What cup shall we move?

Salbadore turns towards the flames again. "I wouldn’t recognize it if I saw it, my good priest. What few religious advocates I've ever met were irrational, but not entirely inscrutiable. To be sure, they had nothing more complicated in mind than the personification of this or that aspect of the universe."

Resting his elbows on his knees, he explains, "There was a woman who lived in a shack in the foothills of Steepend. When I was still residing in Wolfgramm Woods, I was sent once to fetch medicine from her. The skies were threatening thunderweather when I arrived at the hollow in which she had built her home, and so I was obliged to spend the evening there, in her abode. This proved to be a most interesting encounter, for she allowed me to witness her religion. The next morning, she awoke before daybreak and knelt before the rising sun."

He looks up as if he might apologize. "That was it; that was her religion."

"Before parting ways, we drank tea there, at her little house built right into the cliff. As we talked, we found that we agreed on almost everything about the sun: We agreed that it was a star, and that our planet revolved around it. We agreed upon its life-giving properties, and on its exalted place in the chain of being. Yet she found fit to kneel before it, and I did not."

Salbadore sniffs – "I never saw her again" – and waves the rising smoke away from his eyes. "There was an old man who lived in a stone shed in the Capital. He was a wise and industrious get, whose gift was for building hydraulic devices. Would you think he worshipped the water?" The young genomancer takes a sip of whatever there is to drink. "Nay! Twice a week – and never on work-days – he lit a scented stick, clasped his hands, and bowed his head to a portrait of a chap with an iron staff.

"I saw it once. 'Thou art cowering before an oil painting, sir,' I said to him, thinking I was smart. Cripes – it was just my first year of study, and he was not a meister at the Guildhaus. It was my disgusting custom to be most obsequious, even as I cast derision. Orthos will vouch that it is the state of too many full-hearted collegiates." Salbadore has been slowly leaning forward. Now he shivers a little and straightens his back. "How far I've come!"

"Hence –" Salbadore puts his hands on his hips to pantomime authority "– the mechanic said to me, 'Would I cower before a painting? Nay, I am cowering before the hand that paints.'"

Salbadore sniffs again, and returns his gaze to the fire. A little distractedly, he continues, "There is a child at the Guildhaus – my college, as it were – who spends his life running to and fro in the castle halls making beds, putting things away, sweeping the floors. His name is Bezel. He is the son of one of the cooks and he is paid for his labor, but truly he is an odd little sprite, for he works constantly at keeping everything in the Guildhaus in some imaginary order that only he comprehends. He is quite simple, and almost entirely possessed by his self-imposed tasks. Bezel has no friends of his own – we joke that he must keep company with the mice.

"I can't remember the reason for it, but Sinchi and I once asked the lad if the mice had a mouse god. He was forthright in his reply. 'Why, that is I,' he said!" Salbadore effects his impersonation of the boy by squeaking.

"'Hear, then! Do the mice have a heaven?'

"'Yes, Dorey,' said he.

"I asked the child, 'And what is it like?'"

"I will never remember his exact words, but Bezel made very sure that I would ken his meaning: 'It is very much like this place, Dorey, but it's very different. The mice cannot make it, so I shall do it for them. But . . . What cup shall I have to move? Which leak must I patch?'

"I was denser in those days and I declared to him, 'Oh, my little man! But slash the oat-sack open and the mice will find their heaven.' As luck would have it, he did slash open an oat-sack, and five sacks of grain, and ten of corn. No one was the wiser for a night or two, not until Bezel's mother discovered such a thorough-going infestation in the pantry that she fled from it screaming. It was good-ol Hungred who was made to exterminate every rodent in the room, soft-hearted soul that he is. It goes without saying that the foodstuffs were ruined.

"For all their folly, neither the witch of Steepend nor the master mechanic would have made my mistake, and I learned much from the poor lad Bezel, who was whipped. Mice and men are alike: we are short-lived and we are very good at making the best of what life is available. The sun goes up and the sun goes down, my friends, and because of this men, mice, and the rest of the world do not overgrow. We need not be fearful of the world and the shapes in it. I will not; nor will any right Lebenskrafter.

"We want to know, 'How shall we best tend to the world? How shall we coax its most magnificent bounties into the light?' I say: Bezel has already asked the correct question.

"What cup shall we move? Which leak shall be patched?"

c/o Master Joe Yurteling

L.E.L. Horse & Beast Company
6 Thistle Avenue
Freybourne

Mssrs. Yurteling and Hazelbottom,

It is my sad duty to inform you that your property and employee, which my traveling companion and I rented for passage to Dale-Town for the price of thirty-six gold, have been destroyed by highwaymen. The carriage was held up on the customary route southwest from Freybourne to Corcoran. My company and I fought back, driving two of the brigands off, wounding three, and taking prisoner their ringleader. In the course of the battle, this unsavory get unleashed a magical attack and burnt your carriage to cinders. The horses were utterly consumed by his lightning, and that is all. I do not know the name of your driver. His body, being in such a state that it would not have survived the damp trip to Corcoran, lies in a grave near the roadside. Should his family or friends seek out his remains, tell them that they are about thirty leagues northeast of Corcoran. The grave is marked by a short pile of stones and the black bricks that remain of your lovely carriage No. 3458, which was a particular fine conveyance. I was sad to do without it for the remainder of the trip to Corcoran, which we made on foot, and I will continue to miss it for the remainder of the journey to Dale-Town. On the authority of the Sheriff of Corcoran, final justice has been meted out to one Horace Dunkel, the leader of the bandits.

