Chapter 15: Sound and Sorcery

Around Cecilia, the past came to life in song. She twitched as someone sang out by her ear, and was answered from across the clearing. Background chatter like magpies bickering flowed from the fire to other spaces, and once she could concentrate past the musical language of the Krkrow, there were other background sounds: a crackling fire at the pit, heavy items being moved and tossed to the ground, and all the small sounds of setting up a camp for twelve people. She walked slowly around the clearing, marveling at it.

Unfortunately, as beautiful as it was, the language of the bird People was incomprehensible to her. And the others, judging by the concentration and disappointment on their faces. Shin sighed. “I should have taken the beast speech skill. I can make out not a word of this.”

“It’s fine,” Mynet said, although he was tilting his head towards one conversation as if he could translate it by sheer will. “This isn’t what we need to hear, anyway. They don’t sound in distress, so this must be before the attack. Ohta…”

“I can adjust the time. You may want to cover your ears, though.”

Cecilia frowned. “Why?”

Cantor just grinned. His hands sketched a complicated gesture in the air, and the sound around them distorted, warping the bird-like notes into dissonant wails and clashes. The sound multiplied, and Mynet grimaced as he clapped his hands over his ears and gave Cantor a stern look.

Cantor shrugged and said, “I warned you.”

“Not soon enough,” grumbled Shin, who had followed Cantor’s lead. Which was probably for the best, because she looked like if her hands weren’t over her ears, they’d be around Cantor’s neck.

For Cecilia, it just...wasn’t that bad. She didn’t think it was being a golem, either. No, she was pretty sure this was all about having ears that were accustomed to the club scene. It was loud and atonal and not pleasant...but hell, that was just a hard night at her favorite dance joint.

The cacophony was brief. Cantor’s hands dropped and silence descended. He was studying the runes as if they told him something, but Cecilia could see no change in them. She idly activated Analysis.

[Rank 1 Divination – Utility, Ritual. Half-Power Cast Effect: Auditory Only.]

Nothing there she didn’t already know...she wished she’d thought to use it in the sewers. Her head hadn’t been on straight.

Because you’d never seen dead people before and you were a little freaked out. Your priority was getting Keikei and the others out, not playing detective. It wasn’t untrue, but Cecilia felt a little foolish anyway. She’d thought about Cantor’s abilities to identify the magic, but never about her own...even though they were less well-developed.

Her train of thought was interrupted by a cry of alarm...one that abruptly cut off mid-squawk. Cecilia said, “This is…”

“Right,” Mynet murmured, his body tense and intent, concentrating on what they could hear. “The time of the attack.”

It was quieter than she’d expected. The cry, then some soft scuffling, what might have been the sound of a body or two hitting the ground. Silence once again.

Mynet and Shin grimaced in disappointment. But before anyone could express it, a soft but gleeful voice spoke out of the air near Mynet. It said, “Twelve. Just as we were told. An auspicious number, yes?”

“A convenient one,” someone replied, cool. The two seemed to be standing close together, and all four of those in the present gravitated to their position, standing so close to the source of the conversation that it would have been terribly rude had the people talking actually been present.

And they hadn’t been murderers. Cecilia was more than willing to say fuck being polite to these guys.

The first voice spoke again. “Just let me have this. Just because you don’t believe in luck doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. There are even skills for it.” Cecilia thought this speaker was masculine, although his voice, kept low, was difficult to place.

“If there’s a skill for it, it’s not luck. Just a power we don’t understand well enough to manipulate without the aid of a skill.” The second speaker made a disgusted noise. If she had to try and guess, Cecilia would call this one feminine, but husky enough that it could be male, too. “Load them up in their wagons. I’ve been assured the gate won’t be a problem. Now assure me that the ritual will also not be a problem.”

The first speaker’s voice lost its playfulness and turned sharp as a knife. “I know my work. Don’t speak to me as if I were one of your minions.”

Silence. Then, grudgingly, the second speaker said, “My apologies. I didn’t mean to imply any such thing. I’m simply trying to ensure our success. I know you want the same.”

“What I want is irrelevant,” the first speaker said, back to teasing as if nothing had happened. “What I’m being paid for matters. I do love the little luxuries that illicit jobs provide. I’m well-versed in the ritual. Now that the materials have been procured, I anticipate no other problems.”

