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“Necromancy began on the Greater Continent in a region today known as the Mayunn Highlands, above the Arcol Step, just to the east of Ataya. The early nation was a rich and prosperous one, having built many great temples and tombs. Of course, the resurrectionally-inclined do not always agree with the standard views on history, so the less said about their involvement with the Atayans, the better.”
--Atlas of the Greater Continent, Circa N.D. 500, collector’s edition.
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Chapter 10:
Temples and Books
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#10.1 – Friday, the 13th day of the 9th month…
A thing hit the ground with an earth-shattering boom, hard enough to shake the windows of the sleepy suburban home. “Thanks for loaning it to me!” Scarlet called out as Esperanza leapt back into the air.
“Any time!” Esperanza shouted back. “Keep it as long as you want!”
Scarlet continued waving as the dragon disappeared into the sky.
She had not so much ‘survived’ her encounter with the dragons as ‘been treated very nicely and made several new friends’.
Still, it was a life-altering experience.
She had seen the tomb, the grave of the first man to hold the sword. And she had seen the sword itself, with her own eyes(sort of?) and the face of the last person to hold it.
Burned into her mind, she would never escape these images now.
Finding the sword was impossible.
Scarlet knew it, history proved it.
But Emmerich always told her something. In the late evenings, when they’d been sitting in the dining room at her house, Roy immersed in his paper, Scarlet with the entire table covered in books. When her mother hassled them to put an end to the evening because “it’s time for Scarlet to sleep”. Always at that time the aged Antiquarian, a little tired, would get wispy-eyed and talk about the long life he had spent in pursuit of ancient knowledge. “Been at it since I was your age. Still so much unanswered.” Then he would tap the books and look at her. “We search for the answers, book-wurm. But we live for the questions.”
The lost sword of the Pendragon* was a question. Perhaps the biggest in all of the Alliance, and probably not so impossible that one day it would be found.
But Scarlet knew it would not be her.
No, it couldn’t be; not a small, stringy-haired kid. Not an ordinary middle-school student with sub-average grades and a lot of over-due library books. That wasn’t who was going to find the sword, and Scarlet didn’t dare let herself believe any different.
But she could look for it.
She would look for the sword, she decided, right then and there. She would look, and even if it took the entire rest of her life, she was never going to stop looking. She didn’t need to stop. She could live, as Emmerich said, for the question.
Scarlet was still pondering all this when her parents came running out of the house. No doubt, Scarlet reasoned, to see what made the previous earth-shattering ka-boom.
Ann stood, mouth agape for several seconds.
“My azaleas!” she finally managed.
Scarlet glanced down and tried to look innocent while Roy approached the curious object and examined it.
“This… it can’t be,” he murmured, stunned. “A gigantic book! Scarlet, daughter, WHY?!”
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* #10.2 (Friday, 13/9) *
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“Well, here’s something you don’t read every day,” Roy commented over dinner.
“I read things you don’t read every day, every day,” Scarlet murmured, shoveling food into her mouth whilst crouched behind a very large copy of Scalgdorf’s On Dragonology – Volume IV: Linguistics of the Parseltongue, with commentaries by Janice Armstrong*. The huge illustrated book also concealed a second, smaller book, in which Scarlet was currently engaged in fact-checking the former.
“It says here,” Roy continued, ignoring his daughter and straightening his newspaper. “That ‘the semi-final match between Briarwood Boys School and Sunford High has been called on account of dragons’. Apparently, while spectators were assembling, two ‘red-red fire dragons’—that’s got to be a mistake—descended on the field, having some sort of row of their own. They fought each other for about three minutes, terrifying spectators and causing massive damage to the field. Referees were forced to cancel the game and give the win to Sunford, removing Briarwood’s chances of going to nationals this year.”
“Those poor boys” Ann snuffed. “One wonders what they did to deserve that?”
“Yeah, one wonders,” Scarlet snorted. The dragon’s full names, which Scarlet remembered in detail but did not feel the need to repeat in her internal monologue, promised not to get into any trouble but swore they would cause some.
It was nice having friends.
“Scarlet, sweetheart, since you conveniently have a book of dragonology at the table, could you look up what a ‘red-red’ is?” Roy asked. “If it’s a typo I’d love to send it in to one of those late-night talk shows…”
“This is a book about drago-linguistics,” Scarlet replied. “A really unhelpful one. Does this Janice Armstrong person even know what a dragon is? I get that Scalgdorf was writing thousands of years earlier, but I’d have a way easier time with a copy from back then.”
