“Things were just getting interesting when Kephan was elected Archmage and began his island improvement campaign. The Inundation stopped the formal investigation into the phenomenon, of course – hard to conduct interviews and take readings when your island is sinking two meters a week. And the gods were the least of our concerns at the time – which is unfortunate, because several of them were apparently involved in the Inundation. But by the time we knew that, the bulk of the civilization had been relocated to Merwyn.”
“So when did the gods become... gods? ”
“About a generation after the Inundation,” she answered. “Your culture lost much in the sinking of Perwyn – it really was a grand civilization,” she recalled. “Worst of all it lost its commitment to rationality, and within a generation the cultural context Perwyn provided, the bridge to humanity’s past, was nearly gone. So the people began filling in the gaps of their understanding with myth and superstition.” She didn’t sound condemning, she was making an observation.
“Why did that happen, if the evacuation was so orderly?”
“Well, we got the people out safely, but the place was gone too quickly to move much of the infrastructure to the coastal colonies, which weren’t prepared to receive them. The people were lost and confused, going from a comfortable existence in an advanced civilization to a crude and rustic life in the wilderness. The continental settlements were geared for food production, not industry. The cities there were transport hubs and commercial centers, not manufacturing or cultural centers.
“Although Emden was advanced, and Lur Berria was becoming quite well-developed, the refugees from Perwyn weren’t farmers, fisherman or prospectors. They struggled with their new circumstances, and things were rotten for a few generations. The quality of education and the sense of cultural cohesion fell, and your people... regressed.
“That’s when the first proto-divinities began to manifest from your frightened, confused, desperate subconscious. Figures from popular culture were transformed, and old myths were given new life as they struggled to maintain their culture after the crisis. The syncretic nature of human culture bonded some rather unorthodox ideas, thanks to their stark condition, and that produced entirely new entities, within a few generations. From that sense of desperation, need, loss and ignorance, the gods emerged from the mists of your collective subconscious.”
“That must have been impressive,” I remarked.
“It changed everything . Previous manifested thoughtforms had rudimentary enneagramatic cohesion, like basic elementals, but thanks to the human capacity for creativity they were far more complex and unpredictable as time went on and your culture changed.
“To an Alkan eye, it was frightening: these entities didn’t conform to our previous experience. They seemed to appear from nowhere, without being consciously summoned, and they possessed independent agency.
“Far more troubling were some of their powers. They were able to do things that were... impossible, even with magic. At least as we knew it.”
“And you were involved with that, I take it?”
“I had no choice! I was the Alkan expert on humanity at the time, and one of your species’ greatest proponents in our councils. I studied humanity more deeply and intently than any other Alka Alon. I’d lived among you for over a century. I’d learned as much about being a human as I could, on your own terms and through your own science. So naturally when human proto-elementals with independent agency started throwing their metaphysical weight around, I was drafted into the effort.
“That is a tale on its own,” she continued, thoughtfully, “but one of the things that grew out of it was an appreciation for the very temporary nature of manifested divinity,” she sighed. “The transitory nature of the gods’ appearances made them bearable, if unpredictable... and positively useful in a few instances. As our understanding of their nature grew, we realized that priesthoods could be used to manage the social anxieties that could cause a deity to manifest.”
“You? Encouraged temples?”
“Oh, not just me,” she demurred. “It was a joint decision with the colonial authorities. You have to understand, some of the divinities from humanity’s pre-Callidore past were horrific : world-destroying cosmic gods with a penchant for genocide.
“I’m not judging – the proto-Alkan culture was just as barbaric and horrific, before we came to this world, but our gods never manifested the way yours did. Our subconscious minds work differently. Thankfully, there was little absolute belief left in most of those older religions by the time of colonization. Yours was largely a secular society, with only remnants of pre-Callidoran religion remaining.
“But after the Inundation of Perwyn there was a conscious decision made to repress the older forms and encourage the emergence of a loosely-structured adapted religion.”