Cordially,
Salbadore Cane
Subdom Wolfgramm, Genomancer

Peer Counseling

Orthos collegially pats Salbadore’s shoulder. Such friendliness was not unusual for the young man from the College of High Summoning. But, to Salbadore, it has always seemed to contrast with Orthos’ overall appearance. The wild, black hair radiating from his crown like quills and boughs to shade his dark eyes seemed to belong to a savage, a goblin, or a performer. The pallid skin bespoke a childhood spent in frailty – or a life spent in the alcoves of the College, plumbing for secrets forgotten or uncared-for. None of it indicated an especially gregarious man. Yet Orthos was that – and a flirt and a gallant; a dashing adventurer and a bookish scholar.

Catching Salbadore's attention for a moment, Orthos rocks his head towards the smoking carriage. The two step behind it, and he hushedly asks Salbadore, "Dorey, are we sure this is the right course of action? I have a doubt."

"What is it, man?"

"Several things. We are going to escort four men for three days or more, while we eat, drink and sleep. All the while at least two of their compatriots could be following us, and if they bemoan their fate the entire time, what will that do to the morale of our companions? Not to mention, no one seems to be stepping forward to tie a decent knot."

Such worry strikes Salbadore as atypical of Orthos' customary, if wildly swinging, range of moods. Yet, he is not disturbed by it. Instead, Salbadore is relieved to hear the summoner's doubts. Orthos' uncertainty is something that Salbadore understands. "Frankly, the latter concern seems to be the only significant trouble," Salbadore says, "for between my extra rations and those fantastic berries that Varel always seems to have, we can no doubt care for the quartet 'til we reach Corcoran. Does Markus not know how to tie a knot? Or the pip?"

"Haven't a clue."

"I fear we will have to make these men march with their britches around their knees!" Salbadore pats the summoner on the back and smiles broadly. It is a hearty, though markedly insufficient, attempt to play the role of Orthos-for-Orthos.

"But what of when we arrive? There will be talk of elves and magic, and not to mention they said they were to rob us, but we struck first. Then there is the driver. What do we do with his body, bury it here, away from his family?" Orthos crouches behind the wreck slightly. He scans the roadside. "I've never dealt with this type of situation, Dorey. I find myself wanting in conviction."

"Aye. I ken." Orthos in a fret - it is unprecedented and Salbadore is determined to act wisely and lawfully under the circumstances. "But surely, it is our duty. As Varel said, no sense saving eggs from snakes. We have nothing to fear from talk of elves – Laurie is the pet of Virgis now and bears his mark, as we know. And these men's crimes are made all the more egregious by their impersonation of the Imperial foe. You are right however: Varel's magics are likely unlicensed."

"What if," Orthos suggests, "we but bind and gag the leader, carry him back to stand trial for murder – send the rest on their way, with a strong warning?"

"We shall take the leader to Corcoran, then, for is he not a disgrace to our common profession? These dogs will not be nearly as effective without their artillery, as it were."

"Should we try and take the body of the driver for proper burial?" asks Orthos, who settles his uneasy gaze upon the charred remains of the servant, steaming from the heat and drizzle. "And – well, for evidence I suppose? It seems cold to bury him in the wilderness." Both wizards breath deeply and look towards the ground. "Although to have the bandits bury the murdered man seems a start to penance."

"Let it begin with that. We will relieve them of their armor and weapons, which we might pawn in Corcoran. They’ll lay this man to rest. After that, we let the ignorant of the lot out into the woods and wish them luck among the wolves and bears, defenseless." Salbadore wags a finger to punctuate their defenselessness. "And – we take this filth in," he adds, with a nod to the spellcaster. "I will personally see to his feeding as we travel."

"By your lead then, Dorey. You're strong on conviction today," declares Orthos.

Salbadore owes his life to this man: his only friend among his traveling companions. It occurs to him that, adrift in the world as they are, the two wizards – by virtue of their shared struggles, and the duties they now have to one another – are now peers in a sense that transcends the walls of the academies. "I'm pleased to see the universe work the way it should. Snakes and eggs, Orthos!: I think she meant that this is our chance to be the hand of nature, mate."

(text also by fil)

A Rat

During a pit stop on the second day, while the others are stretching their legs or relieving their natural urges, Markus - who, indeed, has bathed - hops up next to Salbadore in the coach's cabin. He leans back as he crosses his legs, stretches, then crosses his arms about his chest. He turns to Salbadore. He smiles. "Got a tick, mate? 'Ave a few 'quiries fo' ya brain box, I do."

Pleased to have a receptive ear for his ministrations, Salbadore can only respond, "Aye, Markus! What would you ask?"

"Roit then," Markus says, smiling while he shifts in his seat. He reaches into his cloak and takes a dagger from somewhere. He uses it to pick his fingernails. "Ya smart bloke, that," he says, "Ya ken me gutterspeak. Ya know wo' we mean by rat, do ya that?"

Salbadore throws up his hands. "Oh on a tied, blue tongue -" He shakes his head and sighs with melodramatic resignation. "Of course I do. What is your point going to be?"

Markus laughs, "Roit good answer," he says, waving his dagger in the air. He nods toward it. "Na' think thisa work, that," he says as he replaces the dagger back into the folds of his cloak.

He smiles. "I jus' wanna light th' dark fo' yeh. I go' no beefa 'Is Emperor. I na' traitora throne, nor any that dog jizz." He pauses dramatically to look around and leans closer to Salbadore, "Bu' sometime wot need doin I do. Sometime wot need doin bes' na' chatterbout, ken me?"

Salbadore is clearly impressed by the rogue's confidence. He swallows and nods.

Markus leans back, laughing, "Tha' na a concern then, izzat? We mates an' all, foit tha good foit againsa bogeys and 'aunts annat, roit?"

