And so, on October 24, 1958, Kanmi was handed his divorce decree by a magistrate. He acquired sole custody of his children under Roman law. He was thirty-four, and the single father of two boys, in a job that required extensive travel and was fairly dangerous . . . but that he was not about to give up on.
Part IV: Fire in the Heavens
Caesaria Australis, 1960 AC.
Chapter XV: Seiches
Longboats allowed the first Gothic tribes to cross the Sea of Atlas in 500 AC. They made landfall in the vicinity of what we now term Novo Trier and the Iroquois Confederacy, but the longboats, or skei, were impractical for transporting the large numbers of people and supplies that would be required for colonization. And colonization was what Rome had in mind for Caesaria Aquilonis from the first moment the continent was discovered. Here was what looked, at first blush, to be a largely uninhabited wilderness, seemingly as desolate and cold as Germania itself. What better place to send the obstreperous northern tribes, while retaining the fertile land north of the Alps for the use of Rome and her more congenial Gothic and Gallic neighbors?
The Goths, Cimbrics, Frisians, and Burgundians, not to mention the various Gallic tribes who were subjected this wide-scale forced migration took their exile, if not with enthusiasm, at least with resignation. Their skei had originally been designed as vessels of war and for trading missions along coasts and along rivers. The ancestors of these ships had carried the Rus into the area of Kiev, and had allowed any number of Goths to make war on other Goths. The shipwrights kept the oars for emergencies, but added a protective upper deck for the safety and comfort of their women, children, and livestock, as well as a second mast and larger sails, allowing them to run into the wind for the first time in history.
The two-masted skei became the method of choice for crossing the Sea of Atlas for generations, and permitted wide-scale colonization of Caesaria Aquilonis. This was the type of vessel commanded by Leif Dalgaard when he circumnavigated the globe for the first time in 1000 AC, with three other small support vessels in tow. He could not have done so without the advanced maritime technology represented by the twin-mast skei.
By 1100 AC, twin-mast skei were a familiar sight in the waters off of Edo, Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Macau, as Gallic, Roman, and Gothic traders all plied the waves, purchasing silks, spices, and exotic foods such as noodles to bring home to the Empire, which was hungry for such riches. In return, the traders brought the exceptional ores and armaments of the West, including Damascus steel, and, in time, books began to pass back and forth along the waves as well.
This period was a turbulent one for Nippon, in which the Kamakura shogunate usurped power from the kami-born emperors. Regents from the Fujiwara clan attempted to maintain control, stability, and legitimacy, with some success, during the period of time now referred to as the Heian era. During this period, the Mongols invaded and occupied large portions of Qin and Korea, and the Khanate even attempted to invade Nippon itself.
The sennin (Latin: “immortal” or “transcendent” ones; the term in Nipponese is used to denote sorcerers, ley-mages, summoners, and god-born alike, without regard for specificity) of both Nippon and Korea went so far as to spawn a destructive typhoon in an effort to destroy the Mongol’s invasion fleet in 1230 AC. Over 40,000 people were killed at sea in a single day as a result of this magic-spawned storm. The Mongols who survived the storm were subsequently slaughtered when they came ashore by the bushi.
Over time, the Fujiwara regents became so inextricably entwined with the Imperial house through intermarriage that one could not reliably be told from the other. They appreciated and understood the benefits of trade with Rome, and their government has maintained that trade relationship without stint for over nine hundred years.
Today, Nippon seems to represent a land of fascinating contradictions for outsiders. They have a rich tapestry of gods, called kami, all their own, but some segments of their population have embraced the Indian tradition of Buddhism, as well as Taoism, imported from Qin. Roman, Gothic, and Gallic gods have shrines here, but these are largely restricted to dock-area neighborhoods. Edo itself has a small, but thriving Foreigner’s Quarter—again, situated near the port. There is a strong tradition of kami-born magic in the Imperial and various shogun families and their schools of sorcery and summoning rival the best of what Hellas, Chaldea, and Persia can offer. But unlike many other nations, they have embraced technology, as well. The University of Edo is one of the foremost schools for engineering and technomancy in the world, rivaling the universities of both Athens and Jerusalem.