“Why?” I asked, troubled at such a conscious manipulation of human culture.
“Some of your folk began looking to their past divinities for guidance and succor,” she explained. “While your ancient cults were psychologically intriguing, the original myths they were based on involved divinities that had dangerous properties.”
“How so?” I felt like I was begging her for information, like a child.
“If the human mind can conceive of a divinity who has the power to create and destroy the universe at whim, ” she proposed, “just what would the useful purpose be of actually manifesting that divinity? Would they judge your species by the standards of another world and another time, as culture and myth dictated? That was madness.
“So the Cosmic deities and the monotheistic religious traditions were eliminated or discouraged. It wasn’t as hard as we thought. Within a few generations on Callidore most of them lost their cultural context anyway.
“What came after was a return to a kind of agricultural paleo-religion. The refugees, deprived of their advanced civilization, were forced to learn to farm, hunt, and fish, and it was a difficult transition. It was made more difficult by the hostilities that broke out over the mainland as the surviving power structures competed for dominance.
“In the few generations it took to get things sorted out, so much of the old world was lost that the ignorant descendants of your race were all too willing to cleave to whatever spiritual solace was available. By encouraging the priesthoods, the Magocracy was able to keep those old Cosmic gods from manifesting by draining the subconscious power that fueled them into socio-magical rituals. Else, any disturbance could potentially release a world-destroying human god on Callidore.”
“That was really a danger?”
“It was,” she nodded, solemnly. “There were a few incidents of manifestations that caused a great deal of trouble. Some of them could have gotten humanity eradicated, if they’d been noticed by the wrong eyes. We were able to keep them quiet, but it’s quite possible that one of those old cosmic manifestations was involved in the destruction of Perwyn. There’s at least circumstantial evidence of that. We know a few lesser archetypes were involved. And some were borne from that crisis: Avital, for one.
“In any case, the new religions were a lot less potentially damaging, once their powers and symbolisms were separated from each other in syncretic polytheisms. The gods your people called forth from their collective unconscious during the Second Magocracy were less likely to destroy the world and more likely to add to its fertility... and its inter-tribal strife. The Imperial gods were fairly manageable, once the Second Magocracy was organized. They manifested rarely, intervened sparingly, and they thankfully faded away fairly quickly. It wasn’t until the Narasi became a force north of the Vore than things got complicated again.”
“My barbarian ancestors,” I mused. “Always the life of the party.”
“A passionate people,” she said, diplomatically. “With a well-defined, if crude, cosmology. And a genius for warfare.”
“I didn’t think the Alka Alon appreciated warfare as an art, the way we practice it,” I pointed out.
“I am no ordinary Alkan,” she reminded me. “I lived with humani culture for a century. Your people’s approach to warfare is different than ours, but the results are inarguable.
“When the Narasi overwhelmed the Magocracy and imposed their gods on the conquered, not to mention destroying the magical infrastructure of the Empire that controlled such manifestations, my people were appalled. Your Narasi deities were far more violent than the Magocracy’s, even their stormy sea gods, and when they manifested it was calamitous.
“It took two generations to complete the cultural fusion that tamed the original gods into something more manageable, but by then my folk had had enough of humanity. When the Narasi began oppressing the magi, the only ones amongst you who had any inkling what was happening when Duin the Destroyer manifested, for instance, most of us gave up. A few of us who didn’t want to ended up discredited, exiled, or... imprisoned,” she sighed, sadly.
“But that’s why the idea of a permanently manifesting human divinity is so frightening, Minalan. Your gods have capabilities that no one on Callidore can match. The snowstone is tangible proof of that. Yet they are as capricious as your myths suggest – more so,” she conceded. “In all truth, most of your myths give the gods far too much credit. Far too much... humanity. ”
“I’ve been very selective in which of them I’ve given this gift,” I answered, carefully. “In some cases, I’ve exacted promises and concessions from them.”
