Jacobson frowned. “Ah. I suppose my contract is concluded.”
“On the contrary. You continue to intrigue me. When I travel north, I thought you might come with me as bodyguard. On a paid basis, of course.”
The warrior grinned slowly. “Of course. Wise lad.”
“Not according to my Masters.” Kelrob returned the grin hesitantly. “Though I stopped asking meddlesome questions a long time ago. Faded into the background as much as possible.”
“Difficult to do, if you become the discoverer of a lost age.” Jacobson’s eyes narrowed, and he sat forward in the floral chair. “You often talk of yourself as an outcast, lad. I know of three things that rankle the Isdori beyond reason: necromancy, divination, and speaking counter to the Gyre’s dogma. So you’re either a corpse-raiser, a seer, or a free thinker, perhaps even some lively combination of the three. How about coming clean with old Jacobson, eh? This ‘discovery’ is every bit as much mine as yours. I want — forgive me, I humbly request — to know why you’re fleeing back up north with your tail between your legs, and why this hunk of cursed porcelain means so damn much to you.”
Kelrob’s face paled, his dark eyes flickering. Turning to the fire he rotated a small brass crank protruding from the hearth, lowering the flames. The room fell into shadow, and Kelrob drew back his hand, blanching at the unfamiliarity of interacting with magic on such a crude, physical level. “The mask is a key,” he said after a long moment. “It could clearly indicate an alternate history for our world.”
“Aye. And I seriously doubt such news will be welcome to the Gyre Itself. Why do you care, lad? These ‘studies’ of yours, the ones you can pursue better on your lonesome — what are they?”
Kelrob blushed, kept his eyes locked on the muttering flames. “It’s a long story.”
“Long shmong. I once listened to a sub-par minstrel sing the entirety of the Lay of Elbon, including that end bit most folk leave out about his lingering death from a stomach wound. Took six hours, but the ale and smokeweed were good; so I say tell on. I doubt the sun will beat you.”
The mage closed his eyes and gathered his words, peevishly desirous of remaining silent but compelled, suddenly and for the first time, to tell the whole thing out loud. When he spoke his voice emerged thin but steady, every word precise as a knife.
“As I tired of the Mentatis Discipline,” - brief flashes of lower life-forms enslaved to his will filled Kelrob’s mind, stoats and rabbits contorting into hideous positions - “I undertook a personal and highly controversial project. There are whole libraries buried beneath the Rookery, mounds of books and scrolls and loose papers made up of everything from shopping lists to primitive spellbooks. The archive goes back over a millennia, and is considered of no value by the Masters; access to it is highly discouraged, if not exactly denied. And, for the last six years, I’ve been going down there with lantern and notebook, focusing my energies on digging through piles of moldy vellum instead of working diligently towards a specialization.” Kelrob smiled bitterly. “Or at least that’s how my Masters viewed it. Admittedly most of what I found was garbage. Old practice manuals, herbology texts, physiological or geological diagrams, notes on speculative transmutation, all of it hopelessly out of date, of interest only as a demonstration of how far magic has advanced. Then there were the aforementioned shopping lists, huge rolls of parchment with decades of transactions spelled out in minute text. There were many similarly mundane scrolls chronicling everything from the trade of livestock to the figures of the latest harvests, all so ancient as to be worthless beyond a certain historical allure. But,” and here Kelrob leaned still closer, his breath hitching nervously, “every so often I would stumble on something fascinating. Usually this took the form of an old spellbook or travel narrative or, rarest of all, works of revisionist history.”
Jacobson’s hands tightened on the arms of his chair. “Go on.”