“I told you we should have gotten you that new book, by the local author?” Ann said. “The nice woman, with the show?”
“Pffft, please,” Scarlet dismissed. “That lady is still alive; since when did anyone alive know anything useful about dragons?”
“I think you may be over-generalizing just a little bit there, child,” Ann said.
“The word ‘Parseltongue’ isn’t even the name for the dragon’s spoken language,” Scarlet tapped the cover of her book. “Some wyverns told the first-wave dragonlogists† to call it that, and the name stuck. It’s actually a rough phoneticization of a really offensive dragon word. Wyverns think it’s funny to troll dragonologists.”
Ann’s eyes narrowed. “…how offensive?”
“Well,” Scarlet leaned down behind her book to squint at the smaller book. “If I told you what it translated to in Common, you’d probably leap across the table and slap me silly.”
Ann exhaled slowly and glared at her husband. “Roy, your daughter is using her command of the written word to openly swear in front of us. Again.”
“Prove it,” Scarlet said. “You sure can’t with this book. Ms. Armstrong doesn’t even mention that factoid.” Turning back to her father, Scarlet continued. “Not from the book, there are three types of dragons: Red-fire, Black-earth, and Blue-air+.”
“No water?” Ann inquired.
“Don’t get Scarlet on a tangent,” Roy said.
Scarlet closed her mouth and glared at her father, then continued. “ANYWAY. Dragons also use color-descriptors to describe age. Similar to how we have toddlers and teenagers and stuff, they have colors. A juvenile dragon—basically just a dragon teenager—is called a ‘red’. So a ‘red-red’ is a juvenile fire dragon. Which can be green, because color-age and color-type aren’t related to skin pigmentation.”
“He has red in his name twice, and isn’t red?” Ann questioned.
“That’s how dragons work,” Scarlet said. “All I know is it makes perfect sense to them.”
“And dropping huge stones in my garden?” Ann asked.
“I don’t think they were aiming for your azaleas, mom,” Scarlet said with a nervous smile. “Can we just say we’re glad they missed the house?”
“You know, it’s easy to call this atypical,” Roy commented. “But in another way it’s actually extremely normal: Scarlet makes a new friend, borrows a book. The circumstances are a little unusual, but it’s still a Tuesday.”
“It’s Friday, dear.”
“It’s an expression,” Roy said.
Ann folded her hands and pushed her plate a little bit. “Well, young lady, you are going to move that book out of my garden tomorrow.”
“Yes,” Scarlet nodded. “That is a thing which is going to happen. Somehow.”
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* #10.3 (Friday, 13/9) *
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Since it was a Friday night, Scarlet got to say goodnight to her parents instead of being ordered to sleep. Alone in her bedroom, she began to ponder the Lieber/Eieber conundrum. The very best primary sources, dated to within a few centuries of his life, all said ‘Lieber’.
“So why is the tomb different?” Scarlet said to her cat. “I know languages drift over time, but you can’t change someone’s name, then keep it the same forever.” Scarlet looked down at Jayce. “But, then, some things really are set in stone, aren’t they?”
When Scarlet was much younger, and first began reading the high-level reference books which now dominated her bedroom, she once shocked her mentor. Not that shocked, since he gave her the first copies, but impressed by her instincts. Books like these were so dense with information most researchers needed decades of practice just to become familiar with a small subset of them. But Scarlet had a keen eye for references and a talent for reading indexes. Information always seemed to stick in her head.
If Lieber/Eieber’s true name were carved on stone at the time of his death, then shouldn’t it also be written correctly during his life?
Scarlet got down on the floor and crawled across the carpet to reach her most out-of-the-way shelf. The books here were enormous tomes, each at least an inch and a half thick and big enough that their weathered spines hung out over the edge of the shelf. They were caked in dust(Scarlet kept most of her room clean, there were just too many books), but she squinted at the small print and quickly found the one she looked for.
“Just like Mr. Bright always says: take a look, it’s in a book,” Scarlet plopped the volume down on her desk and stared at the jagged and torn book jacket. The once glossy cover now hung scratched and dull by age, but the name was still perfectly legible: Denton-Mills Stenography, Volume III.
“There are those instincts Emmerich kept telling me he was proud of,” Scarlet mumbled to herself. “I got this same one out that day I fell in the tomb. Too tired to see it then.”
