I will return with more Trochiabite Boy later, faithful readers out there. But, here, I will offer up a sample of another novel I'm beginning.
SLUVIAN'S DUNGEON
CHAPTER 1:
"It can't be done, Sallianna. It simply cannot be done." Thumirex leaned back in his chair, then reached out to the table, almost as though reaching for her hand. He lifted his mug of coffee to his mouth, instead.
"Why not? You import the damned things every day. You know all about the procedures. You know the paperwork. You know who's monitoring them. You know everything."
"That's just the reason why it cannot be done. Nothing on this trith is more heavily regulated than the importation of ghouls and undead, even among the aethren. Nothing. To the Lord Emperor, the undead is the greatest threat to the world, and more importantly, his empire. If you'd asked me to import twenty maceweed seeds, I could do it withou a second thought. If you'd asked for a dragon's egg or maybe even a pixie or a kunjel maiden slave, I'd say maybe. But a zombie? You have no idea what you are asking."
Salianna studied him across from her. Behind him was Tharneliir Bay, where most of the Aethren kept their private sailing barges, cargo boats, and yauchts. The warehouses lined the bay like children waiting on their fathers, and at least a hundred different masts swayed back and forth like trees in a lazy breeze, one of the many Sarkoshian mast forests.
The sky was blue and beautiful, the air a perfect temperature for sitting and quietly talking like this. The sea was calm, like an infinite valley of dark grass at the feet of a mountain chain of white, puffy clouds. The perfect Eighthday.
They sat together within the low walls of The Blue Hips Café, named for the peculiar roses the gardener-turned-restauranteur grew in trelisses around the eating area. Because this was a place for aethren, all of the tables had provisions for gossip candles.
Salianna's candle stood triumphantly in the head of a little, laughing gremlin statuette, the face of which she'd turned to face Thumirex, as he was a kunjel and would appreciate it more, even though he'd never been anywhere near Frosomia in all his life that she was aware.
"I'm not asking for anything outrageous, nothing even that dangerous. Just one ghoul, merely a lostwalker. He doesn't even have to be all that aggressive, just there."
"It doesn't matter. Even the lowest level of security is too difficult when it comes to the undead. It's just not feasible."
"It's not like I am asking for an ithiot or anything. I specifically don't want anything like a vampire or ruthok or fatekeeper, nothing powerful enough or smart enough to do anything. I just want one ghoul, the stupidest one you can find."
Thumirex shook his head. Now, he crossed his arms.
"You do know all the proper paper work, don't you? I didn't come to the wrong person, did I? You are of the Order Navigari and Labrinari, and you are one of the Aezardel?"
Thumirex sighed and raised his lip a little.
"Come now, what am I to you, some slavedealer? You know I would gladly help you, if I thought I could. I just can't get you a ghoul. How would I explain it? I don't even know what you are trying to build just now. It's obviously something you haven't told Aechanter Gharam about, or we would not be having this conversation, would we?"
"Aechr. Gharam's only bent is to destroy the things, not understand them."
Thumirex sucked in his breath sharply, almost as though he'd been stabbed with pain.
"I know, I know," Salianna said, waving her hands about as though trying to blow out the gossip candle. "I've studied the laws and the philosophy. I'm well versed in the Testaments of the Worther Woodsmen, The Admonitions of Lignium, and The Journals of Willeonis. But I wonder if we are not foolish for not knowing exactly what we are destroying. If you kick over a mushroom, you make hundreds more mushrooms. If you eat a lusk, you get luskworms. If you scratch at grass itch, you rip your skin off."
"We know exactly how to destroy ghouls. We have made weapons to completely eliminate them from this trith. We know that when the spirit driving them is cut free. Two ways. The first severs the ties between the body and spirit, leaving a corpse again; the second is to completely destroy the body and leave nothing for the spirit to cling to, so that it is forced back to Lortho in hell. Now, for both of these resolutions, are several actions that can be taken...."
