“Did you notice the covered walkways and the gatehouse courtyard are free of snow? Well, the covered walkway halfway down the stable side. To get to the other side, we would need another fire in the blacksmith shop at the far end.”
“I love magic,” Po said.
“This kind of magic is called 'excellent engineering.'“
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The Mad Monk
“The Emergency Module backup that we are analyzing began to show signs of outside tampering at this time. Data deletions. The manipulations increased.”
--Solstice 31 Incident Investigation Testimony Transcript: Emergency Module Digital Forensics Report. Independent Tech Analysis Team.
<<<>>>
Olias was amused and excited by how much he had packed into Par on this salvage run. The goats and chickens settled down eventually with the swaying motion of the ride. They were sticking to the roads mostly because it had begun to snow again. The further north they moved, the more generous the term road became. When dawn arrived, the only indication of road was the old growth trees that flanked the track they travelled in. Saplings prevailed in slowing them down like intentionally laid obstacles.
When the goats started to smell, Par activated positive ventilation and made the stench much less noticeable. It was good that the confined space of the extremely packed load held them to a tight space all the way to the back. It would make it easier to clean out later.
“Par, where do you come from? I mean, I thought you were a beast from the mountains. But now I. . .I don't know anymore.”
“I am a beast out of the mountains, Olias. At least I was. I'm so much more now. Barcus made me so. It's a magic I don't understand. I can still hear and see like before. But now I can know things, I can speak in languages. I can hear Barcus in my mind whenever he wants me too. He is powerful, and I love him.”
“You love him?” Olias asked.
“Yes.” Par paused and said, “Because I can leave whenever I want to. I only do what I want to do. He trusts me. He honors me with his trust.”
“How? How do you know?” Olias asked.
“He trusted me to look after you, his friend,” Par said.
“I'm his friend?” Olias wondered.
“What else would you be? How does he treat you? Like a slave? Like a stable boy? He eats meals with you. He gave you a Plate. He trusted me with your life.”
Olias was very thoughtful.
“Does he ever order you to do anything?”
“He always says ‘please’ to me,” Par said.
“Actually, he mostly lets me do what I want,” Olias realized.
“Did he order you on this trip?”
Olias thought about it.
“No. He asked me. He said he needed my help,” Olias said. “In fact, he left all the details to me. He trusted me to make the decisions.”
“See. He's your friend too. Before he named me, I never had a friend before. Never knew what it was. Before his magic touched me, I never had a soul. I'm getting used to it.”
“You never had a soul? What's that like?”
“It's...cold. When you don't realize you don't have one, you're just a thing. I was just a thing with legs and instincts. Doing what was necessary. All the time. Knowing someone, having relationships and making friends were not even concepts in me. But after he brought me to life, I could see all that and more. I could feel things for the first time. I saw in him how to do it. It was wonderful and terrible and filled with so much magic. I was almost overwhelmed.”
Olias was speechless.
“Ash was my first friend, besides Barcus. But Ash is like me. His soul was fresh as well. And for a while, it was just the three of us. We were wandering, trying to find a safe place to rest. That's when we found those men killing the people of Whitlock. Barcus mourned every dead villager. It was as if they were all friends he had just not gotten to know yet. He was so angry. So sad. You see all his friends had been murdered. Every one.”
“Is that why he saved us? Po and me?”
“He had to save you. He could not do otherwise,” Par said.
“Ash followed us that night until we reached Greenwarren didn't he?”
“Yes. We had to make sure you were safe.”
“I thought I heard him in the forest,” Olias said.
“When we saw you safely there, we went on our way. But Barcus always worried about you and Po. He used what magic he could to warn the village. Only you and Po could hear. Ash and I came as fast as we could. I am so sorry. I wish we had been faster.
“Barcus was so angry. He was so worried. We almost lost you again.”
“We're fine, Par. It's all right,” Olias reassured her.
“What I am trying to tell you is that having a name, having a soul, is not all good. When I was carrying those bodies today to the barn, all I could think was that they were two more friends I'd never get to know. It was an ache inside me, when I didn't know I had an inside.
“Please don't tell Barcus I said any of this. I want to be strong for him,” Par said.
“I won't say anything,” Olias vowed.
“I tried to talk with Ash about it, but he is different than me.”
A pause fell over them.
“Want a reading lesson?” Par asked.
“Sure!”
By the time they reached Whitehall, Olias could still not spell his name.
***
It was funny to see how excited Po was about the goats. Two of them were milking goats. They were quickly settled into the paddock in front of the stables. They would spend nights in the stables with the horses. The horses even liked them. Many stables kept a goat. They had a strange calming effect on horses.
They quickly unloaded the rest of the salvage with the help of Ash.
“You have done an excellent job, Olias, better than I could have done.” Barcus slapped his shoulder, nearly toppling him.
“Thank you, Olias. Things will be easier now.” Po actually hugged him.
“When do you intend to go out again?” Barcus asked as Ash power washed Pardosa's ramp.
