The Book of the Dead, page 15
part #3 of The Counterfeit Sorcerer Series
“Correct so far as that goes,” the Reverend Mother said. “But Voros Korom was not their only child.”
“What are you saying? There was another heir to the throne of Elhalad?”
“Indeed. Voros Korom’s younger brother, the more monstrous of the two. His name is Eben.”
“You are joking. Eben is Voros Korom’s brother?”
“He is. Although he does not share Voros Korom’s monstrous appearance, Eben was, in his way, just as powerful. He had a preternatural gift for sorcery; as far as I know, he is the only sorcerer other than Bolond to have found the secret to immortality—although he must continually swap bodies to keep his spirit alive.”
“That explains the rivalry between the two. Each of them wanted to rule Nagyvaros.”
“More precisely, they each claimed the legacy of Elhalad.”
I nodded but said no more. Was the Reverend Mother speaking only of the Book of the Dead or something else? Did she know about Fold Alatt?
The Reverend Mother went on, “Eben aspired to the throne and plotted against Voros Korom but could not defeat him. Finally Eben conspired with Elhalad’s enemies against the city. There was no clear victor in the battle that followed. Voros Korom was nearly killed and was forced to flee to Veszedelem. In the chaos after the attack, Bolond and Eben were forced to flee as well.
“The invaders tore down the gateway and the temple and dragged the stone slabs to the Maganyos Valley. Many of the city’s residents, desperate to escape, attempted to flee through the gate back to Veszedelem. Those who did not make it were trapped between worlds as the gateway was torn down.
“I suppose you know the rest. The blight remained for several hundred years, but eventually the history of Elhalad was forgotten. The Szaszok people began to build settlements on the plain and founded the city of Nagyvaros. The Cult of Turelem grew along with the population of the region. The Cult did what it could to apprehend the sorcerers who remained in Orszag and to secure any artifacts left behind by Bolond and his followers.
“We had nearly wiped out sorcery completely when Varastis discovered the Book of the Dead in the tunnels under Nagyvaros and began to spread the knowledge contained in that book. Our efforts to destroy his school culminated in the Purge, after which only Eben, Radovan, Varastis and a few others at Magas Komaron remained alive. Thanks to you, Radovan is dead, and I gather from Ilona’s report that no one is left alive at Magas Komaron. Only Eben remains.”
“Eben and I,” I said.
“Yes,” the Reverend Mother said with a smile. “And for now at least, Eben is the greater threat. So great that when we learned he was looking for the Book of the Dead under Nagyvaros, we sent an acolyte to the Governor to warn him. She was torn apart by creatures summoned by Eben.”
I nodded, having deduced as much. “You fear the truth getting out.”
“The Cult exists to promulgate the truth.”
“The Cult is built on a lie.”
“Not a lie, a concealment of part of the truth. The truth guides us, but not all truths are fit for all people.”
“Listen to me, Reverend Mother. I will work with you to stop Eben, but I will not keep your secret. When this is over, I will see that everyone knows what is in that book.”
“I am counting on it,” the Reverend Mother said.
I was taken aback. “You do not intend to stop me?”
“Once Eben has been defeated, the Cult’s battle against sorcery will be finished. If the Cult is to survive after that, it must be in a different form. The current regime will fall, and we will have to hope that our message is strong enough to survive the defeat of our enemies.”
“Forgive me if I am skeptical of your willingness to give up power.”
“You are right to be so. I am in the minority in the Council. We are in agreement that you are our best hope against Eben, but I may not be able to keep the Cult from turning its efforts against you after Eben has been dealt with.”
“What does the Council expect me to do against Eben?” I asked. “He is a far more powerful sorcerer than I. Do they intend to use their magic to help me?”
The Reverend Mother shook her head. “Our ‘magic,’ as you call it, does not work that way. We have only the power to request aid from Turelem, and only in very specific and prescribed ways.”
“Then how did you heal my shoulder?”