Kelrob glanced up at the mask. “I started going down to the catacombs out of curiosity, and as a way to be alone. It was a harmless hobby until the day I found a scrap of parchment containing anatomical notes on a being of decidedly inhuman physiognomy. The paper was so fragile it crumbled beneath my fingers — a not uncommon obstacle in the catacombs — but I managed to commit the basics to memory before it was obliterated. I then went directly to Master Huerton, lord of the Mentatii and my personal teacher at the time, and asked him about what I had seen. He told me it sounded like some idle Biomancer’s sick fantasy, and urged me to avoid the catacombs and focus on the real work at hand. Since the real work at hand was untenable to me, I disobeyed him and started my foraging in earnest, driven by my memory of that one scrap of parchment. Over the next several years I found other incomplete tidbits of information, all of it pointing to the existence of a world of order predating the Gyre’s first forging of chromox. I considered it all fictional at first, but as I collected more and more references I started wondering whether the official story of the origins of human reason were...incorrect. Not necessarily false, but incorrect.”
Jacobson nodded. “High heresy. I applaud you.”
Kelrob bowed his head. “Eventually I would leave my training as a Mentatii and begin studying Biomantics. All the while my private quest continued; I showed some of what I found to my friends, and they mocked me. Huerton spread word of my idiosyncrasy to the other Masters, and I suddenly found myself cut off from their knowledge and counsel. With less official work to focus on, and frankly feeling pig-headed over their disdain, I spent more and more time hunting for the thing that would bring the scattered fragments into focus. And two years ago, I found it.”
Jacobson smiled, his blue eyes shining with fascination. “Oh? Some especially revealing shopping list, perhaps?”
Kelrob smirked. “A book. I was down in a deep chamber that I’d been working at for over a year, mostly ledger-books and old recipes, but I’d found a few tantalizing hints that led me on. At the very back of the chamber, beneath a pile of rotten vellum, I found what I’d been seeking for the whole time, a thin black book called the Revelations of Absalom the Mad. I don’t suppose you know the name?”
“Never met the fellow, in flesh or text or hearsay.”
Kelrob smiled uneasily. “I only ask because I noticed, over the years of my research, that nithing cultural practices often preserve certain elements described in the forgotten texts. The belief in pantheons of gods or God, the existence of the human soul, the importance and potency of ceremony — all of these ‘primitive’ elements were spoken of by Absalom, though he presented them as legitimate concepts rather than superstition and savagery.”
Jacobson released a disbelieving grunt. “Are you telling me the rural sheep which the Isdori delight in herding actually hold the secrets to the universe?”
Kelrob looked at him sternly. “We do not ‘herd’ the nithings, but yes. At the very least I think their strange spiritual practices echo symbols preserved in our collective unconscious, vital symbols which act as touchstones to some forgotten nature. In fact it was this theory that stripped away my last bit of credibility at the Rookery; only Master Kenlath would humor me, though when I found the book of Absalom the Mad I kept it to myself. I had to.”
Jacobson motioned with his empty wineglass. “Only two things are made to be spread: tales and the pox. Thankfully we’re dealing with the former. Tell me what this madman had to say.”
Kelrob drew in a deep breath before continuing. “According to the book,” he said after a long pause, “Absalom was a self-proclaimed seer, a man of ancient -”
A knock sounded at the door, causing them both to jump. Jacobson smiled and apologized, pushing himself up from the chair. “Room service,” he said. Walking unsteadily, he tottered to the door and opened it to admit a servant pushing a wheeled tray piled high with roast chicken, pork ribs, fragrant almond bread, whipped butter, grapes in a vast purple tangle, a wedge of goat-cheese, and several
more carafes of red and white wines, their contents sloshing seductively. Jacobson complimented the servant on the spread, disheartened only by the inn’s lack of ale; reaching into his tunic, he handed the man two silver pieces in gratitude. The servant’s eyes went wide, and he bowed and thanked Jacobson, barely sparing Kelrob a glance. It was an exceedingly strange moment for the mage, but he enjoyed it, sitting there with complete and desired anonymity for the first time in his remembered life. He said nothing about Jacobson’s lavish appetite (it was his money now, after all), and instead braced himself for a meal of unexpected intensity, his stomach groaning at the prospect. He watched as Jacobson piled a plate high, and poured himself a glass of watered wine, thanking the big man for his largesse.
“Aye,” Jacobson said, hoisting a glass of wine in each hand. “I’m always generous when it’s my own hungers being sated.” He drained one glass, sipped at the other, and began tearing into a glazed chicken-leg, his gaze straying up to the mask perched on the mantel. “Perhaps Tamrel could be put away for a while? I don’t like being watched while I eat.”