—Valentinus Crespus Heronus, The History of Nippon, “Introduction.” pp. 8-10. University of Rome Press, 1949 AC.
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Aprilis 7, 1960 AC
Lutetia Parisiorum, or the “Swampy city of the Parisii tribe,” straddled the Sequana river in northern Gaul. If a boat followed that river north along its navigable length, it would reach the Channel of Britannia. The area had been occupied by a city since the second century after Caesar’s ascension, and much of the downtown area still followed the original Roman street grid. Petty kings of the western Carnutes, the foreign Belgae, and the nearby Senones—who called the river the Seine, after a slurred pronunciation of their own tribal name—had periodically risen and fallen under the oversight of Roman governors, and the names of the regions around the city still more or less reflected the old patchwork of tribal affiliations. But the province itself had been a contiguous and united domestic unit of the Roman Empire for over fourteen hundred years.
The bulk of the city’s important buildings were on the Left Bank of the Sequana . . . the ancient amphitheater and arena were lit up in preparation for twilight, as games and a play were both underway. A little further from the river, the palace of the governor and the palace of the local kings still bustled as clerks left work for the day, heading home. The University of Lutetia Parisiorum stood somewhat downriver of both, all of its buildings lit up brightly, as the school never slept. The oldest building on the campus had been erected in the eleventh century as a shrine to Apollo, Ogmios, and the Dadga . . . all deities of learning and wisdom. It had been followed by a small shrine to Ceridwyn and Hecate, the goddesses of witchcraft and otherworldly knowledge. As such, the University had always leaned towards arcane knowledge, and had, since 1700 AC, sponsored a yearly conference on ley-magic, ley-engineering, sorcery, technomancy, and summoning. An entire building was cleared out for a week to allow professors, industry experts, and consultants who belonged to a variety of professional groups to mingle, listen to lectures, and attend panels.
Minori Sasaki loved the Lutetia Conference on Magicology, and had attended every year since she’d been a student at the university. Unfortunately for her, she was attaining a reputation among the other attendees as an eccentric. In a crowded and overheated lecture hall, the small woman carefully removed her poster-board graphs from her portfolio and began to set them up on tripods in front of the chalkboards. She could feel dozens of people around her all jostling to clasp wrists and chatter. After twelve years in Gaul, she spoke Gallic fluently, and had already learned Latin and Qin at home in Hokkaido before even leaving for the Imperial Palace in Kyoto. She’d added Hellene during her university education, and a good thing, too—most of her coworkers at Eleutherian Industries were either Gallic or Hellene, and it helped to be able to keep up with them as they chattered.
As such, the stream of syllables behind her rapidly resolved themselves into spiteful clarity.
“Oh, it’s Sasaki again? What is this, the third year in row she’s going to suggest that overuse of ley-energy is causing . . . what is it, weather-pattern changes?”
“No, ground fault shifts and earthquakes. She’s an alarmist.”
“I’d say it’s womanish hysteria, except her last paper was co-authored by Belator Camulorix. He’s pretty senior in the department to be staking his reputation on hysteria.” That was someone with a Hellene accent, speaking in Gall
ic.
“I’d be careful how you throw around the phrase ‘womanish hysteria’ around here. This is Gaul.” There was a Roman accent to that Gallic. Little too much roll on the r’s.
Minori didn’t turn around, but she pursed her lips a little in annoyance. She’d been studying technomancy for twelve years—since coming to Gaul in 1948, in fact—and it would be nice to have her theories accepted on their own merits, but at least the gap between men and women in the professions was much smaller in Gaul than it was back home. Back in Hokkaido, given her status? She couldn’t have had a profession. She would have been, by now, either married off to one of her father’s political allies, or bound as some samurai’s concubine . . . except that when she was twelve, she’d manifested a powerful gift for sorcery. No one in her father’s household had known what to do with her, so he had taken her to the Imperial court and had her trained there. Which had left her a sorceress by the age of eighteen, with a gift for engineering and mathematics . . . and no place to use it. Because, by an accident of fortune, Minori Sasaki had been born the daughter of a powerful samurai and his official concubine. Becoming involved in trade or a profession would have been inappropriate to her family name.
