mad. Accept error, accept irrationality, accept inconsistency, accept the underconscious as the unacknowledged legislator of the world—accept all these errs and except the way of reason to exempt yourself from the wayward airs of reason.”
“There you go, back into your cloud of riddles again,” I said softly, once he had finished rimming the cup of his tetrapharmakos with lyric honey. “You can create so many lies, but can you tell me at least one truth?”
Scammander cut his eyes at me and grinned. “A lie is merely something waiting to become a truth.”
“Your lies lie in wait for truths to ambush,” I said, looking at him wrapped in the flooding robe. “I meant to ask this earlier, but where did you get that robe?”
“My mother sewed it for me; it is made of mana and a drop of water from each river, stream, and ocean of this world. But I got it from Eternity herself at the end of time.”
His robe shimmered with eternity as he recollected how he became a seafarer across the wavy millenniums: “I have sunk my hands in the starry fabric untouchable to mortals, hopped on rushing meteors the size of worlds as they turn and tumble across millennia and rode the astral streak that others pointed to as it plummeted across their horizon; yes, I have soared across the skies of a thousand rolling worlds and through cloudy amphitheaters of couched divinities. Past many a glowing zodiac have I flown, past countless and unending systems of swirling orbs that in mazy motion intermingle and toss their light; through this vast aerial mansion of space and time, to the muteness of infinity have I often listened on my galactic peregrinations; yes, further, and further in than any other I have further looked to the farthest celestial horizon and sailed to the first star whose stretching light touched my eager brow until I reached the edge of infinity. There I bathed in the strange, watery syrups of Time, a chronological bath, the liquid of what has been, what is, and what will be. And Eternity wove a sparkling garland of first things and essences through my hair, linked by undulating strands of pliant starlight and the frosty tails of blue comets. And when all this was done, dancing Eternity turned to me and turned a momentous phrase, saying ‘I will be gone in a moment.’ And she was!”
Splatterism: The Disquieting Recollections of a Minotaur Assailant: An Upbuilding Edifying Discourse Page 33
