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High above the terraces of the palatine, the palace and the temple stood a little way apart, separated by gardens where statues of the gods made obeisance before Helios, the great god. There, Aphrataya and Mayat, Apollonos and Hurucan, Volcos and Peseden, cast in bronze and plated in gold, acknowledged their subservience to the deity who presided over the City of the Sun.
And below the garden, cut into the mountainside, were vaults few common people even knew existed. They were accessed from a recess between the feet of Helios, where a gate opened and steps led down -- steep, chill, dark. A single lamp always burned at the bottom of the stepway, and a passage led to the right and down again. The long, steep ramp ended at a great brass-bound door which might have been the gate of Hados.
Soran’s hackles were up as he made his way from shadow to shadow, passing through the gardens unseen in the late afternoon heat. Priests, acolytes, guards, courtesans and concubines came here to meditate and pray, but no eyes must see him now. Luck was with him, and in the simmering heat the gardens were deserted as he threaded between oleanders and cypress, and a dozen flowering creepers and climbers.
The air was so heavy with perfume, his lungs protested. And then he was in the shade of the bronze likeness of Helios -- and in through the iron-barred gate. He stopped to let his vision adjust enough to feel his way on down the steps, while his eyes and brain struggled to accommodate the sudden suffocation of darkness and rock.
Priests and scribes worked in this vault, but never more than one or two at a time. Still, Soran was utterly alert, like a stalking cat, as he slithered along the dressed stone wall toward the great door at the end of the passage.
It stood slightly ajar, and from within came a dusty, musky smell. It was the scent of old leather, ancient parchment, vellum that had survived a millennium. More. Soran’s skin crawled as he swung the door open on its oiled, silent hinges, and peered through.
Inside was the library, just as he remembered it -- a vastness of shelves and cabinets containing untold books and scrolls, all of which vanished into the dimness beyond the ring of a single reading light.
The walls were lined with shelves; books were piled hip-high beside the writing desks where scribes would labor; newly written scrolls were hung up to dry, fresh ones were hung, wet and weighted to stretch after they had been scraped and cured. Books, scrolls, parchments, vellums, were everywhere, in every alcove, on every surface.
Several pots of colored inks stood open on the writing desk, but the scribe was absent. The uncovered pots told Soran clearly, the man had stepped out only momentarily. Perhaps he had gone to eat, or take a gulp of blessed fresh air before he must return to this crypt.
But he might also be deeper in the maze of the library itself, looking for a particular book. Soran should not be here, and -- witchfinder or no -- the scribe would have every right to raise the alarm. What Soran was doing was extremely dangerous.
The oldest volumes in the library were bound in brown leather into which were stamped gold leafed characters. These books were printed on paper-thin leather sheets, each page rimmed with more gold leaf, and the pigments in the inks were both impervious to time and poisonous as snake venom. All this, Soran had learned from a priest scribe many years ago, when Azhtoc brought him here, just once.
The oldest books were hand-written, and the scribe who dusted and shelved them swore they were more than a thousand years old, made a short time before the advent of woodblock printing. Soran believed it. He also knew from memory, he could not read those books. They were written in a language of symbols, signs, which Faunos might have learned; but Soran’s education extended only to the modern alphabets of Vayal, Ilios and Nefti.
He also knew -- again, the wisdom of a priest-scribe who gave the visiting child the only lesson on the library he would ever receive -- that the books had been translated. The old, original volumes fascinated him. He shivered as he touched them, knowing that the hands of the alchemists, shamans and enchanters of Diomedas’s day had also touched them. But he swiftly passed by, looking for something he could actually read.
It was history he needed, and he knew where to look for it, for the cabinets were marked. The chronicles of Vayal were displayed proudly, closer to the light, but he passed by these too, and moved on into the shadows where the much older chronicles were kept.
And there, standing beneath a bronze statuette of Hados, was a massive blue-bound volume, surely not more than a century old, and possibly newer. His hands shook a little as he stooped to retrieve it from a shelf level with his knees. A tang of cold sweat broke across his palms as he took it back to the light.
With great care not to disturb the scribe’s materials -- even now hoping to leave this place without a trace of his presence -- he opened the book and read its title. Being a literal translation of the Annals of Old High Zeheft, without omission or alteration.
Little wonder this tome was hidden away. Whatever the common man in Vayal was permitted to know, and taught to believe, the bald truth had been recorded here. Soran wondered for a moment, that it was allowed to exist at all -- but with a single glance inside the book he knew why.
The translation was poor, rough, frequently clumsy; and the material in translation was not merely a history, but a record of deeds of sorcery, feats of high magic, including the incantations, chants and rituals through which miracles of alchemy were wrought.