She finished putting up her charts on the wobbling metal stands, and stepped up beside the podium, her eyes on the ground and her hands clasped in front of her as she waited for her introduction. The skies outside were dark and leaden, so she could see her own reflection in the plate glass windows off to her right. She corrected herself, unconsciously, straightening her back a little, holding her shoulders with better poise and grace. She was small, compared to the various Gauls and Goths in the room, but only a little below the average height of the Roman women scattered through the audience . . . and Minori wore heeled boots to make up the difference on days like these. Her glossy black hair was knotted in a bun at the nape of her neck, and while she wore a kimono-like wrapped jacket over her Gallic-style skirt, both were dove-gray, and thoroughly professional.
The emeritus professor in charge of the panel spoke now in Latin. “Please join us in welcoming Dr Minori Sasaki. Dr. Sasaki received her doctorate from this very university four years ago, and has been working with Eleutherian Industries ever since. Her paper today will discuss the Great Earthquake of Burgundoi in 1950—just ten short years ago. Aftershocks from that massive quake were felt as far away as Edo, and at least one tsunami was spawned as a result of it. Dr. Sasaki, what is your contention?”
“That the quake was not a natural occurrence, but rather the effect of ley-line tampering in Nahautl, possibly caused by industrial use.”
Skeptical murmurs from all around. Minori ignored the rustles and the whispers, and began showing her various charts, some of which were maps, and some of which were graphs. She drew equations from memory on the chalkboard at the front of the lecture hall. “This is a record of seismic activity in Nahautl prior to the Great Earthquake,” she said, tapping her first graph. “Please note that the lines of the graphed activity precisely mirror the expansion of the ley power-grid into southern Nahautl, and the tapping of several new ley-lines. Every time a new facility was built, there were noticeable temblors that resonated throughout southern Caesaria Aquilonis. In 1950, there was a sudden and very noticeable jump in the fault lines here—measured as a six-inch shift!” Minori pointed on a map to an area north of Tenochtitlan, “and you will also note on the map of the ley-lines that this same area is heavily resonant with ley-energy.”
“Isn’t that where the Pyramid of the Sun collapsed five years ago?” a voice called out. Gothic accent of some sort, harshening the Latin words.
Minori turned around and looked up into the rows of seats spreading up from the low stage on which she stood at the front of the lecture hall. “It is, yes,” she confirmed.
“If I may interrupt with one more question? Wasn’t that collapse linked to ley-line disruption of some sort? Why didn’t this trigger another massive earthquake?”
The details released at the time had been sketchy, and Minori hadn’t been able to obtain much information at all about the incident since it had occurred. The most she’d gotten was that an experimental ley-tap had been positioned in the ruins to take advantage of where the ancients had situated their city—atop an unusual and highly resonant ley-formation. “The amount of energy dispersed, all at once, did cause local seismic disturbances, resulting in the destruction of the pyramid.” She paused, organizing her thoughts. “The previous intermittent energy discharges in the area can be categorized into two types. Some were sharp spikes, such as the one that I believe caused the major earthquake in Burgundoi, resonating up through the fault lines all along the continent . . . and some were gradual discharges, permeating the environment and re-entering the ley-system.” She paused. “Imagining the ley-system as an aquifer is actually a helpful analogy in this case. If the aquifer is saturated, the water must go someplace, and it will find the path of least resistance. This will result in uplifts and subsidences at other places in the system, many of which can be very far removed from the original flood-point. And flooding will destabilize the ground around the system.” Minori’s lips tightened. This was the weakest area in her hypothesis, and she knew it. Energy and water were not entirely analogous. “Now, the energy discharge in 1955 qualifies as a ‘spike’ and I honesty cannot tell you why a spike in this area resulted in an earthquake so far away the first time, but not the second. I have a few hypotheses. First, the continuous discharge of low-levels of energy may have shifted the system as a whole, as too much water in an aquifer shifts the stone around it, carving new channels, or changing the flow patterns of old ones.”