*swish*tunk*

Before Salbadore can speak, the wood next to his head splinters. The tip of a dagger is buried in the wood near his temple; its blade vibrates near the genomancer's ear, and its handle wags vigorous a few inches past his cheek. Salbadore's eyes bulge and Mayna leaps in surprise, spitting and cawing. She crackles angrily.

Mercurio glares. Taking a serious - ominous even - tone, he states his meaning carefully. "If you rat me out like you did Laurie, I will kill you." He does not break eye contact as he pulls the dagger from the wall and replaces it into his cloak. He relaxes in his seat, but continues to speak with uncharacteristic clarity. "You understand me . . . gub'nah?"

Salbadore: "Sh-sh-sheiss- yeh. Kenned."


(text also by colin)

Miraculum Mundanum

Walking or riding a horse is so much more intimate a means of traversing the countryside; the four walls of the carriage obscures many of the natural features of interest, and insulate the passenger from the trip. Besides the view offered by the tiny, dusty windows, the experience of traveling is compacted into a constant jarring motion, the sounds of hooves, breeze, and the odors of other travelers.

It is this insulated view that Salbadore seems to most enjoy. The first two days see a beamingly happy Salbadore. He hums. He smokes a simple pipe that he has bought in the market. From the vantage of his window seat, he enjoys the luxury of breezes upon his face and cushions upon his ass.

For most of the first days of the trip, the carriage is conducted along the roads between farming centers - from village to castle to village to castle. The landscape is dominated by patches of deciduous woods and expansive golden pools of grain. There is much of it, and those used to the woodlands or the cities might grow bored before the first few hours of boxed travel are over. Those who can appreciate agriculture and the bounties of fertile lands - and who have access to a window or the bravery to ride with the luggage - understand the monumental work that has been invested in these soils. Miles of tilled fields unfold along the road. Under Duke Ivor Youngblood and his predecessors, Kauhedl's peasants had bred well and worked well. And so, happy with their safety and encouraged by the prospect of surplus food, they tilled the land well too, transforming it into a source of pride for the Youngblood line and the Kauhedl nobility.

For those first two days, Salbadore precedes to school Orthos on the miracles of the human will to shape nature that have been manifested in the great farmlands of Kauhedl. Yet, Salbadore's tone - and the darting glances he casts across the carriage - betray his motive (to those paying attention to such things): that, despite his nominal audience, his exhortations of the human hand's effects on the landscape are meant to be of educational value to Laurie. By the third morning, however, his excitement has duly worn off, and he sinks into boredom with the others. Faced with the tedious vista, Salbadore's eyes begin to glaze, and he even gives up his seat by the window if asked.

Studies

Abstract
In contrast to the grandiose spires high atop the main hall, the students’ alcoves are Spartan. They are little more than an arcade of stone cells in a sunken hallway, chambers designed to so submerge the student in isolation that meditation – if not utter boredom – is unavoidable. The ability to adapt to alcove life is what separates the chaff from the wheat at the College of High Summoning, for only those students with the will, collectedness of mind, and sanity to persevere through life in a subterranean slot will get through the first year of school. After the completion of this feat of solitude, the mages in training are relocated into the ground level dormitories and allowed more privileges away from the campus. It is the same at each of Tyritrius’ flagship colleges: a sunken hallway, rows of slots in the walls, one year of seclusion.

One might think that, after a harrowing evening delivering the grand summoner’s birthday present, surviving an assassination attempt meant for Lord Virgis Grimrune, and witnessing the most surprising resolution of the whole, lethal affair, Salbadore might be afforded slightly more comfortable accommodations than these. But he had asked for them, and at any rate there were many more-notable guests on the premises than him.

Sketches
In the old days, the folklore of the colleges held that the students’ years in the cellar are indelibly impressed upon their magical styles. Inductees residing on the East side – those students whose cells, by virtue of the hall’s architecture, receive the most light as the sun sets – were said to be ‘sunset’ mages. Conversely, students quartered in rooms on the West side receive the most light when the sun is in the east; they are the ‘daybreak’ mages.

Perhaps they were the vogue of earlier generations, but tales of sunset and daybreak mages do not circulate much among the students these days. Salbadore learned about them accidentally while reading the diary of Meisterin Doma Magan Abendroth Bezold, an innovator among Lebenskrafters whose theoretically elegant variations of the Facies Transtulis operation fascinated the younger genomancer. The Lady of Facies, remembered in legend as the Bane of Sondergarten, was naturally of the opposite constitution as the young Subdom of Wolfgramm, but her memoirs of traveling with nomads through the steppes of northwestern Qulaun – not to mention her tales of glory in cunning during the two Coastal Wars of four centuries past – stirred Salbadore’s imagination and inspired his studies during that first lonely year.

Salbadore retires to an alcove on the West side of the hall. It is cool and quiet, and nearly dark inside. Salbadore strips down to his pantaloons and slides into the sleeping nook, which is nothing more than another stone slot. He wraps the harsh wool blanket around his shoulders and drifts into a dream about slots within slots:

In a clockwork universe, the heavens turn on a metal dial conducted along by a cosmic gear. As brass teeth rotate with the teeth of smaller and smaller gears yet, the planets snap into place. Metal balls dropping into the world through slots opened by the constellation of the evening, human lives are oriented to the world by the polarities that exist between the planets, and which are modulated by their positions in the sky. Salbadore fell out when a tooth ticked on the daybreak gear.

Gravity works; he slams his shoulder into the ground, but the fall is not far, and he lands on the pile of Orthos’ clothes, which he must remember to return. His stomach convulsed fiercely, a brief artifact of the antivenin – or, perhaps, of betrayal. He had rolled over in his sleep and fallen completely out of the sleeping nook. He refuses to dignify it as a bed. It’s very early morning: he stretches his face, opens his mouth wide, massages his cheeks – anything to crack the crust from his eyes without actually exposing the tender pupils to the bright yellow glow all around him.

