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“And so it came to pass that the Doseu was called before Fate, ordered to kneel, and to declare him as God. But the Doseu said the One King was his God, and that he shall have no other gods. So Fate cut his throat, and ordered the Cardinal Clerics to elect a new Doseu, one ‘more willing’ to see the light. They did, and he repeated what the first had said. This continued, until the forty-first Doseu stood before Fate and swore: ‘I shall no more speak, until addressed by the Pendragon of Slayer Dragons; and that if I should utter a word after this to anyone, all Clerics everywhere should rise up against that person. This is the last the Doseu shall say, until the Pendragon free me from my oath’.”
– Fall of the Long Night, A.Y. 6962
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Chapter 16:
Symposia
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#16.1 – Thursday, the 19st day of the 9th month…
The following Thursday, after enduring much detention, Scarlet faced an even worse trial: a session with her low-rent school-required therapist. She faked her way through the appointment as usual and wanted to dive through the window into her father’s car when he picked her up.
Once settled in the passenger seat, she watched him make a beeline for the nearest ice-cream parlor, clearly aware that only one thing would make his daughter speak to him again.
“So, was therapy really so bad?” Roy asked.
“Every second of it,” Scarlet replied. “Therapy is like anti-ice-cream. Do I have to go back?”
“Only four more times,” Roy teased. “But the good news is, I have a surprise that’s going to make you forget all about therapy.”
“Is it not going to any more therapy?” Scarlet asked. “Cuz that would make me forget all about therapy. Like, right now.”
“Not quite,” Roy smirked. “But just as good. I’m taking you to the Antiquarian Society’s monthly symposium on Saturday.”
“Ok, you are forgiven,” Scarlet said. “But never forget that my love for you is conditional.”
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#16.2 – Saturday, the 21st day of the 9th month…
The Antiquarian Society* formed the primary center for historical research in Arindell, with their monthly Symposium a huge deal in the academic world. There was plenty of parking available.
Scarlet knew a lot of names on the roster well. Big-money producers shilling their latest documentaries, some authors doing the same for pulp books. The rest were either long-standing Antiquarians or up-and-coming historians. But this was a strictly trade-event, so the presentations were meant to appeal to people like Scarlet. And very much they did.
The Exhibition Hall was divided into two sections: a steep, high-backed lecture hall area filled with university students and academics; and three floors of theater-style seating for the tourists.
Scarlet and her dad had to sit in the tourist section.
For Scarlet, though, it was nine solid hours(with a break for lunch) of pure bliss. She took notes, she made a recording, she lovingly cradled her symposium binder, which held long lists of all the citations for the various lectures, and would be enshrined in her room beside the other three she’d collected.
Only after did things get really interesting.
Scarlet talked animatedly to her bleary-eyed father as they waded through the crowd. A series of clacking sounds echoed towards them, and out of nowhere, Dr. Druet Young appeared. Propped up on crutches, Scarlet got her first real look at his feet. He didn’t have shoes, just big metal plates like skids. Bits of rubber clinging to the edges attested to what had once been soles. Articulated joints supporting struts jutted up from the plates and disappeared under his pants.
She was still staring at them, unsure what to do, when Young licked his lips and spoke. “Who was the third Magus of the Arch?”
“Tophet Searlin†,” Scarlet snapped her gaze up to meet his and narrowed her eyes.
“And what year before High Tower?” Young raised an eyebrow.
“No firm date has ever been fixed,” Scarlet said. “The establishment of High Tower+ in thirty-eight-hundred B.G.A. is based in nothing more than a Fourth-Age historian’sP belief that school children should have any easy date to regurgitate on tests. The actual era of High Tower is heavily disputed. I’m comfortable saying it was a seventy-year time span that took place anywhere in a two-hundred-year period.”
“Clever girl,” A small smile creased the edges of Young’s lips. “When did the Mage Wars end?”
“A.Y. One-Two, the Battle of Sanguine Gulch#. That’s not even a hard one,” Scarlet told him. “Just because Eieber said the war was over two years earlier didn’t mean they had no more fighting to be done.”
“Ha!” Young pointed an accusatory finger at Scarlet. “It’s LIEBER! That’s a—that’s not even a primary-school mistake!”
