“The wood for my bow was hewn from one of these trees,” Faun said. “They are called Slyvlerin in Elvish, or Elderwood in the common tongue.”
“Your bow?” I asked. She was not carrying a bow, and I had wondered about this since she told me her role in this society.
“Yes, my bow,” she said, and then, realizing the source of my confusion, added, “I do not take it with me when I make my rounds for the Temple. They have strict policies on handling conflict, and having my bow at hand would be too tempting if something were to arise.”
“That doesn’t make any sense. What if someone needs your help—needs you to save them—on the spot? You can’t step in?”
“I can, but I am not allowed to cause mortal wounds to sentient beings without the consent of the Presence.”
“The Presence? What’s that?”
“You will see in a moment.”
I had so many more questions, but I decided it would be best to keep them to myself for the time being and just go with the flow. Most games had ways of explaining themselves.
As we neared the Temple, I saw that it was no mere place of worship. The building was a fortress, standing half as high as the trees around it. Its foundation and first level were made from the same kind of stone as the gate surrounding the city, while the higher tiers ran smooth as if carved from a single massive rock. It was not what I had expected for a place called the Temple of Leaves, but I had no doubt that such a structure would stand the test of time.
The stairway leading from the ground to the first floor was a journey all by itself. I had never seen so many steps leading to a front door. They must have reached three stories high. Every five yards or so, on either side, there stood long, dark brown, spindly torch-shaped things that were several feet higher than my head. I say they were torch-shaped because, though they effectively functioned as torches, they weren’t torches. It was hard to get a good look at any one of them, but their light seemed to be coming from the brilliant seafoam green glow of stones fixed atop them. Even though the Temple was more exposed to the midday light than much of the city, the shining of these torches set us awash in cool green.
We met no columns when we reached the top of the stairs. There was no overhanging roof for columns to support. The rest of the building above the layered stones of the first floor gradually slanted toward its center as it climbed, each of its four faces the shape of an isosceles trapezoid. Silver half-bowls ran up each wall, emitting the same ethereal glow as the torches lighting the stairs. The higher levels had balconies carved into them, and there were robed figures moving about—some going in, some coming out, and others sitting to take in the scene below. Craning my neck to take in the building in all its massive glory way dizzying. No games ever game me such a sense of scope, such a sense of wonder. I knew that in the real world, a building like this would have taken years to create—decades without modern technology, which these people lacked. But here, in this simulated environment, someone probably designed it in a matter of days. The idea of world-building at such a magnitude was awe-inspiring.
There was at least a dozen double-doors spanning the length of the front wall. All were of the same silver color as the glowing bowls anchored to the wall high overhead. Each of these had a tangle of shining vines embossed into it which looked so true to life that I almost mistakenly assumed they were real vines that had been painted. The door handles themselves were curving metallic vines, one of which Faun took to allow us entry.
I did not think it was possible, but the building appeared larger on the inside than it did outside. It was as if the libraries of ten prestigious colleges had fused together into a single entity and the gods of academia had breathed life into it.
We walked into a Texas-sized foyer with shelves lining the walls to my left and right. There must have been over 10,000 of them. The sheer enormity boggled the mind. From where we stood, I found my neck craning again to survey the dizzying levels above. From what I could see, it was much the same story on each of them, with their countless shelves housing their countless tomes. The only difference between the first level and those proceeding was that the others had no middle area lined with tables and desks. These floors simply had a wide-open space barred by an ornate wooden railing in their centers to allow someone to look down or up to the other levels as I was doing. At the very top was a glass ceiling which let sunlight shower down to further illuminate the building’s internal magnificence. Looking at it gave my eyes an almost overwhelming tingling sensation, like looking at a vibrant color or a computer monitor with its backlight on full glow.
There were hundreds of people buzzing around us like a hive of bees. Most wore robes in various colors, but some did not. I was not drawing the kinds of looks here that I had been on my trip through the city. Everyone here appeared too busy to idly wonder at a random passerby. This place was a walled city in itself, and the thought of disappearing into the crowds was comforting to the rogue inside me.
We stood there for a moment in silence. Faun must have expected my first encounter with the place to have such a dazzling effect, so she didn’t protest an idle pause for me to soak in the scene. Among the murmuring, the turning of pages, the hasty slapping of padded feet on the stone floor, there was another sound, a distinct one that seemed deliberate, purposeful—not simply the result of someone’s primary action. This sound was being made for its own sake.
Faun must have noticed the confusion on my face because she turned to me and said, “You hear the chanting?”
“Oh, so that’s what that is. It seems so . . . out of place for a library.”
She laughed in a musical way that was not too different from the singing echoing out through the halls. “This is much more than a place for reading, Si1ence. Those chants are magical incantations. Druid apprentices are on duty all through the day and night chanting these spells. It is part of their training.”
“That’s interesting,” I said. “What does the chanting do?”