Kelrob complied, taking down the mask and pressing it against his chest. He opened a drawer in the room’s massive writing desk, really more a drafting table than a space for composing missives, and placed the mask inside. It stared at him with amused eyes, blank eyes, the lips curved in a knowing smile; Kelrob jerked his attention away and slid the drawer shut, perhaps a little too forcefully. The mask clattered about inside.
“Thank you, lad. Very sorry for all the interruptions. Pray continue.”
The mage stared down at the drawer uneasily. “Er...where was I?”
“Absalom the Mad, his life and times.”
Kelrob nodded. With a final glance at the drawer he returned to the hearthside, plucking several grapes and chewing them into contemplative mush before continuing. “According to the book,” he said when he was ready, “Absalom was a hermit from the Lost Lands beyond the Marshes of Gova, where even today magisters fear to tread. A thousand years ago it was a howling, haunted wilderness, where will-o-wisps lured men into dark pools and magic refused to function. Absalom lived in the shadow of the northern Ilarks, the peaks that go unguarded; apparently even the Aks don’t range that far north. Of his lineage, his origins, his people, nothing is known. All that is recorded is that, at a very advanced age, he was driven to leave his ancient hovel and travel south, through the Senwood, which of course was a part of the Umberwood in those days. Walking without knowledge he came to the very gates of Ithenmere, then newly-forged, and demanded access to the sacred isle beyond. This was granted, albeit warily, by the Gyre Itself, and Absalom was brought before the Isdori Council to speak what words he would. He didn’t know the common language, but spoke in a strange piping tongue that somehow made itself understood to the listener. What he said to the Council is not recorded, but this wildman was immediately ushered into private rooms in the tower of Ithen. It was during this time that Absalom declared himself a seer of the Old Earth, a term he coined, and began to tell fantastical stories of a world before the coming of the First Gyre and the refinement of chromox. These accounts make up the bulk of the text I found in the catacombs, written down by some obviously disbelieving scribe.”
Jacobson was listening raptly, his eyes fixated on Kelrob as he nibbled at a hunk of cheese. “I’ve known a few men who’ve wandered out from the Lost Lands,” he said. “Daft, the lot of them. What sort of prophecy was this Absalom peddling?” Kelrob’s mouth twitched. He was still heavily conditioned to regard the works of Absalom the Mad as exactly that, the rantings of an addled fool. “Of course, you know the accepted mythology. Before the order there was chaos. Men lived as wild creatures, speechless and stupid and violent, feeding off their own kind.”
Jacobson urged him to brevity with a wave of his hands. “And then the Gyre shat out the chromox and made everything hunky-dory, yes. I may be feral, lad, but I know my history.”
Kelrob nodded, blushing a little. “After the chromox was forged and order brought to Thevin, the Gyre Itself summoned men of vision and trained them in the newly-delved mysteries of magic. The Ilarks were fortified with the Barrier, the lands and weather were tamed. The Aks came in swarms, the mindless men of the chaotic outworld, drawn to the light of order -”
“— as moths to flame,” Jacobson finished. He poured himself a fresh cup of wine, his fifth by Kelrob’s count, and raised the blood-red liquid to his lips with a wince of disdain. “And they do, the poor buggers. Almost desperate to die. I’ve had more than one fling itself willingly onto my sword.”
Kelrob shivered, took a long sip of his own wine before continuing. He had begun to feel a pleasant flush of intoxication, and wanted to nurse it without falling into a stupor. “The Barrier had stood for almost a thousand years when Absalom emerged from the Lost Lands. He was an outcast, a creature aware of order but outside of it; his initial accounts concern a previous civilization of Man that rose a thousand years before the revelation of the Gyre, when magic was wild and all-pervasive and capricious. Absalom claimed that this great civilization sought to harness the magic, and that their hubris and power-hunger brought about their downfall, creating the Lost Lands and resulting in the great chaos which is the beginning of our traditional history. I thought these claims...quite plausible. They certainly explain the ruins to the north-west, which are extensive and bear little architectural resemblance to anything built by men in the last two-thousand years. It is said by the nithings in the Rolling Lands that they were wrought by a race of giants, though the Isdori Council insists the Lost Lands were first colonized by men after the raising of the Barrier, and that they fought themselves to death in pettish wars.”