“Good. I’m going to make sure our ‘materials’ are well-secured.”

A long-suffering groan from the first speaker. “And I suppose I’ll help repack the camp. The sooner we’re out of here, the better.”

The two voices split up, the second calling out instructions while the first faded away entirely. They let the scrying run for a while longer, but nothing else useful was said. Once the sounds of the wagons being driven back to the road faded, Cantor lifted a hand and paused the spell. He was, Cecilia noted with some worry, looking a bit pale. “That’s what I’ve got before they go out of reach of the spell. It’s tied to the feather and there is only so much range.”

“That’s enough,” Mynet said, then squinted at Cantor. “Drop the spell, and I think you’ll need another charging stone.”

Cantor released the spell with a flick of his fingers, the light in the circle flaring up then guttering out. He shook his head. “It’s not so bad. A bit of a strain, that’s all.”

Shin cleared her throat. “This from the man who swore he was fine until he collapsed.”

Cantor turned pink. “That’s irrelevant to this conversation. I kept my azoth use within my limits. You must not baby me.”

“I’m not,” Shin returned. “I am simply pointing out that you either lie about your well-being or you can’t correctly assess it. We cannot trust you to speak truth, either way.”

As Cantor rose to his feet, embarrassment flashing into anger, Cecilia hastily stepped towards them and raised her hands. “Hey, wait. That’s a bit harsh, yeah? C—Ohta, we’re just concerned. It was pretty...worrying...when you collapsed on us. Which,” she turned her eyes on Shin, “doesn’t mean you should be a jerk about it. Okay? Let’s stay focused.” She held Shin’s gaze until the woman gave a curt nod, then turned back to Cantor. “Are you really okay?”

He rubbed one temple. “I am genuinely fine. Just tired. I give you my word that I would tell you both, truly, if I felt otherwise.”

Mynet had been watching the interplay with the lively interest of a tennis spectator, but now he startled them all by clapping his hands once. With their attention captured, he rubbed his hands together. “Now that’s been established, let me say good job. I think we’ve got something to go on, here.”

“Do we?” Shin scuffed the ground with the toe of her boot in frustration. “They barely said anything. No names, no places or affiliations.”

“Not exactly true,” Mynet murmured.

Cantor said, “We know one of them is a mercenary, not a true believer. And they’re the one with the ritual magic expertise. Blood rituals aren’t a common—or well-loved—area of study, and the local Circle may very well know who’s for hire who has shown an interest in such magics.”

“And,” Cecilia put in, “we know they did something to make sure they could get through the gate without comment. Bribe, right?”

“Maybe,” Mynet said. “A bribe or an illusion...but a bribe is more likely. I should be able to access city records to discover who was on gate duty that night. I don’t imagine they would have taken a wagon train around to a farther away gate, so it should be a small suspect pool.”

“Two leads, then.” Shin looked relieved. “Better than I’d realized. I am not a hunter of People. There are more tricks to it than I know, clearly.”

“We’re all learning new things,” Mynet said, and laughed. “Aren’t we lucky?”

“We’ll probably level,” Cecilia said, a touch wistfully. She hadn’t leveled in a while; trekking through the wilderness and entering a city by stealth apparently weren’t things strongly aligned with her Classes. But maybe, since she had the skill tree of Vengeance, hunting down killers might be worth some sweet, sweet XP.

Even if she’d only taken a single skill in that tree, yet. It was starting to feel like a glaring error. Maybe being able to track someone’s soul would be a good use of her precious skill points after all. If nothing else, she could keep track of her friends.

Cantor said, “I have a proposal. I think, once we return to the city, we should split up. Jon and I can go to the Circle; I’m a member, and Jon has been practicing first Circle spells. We won’t arouse suspicion, and I have some ideas on who we could ask for assistance. In this and other matters.”

Cecilia felt a thrill along nerves that no longer existed. “That’s perfect.” There was no reason why they couldn’t blend both tasks—look for this mercenary mage and get that book that Cantor said would help them understand how to build (or find) doors back to her world.

Cantor added, “While we do that, Mynet and Dai could investigate the gate guards. Two will be less alarming than four, and if the guard makes a run for it, or becomes violent, I know Dai is capable of protecting Mynet. I’ve seen her take down bandits at range and in close combat.”