In the century since this raw translation had been done, Vayal’s high priests, philosophers and sorcerers must have labored over these texts, studying, dissecting, correcting. They did not dare destroy the original -- even though it might be the single book that exposed the foundations of the Empire of Vayal as a lie -- for it was the only source, against which every effort they made would be measured.
Angry, bemused, fascinated, Soran leafed through the massive book. As his eyes expanded to see properly in the dimness, he began to actually read, and his mouth dried. The Annals told the story of the rise of the Old Kingdom, from the night when the half-blind old shaman, Elak, went out to see the mysteries which had fallen from the sky. Great deeds and events were recorded in the form of a journal; the speeches of kings, the spells of enchanters, the rare achievements of alchemists and the great victories of the Zehefti people, were all recorded as they happened, in the meticulous handwriting of generations of scribes.
And everything Faunos had said was true. Soran read the names of Aeson and Diomedas; he learned the names of the three foci -- the Eyes of Helios, of Hados and of Mayat. He read of how the great cities were raised, even Vayal itself, in the golden age. And then the struggle for power began, and the Annals became bitter, dark with entries about battles lost, and cherished scions of the House of Diomedas who were captured and tortured until they betrayed their kinsmen.
The war was bloody indeed, and the armies of Vayal were only victories because two of the three foci had already been lost. The Old Kingdom had grown complacent; Zeheft was already declining when the forefathers of Azhtoc and Soran himself rose up in the shadows -- ambitious, ruthless, coveting the wealth, the power, the magic, they perceived about Zeheft. If Zeheft had been at its zenith, if the three foci had still been in the possession of the Old Kingdom’s master enchanters, history would have been very different.
The lore which every child in Vayal learned on his mother’s knee was that evil had walked the streets of Zeheft. Terrible demons crouched in the dark places there; men were turned to stone where they stood, and lovers’ souls were devoured by the incubi while they dreamed of their loved ones. The Zehefti demons were not horrible in aspect; they were of such beauty as blinded men’s eyes -- they masqueraded as angels, and the most evil of them were the witchboys, descended from the loins of Diomedas himself.
Soran thought of Faunos, and shivered. How easy would it have been for Faunos to suck the life, the soul, right out of him, along with his seed? If Faunos were the demon, the incubus, the sleep that came after the age-old ritual of mating would have been the last, long sleep of Soran’s life -- or his death.
And below the garden, cut into the mountainside, were vaults few common people even knew existed. They were accessed from a recess between the feet of Helios, where a gate opened and steps led down -- steep, chill, dark. A single lamp always burned at the bottom of the stepway, and a passage led to the right and down again. The long, steep ramp ended at a great brass-bound door which might have been the gate of Hados.
Soran’s hackles were up as he made his way from shadow to shadow, passing through the gardens unseen in the late afternoon heat. Priests, acolytes, guards, courtesans and concubines came here to meditate and pray, but no eyes must see him now. Luck was with him, and in the simmering heat the gardens were deserted as he threaded between oleanders and cypress, and a dozen flowering creepers and climbers.
The air was so heavy with perfume, his lungs protested. And then he was in the shade of the bronze likeness of Helios -- and in through the iron-barred gate. He stopped to let his vision adjust enough to feel his way on down the steps, while his eyes and brain struggled to accommodate the sudden suffocation of darkness and rock.
Priests and scribes worked in this vault, but never more than one or two at a time. Still, Soran was utterly alert, like a stalking cat, as he slithered along the dressed stone wall toward the great door at the end of the passage.
It stood slightly ajar, and from within came a dusty, musky smell. It was the scent of old leather, ancient parchment, vellum that had survived a millennium. More. Soran’s skin crawled as he swung the door open on its oiled, silent hinges, and peered through.
Inside was the library, just as he remembered it -- a vastness of shelves and cabinets containing untold books and scrolls, all of which vanished into the dimness beyond the ring of a single reading light.
The walls were lined with shelves; books were piled hip-high beside the writing desks where scribes would labor; newly written scrolls were hung up to dry, fresh ones were hung, wet and weighted to stretch after they had been scraped and cured. Books, scrolls, parchments, vellums, were everywhere, in every alcove, on every surface.
Several pots of colored inks stood open on the writing desk, but the scribe was absent. The uncovered pots told Soran clearly, the man had stepped out only momentarily. Perhaps he had gone to eat, or take a gulp of blessed fresh air before he must return to this crypt.
