The Past's Skybound Bane (The War Eternal's Ashes Book 2), page 8
Emerald stroked the back of Alina’s hand absently, staring after the clerk with an air of amused boredom. “What did you tell him?”
“What we are looking for… and, briefly, why.”
“This used to be a place of adventurers, not paper-pushers.” Emerald leaned against the counter, then straightened as the fixture groaned and nearly gave way. “When last we lived in Pyral, you even took on a student here. Whatever happened?”
“The Guild is much diminished. Its leaders learned too late that a large proportion of their funding secretly came from a wing of the Church devoted to preventing misuse of Relics.” Alina gazed at and through the clockwork bell as its chiming slowed, then ceased. “When the Church of the Phoenix began to lose the belief of the masses, the Antiquities Guild was the first to suffer the effects. Without the monetary support of the Church, the guild had to let many of its Antiquarians go, and it soon lacked the means to attract adventurers or educate them. It still nominally answers directly to the Flame-Anointed Council, and is empowered to investigate and report unauthorized Relic-use by anyone, even the highest-ranking clerics of the Church… but outside of that very specific function, its power is largely symbolic.”
“So, the once infamous Antiquities Guild is now an office,” Emerald murmured, “Where a lone clerk jots notes into a ledger about the few Relics brought here by Fiend Hunters. An outpost of learning amid barbarity, where a knowledgeable few watch the glories of the past vanish into the Palace, never again to see the light of day. How sad.”
Alina shrugged. “All things pass in time. It is in the nature of mortals to grow and change: what they think they no longer need is discarded.”
“Sir— I mean, ma’am,” the clerk called, bustling out from the back room. “Here. Made you a copy. You understand, I’ll have to report this, well… oddly specific request.”
Alina gave him a polite nod and surveyed the contents of the scroll. “This will do nicely. Thank you, Antiquarian Sanen.”
The man paused. “I don’t recall speaking my name. Do I know you?”
Alina’s mouth twitched upward at the corners as she turned to leave. “You did, once. A word of advice, my friend: do not stay here too long shuffling records about, or you will never find the answer to that question you were always asking. As you have been told many a time, a content mind is a stagnant one.”
“Only one person ever told me that.” Sanen’s eyes bulged. “You’ve met Pyke! Does the old man still live?”
Alina waved a hand over her shoulder. “It has been fifteen cycles since I used that name: I go by Alina now. Think on what I said.” With that, she walked out the door.
Emerald followed Alina back into the North Square, smiling widely. “Your sense of humour is a rare treat to witness. What did you learn from the scroll?”
Alina scanned the street, which teemed with people coming and going. “I will discuss it with you in private. Even at this late hour of the evening, potential eavesdroppers abound. Suffice it to say that our probability of addressing this threat without assistance is now unacceptably low.”
“Where, then, shall we walk?”
By way of reply, Alina shifted her gaze to the soaring spires of the castle-cathedral which rose high above the rest of the city.
Emerald’s eyes glinted gold. “To the Palace of the Guiding Flame, then.”
In the cramped office room at the back of the Antiquities Guild, Sanen sat smoking a pipe and mulling over the anomaly which had just walked in his door, then back out. It was preposterous to imagine this had truly been Pyke, of course: the woman going by Alina must have met the old Antiquarian and conspired to play a prank on Sanen.
But then again, old Pyke had never been the sort to share anecdotes… or anything personal, really. So how could the lady scholar have known exactly what his mentor used to tell him?
Sanen lapsed into thought, the mystery of today’s visit sending his musings to times long past. Into his mind drifted the memory of a teenage rebel’s first day with his instructor…
Thirty Cycles Ago. Pyral City. The Headquarters of the Antiquities Guild.
“You’re a lucky little bastard, you know that, Sanen?” The old man at the counter gave Sanen a gap-toothed grin and ran a hand through his wispy white hair. “Pyke hasn’t taken on a student in… well, it must be decades by now.”
