The Scion of Abacus, Part 1

by Kamffer, Brondt

  But there was one thing I learnt from the whole affair, and this was perhaps the lesson Deryn Lhopri had been trying to teach me all along: I learnt that I was slowly beginning to see Hero as more than a friend, and I discovered that the realization of my true emotions was a terrifying thing. If anything, this knowledge made me even more reticent to be open with Hero, as though I was now somehow on display, a potential husband auditioning and therefore afraid of making the slightest mistake. It was foolish, I suppose, but you must not forget that the closed environment of the University, and the constancy of our indoctrination at the hands of the professors, made honesty with oneself a thing as rare as honesty among our fellows. It was a system built on lies, and I was soon to realize that everything I was being taught by Deryn Lhopri was preparation for me to rise above the lies, to become a father of lies. There would be no freedom from the untruth that governed the world, only a change in my positional relationship to it.

  But despite her work, Deryn Lhopri herself remained among the lied to, a tool in the hands of a master craftsman to teach his apprentice—me—what my work was to be.

  I did not, however, fully realize this until much later.

  -VII-

  The months passed us by rapidly, the first year of specialized training en route to becoming Hymanni being filled with study from dawn till dusk. All my free time was taken up in the mage’s tower or in the mage’s book in my dormitory, from which I continued to learn the true history of Aaria and the magic all Synths relied on.

  I will now share an extended excerpt from Abacus’ confessions as it prefaces the most important moment in my development as a student in the University. I have said already that the hyma was having no effect on me, and this remained true throughout that first year of higher study. Neither did my ether awaken again as it had done on the evening when I’d narrowly escaped a beating at the hands of an older student. Deryn Lhopri’s lessons continued apace, and she repeated often that the ether of Synths is not equal, that there were those before who waited longer than the rest—as I would be forced to wait—for theirs to awaken.

  All this remained constant, and in the back on my mind Professor Lhopri’s words about truth and lies continued to fester. Indeed, the only person I came to fully trust was a long-dead mage who was now speaking to me through his journal. I trusted Hero, yes, but not enough to tell her all that I was learning. The topic of Abacus’ book remained unmentioned between us, for I saw in her eyes uncertainty whenever the question of the old mages came up.

  So, with these thoughts in mind, I copy now for you from the mage’s confession the most important passage I had read to date:

  I have, of course, spent a great deal of time experimenting with the hymaberry since those days when I created it. As a man of science as well as of magic, it would be remiss for me not to have done so. The berry’s impact varies person to person, but I am not concerned with the common man at the moment.

  The berry is a peculiar creation, for it is the combination of the natural world and the supernatural, for the bush itself existed before; only, in the rituals by which I created the plant its nature was changed into what it now is.

  But here are the two chief things I have learnt in time, and it is well that I betrayed the oath to my brethren and did not take my life as I ought to have done. Firstly, let me address the lesser issue, one that runs somewhat counter-intuitively to all we had supposed when creating the hymaberry plant.

  What is the hymaberry? I have already written of this, but for clarity’s sake the bush can best be described as pure ether. The common man has lost his ability to sense this spiritual part of himself and so has lost the ability of magic altogether. We were, as I have said, only six mages left in all Aaria who could still control our ether, as every man once could in the distant past.

  With this in mind, you can make the leap in logic that if the hymaberry were to increase the common man’s awareness of his ether, then it ought to have a similar effect on a mage, amplifying the ability he already possesses. But here is the first of the two great revelations I have encountered: The hymaberry has no measurable impact on me when I eat of the fruit.

  I will interject here simply to say that in my early readings of this passage, I was troubled by Abacus’ continued use of the phrase “eat of the fruit,” and I believed for a long time that the troubles he described were rooted in this, for it was common knowledge to all at the University that the berries themselves were at best worthless and at worst outright poisonous. It was only in the process of juicing the fruit that the power latent in them was distilled and able to stir the Synth’s ether. Abacus continues:

  At first, this revelation disturbed me, and I conducted numerous experiments with the berry in an attempt to isolate the reasons for the lack of response from my own body. It was not until I revisited the treatise of an ancient mage that I remembered the truth: The ether is not a vessel that one can fill; it is not something that can be half-strength or full-strength. It is more like life itself: You either are alive or you are dead. There is no middle ground between.

  But even this seemed to run counter to what I witnessed in the real world, for the hymaberry only partially awakened the ether of the eater, for the eater cannot tie his ether to the elements outside of his own body, unlike the mages, most of whom have a total connection to all ether in the world, only stronger or weaker than others of our kind.

  I dug deeper, visited the writings of other ancient mages, prayed to God for direction, and conducted further experiments until I eventually arrived at the greater and more troubling revelation—and a balm to my guilty soul. Let me remind you yet again that I had sworn an oath to take my own life after the creation of the hymaberry.

  But I say to you now, my future scion, that had I fulfilled the letter of my vow, I would have destroyed everything my brethren and I had hoped to create. For this reason, I now believe that it was the very hand of God himself who withheld the knife I would have plunged into my own heart.