She looked horrified. “You realize that there is very little you can do to enforce those, don’t you?”
I shrugged. “What can be given, can be taken away. Ishi started to get out of hand in Vorone. I had a talk with her, and things got better.”
“You... had a talk with Ishi? And things just... got better? ”
“I can be very persuasive,” I offered. “And I invoked her self-interest.”
“What other divinities have you... affected like this?”
“Just Herus and Briga, who both seem level-headed by comparison, but I’m open to others.”
“And you think you are adequate to judge which among them is worthy of this gift?” she asked, trying hard not to be condescending. She wasn’t entirely successful.
“If I’m wise enough to regulate the magi, why not the gods?”
“Your wisdom isn’t the question, Minalan, it’s your ability to enforce your will. This is a disturbing development, I will not lie to you. It will enrage certain Alka Alon, when it becomes known,” she said, shaking her head, sadly.
“The Enshadowed? They’re already enraged by humanity. No, there are those amongst respectable Alkan great houses that will see this as an unacceptable development. The same ones who decided to confine me here in Sartha Wood. That’s why they did it, when you get down to it: I assisted the gods in aiding humanity, when they sought to save Perwyn. When my people had turned their backs on it.”
“How?”
“That is too long and complex a story for now, my friend. Perhaps someday I will tell the tale. Right now, it is not germane.
“What is germane is the condition of your wife. I think that with a little assistance, we can help heal her body the rest of the way. And perhaps even bring some structure to her mind, even if we cannot bring it cohesion beyond what I have accomplished.”
“But you said there was hope?” I asked, desperately.
“Hope? Yes, if myths, legends and speculation count as hope. Callidore has many powers, from many ages, and the answers may be among them.”
“I had hoped that it would lie with the ancient enneagram we installed in the Snowflake,” I confessed. “An ancient power we took from a shard of Ghost Rock known as the Grain of Pors.”
“Oh, dear,” she asked, disturbed. “When you said you used an enneagram to control the thing, I thought you had constructed one. You borrowed one from Hapaxilite?”
“Yes, the Snowflake was too complex for a simply constructed enneagram. But one of my apprentices surveyed the Grain and retrieved an ancient pattern, one with sufficient complexity to someday control the thing. A paraclete ,” I explained. “An intercessory enchantment to convey and empower the Snowflake.”
“Minalan, there are many ancient horrors that have been entrapped in Ghost Rock,” she said, as if she’d walked in on a child playing with deadly acid. “Dangerous things that predate both of our species’ time on Callidore.”
“We considered some of those,” I admitted. “But in the end Ruderal – my apprentice – identified one he called The Celestial Mother, a benign entity from the ancient oceans. One with sufficient complexity to control it. Onranion and my people managed to connect it, in a rudimentary way... why are you gaping at me, if I might ask?”
“You have... attached the enneagram of a legendary great Celestial Mother to a hunk of magical crystal?” she asked, horrified.
“Well, yes,” I agreed, “but so far there haven’t been any ill effects. I wouldn’t say it allows me control of the Snowflake but it does give me a rudder to steer with, so to speak.”
“Oh, dear gods!” she gasped, horrified. “You impetuous, short-sighted, impulsive wizard! Minalan, what have you done?”
“What do you mean?” I asked, concerned at her reaction.
“Minalan... does the Alkan Council know you’ve done this?” she demanded.
“No, just Onranion. He’s not exactly in their best graces, right now.”
“Some things are eternal,” she quoted from somewhere, rolling her little eyes. “But if they knew the danger you have just put both our races in...”
“Why? What are you talking about, Lilastien?”
She looked at me quietly for a long time, and I’m sure she was considering just how much information to entrust in my feeble human mind.
Finally she cleared her throat and sipped a large amount of wine.
