Lilith was halfway through the Abbey
courtyard when Mhenlo stopped her. “Lilith!” he called out, and
she sighed and turned to confront him. The Abbey had felt like home
not too long ago. Now it felt more like enemy territory. Wouldn't
they seek to evict her as quickly as Kasha had evicted Paulus? She
wasn't on their side anymore. She had left them for the grave
watchers. “We need to talk,” Mhenlo said.
“Make it quick,” Lilith responded,
gesturing with Kasha's book, “this manuscript is important and I
must get it down to the safety of the chapel immediately.”
“You saved Paulus,” Mhenlo said.
“And I consider my debt to him and
the Abbey repaid,” Lilith said, “if you disagree, you should take
it up with Munne, as I've quite made up my mind already.”
“Lilith, you have been a creature of
the catacomb for a month,”
Mhenlo said, “do you not think that perhaps you are deciding your
allegiances too quickly?”
“Abbot,”
Lilith said, irritated, but then her expression softened with
surprise beneath her mask. “Abbot, why do you care?” Lilith
asked, “I'm an apprentice. Paulus is worth two of me, and ten times
that if your trouble has enough dark magic to be smitten.”
“Why
do fathers love their newborn children?” Mhenlo asked, “of what
use is an infant?”
“I'm
not your child,” Lilith said.
“But
you are a child,”
Mhenlo said, “and someday you will grow up and be more than what
you are, and when you do, I want you on my side.”
“There
are hundreds of thousands of children in the kingdom,” Lilith said,
“trust me, I've seen the census.”
“How
many of them could read that census?” Mhenlo asked. “Lilith, it
is good that you do not overestimate yourself, but it is worse
that you so thoroughly underestimate yourself. There are very
few nobles.”
“My
family supported Adelbern and sold me for being a disgrace to the
bloodline,” Lilith said, “and Rurik himself
said that if my family were Adelbern supporters than clearly the
bloodline had run thin among the de Magi line. Everyone agrees I'm
not a noble.”
Mhenlo
sighed. “Lilith, will you accompany me to the catacombs?” he
asked.
“What?”
Lilith asked.
“I
want to show you something. I will owe you a favor, if only a small
one,” Mhenlo said, “and it won't take more than half an hour.”
“...Alright,
sure,” Lilith said.
Mhenlo
led her down into the catacomb, to a reliquary past the Temple
Corridor in the Halls of Memory. “Do you know what this place is?”
Mhenlo asked when they arrived in the small room, the walls of which
were packed with tiny alcoves, each only a few inches across and
containing a single stone cylinder.
“Of
course,” Lilith said, “it's the Lost Vault. Or the Vault of the
Lost, more accurately.”
“That
is its name,” Mhenlo said, “do you know it's function?”
“Yes,”
Lilith said, “it's where the preserved blood of the founders of a
noble family are brought when that family is exterminated, in the
hopes that some day someone will take the blood and mix it with their
own and restart the bloodline.” She scanned the labels on the
alcoves, wishing that she would find one labeled de Magi, but knowing
she wouldn't.
“Is
it your belief that if you drank from one of these cylinders, you
would become noble again?” Mhenlo asked.
“Yes,”
Lilith said.
“But
you haven't,” Mhenlo said.
“What
would I say? 'Yes, I was sold into slavery, but it's okay because I
broke into a reliquary and consumed an ancient artifact, so give me
an estate?'” Lilith asked.
“You
would not have to say
anything,” Mhenlo said, “if you really believe that there is
power in the bloodlines, mixing your blood would make you a noble on
its own. Wouldn't it?”
Lilith
paused and thought. “I guess,” she said.
“You're
uncertain,” Mhenlo said, “you suspect that what you believe is
not actually true. You suspect being of noble blood would make no
difference at all.”
“Of
course it makes a difference!” Lilith said. She gaped for a few
moments, searching for the words to explain. It was such an
elementary mistake that even putting into words how it was wrong was
difficult. “The nobles are far more powerful than the common
people,” Lilith said, “you said so yourself. The reason you're
interested in me is because you think I'm a noble. And I'm not.
I'm just a witch, and I'm glad I'm that much.”
“Being
content is truly the most formidable enemy of greatness,” Mhenlo
said, “if you wish to prove your point to me, you must first agree
to something.”
“I
am not joining your
conspiracy or counter-conspiracy or whatever it is you're running,”
Lilith said.