  I should have seen it—we all should have seen it—but in the giving up of their blood to make the hymaberry plant a reality, my brethren believed—as did I—that the necessary binding was in place for all time. What is this binding I speak of?

  Simply this, and it is the oldest law known in the field of magic: The power of the magical object continues only so long as the ether that created it remains to bind it.

  You can see why my brethren and I believed that their lifeblood would hold the bush’s power together, for their very ether went into the plant. But you see also that there was a fatal flaw in our system: It was not they but I who was responsible for conjoining the blood of mages with the bush itself. It is my ether that joined them, and my death would have caused the fruit to lose all power.

  Do you not see it? The berry exists because I exist, and it shall only continue to exist so long as I am alive to perpetuate it—or unless I find some other means to preserve the plant before my eventual death. And though as a mage my lifespan is thrice that of ordinary men, yet I must perish eventually like all others.

  What a cruel fate my brethren and I have thrust upon the world in our arrogance, for now I bear an even greater burden than the guilt I bore before. All who partake of the hymaberry and feel the awakening of their ether do so because I make it possible by my life. I have become a father to them all in a way no one foresaw. And as the world continues to remake itself in light of this gift—yea, this curse—I have set upon it, I can foresee the day when all men shall become slaves to my will, for I have the power to withhold power from them, and the world will come to a place where only magic keeps it alive.

  Is that not an arrogant thought? And yet it is the reality I have created. Already, men and women are so enslaved by their need for the hymaberry that to remove it from them would be to cast the world into a dark age.

  When I read that passage for the first time, nearly a year after I had found the book, I must admit that I did not understand most of it, and thos
e parts that I did understand frightened me beyond all reckoning. Chief of all are the words “it shall only continue to exist so long as I am alive to perpetuate it,” though I think my mind was so frightened by the possibilities in the entire passage that it utterly thrust this from all memory, and so it’s rediscovery must await a later moment in this tale of mine.

  However, I did understand one thing, and that is this: the juice of the hymaberry should ordinarily have had its full impact on me from the moment I drank it—if I were truly Hymanni, as Deryn Lhopri maintained. Such were the words of Abacus, and as I have said I had grown to trust him above all others, especially above my professors.

  And from what I had experienced in the past few years, I could come to only one conclusion, and that the most frightening of all, frightening enough that I shut the confessions of Abacus away for nearly six months.

  * * *

  During those six months of self-imposed denial of all things relating to the mage Abacus, including visits alone or accompanied by Hero to the mage’s tower, I developed a finely tuned sense of self-hatred.

  The root of this is not so difficult to understand if you have ever found yourself to be different from others in any significant way. There are essentially two natural human responses to such a situation: you can either embrace your differentness in a kind of arrogant pride, or you can hate the very marks that distinguish you, ultimately loathing yourself because they are inextricably a part of who you are.

  One can never tell how he will react until put in such a situation, and had I given the matter any thought before reading that pivotal passage in the confessions of Abacus, I would have supposed myself more than capable of dealing with reality, even of embracing it. Rather, I found myself retracting further and further into a shell I was constructing against the stares and smirks of my fellows, who never let me forget that in over a year of Hymanni training I had yet to demonstrate any ability with my ether.

  Even Hero began to weary of my constant moods and more so of my unwillingness to talk to her of what was happening inside my head.

  Things got to such a state that I began to wish I had failed the tests of choosing, both as a thirteen-year-old and again as an eighteen-year-old, even if that meant I was doomed to the pathetic life of an Eikos, eking out a sad existence on the streets of Ilion at the mercy of any Synth who happened to be walking by. But even in those dark moments, I did not think of the family I had left behind.

  It is only in later years that I realized how truly selfish I had become.

  You must not suppose—those of you reading this manuscript and having no knowledge of the culture governing Aaria in those days and the peculiar relationship of the Synths to the Hymage and the Dominion—that selfishness was a common trait among the Synths and Hymanni. On the contrary, it was hammered into us on a near-daily basis in the University that all our desires were to be for the state, that even friendship and love were secondary. Feril Animis’ guiding mantra proved to be a fairly standard saying in the University of Ilion: There is no God but Aaria, my mother and my father, my sister and my brother, my creator and my destroyer. I will serve her with all my heart, with all my soul, with all my strength, all the days of my life. There was not a day that passed when I did not repeat those words at least five times aloud and many more in my mind.

  But things came to a head, as such things must when they alter our attitudes, and as I lay abed one night some three months after reading the above passage in Abacus’ book, I thought to myself, What good is it to continue drinking the hyma if it is not helping me use my ether?

  I would not, even in my own mind, give utterance to the daring conclusion I had reached when last reading the mage’s book, fearing it more than I feared the ridicule of my peers. Either way, though, I knew that it was a waste of the Dominion’s resources for me to continue drinking the blood-red liquid, even though one student’s consumption was hardly noteworthy.

  I determined to stop drinking the hyma altogether beginning the following morning.