Architectural Notes
The sunbeam is bright. He cracks his eyes and immediately takes to a squint. On the floor: that is Sinchi’s genolith and that is his wrecked kreisbuch. There, on the desk, is Stefane’s book and genolith. What here is Salbadore’s? In the sleeping slot, under the pillow, there is a book. Around his waist is a fine chain; a yellow jewel decorates the scoop of his ilium. This book, this stone, this body.

It must be dark now in the chamber across the hall. During the darkest periods in the eastward chambers a singularly dense ray of light passes overhead from a vent in the outside wall to one in the interior wall. From there, the light beams across the hallway ceiling and through yet another vent on the opposite side; here, it opens into and illuminates a westward, or daybreak, alcove. The chambers, though cramped, are quite tall and their tops protrude above ground level. The vents, then, are fifteen feet above the floor, and the morningtime light beams were usually out of reach for the sunset student. This time of morning, when the sunset novices are learning to cope with the problem of dressing themselves in the dark, light as bright as day and as exquisite as a banquet is pouring into the westward chambers.

Of course, it works the other way around, too. Sunset mages did most of their studying in the rich orange light of sunset, which lit their chambers like warm fire. It is no accident that, as the novices graduate from their subterranean alcoves and gain more social privileges, the sundown mages always seemed to know how to dress for nighttime social affairs. (In contrast the westward mages tended to always look like they were dressing for work and many had tastes bordering on the militaristic, if not downright imperial.)

Template
Salbadore opens his eyes, and groans. There is a quill going to waste in the light vent – its shadow looms large on the wall. He retrieves it by sleepily drawing a Zauberkreis: “suffragium!” Dipping the quill in a miniature bottle of ink that he keeps secure in the spinal compartment of his kreisbuch, Salbadore begins to pour over Stefane Flavius’ notes. He carefully sketches the more complex kreise in his own notes, and takes careful stock of Faney’s methods and findings.

In the back of the kreisbuch, two columns are scribbled in lead. Are they notes to an operation that he had just been learning to master? Are they philosophical in nature? Salbadore had a sense of what they could be, but it seemed unlikely that Stefane would have been the kind of fellow to deposit astrological folklore in his kreisbuch.

Brightness + Dim light
Apparency + Never obtuse
Out loudness + Often unspoken
Lawfulness + Unarticulated
Faciality + Admixture
Sunlight + Sensual
Illusion + Cover and clouds
Revelation + Dissimulation and covering tracks
Manipulation + Tactile operations and depth
Chauvinism + Nepotism
Differentiation + Death

Ideals and Reals

As he takes in Laurie's pleas, Salbadore wipes the first hints of tears away. Dabbing his sleeve in the corners of his eyes, he bends over and picks up his gains. "Thank you, Master Devil." He dons the ring immediately, and tucks the other items inside his shirt.

"Good evening to you - if anyone should need to find me, I will be retiring to a chamber on the sunlight side of the hallway." He turns to depart. "Mayna: guard," he commands, and the raven hops onto his shoulder, facing the party as Salbadore walks away.

His departing words are for Laurie: "Make haste, girl."

Mayna murmurs something at the imp as her master and vehicle leaves the dormitory. There is someone standing in that cramped little room, who has only just now noticed Mayna's responsiveness to the commands of the young Subdom Wolfgramm. It is inescapable now. "Guard," he has said, and true enough: the last things that the other party members see as the troubled young mage rounds the door-frame are the raven's suspicious eyes, her open bill, and her thick, black tongue. Clearly, she is warding her master, yet whatever strange avian intellect might be submerged in those dark orbs and in that oddly muscular tongue remains as unfathomable as any other animals'.



Salbadore's fierce indignance resonates as his boots strike the stone hallway.

Dedication

Salbadore and one of the imperial soldiers approach the prison wagon. The soldier lowers its gate, grabs a pair of feet, and pulls the –"Ah, sheiss!" Salbadore recoils from the stench coming off from the now-putrid body of the junior mage. Wrapping Orthos' wet cloak around his face, Salbadore laments, "Poor Sinchi!" He sobs, "And to think that you and ol' Faney would have been enemies excepting for Hungred and myself! And now the two of you here in quiet repose, side-by-side. Aw! All but for that bonny fat Mags – all but for the smithy's loose little lass!" His bawling begins to wind down, and he gathers a bit of dignity. "Pardon me, brother," he begs. "It's time to see your things back to the Guild."

A gaping wound in the mage's skull marks the point through which the fatal bolt entered – his toeless foot protrudes from a blown-out boot, marking the bolt's exit. Little more than a topography of blisters, the charred skin on his face retains no readable features, but his purple sash identifies Sinchiran as a mage of the Lebenskraft Guildhouse. Salbadore begins to paw at the corpse in the dim light of the trailer, searching through its cloak and clothing. As he does so, he cannot help but to notice the elderly gnome, dressed in the drab tunic of a prisoner, and locked in the belly of a skraftbiest. The little man worries Salbadore, and this worry consumes him. Lo, Salbadore coaches himself, Stephane and Sinchi died seeing this get off to his destination. Take him in, boy. Lay your eyes on that pip and do not forget.


("Thou imprisoned!" He speaks hushedly through the wet cloak, but not as a matter of privacy for he immediately realizes that he is breaking protocol by communicating with the prisoner through living bars, through fenestrae in the body of an officer in His Excellency's military. Salbadore thinks better of it only after the words have escaped his lips. But they have passed, and the lieutenant has not spoken. Salbadore decides that he will find out the name of the threat that his classmates died fighting. "Old man. Who are you?"
(He mutters something that sounds like, "Traveling, I been going."
("Of what crime are you accused?" Does the mimik shift a little, is it moving?
(The gnome shrugs.
("Two of my friends have died transporting you." Salbadore tries to sound insistent without speaking too loudly. "With all respect, you’ll please see the sincerity of my curiosity, sir, and satisfy it:")


– but what would Salbadore really want to know?