“Nothing
like that,” Mhenlo said, “we simply need to lay some groundwork.
Establish some assumptions that both of us agree to. Do you want
power?”
“Wanting
it won't-” Lilith started.
“I
don't care what you have,”
Mhenlo said, “would you rather have more
power or less?”
“More,
of course,” Lilith said, “everyone
wants more.”
“And
do you agree that truth is power and delusion is weakness?” Mhenlo
said.
“Yes,”
Lilith said.
“And
therefore you agree that you always wish to side with the truth?”
Mhenlo said.
“Of
course,” Lilith said, “believing fake things leads to mistakes,
no one likes making mistakes.”
“Then
you will be entirely willing to tell me that if it is true that
bloodlines make no difference, you want to believe that bloodlines
make no difference,” Mhenlo said.
“It
isn't true-” Lilith
started.
“But
if it was you would
want to believe it?” Mhenlo said.
“Yes,”
Lilith said, “but it isn't. This is elementary principles. I don't
know if defying them is more blasphemous than it is just stupid.”
“I'll
ignore that,” Mhenlo said, almost monotone, “I'm not going to
waste your time or mine if all you plan on doing is repeating
yourself, so please repeat after me so we can get started: 'If it is
true that bloodlines make a difference, I want to believe that
bloodlines make a difference. If it is true that bloodlines make no
difference, I want to believe that bloodlines make no difference.'”
It
felt like a trick somehow. Certainly Mhenlo was laying a trap, and
all this 'groundwork' of his was part of it. But he was trying to persuade her, not some audience. If he suddenly sprung a trap on her, she wouldn't seem uninformed to herself
while trying to untangle what had happened. Lilith smiled beneath her
mask, an arrogant smirk. Was Mhenlo so used to debating for an audience
that he had forgotten how to persuade individuals? "If it is true that
bloodlines make a difference, I want to believe that bloodlines make a
difference," Lilith said, "if it is true that bloodlines make no
difference, I want to believe that bloodlines make no difference. Can we
get going now?"
"I
said it wouldn't take more than half an hour, it's been five minutes.
Have patience," Mhenlo said. "I think we can both agree that you must
prove something is true, otherwise it shall be considered false, rather
than the other way around. So, the burden of proof lies first with you
to demonstrate that noble blood makes one more competent."
"Okay," Lilith said, "well, do I really need to demonstrate that? I mean, isn't it obvious? Nobles are spectacularly more powerful than peasants."
"They
have wealth and land, yes," Mhenlo said, "but that was given to them by
the law, and the law could be anything if the king wanted it. If the
king woke up tomorrow and took the estates from every noble family
and gave them all to peasant families, would the peasants not have
the nobles' power?”
“No,”
Lilith said, “they wouldn't know how to manage the estates.
Peasants are weaker, stupider, slower, worse in basically every way
than a noble. They're good people when you give them good laws to
follow, but that's all
they are.”
“You
were a slave, Lilith,” Mhenlo said, “tell me, when you were first
taken, did you immediately know how to wash dishes, scrub floors,
peel potatoes?”
“No,”
Lilith said, tone dark, “I had to learn. Peasants can't
learn. The reason we don't teach them to read isn't because we don't
want them to know how, it's because it'd be wasted effort.”
“You
can read,” Mhenlo said.
“Yeah,
well, I don't know what I am. I just know I can't be a noble.
Burghers can read. Maybe I'm one of them,” Lilith said, “would
make a lot of sense, actually. I come from a greedy and shortsighted
family.”
“And
yet you see that they are shortsighted,” Mhenlo said, “you went
to Nolani Academy. It was filled with nobles. And did you read slower
than them? Was your aptitude for magic any lesser? Were you much
weaker or slower?”
“I
was weaker than a lot of people,” Lilith said, “I was terrible
with a shortsword.”
“How
much weaker than average were you when compared only to other girls?”
Mhenlo asked.
Lilith's
shoulders shrank back a bit. “I was still under the average,” she
said.
“As
are fully half of all the nobles, that's what an average is,”
Mhenlo said, “what about your magical abilities? Even if they were
weak at the Academy, surely you do not deny you make impressive
progress now? Munne would never admit it to you, but you are the most
promising student she has ever
had.”