  It is remarkable what a resolved will does for sleeplessness, for I slept that night as I had not for many months, knowing I had made a decision and in so doing was at least accomplishing something for myself.

  The following morning, I barely cast a glance at the little wooden box, containing four empty vials and three half-filled ones, as I dressed and left for the mess hall to find breakfast. Hero noticed right away that there was something different about me, that I appeared less moody than before.

  “I stopped drinking the juice,” I said to her in a hushed voice.

  She paused with a spoon of bland oats halfway to her mouth, her raven tresses falling across her face for a moment, before she righted herself and set the spoon back in her bowl. “You did what?”

  “Hush! Keep your voice down. Do you want to get me into trouble?”

  “You seem to be well on your way to doing so without my help,” she replied, staring at me so sternly I could almost imagine she’d been taking lessons from Feril Animis or Deryn Lhopri.

  I shrugged, trying to play down her concerns. “The juice isn’t helping me at all. I’m just wasting resources. The Dominion must come first after all.” I could see that she didn’t believe in my sudden patriotism.

  “Toven, do you have any idea how much trouble you’ll get into if someone finds out?”

  “That’s the beauty of it, don’t you see? I have no ether as it is, so nobody is going to know that I’ve neglected to take my daily dose.”

  We stared at each other for several minutes until Hero finally shrugged and resumed her breakfast. “As you wish.”

  I was stung by the nonchalance of her reply, but I quickly realized how stupid that was. Again, my selfishness was controlling my thoughts, and I wanted pity from everyone, most of all from my best friend, the one I thought could actually understand what I was going through.

  But then again, Hero was not suffering like I was, so what reason did she have to empathize? Had I really thought about it, I should have understood how truly forgiving Hero was of my recklessness. We let the matter drop, however, finishing breakfast and seeing to a new day of instruction.

  The cold sweats began just before noon.

  By the time lunch was ended, I could barely walk in a straight line.

  I was excused from afternoon classes and sent to the infirmary to be treated for influenza.

  I did not go. Instead, I made my slow, labored way back to my dorm and to the box containing my hyma doses. On the outside, my symptoms may have appeared to be an ordinary illness, but I could tell the difference. My body was crying out for the juice, screaming so loudly it was a wonder that nobody else could hear it.

  I clutched feverishly at one of the vials still containing the blood-red liquid, pulled the cork stopper out with ferocious determination, and tipped the contents of the little glass bottle into my mouth.

  I grimaced at the bitterness of the fluid, a bitterness I had grown accustomed to in the last year but of which I was now reminded, even only a few hours after I was due for my daily measure. I fell back onto my bed, my body still weak and perspiring like an ice block on a hot day.

  It did not take long, though, for the hyma to begin taking effect. My mind cleared first and my body rapidly regained strength. Barely an hour after I had been sent to the infirmary, I was standing before the mirror in my room, staring into my own eyes. I caught sight of the empty vial on the table behind me.

  Several books in the mage’s library mentioned such reactions as my body had just experienced, and I wracked my mind to isolate in which tomes I’d encountered the knowledge. It took me longer to remember than it had taken my body to heal.

  My first thought had been to assume that perhaps the hyma had an effect on me after all, that it had healed me via awakening my ether just enough to do the task. After all, Hymanni and some of the warrior Synths had the ability to use their ether to heal themselves at an accelerated rate. The muscles and bones of the body were, of co
urse, composed primarily of the earth and water elements.

  But I knew that it was no book on magic theory, or ether, or the hymaberry, that spoke of the phenomenon I’d just experienced. No, my mind recalled certain books on biology and medicine, and once I was firmly on the trail, it was not long before I pinned down what I’d been seeking.

  My body had gone through the withdrawals of a man addicted to a drug.

  * * *

  Hero and I spoke only once of my failed attempt to give up drinking the hyma juice. It was not a pleasant conversation, and it lead to what was probably one of the biggest arguments we’ve ever had.

  It was two days later. We returned to the mage’s tower, three months since we had last visited the library within. Hero was doing homework, while I was reading from one of Abacus’ medicinal texts, seeking to confirm what I had already deduced from my experience. At one point, Hero looked over at me and frowned.

  “What are you reading? Is that something to do with your illness the other day?”

  She may be smarter than I ever was, but Hero’s devotion to the Aarian Dominion often blinded her to the truth of things where our “beloved” government was concerned. I realized at once that she had failed to connect my illness with my confession that I’d not taken my dose of hyma that morning.

  “Yes,” I answered simply, unsure of how much to tell her. Again, this is not to say that I did not trust her, for I did, at least as much as the gnawing doubt implanted by Deryn Lhopri would permit me to trust anyone again; it was rather that Hero’s devotion to Aaria, as I’ve said, made some topics more difficult to broach than others, for I expected her always to argue in favor of Hymage Quillan and his government.

  “So,” she continued after it became clear I was not going to elaborate, “what was it? You didn’t return to class, yet you seemed fine the next morning.”