“I don’t see why this is such a big deal.” Sanen stretched, his gangly teenager’s limbs barely avoiding a brush with the freshly painted ceiling. He didn’t like that the Guild had downsized just as he’d finally saved up the tuition fee to join… but he’d take what he could get if it meant a life of adventure instead of drudgery at some shop front. “He’s just some wanderer who barely visits. I copied down the logs: he’s only retrieved three Relics in his entire career. Some dabbler, at best, with a day job elsewhere in the city.”
“Did you check the dates on the retrievals, kid?”
Sanen frowned and pulled a scroll case from among the six in his messenger bag. “It says here… this can’t be right. Relic name: Flightfeather. Description: Rainbow-coloured feather etched with tiny Old Ancient script. Retrieval: hundred-tenth cycle since Liberation? That was six decades ago.”
The old-timer let out a bark of laughter. “And you’ll find the other ones are from before the first century. More than seventy cycles past.”
“Are these records a joke? So, what… I’m supposed to believe we have an immortal Antiquarian?”
“Nah. The full-time Antiquarians say ‘Pyke’ seems more like a title than a name, and I agree. There’s been a man by that name on the payroll for eight decades: works on commission, never stays long, and there are varying accounts of what he’s supposed to look like.” The old fogey lit a pipe, and inhaled deeply from it.
Sanen wrinkled his nose as the smell of tobacco filled the foyer. Disgusting habit. “So Pyke’s a pseudonym? For who?”
“A family of scholars, perhaps, or more likely a cult. Regardless, when he’s in town, the current Pyke’s knowledge is the real deal: he’s helped us identify at least seventy anomalous Relics in the past five cycles.”
“Seventy?” Sanen didn’t bother to hide his disbelief. “Who in the Plains of Ash has the time to do all that research?”
“Exactly. He leaves with a Relic, and returns a week later with the object and extensive notes.” The old man shuffled some papers around below the counter, then lifted a sheaf of them. “Must be the work of at least a dozen scholars. Hence the support for the ‘cult’ theory.”
“And this ‘Pyke’—“
“Is that my name I hear?” asked a calm, quiet voice from the doorway.
Sanen looked up, and his expression soured. Pyke was an unimpressive man in the twilight cycles of life. The old Antiquarian was at least eighty, with a weak chin and tufts of white hair clinging to the fringes of his bald pate. His brown cloak was thin and tattered at the edges, worn well past the day it should have been replaced. All of this lent the man a threadbare, haggard appearance: hardly the stuff of legends and epic ballads. This was not the kind of wise sage Sanen had joined the Antiquities Guild to learn from. The only interesting thing about him was the grey colour of his eyes, a rarity in the Phoenix Empire.
“Walk with me.” Pyke turned away, then glanced back over his shoulder. “Unless you have reconsidered the career of an Antiquarian…?”
“No way.” Sanen hurried to follow Pyke out into the daylight. In the North Square, construction was just being finished on the grand Hall of Archives. “Where are we going, anyhow?”
The elderly Antiquarian gave no sign of having heard Sanen: Pyke’s grey-eyed gaze scanned the press of people as he headed south along the main street.
“Hey!” Sanen had to shout to hear himself over the clatter and cries of merchants, farmers and artisans hawking their wares. The crowds grew ever denser as the two approached Midtown Square. “Are you hard of hearing, old man? I asked where we’re headed!”
Pyke picked up his pace, and despite Sanen having grown up in Independence City— though it was called Pyral now, by decree of the newly minted Emperor— it was all he could do to keep up. Pyke seemed able to predict the chaotic flow of thousands of people through the city’s beating heart: the Antiquarian strode through gaps in the ever-denser crowds moments before they closed. The two crossed Midtown Square with Sanen pushing his way through the press of pedestrians: above them, the tower of the prestigious Mechanists’ Guild overlooked everything from the city’s precise centre.
Sanen jogged to catch up with the old man as the crowds thinned and the Square receded behind them. A little out of breath, the teenager frowned when Pyke altered their course to head for the south-by-southeastern part of the city.
“Why are we going into the Mechanists’ Quarter?” Sanen demanded. “I’m not here for tinkers’ tricks.”
Pyke merely glanced back, as though surprised Sanen had kept up. Then he continued walking.