“Actually, the Chronicles of St. Oraounge, which is the primary source for most of the information about the first Pendragon**, were written originally in a kind of shorthand called sepal-script††,” Scarlet stamped her foot and took a step towards Young. “It had thirty-two characters—six more than the Egregts++, the modern alphabet used by Common. One of those characters was called ‘eel’ and has since been lost to time. The Chronicles were not transcribed into longhand until at least the second century of the Golden Age, by which time few scribes still fully understood the sepal alphabet. I believe the ‘eel’, which is pronounced like ‘eie’ was mistakenly transcribed as a ‘ley’, mnemonic-mutation then gave us the name ‘Lieber’ sometime around A.Y. one-two-hundred-fifteen. In his life, however, he was known as ‘Eieber’, and I found records of seven inscriptions documented in the catacombs beneath Valley Gale Keep which support that.”
Young raised his chin and twisted his head to the side. “You do like to impress.” He bent his arms to grip his crutches tighter. “Well, keep studying.” He began to turn, sweeping each crutch in a wide arc. The various bystanders around him had to leap out of the way, but Young paid them no mind. His metal plate feet scraped the stone floor and he began to stalk away.
“…did I just witness an historian fight?” Roy asked.
“I think so,” Scarlet nodded. “I think I won.”
“Oh, shoot, I needed to talk to him!” Roy bounded ahead and caught up with Young. From her vantage point Scarlet watched with shock as the man’s entire demeanor changed. He leaned his crutches against his sides and adopted a perfectly relaxed posture.
Confused, Scarlet hopped along to try and get closer.
“I already sent my letter to the school,” Young was saying to Roy. “I mean, were either of you actually concerned? Three hundred pages, full citations—I’m not even sure her textbook is that long—I know its not as thorough.” As soon as Young saw Scarlet, his lips tightened again and his eyes narrowed. “Anyway, the other scholars will fall in line behind me. Good day, sir.”
This time, a wide hole formed in the crowd when Young swept his crutches. Scarlet, meanwhile, rounded on her father.
“Are all your friends that odd?” Roy asked.
“I don’t even know him!” Scarlet squeaked.
“Well, the good news is, you don’t have to repeat the seventh grade,” Roy smiled at Scarlet.
Scarlet gulped and looked up at her father. “W-what about the summer math assignment?”
“I gave that to some random underling at work,” Roy waved. “I’ll have it for you to turn in soon.”
“I thought you were going to help me with it?”
“Scarlet, when I can get you to admit that you actually have math homework, the only ‘help’ you seem to need is being harangued into doing it,” Roy said. “You don’t need to turn in fifty more worksheets to prove that.”
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#16.3 – Sunday, the 22nd day of the 9th Month…
“I have seen the Blood Stele*, and it is in Arindell.”
“Mine eyes have glimpsed the Blood Stele, and it is beneath Arindell.”
“For I have beheld the Blood Stele at Arindell.”
Scarlet littered her entire floor with books.
One of them was her math book, which had her homework sticking out of it†.
Her shelves were virtually empty. She covered every square inch of floor, bed, desk, and even bathroom counter three-deep in open books. When Hygelic+ was but a barely-lain egg, his father HrethrelP, a great seer and pseudo-sage, spoke a prophecy about the heirs of his soon-to-hatch son. That prophecy was inscribed on a stone. Called ‘the Blood Stele’, it foretold the events of the Age of the Dragon# and the fall of the Old Alliance*. The passing of the Long Night††, and the eventual resurrection and beginning of Scarlet’s era, the Age of the New Day++. All of this recorded centuries before the events came to pass.
Why was this important?
Three generations of Scarlet’s distant ancestors had been linked to that stone. Called ‘Hygelic’s Heirs’PP after the dragon who sired Hunter Jusenkyou. Their names; even before their births, were supposedly written on that stone, and so much more.
“So it stands to reason,” Scarlet announced to no one in particular. “That the Blood Stele should also hold the location of the sword—since that is the completion of Hrethrel’s prophecy.”
“Quack?”
“You’re no help.”
With only her desk chair bereft of books, Scarlet slumped down and eyed the medallion in her hand. A cheap, bronze-coated piece of metal bought from a museum gift shop some years earlier, and among the few trinkets she had.
Specifically, it was a copy of a medallion supposed to have belonged to Conri, that was also supposed to have served as a guide to the Blood Stele##.
There were a lot of ‘supposed to’s flying around.
The original amulet, which had been passing through private hands since Conri’s death, dated to within his lifetime. Its authenticity was above reproach, but its connection to the Blood Stele? Not so much.
Most of the early owners were treasure hunters. Decode the amulet, find the Blood Stele, indeterminate line of question marks, then untold wealth and accolades. That was the idea, anyway.
The fact of the matter: at no point in history had anyone actually seen the Blood Stele.
“Yes, I know, Friar,” Scarlet clicked her teeth. “There are dozens of accounts from people who saw the Stele. But none of them saw it.”