Aye, he thinks, and wants to say (but he cannot bring himself to muster this kindness) to the caged gnome, I ken the pip’s interest in the welfare of his kith. And Salbadore would feel even more understanding towards Nibben if he could believe that the mossback’s imprisonment is a matter of politics - or perhaps for the purpose of extracting information about a greater threat. But, no: no matter what Orthos claims, Salbadore is sure that Nibben was no more responsible for the rescue at Lakewood than he himself was. Nay. We each have been dragged down this path in the name of something else – but, oh, in whose name do you toil so, master gnome? To what end to you seek the company of imperial prisoners?

It will be a whipping for Nibben. Salbadore passes his gaze over the faces of the dead; one-by-one, he takes them in. "Everyone has been on a trip, but no one has yet gotten to where they are going." He winces in sympathy for pitiful, half-crazed Nibben and wonders if the afflicted soul would even be capable of understanding why he was being beaten? And – why, yes, of course – Laurie too had endured a beating at the hands of the lieutenant. What do they want to know? –


("Why are they all so interested in you?" he snaps at the old gnome.
(The frail man leans forward and taps his forehead. "The mindmelters put a bomb in my brain to keep me quiet.
("Anyway, I don't think you're allowed to be talking to me.")


And I won’t dare!, is Salbadore's immediate mental protest, for I know my place! With the auto-indignation of this sudden affirmation, Salbadore returns from his dream and soon locates his friend's genolith. It is nearly encased in the mass of melted metal jewelry around the young corpse’s neck. With some effort, Salbadore bends it free and pulls it over his friend's charred face – Oh no, oh poor Sinchi, Salbadore chants and bites his lip. He tries his best to shear off as little of Sinchi’s flaky skin as possible.

Not entirely happily, but with no small amount of relief, Salbadore succeeds in keeping the melted and burnt face of Sinchiran Balaban Ran mostly intact.

Men of Control and Concentration

Salbadore was reminded of old times by running into Stefane Flavius.


"I’ll not stand for this! I’ll not!" Sinchi was roaring with anger, his comically rosy-cheeks glowing with fury. "Your chin’ll cut – hear me Faney!" He shook his fist. "It’ll cut on my knuckles before you touch my Mags again."

"Jack!" the other man half-laughed and half-pleaded. "Sinchi, I mean! I had no idea she was spoken for!"

"You greased lob! You need not lay eyes on my angel!" He spat, "Fester of shite."

The other man was taken slightly aback. "Well! If you insist on the truth -"

Salbadore and Hungred simultaneously interrupted him: “Flavius!” “Be quiet man!”

"- I’ve scratched every woman you’ve ever fancied, lad –"

"Shutchyur mouf!," Sinchi snarled. He surged angrily against the shoulders of his classmates, Salbadore and Hungred.

"Every last one of them. I've seen you with Mags. Shalanne. Mabia. Rooly."

Salbadore pinched him. "Stand back Sinchi. I’m going to take this rat from your sight."

"Aye, jack! Me standing here, calm and collected and this petty little child raging and raging and wearing himself out. Feel a little bit like the lesser man, don't you? Fekking Mags make you feel important lad?"

"Wipeyur mouf ri-offayur face, I will! Cutchyur chin ri-open on me knuckles! Smashyur fruits . . ." Sinchi did not let up.

Hungred answered Salbadore. "Aye, do so Dorey." He seized Sinchi even more tightly, "This knot won’t untie itself."

Salbadore moved to sever the exchange between the rivals. He hooked his arm into Flavius’s. "You’re coming with me, jack."

"Am I?" Flavius asked as he casually turned with Salbadore. The pair walked away like a couple of sweethearts. "I’m telling you, Dorey," Flavius continued, "Sinchi has nothing to be so enraged about."

"Ah, then, it’s good to know."

Flavius patted Salbadore’s hand. "No, no, Dorey, I don’t think you understand. Of course I rode her. I was telling Sinchi the truth about that. I’ve already done everything I care to do to every Mary and Maggy what’s fancied him even a bit."

"But why speak so meanly to the poor lad? What's the use of rubbing it in?" Thinking of his own sweethearts, Salbadore continued, "All four of us would have been better off if the truth had not been revealed, Stefane. Sinchi’s rage has sufficient cause, I’d say."

Now quite some distance from Hungred and Sinchi, Stefane pulled Salbadore to a stop. Taking Salbadore fraternally by the shoulder, the elder apprentice explained. "I’d say not. Rage does not serve the skraft, we are men of control and concentration. Besides, what woman is worth commotion? Their nature is relaxation and leaking; ours is tension and retention."
He continued, "Mags is the daughter of a blacksmith, and she’s friendly with men. If I’ve opened her up a few times, will the flowers cease to bloom? Sinchi dreams of honorable, fair virgins – will they wilt before he gets his wish of ruining one for himself?"

Salbadore could only look at the ground and nod. "If you could only explain it to Sinchi as you do with me. Surely he’d see your wisdom?"

"Why should I, jack? He’s ready to tear my head off and fekk my neck."

"You know Sinchi –"

"I do not."

"He’ll burn hot for a day or two and then you can approach him. Faney, please, just have a few words with him. Hungred and I already know you well, so we’ll hold him down if need be."

Flavius laughed. "What have I to fear from him? No, I’ll speak with him myself in the next day or three. You and Hungred have already done well." Noting the slightly dejected look on Salbadore’s face, he suggested, "Dorey, you’re a good lad. Let’s have us some millet."