“They are singing many different blessings at once. I do not know all of them, but some are for protection, others are for tranquility and focus, and others are meant to provide all kinds of help such as helping people find books with specific information in them.”
“And they just do this all day?”
“They rotate in shift, much like the Presence, but their shifts are far shorter.”
“There you go with that word again, Presence. Are you going to tell me what that is?”
“It is a group of leading druids. We’re about to meet some of those who are currently serving. Let’s continue.”
We walked straight ahead through the ever-stretching study area. The large double-doors on the back wall were no more than a tiny speck when we started for them. The hall itself must have spanned the length of several city blocks.
Many people were clustered around the tables, some of them pouring over tomes the size of telephone books, others busily scribbling on rolls of parchment. There were small groups, and there were many loners, all intent on whatever it was they were studying. I had to stop and wonder if all of these books had any actual material in them. I had played a lot of open-world videogames in my day. Many of them had books to read in the game world, but they were never impressive, rarely containing more than a few pages of lore relating to the game. There was no way in hell, I thought, that someone had filled all of these books with unique content—especially not in the beta version of the game. A team of 100 people would not have been able to churn out that much lore in twenty years. Before we went any further, I had to figure out what was written in some of those pages.
I broke off from Faun, and she stopped to watch but said nothing. There was a pasty, red-robed guy a little older than me sitting almost within reach to my right. I strode up to him to look over his shoulder and see what it was about his cubic-foot book that was so engaging. Each page was divided into two columns, and this is what I was able to read at a glance:
Bailey John 118 Wind
helm Dr…………………823-1206
Bailey Richard 1125 Short St……………………823-5699
Bailey Sean 108 Rosemary Ln…………………823-1523
Bailey Vincent 1304 Pine Dr……………………844-4302
The guy noticed me, slammed the book shut, and spun around with an accusatory crease in his brow.
“Do you mind?” he spat. “What you are doing is very rude, you know.”
I held my hands up, surprised that this random NPC was making an issue out of something so insignificant. “Sorry, man. I wasn’t trying to steal any phone numbers.”
“Phone . . . what are you talking about? Numbers?”
I pointed to the tome, saying, “That’s a phonebook, right?”
“What even is that? No, this is not some phonebook. This is a book on second-tier druidic rituals.” He laughed. “What would someone like you care? You clearly cannot read.”
“Hey, man, I’m just making conversation.”
“Well, leave me, please. I do not come here to make conversation.”
“Fair enough. Uh . . . good day to you.”
He grunted and turned back to his “work.” I chuckled to myself and rejoined Faun. All of these books must have been downloaded from various sources online—YellowPages being one of them. After what I’d just seen, I was willing to bet that Wikipedia was another source of content the developers used. The idea that each of these people were bustling around, scrambling to soak up all of these meaningless names, phone numbers, and addresses brought a smile to my face. It was just absurd, but that was how games were. Being there literally in the middle of it made it seem so much more real to me. Any more of that sort of stuff, and the humor would be too hard to take. I might end up uncontrollably laughing in the face of some important official.
We walked the rest of the way without further interruption from me. My interaction with the fledgling druid turned a few heads in the moment, but the interest soon died and I was back to being a faceless nobody roaming about the bustling crowds. We stopped when we finally reached the door, and Faun turned to me before pulling it open.
“This is the hall where the Presence gathers. Some of them I know, others I don’t. I have come here for two reasons: one is to report on my rounds, of which there is little news; and the other reason is to introduce you to them since you offered to help us fight off the Gray Favor. They can use everyone who is willing to help, and it will be good to make your appearance known to them. Don’t be surprised if they wish to send you on a mission shortly after introductions. Would you be willing to go on such a mission—to fight the Gray Favor?”
Her question reminded me of the many games I have played where the character is about to enter a boss fight or go somewhere from which they would not be able to return for a while. Games often had a message that would pop up to explain that I needed to save and make any preparations or finish any side quests because I would not have the option to do so once I decided to progress in the story. I thought it was unlikely that this was the case with Faun since I had only just started the game and hadn’t even had the time to explore my equipment options, but she was making me wonder.
“Will I have time to rest and get equipment?” I asked, wanting least of all to let Horan down after I practically promised to meet him for drinks later.
“Yes, I do not see why that would not be an option.”
“Okay, then. Lead the way,” I said, grinning.
This room stood in stark contrast to the library we had just left. It was massive, with dark, smooth walls reaching all the way to the ceiling, uninterrupted by balconies. There was still a sunroof filtering light all the way down to us puny insects below, and that was the room’s primary source of light. This room looked like a miniature, hollowed-out version of what I saw of the building from the outside.
Embedded into the other three walls were some two dozen alcoves, each containing a chair with a shelf on either side of it at arm-level with the chairs. All of these appeared to be carved out of the walls as permanent fixtures. About half of these man-sized cubbies had a robed person toiling away over “ancient texts” or scribing some arcane gibberish, much as the others had been in the library. The recesses that were housing these hard-at-work druids were dimly lit by a fiery glow, the source of which I could not see.