This
Lilith couldn't deny. Kasha had said as much, and she had no
incentive to be colluding with Mhenlo. The idea that she and Mhenlo
had set all of this up in advance was too insane to be true, they
would have to have control over practically the entire kingdom
already to pull it off across such distance. “There's more to
nobility than just the power and the education,” Lilith said,
“there's leadership, too.”
“According
to Paulus you've demonstrated initiative and resourcefulness, and
this very moment you are demonstrating a capability for logical
argument,” Mhenlo said, “even if I think you're wrong, you're
clearly intelligent enough to make a case and defend it using
evidence and not obfuscation. That's most of leadership on its own.”
“Yeah,
all except for the part where people actually follow you,” Lilith
said, “which is kind of the foundation of the concept.”
“It's
true, the peasants do not follow you,” Mhenlo said, “and yet you
are aware that there have been peasant revolutions? Were they not led
by peasants?”
“Yeah,
and look how those turned out,” Lilith said, “brilliant
leadership on display there.”
“Oh,
yes, but haven't we already established that you are no less capable
than any noble, and indeed more capable than their average, despite
your apparent lack of noble bloodline?” Mhenlo said, “you said
yourself that the peasants are good people only when they are given
good laws to follow. How do you know it is not the law that keeps
them from following you as they would any noble?”
“No
matter how many laws you changed, they wouldn't follow me,” Lilith
said, “that's who I am. Burgher, I guess. It's not so bad.”
“How
do you know?” Mhenlo
said, “and if you don't, do you have the courage to admit it?”
“I...Don't,”
Lilith said, “I don't know
that the reason they don't follow me, specifically, is because of the
law, but you don't
know the reason they don't follow me is because I can't
lead.”
Lilith tilted her head to the side. "What?" she asked.
"You don't know," Mhenlo said, "I would venture so far that you have never examined alternative possibilities to the importance of bloodlines at all. Certainly you've done nothing but repeat dogma in this conversation."
"A second ago you said my arguments were intelligently constructed," Lilith said.
"Intelligently constructed, yes," Mhenlo said, "it is what they are constructed from that is depressingly stupid."
"So I guess you're done pretending to be nice," Lilith said.
"You aren't stupid, Lilith," Mhenlo said, "that's what makes it depressing to hear you repeat stupidity. Because everything you've said is a mindless repetition of facts you have accepted without ever comparing them to reality. Peasants lead one another all the time in militias and fire brigades. Certain nobles are clearly imbeciles."
"So the blood grows thin," Lilith said.
"So Rurik says," Mhenlo said, "you are still repeating what others have told you."
"And you'd rather I repeat what you tell me?" Lilith said.
"No," Mhenlo responded, "if you were to agree with me now you would have failed to learn what I am trying to teach you."
"What are you trying to teach me?" Lilith asked, wondering whether or not he had anything worth teaching her.
"What I am trying to teach you is that truth filtered through human perception is always incomplete," Mhenlo said, "my perceptions are more accurate than most. If you take your truth directly from me it will be less inaccurate than if you took it from, say, Prince Rurik. But it will still be inaccurate. No matter how much you, me, or anyone hones their perceptions, we will always make mistakes."
"Yes, and?" Lilith asked, "so humans are flawed. I knew that already."
"But what you do not yet know is how to learn from reality itself," Mhenlo said, "how to learn the truth of things from the things themselves. So: How do you find out for sure, for yourself, whether you are correct?"
Lilith stopped. Thought. And could think of nothing. "I dunno," she said, "I guess it'll always be a mystery."
"I rather doubt that," Mhenlo said, "the process for learning from reality is relatively straightforward. First, come up with as many possible explanations as you can for whatever it is you are investigating. Don't stop as soon as you reach one explanation, and don't shy away from explanations that make you uncomfortable. Truth is power, delusion is weakness, better to be uncomfortable for a moment and strong forever than to stay comfortable and weak until it kills you."
"Okay," Lilith said, "so explanation one is that blood is power. Explanation two is..." For the first time she tried to put Mhenlo's argument into words that were not dismissive. "That training, equipment, and law are the only difference between nobles and peasants." That actually sounded very plausible now that she said it out loud. "So, now what, guru?" Lilith asked.
"You're quite certain that's all you can think of?" Mhenlo said, "all you've done is list what you and I have already argued. There is always more."
"Okay," Lilith said, closing her eyes beneath her mask to think. "Maybe noble lines are protected by ancient Lunatic Courtiers, and they lose their power when they lose favor with them."
“An interesting theory,” Mhenlo
said, “any others?”