“Higher level acolytes have access to what you might call a pool of healing energy. The pool is constantly being replenished by appeals to Turelem. But it can be used only to heal, not to harm.”
“And the hailstorm?”
“In extreme situations, the energy can be redirected to defend Regi Otthon or its acolytes. The most effective way of doing this is to manipulate natural conditions, such as the weather. We have only had to do it three times in the history of the Cult, and each time it has completely depleted the energy pool. If the Barbaroki had pressed their attack, we would have been slaughtered. It has taken two weeks of constant appeals by hundreds of acolytes to get the pool back to the level where I can perform a simple healing touch. The point is, our ‘magic’ is unlikely to be of any use in preventing Eben from rebuilding the Temple of Romok.”
“Then I fail to see how I am to defeat him.”
“You possess the brand. It holds most of his power.”
“So I’ve been told,” I said, “but it does me no good if I do not know how to use it. The Masters are dead and I can’t very well go to Eben for tutoring any longer. Unless I can learn to fully harness the power of the brand, I cannot defeat Eben.”
The Reverend Mother regarded me silently for a moment. “That is unfortunate,” she said at last. “The Council was hoping you had learned enough to be a match for Eben. If you are not, you are a liability.”
“You mean the Cult will kill me to prevent Eben from taking the brand back.”
“No one has spoken the words aloud, but I believe they would not hesitate if they thought that was the only way to defeat Eben.”
“You cannot stop them?”
“I am only one vote among seven. I would not betray you, but I am not confident I could carry the day, and my resistance might cost me my leadership position. Then the Cult would be free to hunt you down. We have many allies; you would not live long.”
“Then you must allow me to see Bolond.”
“Impossible.”
“Why?”
“As I’ve said, he will not help you. He is not in possession of his faculties, and if he were, I do not think he would be inclined to aid us. Furthermore, even allowing you to communicate with him would pose great danger to us.”
“Do you not hold him in a specially constructed prison?”
“My opinion is that the prison is largely theater. Our barriers may inhibit the flow of tvari somewhat, but not enough to stop a sorcerer as powerful as Bolond. Bolond remains in his cell because it has not occurred to him to try to escape.”
“What if he does escape? How could that be any worse than Eben seizing control of both Orszag and Veszedelem? How could it be worse than Arnyek destroying both worlds, which seems likely to happen whether or not we stop Eben?”
The Reverend Mother sighed. “No, I will not loose another evil on the world simply because we cannot contain the evils already here.”
“I am not asking you to,” I said. “I am merely asking you to give me a fighting chance. Put whatever restrictions on my visits you wish, but at least let me speak to the man. I’ve learned a great deal from Bolond already, even though I don’t think he ever intended to teach me. Perhaps I can learn something from him even in his madness.”
The Reverend Mother sat quietly for some time. “All right,” she said wearily. “I will arrange for you to see Bolond. Return here tonight, one hour before sundown. I will leave word with the guard at the side entrance that you are to be allowed to pass. Come directly to this chamber. If anyone else sees you, you are in danger. The rest of the Council will not approve of me allowing you to meet Bolond. If you are apprehended, I will not help you.”
“I understand, Reverend Mother,” I said. “Thank you.”
Chapter Nineteen
I left Regi Otthon and spent the afternoon in the darkest corner of a nearby tavern, hoping not to be spotted by any agents of the Cult. Delivaros is not the place to be walking around with a warlock’s brand on one’s face. Fortunately, acolytes tended not to frequent taverns, and their other agents apparently had better things to do. I was unmolested.
Just before sundown, I returned to Regi Otthon, finding my way to the door the Reverend Mother had told me about. The guard greeted me with a nod and let me inside. The halls were deserted; I suspected the Reverend Mother had selected this time because the acolytes would be at supper. I made my way to her door and knocked. The Reverend Mother exited and gestured for me to walk alongside her.
“Before I take you to Bolond,” she said as we walked, “I must tell you how we came to capture him, because that is the reason for his current state.”
“Please do,” I said.
