Chapter 40-Chiasmus
The brothers met back at the entrance to the castle, where they both breathlessly explained their adventures in the cold night air. A soft, warm mist materialized around them as they spoke. Shivering, they admired each other’s new weapons and tales. After a while, they decided it was time to enter the castle doors. They figured that they would no longer have any need to sneak inside the castle since their expedition had been successful.
They entered the castle, throwing the door open and entering behind a great cloud of frost that created a rather mystical entrance. Their spectacular entrance was done in vain; however, for as soon as the frost disappeared they found Thomas lying face down on his book, and a slight puddle forming beneath his mouth on the old priceless pages. They smiled at each other as they walked towards him. Idus reached forth his index finger, and poked Thomas hard below his ribs. He jumped upright, his hands flying everywhere as his chair flew ungracefully into the wall behind him.
He looked at the two of them in complete shock. His bewildered look was almost too much for the brothers to handle, but they each tried to maintain an apathetic look. After a while, he ran a hand through his dark hair, and looked questioningly at the two twins.
“What are you two…” his voice trailed off as he let out an enormous yawn, “doing up so late?” He closed his wide open trap and scrutinized the two of them. Irgen looked at Idus with raised eyebrows before turning back to Thomas and saying:
“Do you notice anything different about the two of us?” Thomas stared at their faces before slowly surveying their clothing, as he did so, he said:
“No… I don’t notice any--” Suddenly something seemed to get stuck in his throat. His breathing stopped, and he stared with goggling, bulging eyes at the shining new weapons held by the twins’ belts. His gawking mouth tried to formulate words, but only small choking sounds came out. Instead he resigned himself to lifting his hand and pointing at Irgen’s sword.
The twins smiled at Tom’s obvious astonishment. This was the affect they had been hoping for when they had entered the room. They figured it was a little late, but better late than never. After a few moments in this position, Thomas straightened up and regained control of himself, at least enough to almost scream out the words:
“You found them! You found them!” And with that he ran joyfully upstairs screaming with enthusiasm as his voice disappeared into the upper levels of the castle.
Irgen and Idus stood still for a moment as his voice slowly faded away. They had not expected Thomas to grasp the importance of the artifacts so quickly. Surely he was the leader of the Knights, but the brothers had expected the existence of the other artifacts to be known only to their father, who was the heir of Perseus. Nevertheless, they did not mind their friend’s reaction.
As they thought this, voices began to echo from the floors above them. Suddenly they heard a soft pounding of feet as all of their trainers slowly materialized into view, from the central staircase. André led the way; an exuberant look filled every being of his face. He was followed by Nigellus who looked positively youthful from joy. Behind him, came progressively, Harold, Gregory, and finally Thomas. A few seconds after they energetically descended the stairs, Jennifer and Helen appeared on the staircase, looking just as happy as the others.
Congratulations were not in short supply as the twins showed off their new weapons to the Knights (Nigellus had been inducted months before, not having had anything to return to in Menoeceus). It was a long time before any of them went to sleep, and André was so happy, that he allowed the twins to have the entire next day off, something they thought was ironic, seeing as how they had to get the weapons late at night because André wouldn’t let up on their training.
Over the next couple weeks, the two brothers progressed rapidly in their skills. It seemed that with the weapon, Irgen had received the ability to control every element by himself. His training became even more disparate from Idus’ and they began to be separated during the day as they each received their own highly-specialized training, for while Irgen had found the ability to control other elements, Idus had found his powers greatly magnified, to the amount that his control over air began to become unmatched.
During this time, Alexander returned to them. When he came through the gate, his clothing was in shambles, and his hair was askew all over his head. Scars covered his face, and blood ran down his forehead. He managed to stumble through the gate, before collapsing on the cold cobblestone street. It was some time, before his body was discovered, and then it was a miracle he did not freeze to death while lying on the cold stone street.
He took weeks to recover totally, during which time; he managed to tell his woeful tale of his and Reggie’s capture by the Tenebri. Their imprisonment had been a horrible one even by mage standards. They had been locked inside the Tenebri’s cold dungeon during the coldest months of the years. What was worse was the fact that the Tenebri kept a heavy guard on the two of them. Making it an almost impossible task for the two of them to escape, they tried, but to no avail. Alex told them that after months of this imprisonment and torture, Brown had offered himself as a distraction that he might escape.
In such a situation, time was of the essence, so what happened to Reggie, Alex did not know. He himself had barely managed to fight his way back to the castle, finally collapsing from fatigue on his entrance into the citadel.