Three nights later, Salbadore crossed paths with Flavius and Sinchi again. They were walking arm in arm and singing a drinking song that had been popular among generations of young skraftsmen:

Not bird nor beast, nor creeping thing,
Not food nor drink, nor weeping dame,
No beating heart, no shining blade,
Shall route what get work
In His Excellency's Name!

The growls of wolves, the cries of babes
The groans of Father Time!
All these things – but bare life,
Ev’ry subject to our minds!
For what does life do to us,
But bend upon our kreis!

Borrowed Clothes

The Rough Orientation

Markus's skinless automaton tosses three full coils of the constrictor's body onto the cavern floor, keeping hold of only the tip of its tail. Salbadore gasps and -
the hulking patchwork of muscle whips the snake into the wall with such speed -
stumbles backwards, throwing his hands out -
that it whistles through the air -
once again forgetting to keep his nudity covered -
just before slamming into a prominently protruding knob of stone -
and he shrieks -
like the bare crown of a skull -
the first blow leaves a wide red splatter -
covers his gaping mouth with one hand -
but does not kill -
and starts to cry -
the snake writhes weakly -
as he catches one brief glimpse -
then is swung through the air, its head inches from his face -
of its scaled-over reptilian eye -
and then bursts against the skull-like knob.

Salbadore hyperventilates briefly and then falls against the cavern wall. He clutches his chest and spits.

He recovers only slowly.

Finally, he declares, "You - you must - kindly allow me to go up -" he pants for another moment and adds "- after the baby?"

[continued]

Arts Most Base

(Centuries after he helped to save Salbadore Cane from the bogeys of Lakewood, sages were still debating the most minute details of Orthos Sudlow’s life. This excerpt from Jipper Jungham’s little known heretic history, Magi Minori Vol. III: Mages of Tyritrius’s Golden Age, discusses legendary accounts of a meeting between Orthos and a god of self-destruction.)

Binders – those mages who draw their power not from spells, but from the residue left clinging to the planes by the old, disappeared gods. When we speak of binders, we inevitably turn to tales of Orthos, the "smyleful mage". . . .

After days of traveling, Orthos (as he was known in those times) dismounted and literally stood before the face of the mountain. It was a monumental stone relief, a giant motionless face carved right into the exposed natural marble and bound in living cords of creeper vines. To either side, massive stony fingertips protruded from the cliff. It was an exquisite treasure, carved by a gifted and purposefully anonymous sculptor, designed to become a part of a place so remote from any civilized country that only the hardiest or wildest sages would ever lay eyes upon it. Above the face of the bodhisattva, the crest of the mountain reached into the low clouds. The effect would have been something like standing before a god pinned beneath a storm cloud and lassoed into inertia by vines; or else, a mountain giving birth to a round-faced godling.

Orthos set his steed to graze in a field not far off. After four days and three nights of fasting in preparation to meet the remnants of the bodhisattva of Stillness, he drew an arcane sigil in on the readied ground and built a fire on it. He sat down in front of it there, crossed his legs, and closed his eyes.

The apocryphal record of the heathen scholar Bulfhen Hewn VVybulder records that “Orfos was plesede vvif his vverk and pleasede with the vvarmf and der didd he smyl.” Savant Leo of the Yellow Curtain notes that Orthos’s fire would have been fed with the barberwood pines that grow in the moist cloud forests of central Neruwae, and so the smoke would have been thick and greedy, pulling the moisture from brave Orthos’s lips, and making it impossible for him to smile comfortably. On this question, Silling the Bard remarked to me, “Anyone who has spent a night or two with a family of stony barbarians in the cloud forests during the wintertime will no doubt remember how swift the shift from daylight’s foggy steam showers to the evening’s dry winds can be. Even serene Orthos’s lips would have been cracked by leechlike barberwood smokepits.”

At this juncture it bears mentioning that all this debate about whether or not Orthos might have been smiling during his first encounter with the bodhisattva of Stillness has significance only to the rare practitioner of binding magics and the few, odd persons left in the world who consider the details of his life to hold theological significance. Of course here we subscribe to the former concern, and thus my recommendation to binder mages interested in using the topic of the smile in their own workings is to take note of the following piece from VVybulder’s epic account, beginning at the moment when Orthos would have begun “calling down” Stillness.

Brafe Orfos vvent a-smylin
Closede closede vverr de curtins uf lyt.
Grinnin he vvente.
Closed closede vverr de vvindos uf lyf
Grinnin he vvente
VVat, vvat chant mayd his vvurld felle?:

Here, sage VVybulder switches from his heathen dialect into what we must assume is the wording of the chant as it was passed down to him. At any rate, the chant is from the common tongues of neither VVybulder’s nor Orthos’s periods.

na’siddha na
na’bodhi na
jaar ha jaar hwa
om siddha na
na’nata na’sara
na’siddha na

Returning to the better known accounts, we can imagine Orthos chanting the mantra in a bellowing voice at first, as he was recorded doing in Bhaveena’s Third Book of Evolutions upon the occasion of summoning the vestige of a legendary king. But Stillness had never been a king, and those who would compose chants and sculpt mountains in his image would remember him as a suicide god, as a god of self-destruction. And so this chant called for a gradual softening of one’s voice. Quieting himself bit by bit, Orthos repeated the mantra for three more nights, until it was nothing but a whisper, a whisper of a whisper, a light exhale of inhuman subtlety, and then but a gentle trace of his own dimming breaths. Finally, it was the still background of the universe. Pitched into the emptiness between planes, Orthos confronted the Bodhisattva of Stillness.