Historians had long dismissed the Stele as a myth. The obvious place for it was Hrethrel’s home, under the High Mountain dragon eerie*** beside Arindell. Where else would a dragon like Hrethrel leave a gigantic stone block covered in gold?
The problem: every single account of the Stele came from someone living far away who had never even been to Arindell.
Of course, Scarlet now knew better, dragons could transfer memories. That made it very simple: Hrethrel showed these people visions of the Stele from his own memory. Each of them had indeed ‘seen’ it, but not one of them ever stood in front of it.
There was nothing else for it, so Scarlet began to gather up her books and return them meticulously to their rightful places in her bōchōrd†††. She had, after combing through every single volume she owned plus several borrowed from the Library and not returned, come up with half a page of notes. Mostly just references to the books, but they all said one of two things: that the Stele was in Arindell, and that the amulet was the guide.
With the late afternoon sun tumbling through her window, Scarlet fell down on her now cleared bed and eyed the amulet for a bit. She’d read that the original was bronze and covered in glyphs, and that the jewel in the center was a polished red garnet. Not a terribly valuable piece, but historically interesting.
Feeling distraught and like she was going nowhere, Scarlet kept the medallion in her hand and went out to retrieve that day’s mail. Her mother and father were out doing boring grownup things, and she knew she could expect at least mild passive-aggression if they got home and found the post still in the box down beside the street. Flipping through the bundle of papers, Scarlet found several overdue book notices from the Library which she deposited directly into the sewer, two magazines addressed to her, and a catalogue for ‘resident’.
On the walk back to the house, Scarlet eagerly flipped through the fashion catalogue addressed to this mysterious house-mate named ‘Resident’. She must have good taste, Scarlet mused, since the catalogue had a two-page spread by Eva Morrow. After the shopping trip with Esperanza, Scarlet started to feel like she really could look elegant with the right means. And Ms. Morrow’s gowns always felt right. Well out of her family’s price-range, but Scarlet could dream.
Nothing else in the catalogue interested her, so she spent a few long minutes admiring the pretty dresses, then tossed the whole thing into the recycling bin.
“You know, that’s probably where I should put the over-due book notices instead of the sewer,” Scarlet said.
With the rest of the day’s mail deposited in the bowl beside the front door, Scarlet began to flip through her magazines. Both were put out by her beloved Antiquarian Society. She had a subscription to the circular, which was normally not read by anyone under fifty-five. A trade publication, incomprehensible to the laymen, but full of crucial details about what texts were available and where.
The second ‘zine was a relic of Scarlet’s youth(of which she was more than technically still in). A thin, bright, colorful kid’s magazine full of articles about reading and history. Being free, she saw no point in canceling it. Besides, no matter how enamoring she found dusty old books, Scarlet still liked to see colorful pictures of the things she studied. She popped the rubber band holding the magazine and opened it up, astonished to find the front cover filled with an illustration of the amulet in her hand.
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* #16.4 *
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The auspicious halls of the Hasdale and Meyers Auction House wasn’t so much closed to minors as the sort of place so boring that no one under forty ever tried to walk through the doors.
Scarlet snuck in the back.
It wasn’t so much “sneaking” as going to the entrance closest to the bus stop. Scarlet, confused and unfamiliar with the layout of the building, went in past the catering truck and just sort of kept walking until she found the exhibit hall.
The auction wouldn’t be until evening, where some sixty lots of items formerly “belonging” to Conri Jusenkyou were up for bid*.
For all his many foibles, Conri was a huge supporter of charities. He’d buy a tea service or a set of dishes, a coat rack, anything really; use it once, sign his name to it, then give it away to a charity auction. The one thing he used his celebrity-status as “sorta Pendragon” for. It backfired, somewhat, in that by the end of his life Conri’s signature was so common anything he put it on ended up worth barely more than its retail value. People were wise to it, and even started calling the whole thing a scam. They were right to some degree, though Conri’s intentions were pure. The only real Conri Jusenkyou relics of any substantial value were either still in Valley Gale Keep or decorating Scarlet’s house.
“Barely more than retail” though still meant quite a lot of money. Everything up for auction had been expensive to begin with. Now just being five hundred years old and well-preserved drove up the price. The most valuable pieces of Conri memorabilia were items scratched by Echbaldam, but there wouldn’t be anything like that, here. For now, the whole place looked a bit like a swap meet.
“Mom would go nuts here,” Scarlet mumbled to herself as she circled the room. All around her, workers were busy with setup. The few that noticed Scarlet didn’t have time to deal with her. She was invisible.
