Craig Saunders - Tides of Rythe

“If there is one thing I have learned during my living years, and a lesson that has been drummed into my very bones since my untimely, and somewhat unusual death, it is the value of patience.”

“I could always kill you again.”

“I live in hope, Anamnesor.”

Klan smiled coldly. “Careful what you wish for, Master Reader. Now, as you were saying…”

“I don’t think I was…” Master Reader Unger saw the expression on Klan’s face, lent a demonic air by the red light leaking from his eyes “…but I believe I have found something within the scrolls.”

“And?”

“It was among the Archipelago Scrolls, and they tell of the war between the old ones and the rahkens. It was partially burned, no doubt in the eruption of the Archivists’ Island twenty five years ago, but whole enough for me to discern that once, there was a great wizard, who, with the aid of the rahkens, defeated the old ones.”

Fernip Unger saw the look on Klan’s face clearly this time. It needed little illumination. So, the dead Protocrat thought, he does not know as much as he should. Wisely, he said nothing.

“And have your studies told you where this wizard went to after the sundering of the old world?”

“Just what you are aware of already. He lies, if the histories are to be believed — and you must understand that there is much within the tomes that is mere supposition — within an icy tomb far to the north of the western continent, which ancient Hierarch cartographers refer to as ‘Ascalain’. I am sure the people there have their own name for their continent. It is made up of three disparate nations, with few islands to speak of: there is a small country, where exiles from this land first fled, called Sturma through the ages, a vast wasteland further west, called Draymar by its residents, and a frozen wasteland far to the north, known as Teryithyr…”

“I know all this,” interrupted Klan.

“I am sure you do, but I am equally sure that you did not know of the existence of a dormant volcano far inside the Teryithyrian wastes, known as the Thaxamalan’s Crucible to ancient scribes, named for a mythical figure from Sturman lore. The volcano itself is frozen beneath a cover of ice, its sides worn thin with the motion of glaciers — ice has covered the land since the volcano fell to sleep. It is within this structure that rumour — and nothing more — states is the resting place of the wizard.”

“And where is this volcano?”

“No one knows. It is merely rumour, hints of a time when that land was lush and green. It has been so long that it is almost nothing but myth — I would have dismissed it, had there not been corroboration.”

“From whom?”

“From carvings I found on a pre-historic shield, made of a wood not native to our shores. The pictograms show a vast eruption, and crudely, the encroaching ice.”

“You give me much to think about. Perhaps I was not wrong to give you the gift of un-death.”

“There is more.”

“Tell me.”

“Ah, um…I don’t know how to put this…but It is rumoured that the wizard will awake come the return.” Fernip Unger turned his gaze away from the Anamnesor. He realised, swiftly, that he had overstepped the mark. Some things he was not supposed to know.

“Well, thank you for your candour. I believe we are finished for the day. Just keep trying, Master Reader. I do so appreciate your assistance in this matter. You must excuse me. I have other matters to attend.”

“Your will master.”

As Klan turned, he added, “And may I say how well you are looking?”

Fernip gave him a look only the dead can pull off, then watched Klan’s receding back. It might have been his imagination, but he thought he had touched a nerve.

Dead or not, some knowledge should be kept to himself. He would have to be more circumspect in the future.

Eventually, he thought it would be a kindness to the Kuh’taenium. Not long now and she would be weak enough to die. Perhaps she deserved it. She had served humankind for so long. Empathy was not one of Sventhan’s strong suites, but he could imagine just how tired he would be if he had been born to think, and to remember, and had done so for a thousand years or more.

He was tired enough now, and he had only been thinking for a day. But while he knew he might not be a great thinker, he did understand the meaning of duty as few others.

Sventhan followed the Omerteran. He followed it in his every action, his every word. But he knew also what it did not preclude, what it allowed, and how far he could traverse within its iron-bound code. The Omerteran was a way of life, handed down from generation to generation. Over the years it had been spread far and wide, the family growing, but still always able to trace their roots back to the beginning when they had been builders. The knowledge was part of the code — a way to make a building live. There was no magic. It was geometry, in the lines, and the stone. The stone was rare now. There were no more quarries. But far from becoming forgotten, the knowledge of how to build was entrenched in a widening family of builders. There was no call for it any more, but it was the rules. It was never written — and no body outside of the family knew what they knew. It had survived for a thousand years, survived the exile of some of their members across the western ocean, and but two examples of their works remained, the rest lay in ruins, and a few forgotten, or taken over by beasts, converted to a lair, granting those beasts a measure of intelligence. One of the remaining buildings was in Beheth, its name forgotten, because the people who used it were too busy reading books they forgot to use the writing on the walls. The other was the Kuh’taenium.

Sventhan and his family did not know, but there was an older example — Sybremreyen, the home of the Sard. But that predated the Kuh’taenium.

Sventhan took up his quill for the last time and dipped it in dark ink. A solitary drip hung from the tip while he paused for thought. The pause was, to an outside observer, overly long. But sometimes it takes a ponderous man to take the right action. Anyone can be rash, or intelligent. It takes a special kind of breed to be smart, whether they come to their conclusions swiftly, or with the patience and planning only a builder could bring to bear.

At last, the quill joined the paper. The Kuh’taenium was under attack…and it was time for the family to do their duty. The builders were going to war. Their name would be remembered again.

Sventhan wrote as he thought, with great care. It was this attention to care that ensured his family had survived through the ages — it pays to heed caution when creating tower structures from blocks of stone.

He could sense movement in the fabric of society. The Protectorate becoming overly bold, a sense of cowering among the people of the street, a darkening of the soul of the city. The buildings spoke to him, as they spoke to all his family — and they were afraid. The souls of people soaked into them, and the buildings felt their fear. He should have heeded the warnings long ago, but now there were no more excuses for inaction.

Gurt was family. While Reih did not know the builders, they knew her. She had asked Gurt for help, not knowing what she had set in motion, but now events were out of her hands. She must live. She was twinned with the building. There was no other way.

Duty was clear. Protect the Kuh’taenium, at whatever the cost.

The family might be simple builders who knew no other trade, but they could still wield the hammer, and the blade.

Jek Yrie sought allies in any place he could. He had travelled further than any of his peers (he thought he only had a few — those who were among the ascended, and even then only on the most tenuous of levels) seeing the distant lands that were to be of no consequence in the coming battle. There were thousands of small islands, archipelagos, peninsulas, mountain plains, cavernous lakes and natural tunnels underground, forests, deserts — anywhere people could live, there were humans. Some places he could not travel, no matter how powerful he had become since his eyes had turned to red; the blasted planes of the underground, where the Naum were rumoured to exist in their land of perpetual night, within mountain ranges where strange light skinned people lived under the stone, in the depths of the sea. If the Speculate could not see his destination, he could not travel there by magical means. But it did not matter. These hidden peoples, little more than barbaric tribes eking out a pathetic existence, were not players in the final game — the return.