“Your silence is starting to get on my nerves. Aren’t you going to teach me magic?” Sanen reached out to take hold of Pyke’s shoulder, but the elderly Antiquarian stumbled for the first time that day, the misstep carrying him just out of Sanen’s reach. Sanen gritted his teeth. “Say something, damnit!”
“As you wish. We are going into the Mechanists’ Quarter precisely to learn the tinkers’ tricks you hold in such contempt; and no, I shall not be teaching you raw magic. If you can control your temper and overcome your disdain for craftsmanship, then and only then shall I impart to you the secrets of Relic use.”
Sanen crossed his arms, glowering at Pyke. “I’ve no interest in Relics! Why should I use some Ancient’s heretical toy when magic would do?”
“Because they are one and the same.” Pyke halted as a horse’s whinny from ahead was followed by a scream and the loud cursing of many voices. On the left-hand side of the street, a stonemason’s cart had suffered a broken axle and tipped a massive block of speckled grey granite onto a passerby’s leg, pinning the unfortunate pedestrian to the cobblestones. A crowd was gathering to stare. “Perhaps I should illustrate. Imagine you wish to move a boulder, or in this case a block of stone. There are three methods of effecting that end. One is through force of arm: walk up and push on it.”
Sanen wrinkled his nose. “If I were interested in shoving rocks about all day, I’d have joined the Miners’ Guild or the Masons’ Guild.”
“Quite so. The second way you could move the boulder is with raw magic, or ‘primal will’ as the Ancients called it. With a trained and focused mind, one could envision a change in the world, channelling it through an intense desire to invoke that change. Such is raw magic. Unlike strength of arm, it lacks limits: with enough sheer power behind it, and a commensurate degree of desperation, raw magic could move a mountain.”
Sanen tried not to look impressed. “Sounds useful. Why won’t you teach me that?”
“The answer lies in the cost. Raw magic is wasteful, with only a meagre fraction of the required Res, or magical energy, producing an effect in the world. The rest is wasted, devoted to connecting the caster’s will with reality. Moving that block with raw magic would leave you feeling physically exhausted and would draw on enough of your life’s energy that its passage through you would age your body by five to fifteen months, depending on your skill as a spellcaster.”
“I don’t care. A short life lived fast is better than drudgery,” Sanen muttered.
“There is also a cost in expertise,” Pyke continued as though he hadn’t heard. “To move that stone block with mundane strength of arm, you would need to tone your muscles and train in techniques to leverage your body’s full potential. To move it with raw magic would require an equal amount of mental training, tens of cycles of practice in most cases… and the practice itself would be costly to your well-being.”
Sanen scowled. “Ten cycles, just for the skills to shift a hunk of stone?”
“Correct. Twenty cycles to master the intricacies of inner will-smithing and outward world-shaping, with ten cycles of variation upward or downward based on your raw talent, your physical fitness, and the health of your internal organs.”
“Then how would I move a mountain with magic?”
“You would first need to spend a lifetime tempering your will through ever-greater feats of magic, which would require you to sacrifice hundreds of lives for nothing more than practice. If you proved capable of that, it would be a simple matter to slay ten thousand hale and hearty men, capture their Res in a vessel capable of withstanding such a vast degree of power, then unleash it in a torrent which would burn your flesh from your bones and shake your skeleton to dust.”
Sanen paled. “If magic is that costly, why do Antiquarians exist?”
“We, and the Church’s prophets, employ a third option. Such users of magic employ Relics left behind by the vanished Ancients: objects of Glamour crafted by Fae nobles, or Inventions fashioned by the Dead Lords. Almost all such devices can be forced to function inefficiently through willpower and wasteful expenditures of Res, or else activated by an appropriate command in the Language of Magic.”
“The Language of Magic?” Sanen perked up a little. “What’s that?”
Pyke gestured in the direction of the victim at the side of the road, who was still yelling in pain. “Ganas verist.”
The block trembled and rose onto one corner, freeing the man’s leg. The stonemason and passersby gasped and drew back. Tipping over, the cube settled gently onto the cobblestones as though it weighed barely anything.