Shin preened a little...then immediately looked annoyed by her own pride. Or just that it came from a compliment from Cantor. But she agreed, “Someone who tries to run from me will not run far.”

Mynet considered the group. “Hmm. I admit to a small amount of trepidation about spitting the investigative group, not entirely attributed to losing two thirds of my bodyguard for a bit, but the plan makes sense. Let’s do it. It’ll take me some time once we get back to get access to the records, so Dai, let’s meet tomorrow morning. I can come by—”

“I would rather meet you somewhere else,” Shin said. When Mynet blinked, clearly taken aback, she said, “Your clothing is too fancy for our neighborhood, Mynet. I worry that you will be mugged. Or that we will be mugged because people believe that we have money.”

He looked down at his current outfit; while Cecilia had to admit the leather riding suit was appropriate for the activity, she also had to acknowledge that it had what looked like silver studs, and fancy burned scrollwork that probably cost more little sticks than most people on their street made in a month.

Clearly, Mynet was doing some of the same calculations. “...okay, that’s fair. Let’s meet at the gate square, then. It’ll be a shorter walk.”

“And Jon and I will head for the Circle Archives at dawn,” Cantor said.

“Yeah—wait, what? Dawn?”

“Indeed. I’m not looking forward to it anymore than you are,” he said. “But Mages tend to burn the midnight oil. The earlier we go, the less likely we are to be diverted or delayed.”

“But...dawn,” Cecilia whined.

“Dawn.”

Since she didn’t have a better argument than but I don’t wanna, dawn it was.

*

It was an ungodly time of the morning to tromp through a sort-of-medieval city, but when they reached the Circle’s enclave, Cecilia almost felt it was all worthwhile. She let out a low whistle as she peered through the open gates. “Now this is more like it. This feels like magic.”

The gates themselves were twining designs of fire and earth azoth that were currently bent inwards like flaming wings, although they gave off no heat. Through them, three buildings hovered in the air, easily twenty feet up, their marble fronts glowing with runes in all colors. Cecilia briefly tried to activate Analysis, only to reel back from the sudden explosion of text before her eyes. She shut it down, frantically, having nothing to show for it except an impression that the word ‘protection’ had showed up a lot. She rubbed at her eyes, then watched a mage in long, enchanted robes step on one of the glowing circles in the courtyard. The woman was lifted up on a disc of light, her expression distant and bored, like sailing through the air like this was...ordinary.

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“It’s hard to believe this is even real,” Cecilia breathed.

Cantor leaned in to murmur, “After all you’ve experienced, this is what trips you up? We’ve got to take you to the capital, where the truly impressive magical architecture is.”

“This is impressive!”

He seemed to enjoy the chance to be smug as he smoothed down the front of his robes and said, “This is a minor Circle outpost at the edge of the Empire’s reach. They’ve done well enough with the limited resources available to them, but the capital has great azoth reservoirs, enough to build structures out of light itself. Or living wood, magma...some of the previous Emperors have had odd tastes.”

Cecilia tried to imagine walking down streets where the buildings were made of such primal materials. She couldn’t even picture it, really. Her brain just kept turning it into a cartoon of wild fantasy buildings stacked on one another. “I’d like to see it,” she admitted, wistfully.

Cantor’s expression softened. “One day you shall.” He cleared his throat. “Almost certainly, because if there’s a Door anywhere on this continent, it’ll be there. The finest minds and most ambitious mages are there.” He offered her his arm. “But for now, shall we?”

She took it. “Let’s,” she said, and grinned. Cecilia was in an uncommonly good mood, because she was, in fact, Cecilia, and not wearing Jon’s disguise. It had been Cantor’s suggestion. She didn’t know if the strain was becoming obvious, but what he’d said when she’d (reluctantly) offered to continue the deception was that it would be harder for anyone watching the Circle to connect the two of them, sans disguises, to the three adventurers helping Mynet with his work.

“But what about the Guild?” she’d asked.

Cantor had laughed, a little sharply. “The Circle and the Guild are not always great friends. The Guild won’t have told them anything. There’s some danger, I won’t pretend otherwise, but we’ll draw more attention if I’m disguised, and if Jon is associated with my Ohta disguise…”

“Then that’s the link they need to find us.” Cecilia had sighed with relief.