One of these people stopped his studying shortly after we came in. To serve as a bookmark, he tucked a quill into the book he had been reading and shut it before coming to greet us.
“Good tidings, Faun,” he greeted. I could see as the purple-robed man strode into the brighter light that he was at least in his seventies, but that was using humans as a standard. His pointed ears and five-foot-high stature told me that he was not quite human, so he could very well have been multiple hundreds of years old according to the game’s lore. “What news do you bring us on this day?”
“It is good to see you, Elder Frey. I do not have much to report, but I can give you what I do have in private after you meet Si1ence here.” She gestured to me.
The old man turned and looked me up and down. It may have just been the aged creases on his face, but he seemed far less pleased at seeing me than he did when greeting Faun.
“How do you do,” he said flatly, not so much as a question but more so out of his obligation to acknowledge me after being introduced.
Faun addressed me, apparently not noticing the man’s disapproval, saying, “This is Elder Frey. I have known him since I was a little girl. He taught me many of the useful spells I know. It is a rare treat to see him these days because his studies have called him away from his duties in recent years.” Her smile never faltered.
The old man turned back to her. “Indeed,” he said with a thin-lipped smile. “We have known each other for quite some time. So, tell me, who is your friend here? Where does he come from? Is Si1ence his birth name or some sort of alias used by the kinds of brigands that dress the way he does?”
I rolled my eyes, remembering how similar my dress was to the city’s guard, but then also remembering that they were only dressed that way because of my complaint less than two hours ago. It seemed as if Elder Frey had not yet been informed of the change. He was going to feel fairly stupid the next time he walked outside and saw a bunch of armed “brigands” patrolling the walkways.
“It’s an alias, yes,” I said, “but you don’t need to know my real name. The reason I chose my name is of no concern to you. All you need to care about is that I go by Si1ence. You’re Elder Frey. Nice to meet you.” I extended a hand, but he merely looked at it without a word, so I withdrew it and continued, “I’m from another realm that you have not heard of. Where I come from is also not important. I’m here because I promised Faun that I would help you people fight off your enemies, the Gray Favor. That’s the important part. So, where do you need me to go?”
Elder Frey chuckled and said, “So, you think you can simply walk in here, demand we accept your hand in friendship, and go off fighting our enemies? What kind of game do you think you are playing, boy? The Presence does not just lend its trust to anyone who asks for it. We are fighting a war here! There are many who would wish to do as you have done to infiltrate our ranks and sabotage our efforts in the name of our enemy. Why should I trust what you say, stranger? You dress like a man who has made a career of thievery, you are unwilling to divulge any personal details, and you call yourself Si1ence. Everything that has come from your audacious lips has given me cause to raise an eyebrow.”
The other druids were watching us now. Several were making preparations, finding a good place to put their work on hold, and coming over to join us to see what all the noise was about. One of these newcomers was a plush, blonde girl who appeared human in nature. She stood about as high as my shoulder and was wearing a deep blue robe with a silver chain tied around her waist. Her demeanor was serious, and she looked as if she wanted to say something but remained quiet as she approached, perhaps waiting for the proper moment.
&nb
sp; An older woman approached. She appeared to be on the declining end of middle-age and was regarding me with a slight curl in her lip. Frey turned to her and asked, “What is your take on this boy, Mirtha? Does he not look like your run-of-mill vagabond?”
Greying-haired Mirtha nodded. “I would usually not say something like that to someone’s face, but since you asked, Frey . . . yes, his look does make me a tad uneasy.”
Before Frey got a chance to respond, the young blonde piped up, saying, “Oh, come off it, you two. You are talking as if the man has an ugly face tattoo.”
“That’s what I was thinking!” I blurted out. My comment went ignored.
“Well, what is your take on him, newcomer Binari?” Frey spat at the beautiful young blonde woman. “Your tenuous, unusual affiliation status with the Presence does not make you our voice of reason. I do not care how well-traveled you are. You are still young and naïve.”
“That may be so,” Binari said, “but I am not the one making superficial judgements about this man simply because of the way he chooses to dress. You do not know where he comes from, and it is none of your business. If he is truly offering help, then we should give him a chance to prove himself, should we not? We can use all of the able-bodied men we can find.”
“And what do you suggest, Binari?” asked Mirtha. Her voice was more patient than her colleague’s, as if she were actually willing to entertain what the young woman was saying. “Do you have such a trial in mind? Something that would prove definitively if this man, this Si1ence, will act out of our best interests?”
The girl thought for a moment and said, “There is that stretch of river in the desert to the east, the one we have recently gotten word of the Gray Favor using to ship their slaves. Perhaps he could go with several of us to investigate that?”
“And put those accompanying him in danger!” Frey shouted. “If he is in league with the Gray Favor, then those that join him on such a mission are as good as dead.”
Circuit World Page 9