“Magic.” Sanen stared at Pyke, then at the victim, who seemed too astonished even to continue screaming, then back at Pyke. No one else had noticed the old man’s quiet spellcasting, hidden as he was in the press of onlookers. “So it’s real after all!”
Pyke resumed his course for the heart of the Mechanists’ Quarter, ignoring the stonemason’s frantic search for any sign of who had done this, and ignoring also the whispers of Miracle! and Fiend! from the crowd. “Some Relics would avail you nothing in moving rocks about. Glamours or Inventions designed for mind-reading, combat, or magical sight possess no power to exert force on the physical world. With a Relic crafted to transform will into force, a decently trained Antiquarian could hurl boulders all day, at the cost of a comparative pittance of Res: perhaps only a cycle or two of his life, less if he allowed himself to rest and recover his body’s reserves of strength in between feats.”
“So a Relic is like a shortcut for wild magic?”
“Raw magic.”
“Whatever. I always thought Relics were just glorified clockwork machines with a bit of a spell to them.”
“Some are machines. Others, particularly the Glamours of certain Fae, are more like works of art. All are designed as conduits for Res: the more specific the use, and the better the form fits the function, the more efficiently the power is channelled. Even the Ancients could not afford to be wasteful, for their strength, too, was finite.”
Sanen straightened with interest. “What can you teach me about the Ancients?”
“Little is known about them, especially now, a hundred and seventy cycles after the Cataclysm which threw them down.”
“The Cataclysm. You mean what the priests call the Liberation, by which we measure the date?”
“The very same. It is theorized that the Cataclysm was a weapon fashioned by one or another of the Ancients, or perhaps an experiment gone wrong. If its creators foresaw its tearing the sun-comets from this world’s skies, then they were… overconfident… in their ability to return them there.”
“The Church claims the Phoenix birthed the sun a hundred and seventy cycles ago, and that the skies were dark before then.” Sanen’s tone was dismissive: he believed little of what the priesthood said.
“The Church claims many things. Some are true.”
Sanen grinned. “Now you sound like my kind of Antiquarian.”
“And I did not before.” The way Pyke spoke made it clear this was no question.
“I didn’t mean… well, no, not really,” Sanen muttered, a little sheepish. “I didn’t sign up to hear a bunch of cautious dogma that toes the line of the Church’s teachings… I signed up to learn about the Ancients and their magic.”
“I can tell you that to understand magic, you must understand the Ancients… and why they were dangerous. Only when you stand a chance of avoiding their fate can I in good conscience teach you.”
“What were they? No one has a straight answer for me.”
“Do not repeat this to anyone, lest you doom us all.” Pyke’s voice was stern, and something undefinable lurking beneath it sent a shiver down Sanen’s spine. “The Fae were living stories which drained energy from those who heard them, shortening the listener’s and the storyteller’s lifespans. The Dead were shells inhabited by animating intelligences which consumed lifeforce to remain bound to the physical world.”
“You said you’ll only teach me if I can ‘avoid their fate.’ What happened to them?”
Pyke stopped in front of a small shop which, by its sign, sold pocket-watches and decorative clockwork whirligigs. “That, my student, is your first assignment. When you can tell me where they went, and some of the reason why, then your training in the use of their Relics may begin. I shall guide you, but you must needs think for yourself if you are to succeed. Your search begins here, at this shop.”
Sanen groaned. “Why did the Ancients have to go and vanish? I’ve no doubt it’d be easier to get one of them to teach me than wait for you to get all these riddles out of the way.”
“Alas, they have been gone seventeen decades. If you did encounter one of the Ancients walking the Phoenix Empire, though, well…”
“Well? Well what?” Exasperated, Sanen propped his hands on his hips. “Finish the sentence, old man!”
“Suffice it to say it would not be easy to convince one to teach you. The Dead were wont to consider mortals pawns, or else fodder for their Res-engines, and they had no use for peers. The Fae… well, accepting a gift of knowledge from them would place you as utterly at their mercy as would receiving an offering of riches or partaking of one of their banquets.”