That provoked muttering. Everyone knew that ley-lines moved over time, but it was a very gradual process that took place over thousands of years. Current thinking suggested that this was due to the Earth and Sol drifting through the galaxy, causing cosmic strings to shift, as their position relative to other stars changed. It was difficult to imagine that humans, as small as they were, could have an effect on a system this much larger than they were, themselves. “Another possibility is that in the course of the experimentation at the site, someone developed a buffering process that insulated some of the energy discharge. However, since the entirety of the experiment is still subject to a criminal investigation, no information on the methods and processes used is currently available for my study.” Her tone held cool irony. She didn’t appreciate the information being withheld by the state prosecutors. It’s as if something absorbed the energy, she thought, grimly. But I can’t prove that. I would have to dig under the pyramid’s ruins to see if the state-run energy company managed to put some sort of safeguards in place . . . and to imagine that I’d get permission to dig there? Folly.
Another hand shot up. “All right.” This voice had a Britannian accent of some variety. Minori’s head swung up, and she found the face that matched the voice. Male, long, dark blond hair, braided, and a light beard. Between all the hair and the spectacles, it was hard to see his face, but the man was smiling. It had taken her most of her first four years here to learn all the different ways in which a Gaul or a Goth or a Roman could smile. They could smile to laugh, smile to say they were sorry, smile to lie, smile in contempt, smile in joy. Smile, smile, smile, and at first, she’d thought they were like grinning demon masks, always baring teeth. This smile seemed to be kind enough. As if the man didn’t wish to say what he was about to say. “Without details on the ley-line tapping experiment at Teotihuacán, isn’t all of this supposition? You’re trying to draw a cause and effect relationship through circumstantial evidence. Here are all the things that we think are the effects; therefore, this over here must be the cause. How do you determine which seismic shifts are natural, as opposed to those that you believe stem from ley-grid activity? Where do you get the data on the 1950 energy spike from, or do you derive it, backwards, from the fact that there was an earthquake over a thousand miles away?”
Minori bit the inside of her li
ps in vexation. She’d wanted to get all the way through all of her math first. All the detailed charts that showed, plain as day, that wherever the ley company had expanded, earthquakes had followed. Volcanic eruptions. “Those are excellent questions, that I will cover in this presentation, ah . . . professor . . .” She trailed off uncertainly.
“Oh, I’m not a professor, Doctor Sasaki. My apologies. Trennus Matrugena. University of Londonium. Ley-mage and arcessitor.” Arcessitor was the formal Latin word for summoner, and Minori could see a number of people on the benches around the Britannian edge away now, subtly. This let her see the blue and green kilt, and the fact that his white shirt was rolled up to his elbows to show tattoos along both forearms. Masses of them, all interworked in blue-green ink, to form a harmonious whole. Not unlike irezumi, but she doubted that his markings offered the protections that a properly-worked irezumi provided. She knew that Nahautl tattoos could render skin like steel, or allow a man to turn himself invisible, but an irezumi artist could render the wearer of such a tattoo immune to flame. Immune to cold. Immune to the venom of a snake’s bite, or poison in a cup.
Minori cleared her throat. “I traveled to Nahautl myself last year to conduct thaumometric analyses of the rocks around the Teotihuacán site. I couldn’t get into the crime area, but my fifth chart is an analysis of the decay of energy in the region . . . and the sixth chart shows what archaeologists charted in the area in 1948 and 1953, when they were conducting ley-surveys of the ruins to determine why the buildings were constructed where they were.” She raised her eyebrows. See? I do my work. “Their findings were independent of mine, and show that the ambient power levels increased in the region after 1950 . . . and my own information shows an enormous increase in the background energy of the area after 1955.” Trying to get her presentation back on track, she slapped a hand against the next poster-board. “The pattern is clear. The seismic events have the Teotihuacán area as the epicenter of the activity, or the smaller, newer ley-taps in southern Nahautl.” She took that map down, showing the next map, this one of Caesaria Australis. “And here, in Tawantinsuyu, where the ley-grid has been slowly expanding for the last eight years? We see a similar increase in the number and intensity of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. Numbers do not lie.”
The Valkyrie (The Saga of Edda-Earth Book 1) Page 86