There might have been some holes in the logic, but she didn’t really care. It felt so good to be back in as close to her ‘true’ form as she could get while she was stuck in the golem’s body. Between that and the fact that they were finally taking steps to get her closer to home, Cecilia was feeling better than she had...perhaps since waking up in this other world for the first time.

She dragged Cantor towards one of the circles, only realizing it when he protested. “We want that one,” he said, pointing.

Sheepishly, she corrected their course. They stepped on the stone circle, and she craned her neck to take in the runes that rimmed it before something flashed under their feet. The light hardened and lifted them as smoothly as an elevator.

Even so, Cecilia stiffed as the continued to rise. She could see through the disc, vaguely, and the sight of the ground below...she had to push away the memories of her head-first plunge towards the sidewalk back on Earth. It was only partially successful. Cantor squeezed her arm; a peculiar sensation when her limb had no give to it, but she felt the warmth and concern, even so.

“I’m fine,” she said, quietly. “Just maybe not...great with heights right now.”

“I apologize about that,” he murmured back. “At least it’s brief. Here we are,” he said, and stepped up to solid stone as the disc deposited them on a marble landing before the door of the central building.

She didn’t look back, or down, as they went inside. The interior was just as impressive as the exterior, and the wonder of it all chased away the greater part of her fearful memories. It was hard to dwell on death—even your own—when unfurled scrolls were flying under their own power past your face, undulating like snakes. Free-standing flames in a dozen colors just floated about the large central hall, helpfully illuminating people and various items of interest. Cecilia and Cantor got a bright blue flame that came to rest above their heads.

It attracted the attention of a young man—a child, really, for Cecilia thought he couldn’t be older than thirteen or fourteen—who picked up the hem of his robe so he could trot across the polished stone floor to meet them. “Hello, and welcome to the Circle Archives. I’m Apprentice Eni. Can I help you?”

“Cantor of the Second Circle, and guest. I’m here to consult the Index.”

It didn’t seem to be an uncommon or unusual request, because Eni immediately beamed and said, “Of course. Follow me.”

They fell into step just behind him. As they did, Cantor added, “I should also like to talk to Third Circle Mage Nevero, if she is available.”

Eni missed a step but recovered quickly. With considerably less enthusiasm, he said, “Oh. It’s rather early for her to be up…”

“We can attend to our research first. Would an hour be sufficient?” There was firmness in Cantor’s words, but he also sounded sympathetic.

“Probably,” Eni said, morose. “I’ll do my best.”

He led them through a side hall into a room that looked considerably less...library-ish than Cecilia had been expecting. It looked more like a sitting room from a Jane Austin adaptation, all fancy furniture and polish. Several of the flames, all bright white, hovered around the only book in the room.

Although Cecilia had to admit that it was an impressive book. It was even bigger than the coffee table art books her mother was fond of, and several times as thick. The book was bound in pale leather that had sigils embossed with gold in intricate designs. As they got closer, she realized that there were even small jewels, possibly diamonds (but they weren’t as sharply faceted or radiantly cut as she was used to, if so), embedded in the cover.

Eni left them while Cecilia was staring at the book. Cantor was watching her face with amusement, and once the apprentice was gone, he said, “This is the Index. Or one of them. It’s one of the Circle’s prize enchantments. This book is one of a hundred linked to the true Index at the Circle Tower in the capital. Whenever the Circle or any of its affiliates acquires a new book for the Archives, they notify the capital of the title, author, location of the book, and often a few other details. These are transcribed into the central Index, and that knowledge becomes instantly available to every other linked Index.”

“You guys created a networked database. Holy shit,” Cecilia breathed.

Cantor looked...disappointed. “You’ve...heard of such a thing?”

Hastily, she said, “Not magic. My world has technology that does something similar, but this is incredibly impressive. How does it work?”

He rallied quickly. “Just like this.” He reached over and placed his hand on the cover. He didn’t speak or even gesture, but the cover glowed under his fingers, and the whole book shivered on its display podium.

As Cantor lifted his hand away, the book opened, and beautiful handwriting began to fill the pages.