Lilith thought for a while longer, and
then said “well, all I can think of is that nobles are just whoever
happens to be born most capable, except that's clearly not true or
else there'd be a new family in charge of an estate every time anyone
died, and that's obviously not true.”
“And you've stumbled across the next
step,” Mhenlo said, “or close to it, at least. Imagine that there
are three worlds. In one world, the noble families of Ascalon have
inherent power because of the purity of their blood. In another, they
have power because they are watched over by Lunatic Courtiers. In the
third world, they have power because their ancestors seized it
through their own capability, and then rewrote society to favor their
descendants, whether they were powerful geniuses or pathetic
imbeciles. Besides these differences, each of these three worlds is
identical. Imagine that all three of these worlds are real, and you
know you live on one of them, but you do not know which. How can you
determine which world you live on?”
“Well, by finding out where nobles'
power comes from,” Lilith said, “you aren't seriously going to
try to convince me you're right because there's an alternate
reality where nobles are
powerful for the reasons you say they are?”
“It's
a metaphor, and I shall revoke my favor owed you if you continue to
assume my stupidity,” Mhenlo said, his voice low and dry, “and
you have simply wrapped your mind upon itself. You are already
trying to find out where nobles' power comes from, and finding the
answer cannot be a step in the process of finding the answer.”
Lilith
sighed and said “yes, alright. I don't know. Tell me.”
“Think,”
Mhenlo said.
Lilith
closed her eyes. She could compare two different worlds against each
other for differences, and see which theory was supported by those
differences, except that she could only actually observe one of the
three worlds because the other two were hypothetical. Except...Since
they only existed in her head, couldn't she just make them however
she wanted? Well, no. That wasn't how hypotheticals worked. She could
imagine what the
worlds would look like, or more accurately make an educated guess,
and then compare the hypotheticals against each other. “If I
compare all three realities against one another hypothetically, I'll
find differences,” Lilith said, “or if I don't, then obviously it
doesn't matter anyway. Except it has
to matter, because obviously
it makes a difference whether or not some peasant could be a noble if
you sent him to the academy, and...That's it, isn't it. We take a
newborn peasant, somehow convince a noble that the peasant baby is
actually theirs, or at least some
noble's child, and then see how they turn out. Except how the Hell
would we pull that off? Wait, did you actually do that?”
“You're
very close,” Mhenlo said, “the only trouble is you've skipped a
step. No, not skipped. You performed it without recognizing it. Back
up. See if you can find what you didn't notice.”
Lilith
was seriously considering making Mhenlo do some really trivial,
menial task just to spite him for being so difficult, but
nevertheless backed herself up and thought about it. “There's
differences between the hypothetical realities,” Lilith said, “so
you look at places where they would be different, and you check to
see which of the three possibilities they support.”
“Or
at least,” Mhenlo said, “whether or not they can rule
out one of the three
possibilities. Or more, if you are investigating a phenomenon for
which there are more than three explanations available. Do beware of
the process of elimination, though. There is always the chance that
the real solution is some other possibility you never thought of and
have not tested. Now, can you think of some faster way to test which
of the three worlds we live in, something that doesn't require
eighteen years and a gullible knight?”
Lilith
closed her eyes and racked her mind. “Look,” she said after
several minutes, “you're not my teacher and I'm sick of playing
this game. If you have some grand test, why don't you just tell
me?”
“Curious?”
Mhenlo asked.
Lilith
looked to the floor. “Okay, yes,” she admitted, “maybe all the
smartest and best educated people in the kingdom have gotten it wrong
for a thousand years. I mean, not everything they've built on the
concept is true. There are exceptions, at least. But either way, I'm
tired of this.”
“Unfortunately
for you,” Mhenlo said, “I can't just tell you the answer. I don't
know the answer. I
just know how to find it.”
“What?”
Lilith said, “you don't know?”
“Bloodlines
have never been my problem before today,” Mhenlo said, “does it
matter to me whether nobles receive training because they are the
only ones who can learn, or whether they are the only ones who can
learn because only they are legally allowed the proper training?
Either way, nobles are the strongest pieces on the board and no one
else matters. Until now. You have the upbringing. Evidently you do
not have the blood. So do you have the power? The observable reality
is that yes, of course you do, you are Munne's most promising
student...Well, ever. Don't let it go to your head. But I know you
won't believe it on my word alone. And you shouldn't.
