Sethbert’s lack of words spoke loudest of all.
Rudolfo wondered if his own did the same.
Neb
Quiet voices woke Neb from his light sleep. He lay still in the wagon, trying hard not to even breathe. The night air was heavy with the smell of smoke mingled with Evergreen.
“I heard General O’Sirus say the Overseer is mad,” one voice said.
A snort. “As if that’s anything new.”
“Do you think it’s true?”
“Do I think
A pause. “Do you think he destroyed Windwir?”
Neb heard the sound of cloth rustling. “More likely they destroyed themselves. You know what they say about Androfrancine curiosity. Gods Kriof conly know what they found digging about in the Churning Wastes.” Neb heard the soldier draw phlegm down and spit. “Probably Old Magick… Blood Magick.”
For all their obstinacy toward unsanctified children, the Androfrancines did one thing for them very well. One thing that-apart from the wealthiest of the landed and lords-no one else did for their children: They gave them the best education the world could offer.
For as long as he could remember, Neb had spent most of his days in the Great Library, usually under the care of an acolyte assigned to a group of boys as a part of his own education. The Arch-Scholar Rydlis said it best: The path to learning lies in teaching. And the path to teaching lies in answering the questions of a child.
Neb knew this story very well. The Age of Laughing Madness was brought about by Blood Magick. And part of the charter of P’Andro Whym’s followers-codified hundreds of years after their venerated founder had died, nearly five hundred years since the onset of the Laughing Madness-was to keep both magick and science under a watchful eye. The Rites of Kin-Clave had sprung from that same dark time on the edge of histories, forming a labyrinth of ritual and social expectation that twisted and turned back on itself with all the mystery of the greatest Whymer Mazes. Blood Magick was expressly forbidden. Earth Magick was only tolerated during time of war, and never used by nobility. At least not with their own hands.
It made sense. Blood Magick had felled the only home he’d ever had. Such a kind that had not been seen in the Named Lands from the days the Homeseekers had migrated in from the dust storms of the deep south. Such a kind that had not been seen since Xhum Y’Zir, enraged at the murder of his seven sons by P’Andro Whym and his Scientist Scholars, had turned the Old World into the Churning Wastes.
Neb wondered if maybe he couldn’t speak now because he’d been driven mad. But then he wondered if the mad could contemplate their possible insanity.
The soldiers moved off and Neb sat up. There’d be no more sleep for him tonight. The stars overhead were swollen, hanging low and heavy in the hazy sky.
Neb slipped from the wagon and returned to his tent. Inside, he went to the table and selected a pear and a piece of bread. While he chewed the pear, tasting its tart sugar on his tongue, he reflected on the soldier’s words.
Gods only know what they found digging about in the Churning Wastes.
He remembered his last visit with his father three or four months ago. He’d just returned from a dig in the Waste and he’d brought Neb a square metal coin that shined brightly despite its age. Brother Hebda was excited.
“We’ve found a good one this time, Neb. A shrine from the time of the Y’Zirite Resurgence.
Neb remembered this from lessons about the Age of Laughing Madness, the five hundred years after the end of the Old World that were marked by chaos, anarchy and a near eighty-percent insanity rate from the earliest days of the apocalypse to the fourth generation of children. There were some who argued that Xhum Y’Zir had built a hidden eighth Cacophonic Death into his spell after it had been shaped and bargained for in the dark places of the world-a last and final blow for one of his favorite wives who had been captured, raped and beaten to death on his last night in seclusion for his spell-making. But the traditionalists insisted that the exaggeration of ancient magicks was already a large enough problem without adding more to it. But both camps agreed that the insanity was prevalent, and that if it weren’t for the Francines-a monastic movement centered around the intricacies of the human psyche, the patterns of human (and primate) behavior-humanity would have murdered itself. The Y’Zirite Resurgence was a small sect of survivors whose particular insanity was the worship of House Y’Zir. They celebrated that fallen Moon Wizard’s children for challenging-and later eradicating-the Scientism Movement that had converted P’Andro Whym in his boyhood.
Franci B’yot, the posthumous founder of the Francines, though older than Whym, was influenced by the early days of the same Scientism Movement. Fragments of Whym and B’Yot’s correspondence largely led to the sects working together, and eventually becoming the Androfrancines.
So Neb understood why his father had been so excited about the find. A Y’Zirite shrine would have a small library-usually two or three carefully packed jars of parchment. And sometimes mummified martyrs bearing the mark of House Y’Zir burned over their heart.
He turned the coin over in his hand, looking at the image stamped into its surface. “Who is it?” he asked.
“Let me see it.” His father took the coin and studied it. “The third son, Vas Y’Zir,” he said after a moment. “He was the Wizard King of Aelys.” Around them the Orphans’ Park was quiet, as the other children were in their classrooms. Brother Hebda always pulled him out of class when he came to visit, and the teachers never minded. He leaned over on the bench, holding the coin in the palm of his hand and pointing to it. “If you look closely, you can see the etching around his left eye-and if you look even closer, you can see that the left eye is actually carved out of nightstone. They said it made him able to see into the Unseen World to make pacts for his Blood Magick.” Brother Hebda handed it over.
Neb took it, held it to the light until he could see the dark eye. “Thank you, Brother Hebda.”
His father nodded. “You’re welcome.” His voice lowered and he looked around. “Do you want to know what else we found?”
Neb nodded.
“The arch-scholar didn’t let me get too close to it, but buried in the back, behind the shrine figure, they found a Rufello lockbox.”
Neb felt his eyes go wide. “Really?”
Brother Hebda nodded. “They did. And it was entirely intact.”
Neb had caught glimpses of the mechoservitors Brother Charles, the arch-engineer, had reconstructed from Rufello’s Book of Specifications. They were kept in stalls in the lower parts of the library, but once, during a research trip in the care of an acolyte, he’d caught a glimpse of one. It clanked when it walked, steam hissing from its exhaust grate as it moved. It stood about three spans high and it was bulkier than the metal men from the days before P’Andro Whym and Xhum Y’Zir. Still, it was close enough to the drawings that Neb could see the similarities. Neb watched it select a book and slip back into one of the library’s many disguised elevators.
“Do you think it may have some of his drawings inside?” Aiedos Rufello was one of Neb’s favorite figures from Old World history. His work was old when P’Andro Whym was a boy, and he’d given his life to understanding the scientific mysteries of the First World.
“Unlikely,” his father said. “You know why. Show me how well they’ve trained you in that school of yours.”
Neb studied the coin, digging in his memory. He found what he was looking for and looked up with a grin. “Because the Y’Zirites would have no interest in preserving Rufello’s science-based work. Xhum Y’Zir saw the Scientism Movement as a threat against his magick, and later, some of its scattered followers murdered his seven sons.”
“Exactly,” his father said, a proud smile spreading across his face. “But isn’t it interesting that all those years later, whoever built the shrine used Rufello’s science-based work to protect something they had hidden there.”
“Why would they do that?” It had to be important to them, Neb thought.
Brother Hebda shrugged. “It could’ve been an aberrant Gospel or perhaps part of the Lesser Spell Codex. Regardless, they had me race it back here under a full complement of Gray Guard Elite. We rode day and night; we even magicked our horses for silence. One of the mechoservitors is going to cipher its lock code, but I doubt what’s