The suicide god had once been a mortal man, who had pursued a strange quest. So disgusted with the inevitable pain and suffering of life, this man – his birth name has been lost to the eons – set himself to completely remove himself from the universe, as a final protest, to which even the gods and the planes themselves could never respond. He was at first a good man, but he soon shed all concern for aligning his moral inclinations. Amoral and driven, death would have never been enough for him: he wanted to completely escape from the responsibilities of life, from its entanglements, its corruption. The meditations and research required to uncover the secrets of Stillness, the powers of self-disintegration and nihilism, took him well beyond his natural lifetime to discover. Indeed, he spent centuries searching for ways to lengthen his lifespan, just so he could search more concertedly for the path to his ultimate demise, more complete than mere death: by utterly wiping all remnants of his physical form and all traces of his psyche from the planes.

Yet even after successfully wiping himself from the mortal plane thousands of years ago, there was something left of him, some odd bit that had slipped into the cracks in the ether, which fills the space between worlds. Stillness, here in the cosmos, but just an absence; dead but still alive. What Orthos met was the fragment of that being, a slight film of life that had been unwillingly nourished by nihilistic cults inspired by Stillness’s own inglorious pursuits. Cosmic ironies play themselves out in literary ways, and so the very devoted iconoclasts who revered Stillness's life achievements, in the end, built lonely monuments to him in the wastes of world. Monuments that would secure his inability to escape. This vestige was a most ironic aftermath of Stillness’s own will – nothing but a psionic anamoly in the elemental ether. Yet this anamoly, this little sick flame could only putrefy, forever unable to snuff itself out completely. Stillness had long ago gone mad.

But, as horribly incomplete as they were, Stillness's powers were nevertheless staggering, and that is what Orthos sought. He failed in the end. How the confrontation occurred, we may never know for sure. Here VVybulder writes in his typical heathen dialect about Orthos’s defeat:

Haytful vvill to nuffin
strikt and stiffed lyk a vvalle
rot and blacken da cuffin
“Iyam nuffin!”
Orfos smylede and den he felle.

So much for the smile, but a fitting end for this episode in the binder mage’s tale! Dehydrated, cold, and hungry it would have been long trip home for Orthos, and he would have had a long time to consider his options for his critical second encounter with Stillness, which I record in volume IV.

Two Baskets

The horde of flies had turned on and off seven times. One week. He hadn't touched a scrap of food for a week, not since the purpose of his captors' pinching and needling had become clear. That is, not since they had pried the old stage guard from his cage, and dragged that poor man screaming down the corridor.

One week. Salbadore suspected that whether or not he ate the provisions, the monsters would eventually grow hungry. They would come back, gibbering at a fever pitch, shaking with excitement. Would they even cook him?

Yet, there was a wretched little bit of hope across the chamber. Once the guard had been taken, the monsters - what else could you call them? - had no further use for his broken cage, and they dismembered it. Brutes! No taste for forethought. Now, however, Salbadore could see that there were two big baskets opposite to his cage. The baskets' purpose was made clear when two little fingers pushed their way through the sticks. The savages were keeping children - or perhaps pips. No, given a few days, an adult, even from one of the tiny races, would have managed to break through the rotty old basket, somehow. Salbadore noted that the smaller captives were accepting food. For the next five days, this fact gave him some hope for a period of reprieve. And, so, he continued fasting, starving, shivering, and counting time by the movements of shit-eating flies.

Five days. Two naked bogeys, covered in mange and dirt, came for the children. Oh, but they weren't just beasts, like animals, they were worse: they had dim intelligence in their eyes. They had hands, and walked on two bent legs. Deep within the earth, they beat on drums in a slow, rhythmic way that was unimaginably restrained compared to the excited, chattered gibbering of their speech. Worst of all, they laughed like little men. And, yes, their victims were human children, a boy and a girl in separate baskets. Unlike the driver and the guard - with a little shame, Salbadore realized he hadn't even bothered to learn his companions' names - the children went quietly. They weren't dragged. Instead, they were dumped from the baskets and led away by hand.

Those sickly green fingers: stroking the children's heads, pinching their cheeks, piling some kind of cruel affection onto them. Two loping green degenerates, pulling on the helpless hands of those pretty children. What a terrible sight! And so went Salbadore's last chance of forestalling his own consumption.

The bogeys laughed as they took the children.

Then there were drums.

The Pit and the Cage

[Describing events introduced by HomoDM here.]

The Scatological Evidence
His first guess had been that he was in an animal’s burrow. But the scatological evidence pointed elsewhere. The chamber in which he was imprisoned was caked with bones, rot, and feces. Most beasts are wound up, Salbadore thought, so that they never shit in their own hole. But his captors could not be people, either. Of course not, olchap! Rattled and abused; one’s kenning e’n’t perfect in such situations. I’m in a cage! No one bothers to cage a lob of shit!

A Fortnight, Perhaps
That was his best reckoning as to how long he had been held captive below ground. Salbadore’s ignorance on this count was one of several meager clues that he had gleaned about his whereabouts: here, in this hole, he could not count the days because daylight could not reach him. The first hours were nothing but a single intense note of pain and sound that shot through his consciousness like a metal spike splitting an old board. His judgment had been compromised. Naked as he was, with vision blurred from the slowly subsiding concussion, there was nothing to do but curl into a ball and wait for sense to return.

When they dragged the plump carriage driver away, Salbadore could barely withstand the sundering of his attentive faculties, torn in one direction by the hatefully singing scab inside his ear, and in another direction by the barely intelligible screams of the driver as he was slashed . . . raped . . . butchered alive . . . who could know?

Regarding the Kinds
Salbadore’s back cramped again, from being bent over for too long in this cage of scraps. Broken bits of furniture, one or two planks, but mostly sticks and bamboo: nevertheless the cage was sturdy enough. Right in front of Salbadore, one of his horrible little captors squatted on its feet and began to roll the copious lips of its filthy gash around with its own toes.