So where can you look to see for yourself whether it's true?”
“Archaic
histories,” Lilith said after a while, “primary sources from the
early centuries of Ascalon. Before the blood would have had much
chance to thin, but after the founders were all dead and their
descendants had enough time to botch things up. If bloodlines really
are all that important, they won't. All the noble families will be
more or less keeping things together. But if there's lots of
infighting, lots of nobles making stupid or shortsighted moves, if
the peasant rebellions are no less frequent then than they are
now...It means that misrule was as common then as it is now, even
though the blood obviously has
to be a lot thinner.”
“Yes,
although that doesn't say anything about the favor of Lunatics
theory,” Mhenlo said.
"No,
but the same sources will tell me whether the noble families gradually
got less and less competent or if they suddenly went from reliably
competent to random at a certain, obvious breakpoint," Lilith said, "and
that will tell me whether it's bloodlines or Lunatic favor."
"Where am I going to find the time to go digging through the archives?" Lilith asked.
"Where are you going to find the time to determine whether the foundation of the political philosophy that got you sold into slavery is a complete fiction?" Mhenlo said, heading for the exit, "if you can't find the time for that, I'm most definitely wasting my time."
Lilith did not go to the Abbey's
archives that night, nor did she the night after, nor the night after
that. Instead, she spent her time burning midnight oil and engrossed
with Kasha's tome. Blood magic relied on the inherent vitality and
magical potential stored in human blood. Lilith
dutifully read the chapters on simple consumption and blood spoiling
to see if there was anything contained within that she did not know,
but this proved to be wasted time. Kasha had, after all, probably
learned the trick from the same person who taught Munne and Verata,
or perhaps Kasha was the one who had taught Munne and Verata in the
first place.
Regardless,
it was the later chapters that proved more intriguing. There were
dark powers who valued the power of blood, especially human blood,
and would grant abilities both terrible and incredible to those who
sacrificed it. Many required virgin blood. Other secrets of blood
involved channeling the power oneself through witch glyphs inscribed
upon the skin, secrets that fueled many necromantic arts already. The
line between necromancy, hemalurgy, and curses seemed thinner the
more Lilith studied them.
Lilith's
first pass of the book was, despite the intensity with which she
devoured it, barely more than a skim. When she did not fully
understand a concept, she moved past it. As the book progressed into
ever more complicated concepts, the diagrams became impossible to
follow and keeping the jargon straight was similarly daunting. After
a week of trying and failing to make further progress, she returned
to the first spell she had studied but not yet cast. A simple trick
of blood renewal, whereby the user's blood was infused with vital
power by a dark spirit, sacrificing some of it to have the rest
empowered. The result, according to the book, was resistance to
fatigue and disease as well as generally improved health.
The
chapel was calm and empty. Munne had left to visit Verata to discuss
something, which was apparently important enough to make the trip to
Wizard's Folly for, but not important enough to bother telling Lilith
about. Lilith stood in the center, her left arm uncovered from the
elbow down, her right clutching her razor-sharp ritual dagger. She
had removed her mask to make sure she could be heard by the lurking
spirits. “Degothuau,” she intoned, “accept this my sacrifice,”
her blade bit into her own wrist, blood trickled from the glyph she
carved into herself, just big enough for her hand to cover it
entirely, “and when next I pay tribute to you and speak thy name,
grant me vitality.”
Her
blood began to evaporate, flowing into a red mist. Lilith sucked in a
breath between her teeth, listening to her heart pound in her chest,
until finally she began to grow weak. Then she clutched her hand
around the wound on her wrist and the flow stopped. Unsteady on her
feet, Lilith staggered to the cage where she kept rats to feed on
when Munne had finished feeding on her, which had a similar effect.
She unlatched the cage, snatched one up, and bit into it, having long
ago learned to ignore the filthy taste of the rat's pelt in her
mouth. She had developed immunity to most diseases by now, some from
her necromantic studies and others because she was constantly getting
infected. Helped build up her body's resistance, and Mhenlo purged
them whenever they proved to be something life-threatening.
Sighing
with relief as the weakness began to lift, a hungry Lilith dropped
the drained rat and reached into the cage to grab a rat attempting
escape and bit into it as well, closing the hatch at the top of the
cage with her spare hand. Lilith looked at the glyph she had carved
on her wrist. Degothuau, giver of vitality. According to Kasha's
book, a hemalurgist's body would in time come to be covered in these
glyphs, whether their purpose was to summon dark spirits or channel
the power contained within a witch's blood.