“Since the fall of Elhalad over a thousand years ago, Bolond has remained mostly aloof from the struggles between the Cult and the sorcerers of Orszag. Some of our kind believe he continued to work at undoing the damage he had done to Veszedelem, while others believed he was working on other tasks. Some thought he had sworn off sorcery entirely and lived as a simple hermit in some remote location.
“After the Purge, however, Bolond reappeared. He founded a new school of sorcery at Yenoom Nivek, about a hundred miles west of here, with the apparent purpose of destroying the Cult. It seemed that with the near-total eradication of sorcery in Orszag, Bolond feared that the Cult was becoming too powerful—and for good reason, as you suggested. Bolond had always hoped the Cult and the sorcerers would cancel each other out, but now it appeared that the Cult would survive, unopposed. Bolond might have succeeded in his aim of destroying the cult, but Yenoom Nivek was wiped out by the Torzseki, who claimed the settlement was on their territory. Bolond was not present during the attack, but his students were slaughtered.”
“A hundred miles to the west of Delivaros? That would put it on the other side of the Zold, well outside Torzsek territory. And I’ve never heard of the Torzseki engaging in wholesale slaughter.” In my experience the Torzseki tended to be shrewd and pragmatic in their raids, which was one of the main reasons they had lost so much territory to the more vicious and fanatical Barbaroki over the years. Even if there had been a territorial dispute with the settlers of Yenoom Nivek, I couldn’t see the Torzseki slaughtering non-combatants.
“It was unexpected, that is for certain,” the Reverend Mother said. “The Council had considered approaching the Torzseki to form an alliance against Yenoom Nivek, but nothing came of it. So I was surprised to learn the Torzseki had obliterated Yenoom Nivek on their own.”
“Perhaps some of the others on the Council decided to proceed in secret?”
“It is possible, but unlikely. They would have needed my support to make any sort of significant offer to the Torzseki. Stranger still, Nebjosa denies the Torzseki had anything to do with the attack.”
“Nebjosa is usually honest to a fault,” I said.
“That is my experience as well. But one of our acolytes claimed to have seen a Torzsek war party heading toward Yenoom Nivek shortly before the attack. It was led by the man who is now Nebjosa’s right hand.”
“Davor Sabas?”
“That is the one.”
“How long ago did this happen?”
“About four years ago.”
“Just before Bolond was imprisoned in Nincs Varazslat.”
“Yes. After the destruction of Yenoom Nivek, Bolond was desperate to stop the Cult. Perhaps he suspected we had something to do with the Torzseki attack. He went to the Governor of Nagyvaros and told him of his concerns. The Governor, Nandor, was sympathetic and instituted a policy of eliminating agents of the Cult from his government. The Council reacted by having Nandor assassinated.”
“Then it’s true,” I said. “I had thought that was just a rumor started by anti-Cult partisans.”
“I voted against the plot, for what it’s worth, but I was overruled. Governor Nandor was poisoned and replaced with a puppet of Delivaros.”
“Why not just kill Bolond?”
“Bolond was too powerful and too wary for us to attack directly. We already had agents in place in the Governor’s Palace. Killing him was relatively easy.”
“It seems your organization will do just about anything to retain its power,” I observed.
“Moreso even than you think,” the Reverend Mother replied. “For the purpose of the assassination was not merely to replace the Governor. It was to test a theory, and hopefully catch Bolond in the process. You see, some on the Council believed that Bolond had become fascinated by the way time passed more quickly in Veszedelem than in Orszag, and that since the fall of Elhalad one of his goals had been to master time itself. We believed this partly because of rumors we had heard about Bolond’s activities, and partly because our own work on the subject suggested that mastery of time was possible.”
“The Cult can control the passage of time?” I asked, dubiously.
“Not in so many words. But we can sometimes… exert influence over events in the past. Our ability to do so is very limited, and requires a great deal of power and preparation, but we knew enough to suspect that Bolond was trying to manipulate the flow of time to undo what he had done to Veszedelem.”
