Chapter 214 – Tales of the Past

Gaius Nezzar stood in the kitchen, hands wrapped around a mug of tea. He’d reactivated the illusion so that one of the walls looked like Mirian’s childhood home.

“Where is this house?” she asked.

“Ten miles or so northeast. Not too far from Falijmali. Deep enough in the desert I thought it would be safe. But your mother was right. I should have never let those Baracueli scum get away with the first treaty violations. All it ever did was encourage them to keep doing it.” He sighed. “But who would have renewed war alongside me? By then, all my allies were dead. Ground to dust by war or time.”

She had so many questions. “You said you hid your true name. Were you always Atrah Xidi to them, or did you have another name before that?”

“You’ve read the histories of the Unification War?”

“Several, by now. Well, skimmed most of them.”

“And what did you think?”

“I’d burn half of them if they wouldn’t come back in the next loop anyways. Riddled with contradictions and what sources I did investigate didn’t say what the author said they did. Atrocious scholarship.”

The necromancer nodded. He held the teacup, but hadn’t taken a drink. Mirian was pretty sure he didn’t actually eat or drink anymore, but he seemed to like the ritual of tea. One question at a time, she told herself, though she was burning with so many. “Before I was Atrah Xidi, I was no one. I never needed another name. Gaius was good enough. I was, for most of my life, a historian. One who dabbled in necromancy not for power, but for answers.”

“That’s right,” Mirian said, a pang running through her. “I have this memory of saying I wanted to be a historian, just like you.” Only, Westerun had taken that from her. How much had warping her memory changed her? At least I kept my love of math, she thought. “I want to know your story,” she said.

Her father smiled. “Probably best not to tell the whole thing in one sitting.”

“The short version for now, then.”

He nodded. “I’ll try to keep it brief. Highlight the important parts, the parts that might be important to your mission. I was born, from what I remember, in a small village upriver of Alatishad.” He shook his head. “It was so different back then. Different in ways people don’t understand, can’t understand anymore. There were no spell engines, so there were no spellwards. Every able bodied man or woman in the village was required to do guard shifts in the watchtowers or maintenance around the palisade. Despite the precautions, myrvites killed someone at least once a month. Usually, in the farms along the river, but sometimes a river creeper would snatch a child from a room at night. And magic… it wasn’t the same. Now, they ship myrvite parts around Enteria. Every ink and organ is available, and alchemistry makes it so easy. In my time, spellbooks were worth more than gold. Collecting spells was the work of a lifetime. Getting the materials was only half the problem. Mage guilds and wizards’ towers kept their spells and artifice methods secret.”

“How old are you?” Mirian asked.

“Three hundred. Give or take. But I don’t feel a day over two hundred and fifty!” Gaius smiled. “I know, it’s a pretty poor historian who doesn’t know his exact age, but in my defense, the village I was born to never kept census records, and had no tradition at all for celebrating birthdays.”

“So how did you become a necromancer powerful enough that Baracuel still fears you?”

He snorted. “Doesn’t fear me enough, it seems. We’ll have to change that. Well, it happened slowly. When I was young and foolish, I figured out that I could sneak out into the desert and visit the old Persaman ruins leftover from the Triarchy, and that visiting arcanists would pay a fine price for some of the relics. Eventually, a wizard noticed I had a knack for finding the good stuff and not getting myself killed. She hired me to work on collecting old artifacts for her full time. Eventually, I realized that some of the libraries in Alatishad had old Persman records and maps, and if I used those, I could quickly find the best things. At first, I was only interested in the artifacts. Fragments of alchemistry equipment. Old spellrods. Extinguished glyph pieces. But then, I became fascinated by the history itself. I began to wonder, first about the Persaman Triarchy. How could an empire that had endured so long fall so far? I quickly realized that understanding necromancy was crucial to understanding the history.”

Mirian nodded. That was the historical consensus. “But you wanted to know the mechanism,” she guessed.

“Precisely. It was taken as axiomatic that necromancy was so terrible that its use destroyed the Triarchy, but that didn’t explain why such a civilization was able to rise above all the kingdoms around it, subjugate half the continent, and persist for over a thousand years. All the while, using necromancy.”

“So you started learning it.”

“Indeed. I had picked up a bit of arcane magic from serving the wizard. But it was in Mayat Shadr that I found a spellrod with a focus incorporated into it. I became obsessed with learning all I could about necromancy. I scoured libraries for books, scoured ruins for old scrolls and tablets. Eventually, one of the old restorationist cults got wind of what I was doing and recruited me, and then I had proper teachers.”

“Restorationists?”

“Wanted the Triarchy back, necromancy and all. Largely culled by Prince Fariba and her Great Guilds a hundred years later. Most of them moved north to hide in what would become Baracuel, then got purged by the Luminates. Anyways, that was all to come. At the time, we figured we could both help each other. The years passed, and I began to understand something of the nature of the fall. And here’s where you might be interested. The Ominian is dead, and yet, They live. The last Triarchs sought to resurrect Them. Whatever ritual they prepared, whatever method they thought to do so, all I can tell you is it involved mass sacrifice on a scale that chills the blood. They thought, perhaps, with enough souls, it could be done. Except, the necromancers at the time perhaps knew more about that soul than we do today. They knew a soul cannot be simply switched around. No amount of falcon souls could ever animate a person.” Gaius shrugged. “Most of the records around then, including of the magic, were deliberately destroyed. Whatever those Triarchs did, it caused a collective horror that changed the culture of the land for generations to come. The exile of what would become the Luminates. The rise of the Isheer. Mass rebellion, war, and the near-complete destruction of necromancy. I never did quite solve the history, because I became obsessed with another question.”

“The fate of the Ominian?”

“Not quite. The question I wanted to know was: how far could I trace humanity’s history?”

Mirian paused at that. Even a few years ago, she would have thought, ‘to the Cataclysm,’ because too much had been destroyed during it to say much. But then she’d seen those soul fragments beneath the oasis of Mahatan. “There are tales told in the remnants of souls. Tales in the stones of ancient ruins. Tales in legends,” she said.

This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“Yes. I began to seek them all out. It all led to more questions. That all non-Elder creatures share common ancestors is ancient knowledge, passed down as common sense for generations. But where did the idea originate? It is easily seen in the variations of birds and lizards, or the traits of flowers. But where are the creatures like humans?”

Mirian found herself nodding along. Talking of humanity’s origin had triggered an old memory. “Xylatarvia’s Great Ship. She descended from the stars on a boat made of vines.” Priest Kier had given a sermon on it that she’d heard many times in the early cycles. There had been a strange reference to that it in the Grand Sanctum. She closed her eyes, trying to remember. Down this hall, in this room. “There was as cult of Altrukyst that had a secret room in the Grand Sanctum of Palendurio. It said Xylatarvia sailed her ship through a hole in Altrukyst’s chest. She then emerged from the moon. The strangest tale. It sounds like a fable for children.”