“What I’m about to tell you hasn’t been properly understood by your people since before Perwyn sank,” she began, softly. “The knowledge has been lost over time, and for the most part your people have carried on without the burden of it. Living happy, natural lives, as their ancestors intended.
“But when your folk first arrived from the Void, they assumed – incorrectly – that the Alka Alon were the masters of Callidore. Our cities and settlements were the most like theirs, and they recognized our civilizations as being remarkably similar.
“Unfortunately for you, that was not the case. The Alon ourselves came from another world, more than ten thousand years ago. We were invited here... by the Sea Folk. The Vunden. They are the true native civilization of Callidore.”
“I know as much,” I agreed. “But why would they do that?”
“They have their own reasons,” she shrugged. “From what I understand from they years I studied the Vunden—”
“You’ve studied the Sea Folk?” I asked, surprised. I hadn’t thought the Alka Alon had much commerce with the aquatic race.
“I had to do something before humanity showed up and captivated my interest,” she demurred. “But I studied them for a century, in my youth. A very alien people, compared to Alon or human. They rule the most important part of Callidore, the seas: the Great Depths beyond the Shallow Sea, where the great reefs span hundreds of miles, giant mountains teeming with life the Sea Folk shepherd.
“The history of the Vunden stretches back over a hundred thousand years, and they are just the latest incarnation of the aquatic masters of Callidore. Their line, in truth, stretches back millions of years, to a time before both Alon and human were more than beasts on our respective homeworlds. In the ancient history of Callidore, the ancestors of the Vunden were ruled by the Great Mothers, beings so complex and sophisticated that they ordered the very ecosystem of the oceans. Millions of beings depended upon their wise governance.
“But the Great Mothers weren’t the pinnacle of the race,” she continued, reciting a history few had ever considered. “For as the Realms of Light and Darkness waxed and waned, their powers grew and receded as w
ell. Over time they became more and more sophisticated, until the Great Mothers birthed the Celestial Mothers... beings so vast that they could perceive the universe far beyond the shores of Callidore.
“They reached out their perceptions into the universe and eventually found that they were not alone. There were other worlds, some teeming with life. While they observed, the Celestial Mothers had little way to interact with the distant worlds. Their curiosity outweighed their caution, however, and they finally discovered another world... one which was similar to Callidore, in many respects.
“Like here, life had arisen within a type of Magosphere. But while the new race possessed curiosity and interest as the Sea Folk did, when the Celestial Mothers invited them to visit through their mighty magic, the new race agreed.
“Only once they arrived, they proved to be an invasion force, not emissaries of good will. The translations we have of their name are tenuous, but the Sea Folk usually refer to them as the Formless Foe. Their powers were great, allowing them to transform their bodies and adapt themselves to Callidore’s rich Magosphere.
“It was far stronger than their homeworld’s. They grew strong, very quickly. They found they enriched themselves when they consumed the magical corals the Sea Folk tended. They realized new powers, with the help of the Sea Folk. Then they went to war with their hosts.
“It was war on a scale unimaginable to our minds,” she reflected. “For thousands of years the Formless fought under the sea, seeking to overcome the Celestial Mothers’ defenses and feast on the rich corals that sustained both races: one by cultivation, one by consumption. After millennia, it appeared the Celestial Mothers were triumphant, driving the Formless Foe either into the Depths, the deepest part of the ocean, a place of unimaginable darkness and fury... or on the Dry lands, above the surface, where they could do little harm.”
“They came ashore?” I asked, surprised.
“They were Formless ,” she shrugged. “They adapted. The Dry Lands were almost unknown to the Sea Folk, beyond a few brief surveys. The life above the waves was sparse and primitive, compared to what lay in the Deeps. The Formless were an aquatic species, evolved on a watery world, but they were powerful enough to transform themselves to survive the Dry. For a few brief centuries, the Sea Folk felt as if they had finally won.”
The Spellmonger's Yule: A Spellmonger Series Short Story Page 7