“Blood
is power,” Lilith said, her head tilting to the side. She got to
her feet, walked to the spare room where Kasha's book was kept safe
and, wrapping her wound up in some spare cloth to make sure she did
not bleed on it (or, for that matter, lose consciousness and bleed
out entirely while reading), she examined the chapters on sacrifice
again. Different spirits have different tastes in blood,
the book read, sub-par offerings are likely to displease
them. If you have only lamb's blood, do not attempt to summon Ha-il, who favors the blood of human men,
and hope lamb's blood will do, no matter how generous you have been in the past. Instead, summon Icyatha, who favors
lamb's blood, and make do with the power she grants. Learn to work
with what you have available, and do not risk the wrath of dark
spirits because you lack the creativity to solve a problem without
the perfect tool.
Lilith was quite positive it was good advice. But it was not what you would expect to see in a world where noble blood was inherently superior to common. Kasha had made a list of the dark spirits and their favored blood. Many of them were mercifully not very picky, simply preferring any human blood, but some came with warnings: Do not sacrifice blood of someone that is ill, starving, or otherwise weak. Of those who had a preference, many had preference for a child's blood, for the blood of men or women, or for the blood of a specific animal, sometimes with stipulations as to whether it also be male, female, or a child. Curiously, none of them seemed to want adult blood only. And more curiously, none of them favored the blood of nobles, though some came with notes like Only accepts sacrifice from those of healthy upbringing, who rarely fall ill, are strong in body. Do not attempt sacrifice without exceptional specimen. Would that effectively mean nobles only? Or would burghers work? Lilith wished Kasha were close enough to make asking her reasonable. Maybe she could have a message sent. Of course, she wasn't paid at all, so paying the messenger to carry it would be troublesome.
But there were other sources of information available to Lilith now. She flipped a few pages further, to the section on summoning Zachath. “Okay,” Lilith muttered, pulling
out her dagger, and a thin brush with it. Technically she was not
supposed to be bleeding herself in the same room as the book, but she
didn't trust herself to draw the diagram properly without a
reference. “Zachath likes them young, never more than eighteen,”
Lilith said, cutting her wrist open, “no problem. Zachath likes
variety, alternate between males and females, and always younger than
the last,” she shrugged, it was her first time, she was sixteen,
that was fairly close to Zachath's limit anyway. It wasn't wise to
push boundaries with a spirit this powerful an ancient. “Zachath
is...Extremely anal about precision diagramming. Okay, then.”
Lilith spent two hours inscribing the
diagram on the floor. Three times she drew it incorrectly, drawing a
large red X over it to disrupt the lines and make sure she didn't
accidentally draw some other
diagram by leaving Zachath's unfinished. Fortunately there were no
witch glyphs or seals that included a large X.
Finally,
on her fourth attempt and after sucking another rat dry to restock
her blood, she had finished the diagram. Lines at harsh and exacting
angles danced around the edge of an octagon of empty space. Ellipses
just above the empty space suddenly shot open; Eyes inscribed in
blood looked about the room, then focused on her. Lilith dabbed the
brush in her blood and began to write.
Zachath, keeper of knowledge, I
beseech you for answers and offer in exchange young blood.
She
finished the sentence, the eyes stared at her a moment and then,
satisfied she was finished, the words dissolved into the stone floor,
replaced immediately by the response.
Your gift is accepted. Ask three
questions. I shall grant thee three answers.
Lilith sighed with
relief, and then took a deep breath. Zachath was noted for being
exceptionally patient so long as he was summoned properly and treated
with respect, so the hard part was out of the way. She dabbed the
brush at her bleeding wrist and began to write again.
Why do the dark spirits require
different blood as tribute, instead of demanding the highest quality
there is?
In a moment, the
words faded. The response was again instantaneous.
Why does one man prefer apples and
another grapes? All blood is life. Whether young or old, male or
female, the only difference is taste. That is one.
'That is one' meant
the first of the three answers, or so the book said. It was a trick
Zachath used to convince first-time summoners to waste a question
asking for clarification.