“I think in the morning. There is too much that will go to waste otherwise. Would it be possible for Ash to come on the next run? Some things are just too heavy for me. Plus, we could stage things so Par could make runs without me while Ash and I take the wagons for local salvage,” Olias said.
“Whatever you think best, Olias. There is a hot bath and fresh clothes ready for you,” Barcus said. His word confirmed what Par had been telling him.
“Here, I got these for you.” Olias retrieved a simple wooden box that looked like it was a small crate. He opened it.
There inside, were eleven leather bound books.
Barcus accepted them as if it was a treasure chest.
“Thank you, Olias. This is really excellent.” His smile was very wide.
“Watch this,” Olias said, picking up a stick.
He carefully scratched in the soil where they stood in the courtyard, “OLIS.”
Barcus laid a hand on his shoulder. “Olias, a new world awaits.”
Po suddenly burst out, “It says Olias!” Her eyes were wide. “It means...Olias.”
Smiling when their eyes met, he looked down again and scratched in perfect block letters “Po.”
Her eyes went wide when she got it, and her hands flew to her mouth. They looked at each other and then both looked at Barcus.
He smiled mischievously. “Magic,” was all he said and walked away with the books.
Po and Olias talked about reading and the other aspects of the salvage inventory as Barcus walked to the gatehouse. On the way up to the loft, he collected the other four books and placed them all on the shelves he had there.
“We need some bookends,” Barcus said and they appeared on the salvage want list. “And we need small slate tablets for writing lessons.”
“Barcus, the Plates have that ability. I will work it into their lessons.”
Olias he
lped Po distribute and organize the salvage with assistance from Ash. The heaviest items were the tools in the blacksmith shop. The day was warming again, and the snow melting. The goats were happily rooting in the snow for the easy to find grasses.
Po showed Olias that the plumbing was fixed on the south end of The Abbey. They went to see if the dorm baths were working on the west side of The Abbey yet. Water was just trickling from the six spigots into shallow puddles in the baths.
One bath would have to do for now. The roof there had a few places that were trouble as well.
Barcus spent the rest of the day carefully scanning the books in his den with Em’s help. A few BUGs positioned correctly made the job as easy as simply turning the pages.
This made them available to him on demand after that. It allowed Em to assimilate them and use the data for cross correlation.
The first book was detailed instructions on how to make various distilled beverages from apples, everything from simple ciders to powerful straight liquors. It even had diagrams for making the stills from iron and copper.
The next book contained notes regarding animal husbandry and specific livestock breeding. It had chapters dedicated to cattle, goats and even dogs, right down to kennel designs and functions.
Another was a handwritten catalog of medicinal herbs and their properties. It had detailed, beautiful drawings of the herbs, instructions on how to dry them and even ways to preserve them as infusions in alcohol or oils.
The smallest book listed all the High Holidays of the Keepers and the various associated rituals for each.
The oldest looking one was a kind of travel guide that talked about the “Ten Greatest Cities.” That could be very handy, even if it was old information.
The next one was very thick. It was a ledger of goods and services associated with The Boar and Barrel Inn in Greenwarren. It showed everything from building materials to booze - how much they paid for goods, how much money they made and who owed them monies. The list was long.
The next handy book was about pest control for things like rats, mice, snakes and various bugs from mosquitos to horse flies.
“We need a few cats,” he casually remarked, and “cats” priority jumped on the salvage want list.
One book was very thin and contained mostly pictures of clouds and what they meant for the weather. It actually contained the phrase, “Red in the morning sailors take warning. Red at night, sailors delight.”
There were two cookbooks. One was titled “A Soup Cookery.” It contained recipes for many kinds of soups and stews. The other cookbook was about baking breads and meat pies. It actually made his mouth water, even though the pictures were not done very well.
The last two were the most interesting to him. It appeared that they were both first person fiction. One was called “A Warriors Tale” and the other “The Mad Monk.” Barcus would save these for the long winter nights that were on the way.
Closing the last book, he stood and placed it on the shelf, sliding the blocky stone up for a bookend. He rolled his shoulders and said, “Em, initial summary review.”
“Useful data for long-term. Perhaps the most useful of them all are the two works of fiction.
“The Mad Monk is about a retired High Keeper that decides to move to an isolated monastery and make wine. It says he began to dabble in dark forces and was killed when the darkness found him, destroying his monastery and all his people to the last man, woman and child”.
“Does it say how or when it was destroyed?”
“There was an explosion followed by a horrible plague that was only stopped by the harshest winter in memory. Tens of thousands died in this story. Dates are not specific, and there is a lot of flourish and hyperbole.”
“Are there any other specific points of interest there?” Barcus asked.
“It alludes to 'dark catacombs' where this mad Keeper performed his experiments. I have come to believe that this Abbey is more than it seems. While we have been executing repairs, we have discovered a few things.”
“Like what?”