Doom and gloom seemed to permeate the castle after this news from Alex. The trainers spent hours poring over the possible ways to break Reggie out of prison, but all of them ended in the fact that they did not know where the Tenebri’s castle lay; it appeared that it moved every time a stranger found it. What was worse was that after Alex recovered, he spent hours by himself staring off at the distant mountains. After some time of doing so, Idus began spending a lot of time with him.
They grew close together as friends, and Alex began to join the training of the two brothers. Soon, the twins found themselves fighting with the brothers’ powerful weapons. It seemed that the weapons were so powerful, that the twins only needed to tell the weapons that they were sparring, to make them magically harmless.
The brothers found that this was not the only change to their training, for they found at about this time, they began to spend more time conjuring, they found their endurance levels begin to rise, as they each slowly progressed in strength and energy. Their book studies also changed, they began to study ancient writing styles, from runes, to the Greek alphabet. They became more and more powerful, but no matter how strong they got, no matter how much they learned, no matter how hard they tried; they found they could not decipher Xenophon’s poem. It always seemed to make no sense to them, they had asked their father many times for help, but he had always excused himself from helping them, saying that it was not his part to help them.
Finally, there was a month left before they would complete their training. In desperation they decided to ask the one man whom they had come to think could help them. They decided it was Marius. After months of being trained by him, they had decided that only his unorthodox methods could make sense of Xenophon’s foul poem.
One day after a somewhat easy day of training, Irgen approached the old man. He asked:
“Marius, do you know much about riddles?” Nigellus eyed Irgen, a little taken aback, before saying:
“I know that riddles contain mysteries, which are meant to stay hidden.” Irgen blinked at the old man’s reply, ready to give up any hope of Nigellus helping him, but then Nigellus added, “But I always like to hear them. Do you have one for me?” He asked happily, as though waiting for some treat.
Irgen looked at him for a moment, before reaching in his pocket and withdrawing the ancient poem, and handing it to Nigellus. He eyed it for a moment, while patiently scratching his white beard. Finally he looked up at Irgen and said:
“Well this one is very interesting indeed. At first glance, it lo
oks like complete nonsense, indeed it doesn’t rhyme, and it seems to have no purpose at all, but if you look at it from a different perspective it makes complete sense.” He looked ponderously at Irgen, as though asking if he knew what the riddle was about, but Irgen just shrugged unhappily, and Marius smiled musingly.
“It’s simple really. You see it is written to be a chiasmus.”
“A-a what?” Irgen asked timidly.
“A chiasmus” Marius responded absentmindedly, “it is a form of Hebrew poetry. It is built to repeat itself but in reverse order. For example the last line should contain some of the same wording as the first line, and the second to last should go with the second to first, and on and on. It is a form of poetry that is not the most widely used, so it is nothing to be ashamed of that you did not know its meaning, but may I ask, where did you get this?”
Irgen looked uncertainly back at Marius before saying recklessly:
“Ummm. You may not believe me, but I will tell you anyway… I got that riddle from Xenophon himself.” Nigellus’ eyes narrowed as he surveyed the strapping figure of Irgen before him. Finally he said:
“Xenophon, that’s interesting...He does live then.” He sighed and a long pause followed before he finally added, “Xenophon was said to have fought as a mercenary for a Persian King in the 5th century B.C. Perhaps he learned about that form of poetry there.” Once again Marius paused. Irgen’s thoughts were racing inside of his head:
“This poem was merely a form of poetry, and it wasn’t built to make any sense at all, well how did that happen?” He thought to himself. After an even longer pause, Nigellus spoke again:
“It seems that Xenophon wants you to find what he referred to as his old home, but I don’t think he means Petros, for he seems to have left his kindred people and built a new one, more than that, it seems that once you find this home, you will find the clue you truly seek, it is the clue to allow you to find what he calls wondrous power. That is about all I can get out of the riddle.” He cast his eyes down and added, “I am sorry I cannot be of more help to you Irgen, but perhaps that will be enough.” He handed the poem back to Irgen who ponderously took it before saying:
“I think that will be great for now Marius. I don’t understand how you could make anything at all out of that confusing poem. I thank you, for perhaps that is all we need.”
“Yes, perhaps you are right, Irgen. Sometimes I forget that it is the simple, not the profound things, which when used properly allow us to grow.”
The Brothers Tuerl & The Staffs of Zeus Page 41