“That looks like more than one book,” Cecilia murmured as the page flipped and the writing continued.

“It is. I asked the Index for anything it has on the Doors between worlds, and for any accounts of Travelers in the last ten years. And the Codex of Travelers, of course. They should have a copy here of that, but some of the more esoteric tomes are likely to be elsewhere. We’d have to travel to find them.”

“Shame there’s no inter-library loan,” Cecilia murmured. At his blank look, she quickly explained the concept.

There was a sharp wistfulness in him as he contemplated it. “That would be remarkable. But these tomes are often dangerous to transport, and teleportation doesn’t work well with some of the more enchanted books.”

Cecilia chuckled. “Yeah. Our books are mostly only dangerous for their contents, not their magic.”

The book stopped writing. It had covered at least four pages with neat blocks of text, each one a different book. Cecilia did a quick scan and decided they were looking at something between twelve and fourteen books. A thought occurred to her. “Is there any filtering or restriction on the Index?”

“How so?”

“I mean—are there books that you have to have special permission to even know about? Things that wouldn’t show up in an open search like this.”

“I…” Cantor trailed off. “I don’t know. Not for certain. But I do know something about how the Circle is organized, and I would not doubt it a single bit.”

“So there could be more, but we’re just not authorized to see it?”

“Yes. I suppose that’s true.” He scowled at the Index. “But for now, let’s start with what is accessible to us. We can worry about the rest later.”

They both leaned over the book to examine the search results. The Codex of Travelers was, thankfully, the first result. And Cantor had remembered correctly; it was in the Can Gallos archive. There were two other promising results: the personal journals of Fifth Circle Mage Lia the Silver Enchanter, and something called On the Natures of Firmament and Ephemera.

There was no ‘checking out’ of books from the Archives, Cecilia soon discovered. Cantor looked genuinely horrified when she’d asked, and when she’d explained how public libraries on Earth worked, he shook his head. “Baffling. How do you keep people from walking off with your entire archive and selling off the books?”

Cecilia fidgeted, thinking about it. “Because...books aren’t that rare or expensive in my world? Not any more, I mean. We’ve got automated printing presses and all of that. There are second-hand bookstores, sure, but outside of something special, no one’s going to pay enough for a book to make it worth stealing and reselling.”

She stopped when she noticed his fingers were trembling. He took a deep breath. “A world where you have that much knowledge at your fingertips for that cheap. Free, even, with these libraries of yours. And most people can read it?” At her nod, he said, almost reverently, “Your people must be wise and accomplished beyond belief. No wonder you’ve adapted so well to this world.”

Cecilia stared at him, mouth slightly open. There was an instinctive urge to correct him, maybe even to try and explain what happened when people had too much information and no way to reliably sort the good information from some racist incel ranting about sperm flowing up his spinal cord and supercharging his brain.

Then she decided to spare him that. Libraries were pretty cool, and so was literacy, and maybe that’s where they should leave it. She cleared her throat. “Let’s take a look at those books while we’re here.”

A different apprentice was on book-herding duty, as Eni had apparently been sent to wake Nevero, a task that the new apprentice, a young girl with wildly-curly hair of what appeared to be a natural spring green, related with all the solemn sympathy of a doctor passing on a stage four cancer diagnosis.

She brought the books quickly, and laid them carefully on a small reading table. Cecilia let Cantor take the lead in reviewing them. Apparently “tables of contents” and “indices” within books were two things that hadn’t yet been commonly developed, and while Cantor indicated that a printing press had been developed, it was never used for books relating to the arcane, due to the way azoth tended to build up on the plates over time, eventually causing all manner of magical accidents.

So, their research involved trying to parse handwriting of various levels of clarity, in a language that Cecilia’s brain had to take a moment to ‘flip’ to something she could understand in English. Oddly, while simple examples of language like shop signs were translated instantly in her mind, the more complex the material she was trying to read, the more of a ‘lag’ it seemed to create. Which, she mused, suggested that there was something that was processing that function, and that whatever it was, complexity mattered. Would something that was pure magic have a delay like that?

Cecilia, therefore, took notes based on what Cantor was relaying. In English, because as she pointed out to him, it was a decent code that would need, at minimum, a translation spell to break. He agreed, and he read as fast as anyone she’d ever met, even allowing that he was skimming through the texts looking for specific items.