Salianna held up her hand for him to stop. He sounded like a professor of a class on Willeonaen law. "I've read more than you on this subject, probably. After all, I have made, at one point or another, half the things you use on the damned creatures. And you're right. It is best to destroy them...in most situations. But you've heard of the dangers of a cagulant. You know as well as I do that exploding a cagulant is more dangerous than leaving it whole."
"A cagulant is burned," Thumirex said, now sounding like some sunchested idiot.
"Yes, I know. But, reading from the other texts...."
"Other texts?" Thumirex narrowed his eyes. "What other texts?"
"For instance, The Accountings of Xenoreth, or The Journals of Vesh'niir?"
"You cannot be serious. The words of the Darkdriver."
"It's dismissive to just label him the Darkdriver. You are more intelligent than that. If we profess to be Sarkoshians, members of the Restored Aethren Empire, as well as guilty of breaking just about every law Willeonis ever rubbed his temples over, then why not acknowledge Xenoreth? After all, it was him who discovered the art of necromancy, and it was him that first created and enslaved the undead."
"And it was him that can be traced back to the source of the Crumbling, the First Qwadro Wars, and the loss of millions of lives. It's his fault we have undead to begin with. Willeonis Treborrin may not have been right about everything, but tampering with the souls given to Lortho, the souls of the damned is never a good thing." His voice was building a wall between them, every noun and verb landing like a great block of stone, firm and forever.
Sallianna pretended to be out of arguments, not wanting to push this too far. He was only a kunjel, after all, and they had a thing about laws and morals she might never understand. She turned her eyes to the candle again, giving her most defeated sigh.
Here was some irony, when she allowed herself to think about it: a handsome, upstanding, respectable kunjel she'd known for years; a candlelit table with hot, rich, expensive coffee imported from a L'wii plantation in Southern Terrilia; perhaps the loveliest view in all of Sarkoshia if not the world, and what was the conversation? How to get a zombie onto the island without being noticed by the authorities. She snorted, then pretended to cough.
"It's a shame," she said, as though talking to the candle now. Her hand emerged from her pocket holding a small inscribed pebble about the size of a thumbnail. "I thought you might want some of these."
As though leaving a message for a lover, she gently placed the stone between them on the table, her hand falling away from it like a leaf blown in a breeze. The little stone gleamed like a saphire, and his eyes were drawn to that stone.
His hand flinched. It was not a grandiose gesture, just a little jump; the corner of her mouth reacted in kind.
An awkward silence also came between them, now. The same memories probably bubbled to the surface in both their minds. The stone might as well have been a star both of them wished upon.
"Is that a...." his voice trailed off when she nodded, and suddenly a rosey hue appeared above this grown and highly trained wizard's beard. He glanced at the stone again. Now, to set the hook.
"I was going to sell these down in the Song and Dance district. I've just finished a batch of twenty." The Song and Dance district was another name for the Entertainment District just north of the university, a teeming nest of prostitutes, starving artists, poets, singers, writers, and all manner of other oddly assorted novelties: a good place to sell something like these little rocks. "Of course, I might keep one or two for myself." Her hand reached for the stone, and Thumirex's landed just on the other side of the table. Like a spider defending a web, it crept across the table and picked up the stone.
He took the stone between two fingers and looked at it as though appraising a turd. His face only feigned disinterest; Salianna had known him long enough.
"You've improved your methods. How long does it take you now?"
"Oh, I'd say about four or five hours a piece. Of course, things have been much easier since Go-Shirí came."
"Go-Shirí?"
"My little house mouse."
"You have a slave? A kinto-shah slave?"
Salianna tipped her coffee mug towards Thumirex and then took a drink. The coffee was growing cold, but who cared? She liked it cold.
"Well, if you are going to own a slave, why not buy one from a people that actually train them how to be slaves. She's great. She does the cooking, the cleaning and washing. I recommend people get one."
"A slave? How long have you had her?"
"Oh, we're not going to have this argument again are we? Come now, please don't get all Droddy and Averment on me. Please. You know as well as I do the kinto-shah don't run slavery that way. Let's just call her my maid servant, like in a palace or something. Can't you just imagine me a princess or empress or something like that? Will that get your hackles down?"