Jacobson snorted. “I’ve been as far north-west as the Senwood. There are a few ruins there — majestic, strange, and ancient, though rumor says much greater structures lie beyond the swamps. Up in Aguar it was said they were not actually ruins but odd rock formations, which is hogwash.”
“And magic still goes awry there,” Kelrob said, “despite generations of Binders working to expand the Gyre’s influence. It all made sense to me, though I could tell no-one. And of course, that was only the first chapter.”
Jacobson’s eyebrows rose inquiringly, but he said nothing.
“Here Absalom’s claims really become absurd,” Kelrob said in a sudden huff. “He goes on to describe magic as a limitless resource, which runs counter to everything we know of nature. Men and women were able to transmogrify themselves into beasts, or inanimate objects, or fly through the air on wings of harnessed flame. Demoniacal bargains and spirit-summoning and comets wrenched from their paths; it’s all very sensationalist. Absalom then goes even further back in time, describing other races before men, fantastical beasts and great kingdoms of beings who were near-immortal and could imbue inanimate objects with their essences, ensuring life even beyond their countless natural years. They all revered gods, true-gods, who walked the land in primal form and danced upon the peaks of the Ilarks when the moons were full, who were worshiped and sacrificed to in much the same way as nithing-deities are now. It was all too unreal to seriously consider; I worked on convincing myself that Absalom’s words were nothing but fantasies, that the world was as it is, but I was continually drawn back to his accounts. They made me wonder why the Gyre is so insistent on Its one version of history, why the depiction of inhuman or unnatural creatures was forbidden so long ago. And now, after what I heard and saw in the House of the Setting Sun, I feel more than ever that the true past has been obscured to us, though not necessarily deliberately.” Kelrob trailed off and leaned back, satisfied to see that his little revelation had actually halted Jacobson’s wine-glass halfway to his lips. He steepled his fingers and waited for the warrior’s response to the unthinkable.
Jacobson blinked at the onrush of heresy, and set his wine aside. “Do you still have this book?” he asked, the low firelight casting strange shadows over his face
.
Kelrob shook his head. “No. The pages crumbled to dust even as I turned them. As it is I only managed to translate half of what I read; it was in an archaic form, from before the second vowel shift. I did copy each page before turning it, and kept the journals for further study, but I burned them last spring when several members of the Isdori Council came to the Rookery for a surprise inspection. Bit of a stupid reaction; it’s not like they planned on personally scouring my chambers. But I’d become so obsessed with re-reading Absalom’s account that I was subconsciously looking for any reason to destroy it. Of course it just made things worse; immediately I regretted the loss, and began to spend all my time repeating passages in my head, submitting them to memory if not to parchment. This destroyed my last ounce of concentration on my Biomantic studies, and upon initiation into the 16th Circle I resolved to settle for Hedgewizard, retreat to my homeland, and try to reconstruct the text from memory while working as my father’s accountant. I hoped to eventually start searching in other remote archives for further proof, maybe even go spend time among the nithings and learn about their practices first-hand. But this,”– here Kelrob motioned to the sealed drawer containing the mask — “changes everything. If Tamrel was a being that somehow survived from a former world, it would justify all my diggings, elevate my position with the Masters of the Rookery, perhaps force a reassessment of history as we know it. It’s a dream, but a strangely possible one.”
Jacobson crossed his hands over his expansive midsection, fixing Kelrob with a hard stare. “More likely your precious Masters will get all jittery, hide the mask away, and treat you even more like a leper. You must realize this.”
“I have to take that chance. Before all I had were scraps of paper, the half-legible words of people long-dead. Surely they will accept tangible evidence!”
Scott J Couturier - [The Magistricide 01] Page 12