They started with the Codex of Travelers. It confirmed what Cantor had said: there were two documented types of doors between this world and the other worlds that Travelers came from: Onyx and Smoke. Onyx meant death. Here, Cecilia stopped him to ask, “But what kind of death? Clearly not every death, or you guys would be drowning in otherworlders.”

“It’s unclear. The text doesn’t share a lot of details; I imagine the first-hand accounts of Travelers would, but considering the kind of changes they wrought on our world, most of those are kept under lock and key. But there does seem to be one trend just in these examples: no one mentioned died of old age or peacefully.”

She leaned back. “Well, tick another box on that tally, I guess. What sort of changes have Travelers made?”

Cantor hesitated before he answered. “War, mostly.” At the way her face changed, he shrugged. “Sorry, but that’s the truth. Stanley the Burning Chevalier conquered half of Wataunga to found the Golden Princedom—”

“Wait. Stanley? His name was Stanley?”

“...yes? Is that an ill-omened name?”

“No. It’s just,” Cecilia snickered. “Stanley. Kind of has nerdy accountant vibes...and I say that as someone about one exam away from being a nerdy accountant myself back in my world.”

“He’s documented to be responsible for the deaths of approximately twenty thousand people, at least five hundred he dispatched personally.”

“Oh.” She winced. “Sorry. Uh. Please continue. I’ll shut up.”

Cantor smiled. “He’s hardly the first or even the bloodiest conqueror in the history of our world. But Travelers are often documented as either founding their own countries, taking over countries, or becoming the centerpiece for a great power’s rise. The last Traveler reliably documented in the Codex was Jehanne the Maiden, about six hundred years ago. Give or take a century. She overthrew a despotic council of rulers on the eastern edge of this continent and had a rather fanatically loyal group of followers—so loyal that they even gained their own special Classes related to her leadership. She didn’t become a queen or an Empress, however; she lifted up a young boy after saying that ‘angelic’ spirits spoke to her in a vision and anointed him king.”

“Was he a good one?”

“Good enough as these things go, I suppose. Sadly, towards the end of his reign, the Third Collapse began with the breaking of the Lethewall. The kingdom did not survive the next fifty years of devastation. Most didn’t, to be fair.”

Cecilia looked down at her pad. “This place can be a bit depressing.”

“Is there any place that isn’t?”

“Fair point.” She wrote down the salient points. “What about Doors? A Diamond Door.”

“Nothing in the Codex, except speculation. All of the Travelers documented are Onyx. There is reference to Doors of Smoke, but…”

“But?”

“Not within the Empire. Supposedly, there’s a city across the Pale Sea, Tevalos, that specializes in creating them and using dream trips to other worlds to fuel their culture and art. We could try and reach out, but we’d have to go to Can Imperia. That kind of ritual takes more power than I have. And spells that I don’t know.”

“Okay, well.” Cecilia bounced in her seat and the wood groaned warningly. “Let’s go. Once we finish this thing with Mynet, we can just go, right? It’s probably better to stay on the move anyway.”

Cantor didn’t immediately jump to agree with her, and she couldn’t help but notice that he looked...less than enthusiastic about the prospect. “I...yes, that probably should be our next destination, but I’d like to take time to read these texts thoroughly. There may be information here that we need.”

“I need to get home,” Cecilia shot back...then immediately felt like a whiny child for doing it. She forced herself to take some deep breaths. “No. Look. Cantor, I get it. We should do our research. I’m just…” she swallowed, “even if it’s only in a dream, I want to see my home again.”

He ran one hand through his hair, and nodded. “I understand, Cecilia. And I’ve said I’ll help. But the capital is dangerous. While the Circle is there, so is the Guild in its fullest strength, and—”

His next words were drowned in a crash as the doors were flung open by a gust of arctic wind. A blizzard entered the room, a cloud of swarming ice and flurries of snow that landed on Cecilia’s arms and promptly froze.

In the center of the storm was a tall, broad figure, with wide shoulders and hips and skin and hair of varying shades of blue. She scoured the room with ice and her gaze until she found Cantor, and her lips twisted.

“Second Circle Mage Cantor, explain yourself.”