“The diameter, as previously stated, of the keep is 91.44 meters. It varies by less than a centimeter at any given point. The material of the walls is a type of cement that seems to have been poured seamlessly, solid for 1.828 meters.”
“You seem to be implying there some significance to this besides its precision.”
“You are correct. 91.44 meters is exactly 100 yards, and 1.828 meters is exactly two yards,” Em said. “The ships we have seen are of a vintage that would be consistent with an Exodus class colony ship. If that is true, those ships were equipped with eight RFUs.”
“RFUs?”
“Redoubt Fabrication Units. The early name for Makers. These were specialty massive robots that were designed to create human habitats in harsh environments. They were big machines that would use local materials to create domes, and then they would use themselves as raw material to create the interior infrastructure and support systems. They could even function autonomously in a vacuum. They were very early single task AIs.”
“Are you saying that this was once a dome?”
“RFUs were designed to make a few different configurations. A dome and a configuration known as a bowl were common. It was basically an inverted dome.”
Barcus was thinking now and looking at The Abbey diagram in his HUD.
“The Mad Monk talks about dark catacombs. If this Abbey is actually a Redoubt, there may be more below.”
“Here in the diagram, the stairs go directly into the water. Do you have any real time imaging of this area?”
“I’m sending a BUG there now.” Another window opened of a flying view moving toward the tower and then down the spiral stairs. Six and a half steps were drying; there was a glaze of stain on them.
“The water is receding. Repairing the wall has stopped the flooding. Where is Ash right now?”
“Ash is currently rearranging salvage with Po and Olias.”
“When he is done there, I want him to take a little swim.”
“You know the suit is not designed for long term exposure to water.”
“Yes, I know. He will have to tie off a micro cable before he goes in. That will give him 600 meters of movement, even if he does sink like a stone.”
“Do you have any insight on what the layout might be?”
“Layouts could vary and could have been programmed locally,” Em said.
“How is it draining?”
“It probably has natural gravity feed drains based on what I've seen from the other plumbing systems here. Assuming all this is true, I have dispatched a swarm of BUGs to search the surrounding area for period-appropriate solar collection systems. A Redoubt of this period would have been equipped with ten solar collectors that provided all the Redoubt power needs.”
“So this bowl might go down 50 meters? Or more?” Barcus asked.
“If I had to speculate, I would say, yes. Probably ten to thirty levels. I would certainly consider them 'catacombs' if the Mad Monk was in fact a true story and based here.”
“Something doesn't seem right, though. I have been on lots of blast repair crews, and the damage I see here didn't originate below. This exploded and blew down as hard as it blew up and to the sides.”
“I have also run many simulations based on the observed damage.” A window opened in his HUD that was a simulation of The Abbey when it was intact. It had a globe marked “point of origin.” The point was on the roof of the cathedral, just above the gutters on the east side, near the corner in the center of The Abbey. Slowly, the globe expanded showing the pattern of destruction that intimately matched their known reality.
“Em, I swear, that looks like a dropped bomb to me.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
The Drowned Redoubt
“The Emergency Module knew it was a colony redoubt.”
--Solstice 31 Incident Investigation Testimony Transcript: Emergency Module Digital Forensics Report. Independent Tech An
alysis Team.
<<<>>>
It was almost dusk when Ash was done moving the tons of items around for Po and Olias. The blacksmith shop that had previously been used to store items was now clear of them. Tools now hung on its walls. It was not a full complement of smithing tools, but Barcus would not recognize most of them even if there were.
Goats were still exploring the paddock outside the blacksmith shop and a door had been re-hung to contain them, thanks to the new hinges Stu had fabricated and Barcus had brought back from Foxden.
Dinner that night was better still. It was soup and flavorful flat breads with large potatoes stuffed with spices, onions, meat and cheese. There was even a dessert. It was like a biscuit, filled with a thick whipped cream and drizzled with stewed dried fruits of some kind. Po made two for Olias.
Barcus no longer had to nag Po to eat. He could see that she was benefiting from it already. He realized that her face was filling in. Before, her skull was too evident. She spoke freely in front of him more easily as well.
Barcus didn't protest or force her to allow him to help clean up. He simply let her do it without a word. It seemed to make her happy, that small concession.
He went up to the loft later. Po had cleaned up in short order and climbed into bed with her Plate and was studying quietly.
Barcus sat in one of the loft’s overstuffed chairs and seemed to stare into the darkness. His entire view was full HUD mode with Ash, seeing everything Ash saw.
Ash was in the tower and had driven a piton into the stone of the tower and attached a carabineer. After hooking a thin cable through it, he began to descend the stairs slowly into the water.
A seventh step was now exposed. He descended about fifteen meters into the chilly dark waters before he came to an open arch. All his bright work lights were now deployed. Infrared was of no use because everything was the same uniform cool temperature. Other night vision systems were useless as well, seeing only the murk in front of them. So the work lights were his sole technological support.
Solstice 31: The Solstice 31 Saga, Books 1,2,3 Page 17