Bending down, Scarlet opened the bottom drawer of her desk dubbed “the drawer of shame.” She had to dig past three teacher’s notes to her parents that she never got signed, and her worn-only-once ballet shoes. Tucked away at the bottom she retrieved the small plastic case containing her glasses.
“Too tired and too blind,” she whispered.
Like her father before her, Scarlet suffered from a bit of farsightedness. Her eye doctor told her she only needed the glasses to read. Her head doctor, meanwhile(who’s area of expertise most definitely did not include the eyes), insisted up and down that Scarlet must have very poor vision and faked proficiency. According to Dr. Flowers, Scarlet should wear the glasses to school and tell all her teachers she had to sit in the front row.
Thusfar, Scarlet only found she needed the stupid things for books like the one open in front of her. With pages twice the size of a normal book and font half as small, even people with perfect vision had trouble reading the Denton-Mills Stenography*.
The books themselves were nothing more than an exhaustive list of every stone inscription ever discovered in Arindell.
“Inscriptions,” Scarlet said. “Inscriptions will be set in stone.” She glanced unhappily at the bottom two shelves of the case, where the rest of the collection sat. “This is gonna take a while.”
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* #10.4 *
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#25 – Saturday, the 14th day of the 9th month …
Dressed for an out-door workday in knee-length shorts and a tanktop, Scarlet looked upon the morning sun as it shown down on the single largest book she had ever seen.
Made of solid stone, it came in at twelve feet along one edge and fourteen on the other. The pages were made up of two solid slabs of stone each with a layer of metal in between. Comprised of just seven mammoth pages, each a foot thick, and bound by dragon-iron rings. Each ring had been forged by taking a bundle of rods, twisting them into a tight coil, then shaping the coil into a circle. The bundles themselves were as big around as Scarlet’s head and half as hard.
No one knew quite how dragons forged steel*, but it had properties no human metal-smith could match, and was magical in nature. It had a strange trait of corroding only along the surface while protecting the interior. Scarlet could, with very little effort, scrape off a top layer of rust and polish the rings to a brilliant luster if she felt so-inclined.
“Because, you know,” Scarlet said. “Polishing big pieces of metal is totally what teenagers are into these days.”
The book sat at an odd angle, one corner having dug into the ground. Scarlet placed her hands on it and made an attempt to lift it.
This worked exactly as well as it sounds like it should.
Next, she tried to push it.
It was like pushing, well, a giant rock half hurried in the dirt.
Huffing angrily, Scarlet climbed up the cover and sat on the highest corner, surveying her prize while wondering why her mother didn’t simply give up now and re-plant her precocious, extremely smooshed flowers.
Jayce, who had by now completed the highly important and lengthy task of sniffing every single inch of where the book met the yard, effortlessly scaled the rock to join her.
“This is hopeless, Jayce,” Scarlet announced, defeated. “I’d need a damned army to move this thing!”
She exhaled and gazed outward.
From this height, Scarlet could see over the neighbor’s hedges and down the length of Stormreaver Valley, out to the pass and the route to Boarder Watch. The mid-morning sun sat at that perfect height where its rays spread golden. Down towards the end of the valley, from her angle and to the right of the pass, the light reflected off the alabaster dressing over the four enormous pyramids that made up the outer edge of the Necromancer temple†.
“Or,” Scarlet posited, looking down at her cat. “Slightly more plausibly: an army of the damned.”
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* #10.5 (Saturday, 14/9) *
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As a major tourist destination, Arindell was well-known for its public transportation system. A highly efficient mélange of busses, trains, trolleys, streetcars, and big weird moving platforms, coupled with a timetable so simple a child could master it, made getting most anywhere a breeze.
Today, Scarlet used several of these to get to the Necromancer Temple*. There were many types of magic in Arindell, including several that ended in ‘-mancy’; but the necromancers were by far the most visible. An ethno-religious group with hereditary magical powers, they made up about ten percent of the city population. Anyone with at least one necromancer parent could raise up shades and re-animate dead bodies.
Scarlet wasn’t scared by any of this. Like most residents of the city, she took it in stride. A completely ordinary part of every-day life. Tourists weren’t always so lucky, and as such Arindell’s chief necromancers† devoted sizable resources to public outreach.
Scarlet’s ride to the Necromancer Temple, while long, was uneventful and boring. The restored structure consisted of four smooth-sided pyramids each a bit over four hundred-fifty feet in height. These were connected by walls surrounding a central courtyard. Around the edge, flanking the outermost corner of each pyramid, soared eight needle-like obelisks. The tallest man-made structures in all of Arindell. Built during the Golden Age, the whole structure stood clad in expensive imported white alabaster.