They were clearly not members of one of the so-called “beautiful kinds” of the anthropomorphia. The pale little demi-men were certainly of one of the lower genera – but which one? The males were easy to identify, for their enormous scrotal sacks swung back and forth, dwarfing their childlike penises. They were not slow-birthers, whatever their proper name. Not unless all the jizz that those offensive, shit-crusted eggs produced was unstable mucus. This was how to discern between the more perfect kinds of life and those that had not yet – and maybe never would – reach a stable form. According to the theories of the masters, kinds with weak reproductive potential, whether it be from slow ontogeny or degenerate seed, must either be very hardy or very randy. How to make your way through life?: By shyly hiding in the clouds, investing hundreds of years in each precious child? Or by fekking every filthy subhuman crack available and letting the strong spunk sort itself out from the weak?

Time Flies
It was only long after the horrible internal ringing had eased, long after he had identified his captors as Bogus abigus, that he finally came to a way of guessing the duration of his captivity. It was by the activity of the bottle flies that seemed to live commensally with the ugly little jackers – by their ceaseless buzzing when feeding on offal, by the foul and dimly shimmering carpet they formed on the dark wall when resting. That is how Salbadore counted time, and this is also how he came to realize that he could not be too deeply hidden from the outside world.

The Pinnacle of Humanity

"Huzzah gentlemen!"

"Huzzah!"

"With Master Connelly's calculations in hand, and with the materialogical evidence excavated by Master Jillhorne from the cliffs around Lake Manticore in the Duchy of Neruwae, we may now rest assured-"

"- but not easy! -"

"Aye, Foontint! But never easy! Hear!"

"Hear-hear!" cried out the young men in purple sashes. Their Umganglichetiere echoed them with a chorus of caws and hisses.

"But only assured! Assured in the knowledge that Human History Proper began no more than two thousand years ago!"

Hungred barked, "And our lot are the discoverers!"

"The Masters, you mean!" Salbadore interjected. "Mere plebians, we are! Embryos!"

"Ah, all the privilege we have extracted with our hard labors!"

"Hear-hear! To our privileges and our labors! May they be long!"

"And," added Salbadore purposefully, "short - respectively!"

"Hear-hear!" Glasses clinked, ale and wine sloshed onto the table. There were ten youthful, blushed faces now - three had already left. Passions enriched with drink, they toasted to their common bond.

"To our superiority!" proposed Sinchi.

Again, Salbadore interrupted the toast. "Nay!"

"Then what do you call it? What is it? Ho, Dorey, speak!"

"Superiority it e'n't," Salbadore hiccuped, "Where you and I may be content to stand in the shadow of the monolithic workings of His Excellency-"

"Hear-hear! To His Excellency! To the Formulae! To the True Genomancy!"

"Hear!"

"Yes, hear-hear, all!"

"Hear! Dorey, as you was saying!"

"Superiority it e'n't," and he hiccuped again, "For it still takes but a sharp blade to end my life! A trip sends my noggin to the dirt and I find my brains dashed on a rock. Smithy's sister's children are more practiced at the rocks and sticks than the lot of us, Skraftsmen!"

Roars of laughter. "'Cept Ruwen there," someone pointed out, "wot get has a thing for sticks and rocks." More laughter. Loud young men letting everyone in the tavern in on their jokes and, despite all their intelligence, never realizing that the locals - poor people, grimacing through their meals, gagging on the pretentious shouting of the novices - had heard it all before. Every three years, in fact.

"But not everyone can do this!"

"Hear-hear! 'Tis true!"

"Hear-hear! Here's to circumstance," said Ruwen, dragging himself back to the temple after vomiting in the street. "And the gift of wisdomry - er, the gift of wisdom and the circumstance of intelligence!"

"Yes, you boffer, hear-hear!"

"To Wisdom and Intelligence!"

"And this bunch of us here, this lot of us - well - we . . ." Salbadore choked up.

"What is it, Dorey? What of it now?"

"Well, lads, we're the keenest of all. I'm honored."

"E'n't we!"

"Hear-hear! To the Lebenskraft Guildhouse! Huzzah!"

And a rosey evening of carousing and singing it was.

Meeting Mayna

Down the Ladder
The novices were then ushered into a further chamber even deeper beneath the manor house. No portraits and wooden panels on the walls here, just bare, chiseled stone. As the four young mages entered the room, their whispers and the shuffling of their feet echoed loudly, hushing the group. There was yet another door bearing the Meister's Mark, and light leaked into the stone room from the rough-hewn doorjamb. In the sudden silence, the popping of sparks or electrical crackles could be heard from beyond. "Cane is first."


Caminus Bestius
The coordinates for the Skraftbiest's membranes had been laid and charged, and then the extrusion began. The pain was brief, and as soon as it ceased every muscle in Salbadore's body sighed and sank into the leather chair. An oversized, translucent egg rested in the air before him, as if it were behind glass on an invisible pedestal. Inside the bluish, pinkish jellies of the Ovum the curled form of a black, raven-sized bird was discernable. Finally, the attendants loosened the bonds on Salbadore's wrists.

The Umganglichetier
The raven hopped clumsily on the ground, half-stretching and half-dragging its slimy wings. It had not yet opened its eyes. It tried to flap blindly, slinging droplets of fluid in all directions. With his ankles feeling weak, Salbadore knelt before the newborn, and for the first time in over twelve hours spoke in the common tongue. “Skraftbiest, you are truly wonderful. Your name is Mayna, and now you are my living companion.” One, two, three, its lids pulled away from its shiny black eyes, and it looked intently – sidelong, as ravens do – into Salbadore’s own. She hopped towards him again, and leaned against his knee. Salbadore could feel her trembling.