"How is it you can keep a slave?"
"I don't. Gharam does. He's the one who bought her for me. He's the one with her contract. Go growl at him a while."
Salianna quickly put the coffee down, the knuckles of her fingers getting weary of the grip. A little too quickly. A drop or two sloshed onto her blouse and reminded her why she hated it. The dark reddish brown spidersilk accentuated her slightly protuberant stomach, particularly if she slouched. Her trousers, made elfling fashion, were no help either, almost lending her a mannish look.
"Look, I need this ghoul. There're more of those where that one came from, nineteen more. Just think about that. Twenty nights."
Thumirex looked around, obviously forgetting temporarily about the candle between them. Then, he gave the stone a little squeeze between just two of his fingers. His eyes closed and he groaned, as though something were happening beneath the table.
"This isn't fair," he said. "I keep honor, you know. I am a Protectorist, and I am honorable, and you bring these things?" He shook his head and hastily put down the stone again on the table. "I could report you for this conversation, you know."
"Report me?" Salianna fell back into her chair and put her hand over her oversized breasts. Not all the shock she expressed was hyperbolic. "I was merely asking how to get a ghoul, not actually getting one, remember?"
Thumirex was compromised, though, and both of them knew it. The moment he pinched that stone was it, that was the moment he was hers. He'd come close to an addiction to those rocks once; hell, he still had an addiction to them. Deep down, Salianna felt a pang of regret in resorting to such measures, but she had to know something, and he was her best means.
His hand tried to put the stone on the table and leave it, but he couldn't. He picked it back up and rolled it around his palm with his thumb, pinched it between two fingers, set it on the table cloth, then picked it back up.
"A shipment's coming," he said, as though talking to himself. Then, he put his hands on the table and leaned over his cup. "Not long from now. Aeza Theel commissioned an expedition last year to Jezzeera. He's been waiting on it ever since. It should be arriving within the month. Aeza just got word they captured the last of about twenty ghouls just this side of the Knife Ring Mountains, and were getting ready to box them up and ship them this way. It's only about a week or two sail, barring pirates or storms, between Jezzeera and Sarkoshia Rejia."
"Alright, so what?"
"Well, that's something isn't it?"
"A lot of good it does me, if every one of those ghouls is slated to be blown to bits or burned or disengaged or whatever."
It was Thumirex's turn to deflate. He probably assumed that this would be enough information to win him a few more stones. Sometimes, Thumirex was very much like a child, and she couldn't decide whether it was his addiction or his kunjelic background that caused it.
He sighed and pushed the stone around the table with the tip of his finger. He picked it up again. He looked at it.
"I learned a spell, where if I wanted to, I could import a smaller stone directly into this stone, shatter the bigger stone like a bomb. It's called a destructive importational displacement, not very distinct from the old destructive biological replacement, where you replace a person's heart with maybe another organ or some kind of bird. It's not even a difficult spell. I could take a piece stone no bigger than a ball of snot and put it inside this stone and it would shatter all over. A little pop that would send splinters in every direction, just like a bomb."
He wouldn't do it. Indeed, his hand lowered the stone back to the table and it left it there. Even so, Salianna breathed a sigh of relief.
"Conversely," he continued. "You can make portals inside of things that turn them inside out. You transport the core of the thing, or maybe some small part inside of it, to somewhere else. It's is called reversional interior vacuous displacement. We did that to a ghoul once." His catlike eyes looked at her, never blinking, ever. "You should have seen it. It was...quite a sight." He sighed. His hand hovered above the table, and the stone.
He shook his head.
"What do you want?" he asked. He shook his head again. "No, that's not what I meant. I meant, what do you want a ghoul for? What is it you are trying to do with it?"
"An experiment. Merely a brief experiment."
"Tell me. Tell me now."
"Are you going to help me? Or are you wanting to know what to tell Aech. Gharam?"
"Just tell me." His hand submerged under the table again. "I can't believe you would do that. Take that stone away. Take it away, please."