Needless to say, it brought in a lot of visitors. The site housed an extensive visitor’s center and museum. To the average looky-loo, it was just like any of the other ancient sites in and around the city. Most who trod the grounds didn’t realize they were walking through an active temple, a community and home to thousands of orthodox necromancers.
The ride back from the Necromancer temple was a little awkward.
The tourist passengers scooted away, some got off clearly before their stops, and still others just stared aghast. For some odd reason, nobody seemed comfortable riding a bus on a Saturday morning with twenty undead minions and a shirtless apprentice necromancer named Hezikah.
“You see, many people think that just because we build underground, we must also live and spend all our time there,” Hezikah said. “But in truth, we spend just as much time outdoors as you, and many of our living spaces are even above the ground. Some Necromancers even choose to live in normal houses outside the temple structure.”
Dressed in traditional summer vestments, Hezikah’s outfit consisted of a white half-robe that went from his waist to just bellow his knees. A ceremonial loincloth embroidered with prayers hung over this. Atop his head, a metal circlet fashioned to resemble a snake.
“Yeah, I’ve got a neighbor down the street who does that,” Scarlet told him. “Black robes and minions and everything. The Koldatha’s have the best Intertwention Day decorations.”
Hezikah looked to be in his early twenties, very kind, soft-spoken, and almost unearthly calm. He had a bright infectious smile paired with a casual demeanor. On the bus, surrounded by normal people in modern clothing, he looked perfectly comfortable with who—and what—he was. Scarlet, who couldn’t remember being comfortable in her own skin, envied Hezikah’s serenity.
“So you know my people?” the corners of Hezikah’s mouth turned upwards.
“A little bit,” Scarlet said. “I went to a necromancer preschool. And Mrs. Koldatha used to babysit me.” She eyed his bare chest, noting that her neighbor certainly didn’t look that good. “So, that getup, its not a costume for the tourists, is it?”
“We don’t play dress-up,” Hezikah replied. “I am an ascetic. For ten years I must abstain from all worldly desires, teach myself to be fully and wholly devoted to the cause.”
Scarlet nodded, pretending to know what he meant. Despite all her readings she didn’t fully grasp the concept of asceticismP. Probably because any passages on it rapidly delved into subjects she found uncomfortable. But she understood it involved abstaining from all personal and worldly desires, in order to focus on the ascetic’s given devotion.
At Scarlet’s house, they discussed the book. Hezikah seemed quite enamored, both with the potential contents and the challenge of how to move it. His undead minions, which consisted of about twenty bandage-wrapped mummies+, carried several hundred feet of stout ropes. They began tying them at various points while Hezikah spoke to Scarlet.
“They can tie knots?” Scarlet asked.
“Mmmm, more like I can tie knots,” Hezikah smiled. “The first thing we necromancers learn is the command of undead. How to control them. They respond to simple verbal commands, but for anything more complex we use magic. A skilled necromancer can see through an un-dead’s eyes and carry out complex tasks; I’ve even heard of surgeries being performed.”
“They have bandages over their eyes,” Scarlet pointed out helpfully.
“Yes, but you see they have eyes painted over the bandages,” Hezikah gestured. “The eyes themselves would have desiccated long ago. Our most powerful of the differently-living, necromancer priests who have descended to become Liches, replace their eyes with glass. But for a simple re-animated servant, a little paint gets the job done.
“Ok, so I know there’s a bloodline that gives access to the magic,” Scarlet said. “Is that a ‘hard and fast’ thing, or just kind of a guideline?”
“Hard and fast,” Hezikah apologized. “Only those born into the bloodline can command our magic. Those who marry into the temple or join the faith of their own accord are welcomed as equals, but they cannot learn our magic.”
“Rats,” Scarlet muttered. “So, uhm, is there anything I can do to help out?” She pointed to the undead, who were currently engaged in an elaborate stretching routine in preparation to drag the book.
“Something cold to drink would be appreciated,” Hezikah smiled. “For me, though; nothing for them.”
Having learned the fine art of entertaining from her mother, Scarlet returned shortly with two tall, icy glasses of lemonade on a tray. She made it from powder; but long summers of mixing refreshing drinks helped Scarlet perfect just the right combination. She grabbed one of the small vases with a plastic flower in it her mom always put on the trays, and carried it quickly back out to Hezikah.