“So you set a trap for him.”
“Precisely. We suspected that if Nandor were killed, Bolond would attempt to undo the assassination by somehow going backwards in time and warning him. We were right. Bolond tried it. What he didn’t realize was that we were waiting for him. In order to shift backwards through time, Bolond had to first go to the place between worlds, where time does not exist. We caught him there and brought him back to Orszag. At the time there was no better place to keep him than Nincs Varazslat, so he was taken there.”
“That is where I met him,” I said. “Rather, that is where I heard his voice coming to me through a hole in the wall. I was not entirely certain he was there at all. He did not seem to know where he was.”
“Being apprehended in the in-between caused Bolond’s mind to become confused. He had been attempting to move a day backward in time, and now he is stuck reliving the same day over and over. Every day he awakes with no memory of the day before. It was probably only his confused mental state that prevented him from escaping Nincs Varazslat. When the prison we constructed for him here was finished, we had him moved. Even now, he thinks he is in an antechamber in the palace, awaiting his meeting with the Governor.”
“Then he has not changed since I last spoke with him.”
“It would appear not.”
“You think he is faking?”
“No. I mean to say only that not all is as it seems.” We had reached a door at the end of a long hallway. Two men in full armor and bearing halberds stood, one on either side. They saluted as the Reverend Mother approached.
“This man needs to speak with the prisoner,” she said.
“Your Holiness?” the man on the right said uncertainly, looking at my face.
“Were my words unclear? The prisoner is to be interrogated.”
“Yes, Your Holiness. It’s just… is this man not a sorcerer himself?”
“This man is in my employ, and I need him to interrogate the prisoner. Open the door and step aside.”
The guard looked to his comrade, who shrugged. “Yes, Your Holiness,” said the first man after a moment. He took a key from his belt, unlocked the door and opened it, standing aside to let me pass.
“Be quick about it,” the Reverend Mother said, and I gave her a nod. She turned and walked back down the hall. I went through the door, and the guard followed. We were in a narrow, curved hallway that was dimly lit by a flickering light somewhere out of sight to my right. The wall in front of me was made of blocks of some pale gray mineral. To my left was a blank wall of ordinary stone blocks. The guard closed the door and began walking down the hall to the right. I followed him, and we made our way around the curve to the left.
As I walked, I allowed my fingers to rub against the left wall. Pulling them away, I found my fingertips coated with white residue. Tasting it confirmed my suspicion: salt.
We followed the hall until we had walked a half circle with a diameter of about forty feet. At this point, the guard reached another blank wall and turned sharply left to enter another, more tightly curved hallway, nestled inside of the one we had just traversed. When we’d again walked a half circle, we came to another blank wall. In the right-hand wall was a heavy wooden door. The guard opened an eye-level slot in the door, barked an order to stand back, and then opened the door. He held it open long enough for me to slip inside and then closed it behind him.
Bolond’s cell was a circular room about twelve feet in diameter, with a domed ceiling. The walls and ceiling were made of blocks of salt into which had been carved hundreds of protective wards that had then been filled in with silver. Even the door was coated with salt and inscribed with the same silver glyphs, so that when it was closed, the pattern was unbroken. Having a basic understanding of how tvari flowed and how salt impeded its movement, I could appreciate the design of the prison: two concentric walls of salt blocks, separated by an open passage, would make it nearly impossible for the occupant to draw tvari from outside the cell. Whether the glyphs augmented the effect in some way I did not know. The room was lit by a single lamp far overhead; it seemed to be supplied by oil from somewhere outside. The room was furnished only with a bed and the rug. Bolond sat cross-legged on the far end of a tattered oval rug.
I had never actually seen Bolond before, but he looked about as I expected. He was small, not much over five feet in height and compactly built, with short, greyish-white hair. He looked to be about forty years old, though of course he was much, much older. He greeted me with an air of expectation that immediately turned to disappointment when he realized I was not going to be taking him to the Governor.