But he might also be deeper in the maze of the library itself, looking for a particular book. Soran should not be here, and -- witchfinder or no -- the scribe would have every right to raise the alarm. What Soran was doing was extremely dangerous.
The oldest volumes in the library were bound in brown leather into which were stamped gold leafed characters. These books were printed on paper-thin leather sheets, each page rimmed with more gold leaf, and the pigments in the inks were both impervious to time and poisonous as snake venom. All this, Soran had learned from a priest scribe many years ago, when Azhtoc brought him here, just once.
The oldest books were hand-written, and the scribe who dusted and shelved them swore they were more than a thousand years old, made a short time before the advent of woodblock printing. Soran believed it. He also knew from memory, he could not read those books. They were written in a language of symbols, signs, which Faunos might have learned; but Soran’s education extended only to the modern alphabets of Vayal, Ilios and Nefti.
He also knew -- again, the wisdom of a priest-scribe who gave the visiting child the only lesson on the library he would ever receive -- that the books had been translated. The old, original volumes fascinated him. He shivered as he touched them, knowing that the hands of the alchemists, shamans and enchanters of Diomedas’s day had also touched them. But he swiftly passed by, looking for something he could actually read.
It was history he needed, and he knew where to look for it, for the cabinets were marked. The chronicles of Vayal were displayed proudly, closer to the light, but he passed by these too, and moved on into the shadows where the much older chronicles were kept.
And there, standing beneath a bronze statuette of Hados, was a massive blue-bound volume, surely not more than a century old, and possibly newer. His hands shook a little as he stooped to retrieve it from a shelf level with his knees. A tang of cold sweat broke across his palms as he took it back to the light.
With great care not to disturb the scribe’s materials -- even now hoping to leave this place without a trace of his presence -- he opened the book and read its title. Being a literal translation of the Annals of Old High Zeheft, without omission or alteration.
Little wonder this tome was hidden away. Whatever the common man in Vayal was permitted to know, and taught to believe, the bald truth had been recorded here. Soran wondered for a moment, that it was allowed to exist at all -- but with a single glance inside the book he knew why.
The translation was poor, rough, frequently clumsy; and the material in translation was not merely a history, but a record of deeds of sorcery, feats of high magic, including the incantations, chants and rituals through which miracles of alchemy were wrought.
In the century since this raw translation had been done, Vayal’s high priests, philosophers and sorcerers must have labored over these texts, studying, dissecting, correcting. They did not dare destroy the original -- even though it might be the single book that exposed the foundations of the Empire of Vayal as a lie -- for it was the only source, against which every effort they made would be measured.
Angry, bemused, fascinated, Soran leafed through the massive book. As his eyes expanded to see properly in the dimness, he began to actually read, and his mouth dried. The Annals told the story of the rise of the Old Kingdom, from the night when the half-blind old shaman, Elak, went out to see the mysteries which had fallen from the sky. Great deeds and events were recorded in the form of a journal; the speeches of kings, the spells of enchanters, the rare achievements of alchemists and the great victories of the Zehefti people, were all recorded as they happened, in the meticulous handwriting of generations of scribes.
And everything Faunos had said was true. Soran read the names of Aeson and Diomedas; he learned the names of the three foci -- the Eyes of Helios, of Hados and of Mayat. He read of how the great cities were raised, even Vayal itself, in the golden age. And then the struggle for power began, and the Annals became bitter, dark with entries about battles lost, and cherished scions of the House of Diomedas who were captured and tortured until they betrayed their kinsmen.
The war was bloody indeed, and the armies of Vayal were only victories because two of the three foci had already been lost. The Old Kingdom had grown complacent; Zeheft was already declining when the forefathers of Azhtoc and Soran himself rose up in the shadows -- ambitious, ruthless, coveting the wealth, the power, the magic, they perceived about Zeheft. If Zeheft had been at its zenith, if the three foci had still been in the possession of the Old Kingdom’s master enchanters, history would have been very different.
The lore which every child in Vayal learned on his mother’s knee was that evil had walked the streets of Zeheft. Terrible demons crouched in the dark places there; men were turned to stone where they stood, and lovers’ souls were devoured by the incubi while they dreamed of their loved ones. The Zehefti demons were not horrible in aspect; they were of such beauty as blinded men’s eyes -- they masqueraded as angels, and the most evil of them were the witchboys, descended from the loins of Diomedas himself.
Soran thought of Faunos, and shivered. How easy would it have been for Faunos to suck the life, the soul, right out of him, along with his seed? If Faunos were the demon, the incubus, the sleep that came after the age-old ritual of mating would have been the last, long sleep of Soran’s life -- or his death.
Turn page to Chapter Nineteen continued...
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