Scarlet found the amulet, stacked haphazardly on a cheap folding table alongside three tea sets, six candy dishes, a stack of gold-rimmed plates, and about three-score of random baubles or small novelties. According to her auction program, the entire lot intended to sell for somewhere north of ten thousand wingbeats. Beside the cheap folding table waited one of Hasdale and Meyers’ trademark bespoke wood and glass display cases, where the lot would sit when Arindell’s wealthy elite came out to play. At least that’s what Scarlet assumed, she actually hadn’t a clue what sort of people came to auctions†.
Scarlet leaned down and squinted at the amulet. “Maybe I really do need glasses,” she mumbled while she compared it to her replica. A lifetime of museums meant Scarlet knew better than to touch+. “Look with your eyes,” her mother’s voice echoed in her head. The size was close; the replica even had a similar patina. But the original appeared much older, and very different in a few key ways. Where Scarlet’s had a hunk of leaded and dyed glass in the middle, the original held a milky, faceted stone.
Most striking were the glyphs covering the amulet. Scarlet’s copy was made with a simple clamshell mold. But the original had been cast from a wax blank, then the symbols carefully carved into the surface with great precision.
Down the isle, Scarlet saw a worker pushing a huge rack of folding tables and thought she should probably get out of the way. Then she thought about the amulet, and how no one had ever really studied it in detail. No papers, no high-resolution scans; no real scientific analyses of any kind. There were only two real facts surrounding it: that Conri owned it, and it somehow related to the Blood Stele.
The cart rumbled closer and Scarlet did her best to scoot out of the way, hugging the folding table. Whoever pushed the cart didn’t seem to know she was there.
The cart hit her.
For a brief instant, Scarlet felt annoyed. Yeah, she was practically invisible, but that was no excuse! Annoyance gave way to terror as she realized she’d been hit much harder than a glancing blow and knocked into the table full of reasonably valuable antiques.
The cart kept on going, and smashed into the corner of said table, causing the improperly-locked folding legs at that end to give way.
Everything started to slide.
Thinking fast, Scarlet dropped her amulet and grabbed the un-hemmed velvet tablecloth. From her awkward angle she tried to ball it up as best she could and make a soft landing spot for the expensive dishware. This worked well for the plates but not so good for Scarlet’s shoulder, which impacted the floor with a resonating thwack.
Scarlet grunted in pain but did her best to stay quiet.
“Ohhh, my god, oh my god, oh my god!” a middle-aged woman in a Hasdale and Meyers uniform rushed over and knelt beside Scarlet. “Oh, god, I cannot loose this job! Oh, and you, are you ok?”
Scarlet rubbed her shoulder. “I’ve had worse.”
She looked around at the carnage. Her desperate bid for the tablecloth saved the plates, but there were knickknacks and teacups rolling all over the floor. As she watched, one saucer came to a stop, fell on its side, and cracked right in half.
“I’m in so much trouble,” the woman offered a hand to Scarlet and helped her back to her feet. “Oh, Eliza, why are you such a klutz?”
“Uhh…” Scarlet felt confused for a moment, then caught a glimpse of the woman’s nametag and determined she herself proved to be the Eliza in question. “It was an accident, right?”
Eliza knelt down and started sifting through the debris. “Oh, this is just like me. I swear I’m being careful—hey, what are you even doing here? Are you someone’s kid, or something?”
“I assume so, I definitely wasn’t the product of spontaneous generation,” Scarlet got on the floor beside Eliza and worked to untangle the candy dishes. “Oof, the lid on this one shattered—that’s the part with the guy’s name on it, sorry.”
“What are you even doing here?”
Scarlet grabbed her magazine off the floor and pointed at the cover. “I came to see this necklace. Even brought my own copy to compare, which is… somewhere around here.”
“Here,” Eliza grabbed Scarlet’s replica off the floor. “You better take this and get out of here. I don’t think there’s no children allowed, but the further you are from this mess, the better.”
Scarlet got up and started backing away. She hit a barrier and for a moment thought she’d run into another display case, only to discover something much worse.
“Ouch! Watch where you’re going!” the voice belonged to Artur Hasdale himself; Scarlet knew him from the symposia. He grabbed a big fistful of Scarlet’s shirt and pulled, forcing Scarlet to stand on her tip-toes to keep from falling over. “What are you doing here, boy?! This is not a schoolyard!”
“Hey, I’m not a boy! Let go! I didn’t do anything wrong!” Scarlet swatted his hands aside and took several steps away from him until she heard her boot crunch. “Uh-oh.”