They sat at the picnic table, Hezikah even keeping his back to his undead minions. Scarlet could tell by his slight smirk that he was trying to show off a bit. Behind him, the undead all formed up on the rope, gave a test tug, and then made a mighty yank, dragging the entire volume about a foot.
“Wow,” Scarlet breathed.
“With capabilities like that, one can see why my people never saw fit to develop cranes,” Hezikah smiled, sipping his drink.
“Yeah,” Scarlet marveled.
“I could tell you more about our beliefs, if you’d like to learn,” Hezikah offered. “However… I noticed by the décor of your home that you seem to be a Cardinal Cleric.”
“Yeah, but, we’re really not that observant,” Scarlet winced. “It’s really more of a Day of Dawn’s Reflection and Resurrection Day kind of thing. Could I really join your temple? I mean, if I wanted to?”
“Ahh,” Hezikah nodded. “Well, many outsiders find our ways strange. Being a necromancer is more about… practice and ritual, than a set of core beliefs. If you dedicated yourself to our ways, you could become an Acolyte.”
“That’s, what, a junior-necromancer, or something?” Scarlet questioned.
Hezikah smiled. “It’s what we call outsiders who follow the non-magical side of our ritualistic life.”
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* #10.6 (Saturday, 14/9) *
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At Scarlet’s direction, Hezikah’s score of undead pulled the enormous book† across the yard in short spurts, stood it on end, and fanned the pages so it would both stay up and be readable.
While they were finishing up and removing the ropes, Scarlet went to take the tray and lemonade glasses back inside. The lock on the side door had always been finicky, so she headed around to the front.
The split-level house had one room over the garage, and a driveway that sloped down from the street rather than up like all the houses around it. This itself didn’t seem strange to Scarlet anymore; but it being covered in rocks and shattered dirt clods sure was. Scarlet stooped over to examine the mess, spotting numerous scuffs and dings on the garage door that weren’t there a few hours ago.
Then a rock struck the tray, knocking it out of her hands and shattering the glasses.
“HEY!” Scarlet screamed. Turning fast in the direction the rock had come, she saw Chet and Andy standing down by the street. Andy hurled another rock, a fist-sized chunk of gravel and dirt, which struck perilously close to Scarlet.
“What is wrong with you?!” Scarlet screamed at him. “That almost hit me!”
The two boys crossed the lawn and took up menacing positions on either side of her. Chet moved in between Scarlet and the front door. She could bolt for the street and probably make it, but two on one she was unlikely to get far.
“You made us lose the game!” Chet screamed, bending to grab another rock. “The whole season’s over ‘cuz of you!”
“Coach says none of us are gonna ever make JV over this!” Andy snarled, spitting in Scarlet’s general direction.
Scarlet opened her mouth and screamed at them. “YOU TRIED TO FEED ME TO A DRAGON!!!!”
Anger boiled up inside Scarlet and she felt it behind her eyes. Her ancestor, the last true Pendragon*, was said to have a raptor-like gaze which could stop entropy. He had the eyes, she had the eyes. So she decided to train such a gaze on Chet. Exactly what she hoped to gain by making this shiftless teenage boy stop tending towards disorder, she couldn’t say.
But she focused her gaze on him all the same.
Chet hurled a big dirt clod at her feet. It kicked the dropped tray into the air and Scarlet tripped right over the damn thing, immediately destroying all sense of menace and threat she might have achieved with her eyes.
She desperately tried to avoid the glass, landing on her arm with a sickening crack. Her wrist felt like it was on fire, and Scarlet had to use her other hand to get back up.
“Cuz you’re a worthless little piece of trash nobody cares about!” Chet screamed. He found a fist-sized rock and raised it up into a throwing position.
“Imma make you eat those words!!” Scarlet hollered.
“Yeah? You and what army?!”
“Is there a problem?”
Chet and Andy went ashen and began backing away from Scarlet. Hezikah, who’s voice she recognized even through the fog of anger, stood behind her. She turned and glanced to make sure; her front lawn was now covered in undead moving in attack postures.
“How about me and this army?!” Scarlet said.
Chet dropped his rock as the two boys fled into the street, narrowly avoiding a neighbor’s car as it rounded the bend. The car skidded to a stop and Andy slammed his hand on the hood, yelling a profanity before he and Chet raced off between the houses across the street. The neighbor only glanced out the window at Scarlet, nodded to Hezikah, then continued driving down the road.
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End:
Chapter Ten
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