"Really, I'm sorry." Salianna felt awful now. Her hand was clutching something else now in her pocket and she debated whether or not to share it with him. Would he help her? Her other hand took the stone away like a snake biting a raig. "I just thought...well, I just thought you might have...."
"It's alright. I didn't realize just how much I missed them is all. You always made them best. I used to call yours one-and-a-halfers. I could always get a little extra out of yours, but I forgot about them."
"Was it really that bad? Really?"
He nodded.
"Let's just leave it alone. It was a time in my life, and that time is in the past, and so let's just leave it at that, shall we?"
"Really, I'm sorry."
He held up his hand again between them.
"Just tell me. What do you want with a ghoul?"
"I told you. An experiment. I wish to test a new apparatus."
"A way to destroy them?"
"Well, not exactly, no. Have I told you about my lens, the lens I have been perfecting?"
"A lens? No. You haven't told me about any lenses. What is it? What does this lens do?"
"It...well, I don't know exactly how well it works, as I haven't tested it yet on a ghoul."
"What did you design it to do?"
"To see. To see...." Salianna looked at the candle. It was dwindling. They were only designed to last about an hour or so. "To see within."
"To see within?"
"Yes." Now Salianna's mind twisted into knots trying to think of a way to tell him the truth. The truth? What really was that? She was curious. He'd blow out the candle the moment those words left her mouth. "Yes. I wanted to see inside a ghoul's mind, to see...."
"Inside their minds? What minds? What kind of insanity is this?"
"I figure that if we can see what they see, see from their perspective, we can understand them better. If we can know what they want, perhaps we can be able to deflect it or confound it or even perhaps find a way to turn them on themselves."
His eyes narrowed.
"What if we could spy on them? What if we could track their masters, their creators, their affiliations. There are still Fatekeepers out there, and if we could somehow get inside a ghoul's mind, we could not only track them back, but use them. What if we could control an undead and turn it against its master?" As soon as she said it, her voice trailed off, and she knew she'd lost him.
"That violates Willeonaean law."
"I know. Forget it. Forget this entire day happened. I wish we'd just had coffee and kept our mouths full." She stared into the dark liquid almost gone from her cup. She didn't have enough money for another cup. She wished there was enough there to drown herself.
Thumirex leaned back.
He looked upwards, at something behind and above Salianna's head.
"I've read Willeonaean law often, and the Lord Emperor breaks it. Well, bends it. Have you read much of The Lord Emperor's chronicles or papers?"
"Propagandizing nonsense," Salianna grumbled.
"Indeed. But he writes several essays regarding the Willeonaean law. I remember something in particular he wrote, and it comes to mind now. He wrote in volume six, personal journal three, page seventy-eight: 'Many ask of me, how comes a king to be a warlord, an emperor, and yet also a magician. Was it not the Willeonaen law violated that leaves us in this age of broken lands and broken dreams and broken hopes?
"'Many have and will say that it was the overthrowing of the eight's legacy and all the Willeonaean laws that left the world in the Shattered Age, but also many more will say that the crowning of the eight to begin with was what tipped the world towards its bitter fall. And yet here I am, crowning myself Lord of Sarkoshia, Emperor of The Sarkoshian Isles, the First and Only Sarkelosh.'
"'My answer to these challenges to my authority is this. When a task requires a carpenter, one does not hire the aid of a sculptor; when a task requires the work of a book maker, one does not go to a boat captain. In as much as this land needed a king, I became a king for them, bearing the authority of a king. I do not use magic to rule, but to heal, which is part of the mandate of Willeonis Treborrin himself who said magic shall not rule, but shall heal. When it has been required to build, I have been a builder, and when it has been a time to cover over wounds, I have made bandages, and when it has been a time for me to rule, I have been a ruler, and where magic has been needed, I have given magic. The tool or agent is not to blame for wishing to do his craft, but to what end his craft may be accomplished. A man may build a castle and be the master craftsman, but it is the king who sits in the castle's thrown and judges from its court, that determines the worth of the castle.'"