Scarlet took a moment to size up Auction Master Artur Hasdale. At six-foot-four, he towered over her imposingly. He wore a heraldry sword and an antiquarian medallion. These weren’t merely fashion accessories or props, they marked him as a member of Arindell’s elite. Exactly the sort of person Scarlet didn’t want to make an enemy of.
Very carefully, Scarlet lifted her boot.
Hasdale motioned for her to get out of the way. It seemed strange watching such a large man crouch down on the floor. He came back up holding the broken remnants of a teapot, but he didn’t seem angry. At least not at Scarlet.
After squinting at the piece for several seconds, he took a jeweler’s loop and examined the break. “Triangular cross-hatching,” he mumbled, then glared at Eliza. “You! What happened here?!”
“Um, it, ya know, ahh,” Eliza managed.
“It was an accident, sir,” Scarlet said. “The cart hit the table and—”
Ignoring Scarlet, Hasdale stepped over to Eliza with a single stride and leaned down to show her the broken pot. “Look at the heckle marks here and here? This is a modern-day reproduction, not a hand-made original. It’s a fake.”
“Oh, well, uh,” Eliza stammered.
Artur stroked his salt and pepper beard. “I couldn’t live with myself if something like this passed through these halls.” He glanced over at Scarlet again and narrowed his eyes at her, then spoke to Eliza. “Escort this child off the premises immediately. And if you break anything else on the way out, make sure it’s another fake.”
Scarlet started moving even before Eliza got to her. She walked with a series of short, stilted steps. She certainly didn’t think she’d done anything wrong, but it could be difficult to feel that way in the face of a stern, disapproving authority figure.
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* #16.5 *
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Two short bus rides, a train trip, and a medium walk from the station to her suburban home later, and Scarlet discovered she had, in point of fact, done one thing very wrong*.
Roy stood in the open doorway alongside Jayce, with the latter being inquisitive about this thing called ‘outside’, while the former watched Scarlet make her way down the street. “Do you know what time it is, young lady?”
“Not… really?” Scarlet admitted, forcing herself to meet her father’s gaze.
Roy pointed at the sky, then made a little motion simulating the sun moving across it and setting. “You’re in trouble.”
Scarlet hung her shoulders as she trotted into the house. There were few rules in the family, but two were sacrosanct: Scarlet was to be home by dark unless given prior permission, and was not supposed to leave the neighborhood without telling her parents first.
“I saw you getting off the cross-town bus,” Roy said. “Want to tell me where you were?”
Before Scarlet could answer, Ann addressed her. “Scarlet, sit down.”
Scarlet went to the indicated sofa and sat in the middle.
“Now, you know you aren’t supposed to be out this late on a school night,” Ann began. “Were you out visiting Hezikah?”
“What? No!” Scarlet nearly jumped to her feet, but stopped herself and just gripped the couch cushion.
“Honey, let me handle this,” Roy said, clasping Ann’s shoulders. The gentle, stern lecture that followed focused mainly on punctuality and responsibility. Because it was Roy talking, it also included some things about tax law.
For her part, Scarlet sat and tried to look apologetic. Something nagged at her, and while she nodded and paid lip service to Roy’s interrogation, one hand shifted to her pocket and began to finger the medallion.
Despite having touched it hundreds of times, it seemed like she were feeling the glyphs for the first time. Just as her father’s measured tirade began to touch on his strong emotions regarding committal entail, something in Scarlet’s head went ‘click’.
Breathing hard, Scarlet pulled the medallion out of her pocket and stared at it.
The glyphs were not cast from a mold, but carefully cut into the surface.
“Scarlet, are you listening?”
“Yeah, dad,” Scarlet said, eyes still fixed on the medallion in her hand. “Fee tail was a good idea, but they did it wrong. I don’t really know what that has to do with staying out too late; can I go to my room?”
Without waiting for an answer, Scarlet got up and started walking.
It was impossible now to pinpoint just where the mistake happened, but somehow, in all of the confusion, Scarlet’s cheap souvenir medallion got left on the table, and Conri’s priceless(actual value: 500 wingbeats) original ended up in Scarlet’s pocket.
“You’re coming home right after school tomorrow,” Ann instructed. “No Library! You call me on the home phone as soon as you get—are you listening, Scarlet?”
“You got it, mom,” Scarlet waved over her shoulder. “Straight home.”
Alone, Scarlet pondered the amulet. She knew she couldn’t keep it, as much as she might like to. To any other researcher, the medallion was a curio, an interesting piece, but of little historic or intrinsic value. Except for the part where Scarlet, and Scarlet alone, now understood it was the key to unlocking the mystery of the Blood Stele.
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End:
Chapter Sixteen
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