A wizard had to have a very good memory, the ability to remember extremely complicated calculations and several different. He'd practically remembered a speech, and the words drifting across the dying candle pushed her backwards into her chair. She had to snatch them out of the air and reassemble them piece by piece before she understood just why he'd said it.
"Are you...are you offering to help me?"
"No, merely that I am interested. Show me this lens."
"Not here. There are other Aethren here. People I don't trust. I think I saw one of Biimillin's...offspring...about, probably spying on me. No. I'll show you later, I promise. I'll even let you use it, if you promise you won't tell anyone about it."
The candle blinked out, and suddenly the noises from all around them rejoined them at their table. The conversation had to end. To bring out another privacy candle just wasn't done. It raised too many questions to need more than one hour of privacy in a public place.
"I tell you what. Come to my chambers tonight, and we'll look the answer to that question up. I think I have a few books that might interest you, and it'll be quiet there." Thumirex stood. From the pocket of his dark, blue robes he removed a piece of parchment upon which was already written several symbols. He put the parchment on the table and pulled from another pocket a burntip stylus. For a long moment, he scowled at the parchment, the tip of the parchment hovering over it.
"Oh, wait a moment," he exclaimed. "I almost forgot to pay for my coffee."
"No, no, I think I can cover it," Salianna played along.
"No, I wouldn't think of it," he retorted without really putting any passion or particular grace in it. He put a single coin on the table. It was a silly game kunjels paid, and it was considered rude not to at least offer to help pay at a restaurant. Thumirex always left too much, and never got change back from it, and Salianna admired his ability to be so ridiculously extravagant.
As soon as the coin was placed upon the table it was forgotten. No, Thumirex did not accidentally forget it, nor had he misplaced it. No, it was lost, abandoned, as forgone as a ship sailing over the horizon to him. Once Thumirex gave something up, it was no longer his, as though it never had been his to begin with. Even if the waitress was honest and tried to give him back some of it, he would look at her as though she were speaking a different language. Salianna had seen it several times.
He sighed, and tapped his lip with the back end of the burntip, then set the stylus on the parchment and set to scribbling.
"A linking? You can remember well enough to do a linking on a scrap of parchment?"
"What? Oh, well, yes. Well, not really a linking. It is more a replacement. It's a bi-directional replacement with monolateral attachment." He didn't try to explain it any further than that. Salianna was only passingly familiar with all the terms the wizards used. She could recreate several of their spells, but could not really remember what they were called as well."
He made a little squiggle in the middle of the piece of parchment, with a flair like finishing a signature, and all at once, the swirling patterns came alive. They glowed with a strange, nearly blinding light that didn't hurt to stare at.
Then, he was gone, and what remained on the table was another piece of parchment with dark swirls upon it. One of the quicker and seemingly more efficient teleportation spells invented, but one that required, if Salianna were to guess, immense powers of preparation and concentration and memory.
This was not something a neth, a person without magical abilities who would normally use a liquid portal or a travel house with a guide's help, could ever even hope to do. Thumirex was showing off a bit, because such a spell as he'd just done was very, very dangerous. It was a movement not just through space, but time, too. She'd heard a story once about a wizard, one of the ones she helped Aech Gharam create tools for, accidentally teleport himself into his own body, destroying himself completely and utterly.
Magic was dangerous and treacherous.
Salianna carefully counted out her money for the cups on her side of the table. Then, she summoned the waitress to come and get it. While the waitress worked, Salianna took her lens from her pocket and held it between her eye and the waitress's body.
The muscles of Salianna's arms grew suddenly sore, and her back ached. Her stomach grumbled. Salianna put the lens on the girl's head, and suddenly she was looking down at the table, her hands picking up and stacking the cups hastily, but carefully. She no longer looked out at the boats in the bay, nor at any of the other customers. She was drifting now back to the kitchen of the restaurant. She thought in a strange language mostly, Allorinian mostly.
Salianna put away the lens again and reclaimed her own mind. Her body suddenly remembered its own aches and pains, like coming home to an unclean house, and Salianna left the establishment, passing through the hip-high gate clutching the stone in her pocket.
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