It wasn't much of a
surprise that the dark spirits fed off of all blood equally. Witches
worked the same way, as Munne had taught her that while human blood
tasted better by far, a diet of all rats worked just as well as all
humans. And if Munne wanted to keep her apprentice on a terrible
diet, she wouldn't bother lying about it, she'd just do it. She
hadn't made any bones about sucking the life out of Lilith three
times a day in the first place. It was weird that several of the
spirits actually preferred animal blood over human, but strange
spirits might have strange tastes.
But that didn't
mean blood didn't have power in it, just that the power didn't
provide any more nutrition. The best meats were pig and cow, not bear
and wolf. Would Zachath know whether being born with the right blood
could make you stronger? Zachath hated being asked questions
he didn't know the answer to. But Kasha's book had said that
Zachath knew all the secrets of blood, and also that he gave
vague answers that required follow-up questions, and Lilith did not
have time to track down a fifteen-year old boy and borrow a pint of
his blood to contact Zachath again. This seemed a worse and worse
idea every moment.
What bloodlines will make a human
live longer or stronger?
This
time, the response from Zachath was not immediate after her words
dissolved in the stone. Zachath's eyes shut. Lilith waited a moment.
Was this how his wrath began? “Z-zachath?” she asked aloud.
Wait.
The
words appeared in the octagon and vanished immediately. Lilith waited
a while longer.
In every creature born of
fornication there is a father's and a mother's blood. The bloodlines
struggle and fight a hundred and a hundred thousand battles to assert
themselves. Abilities which have lain dormant for generations may, by
chance, resurge. Some traits are stronger than others in the blood,
and will push out other traits, but traits strong in the blood are
not always strong in the world. So it is that a bloodline must be
strong in the blood and strong in the world, or else both mother and
father must have blood that is strong in the world such that blood
that is weak in the world cannot drown out that which is strong, or
else the child must simply get lucky, and the traits weak in the
blood triumph by chance. That is two.
The words lingered
for several minutes for Lilith to digest, and then dissolved. What
exactly did that mean? Bloodlines seemed important, but it was all
far more complicated than simple purity. Some traits were strong in
the blood but weak in the world, so bad bloodlines crowded out good.
That made sense.
Is the de Magi bloodline pure?
It was only a few
moments after the words dissolved that Zachath replaced them.
There is no de Magi bloodline. With
every marriage the blood of the first de Magi mixes and mingles with
other families, diluting its original essence, which was itself a
chaos. Who now can say they are the heir to the de Magi bloodline,
when it has mixed with so many other families that it is now a chaos
again? Family names are immortal. Bloodlines die after four
generations. That is three.
The words lingered
for a minute while Lilith read them, then again. What did that mean?
He said 'bloodlines die after four generations,' but did that mean
all bloodlines? It certainly didn't seem to specify hers. But he did seem to be referring to specific bloodlines. So while the de Magi bloodline may not have been literally pure after four generations, having mixed only with other nobles it would still be strong.
The
blood was dissolving away, not just the writing in the octagon but
the entire diagram, and Lilith was still trying to process what exactly she had just learned. Zachath said that a child might be born strong purely by accident, because he happened to get really lucky and have lots of traits weak in the blood but strong in the world win out anyway. But his kids would have his same blood, and they probably wouldn't be so lucky. And if there was even one of those people on the continent, and he didn't happen to get killed by plain bad luck during Thorn's rise to power, he would end up a noble. That's how Thorn identified the pure families in his day, he found the people who were already strong, but if they were strong by chance then their kids would probably be weak. Is that what happened to the de Magi? But then what had happened to Rurik? Adelbern was still a noble, and Thorn's line had been marrying nobles long enough that it wouldn't have made any difference. Thorn's blood would've thinned out to nothing in four generations, eight hundred years ago minimum, according to Zachath.
According to what Zachath had told her,
the nobles were probably much stronger on average because their blood
would have been much stronger on average. Nobles intermarried all the
time, which means the weak blood would've been mixed in with the
strong, but the majority of nobles would probably be people who had
lots of traits that were strong both in the blood and in the world.
Those with traits weak in the blood would be rare to begin with
because of that weakness, and those with traits weak in the world
would not have been able to establish themselves as nobles at all.
But if
the blood was all equally mixed, like it must have been, that means
that even if the de Magi had originally
been the result of a single strong fluke whose blood typically
produced strong children, that blood would have been thinned to
irrelevancy within those four generations, like Zachath had said.
That was why bloodlines didn't last. The specific traits common to a
particular family intermingled with other families through marriage,
and were slowly drowned out. All that would be left would be the
general ratio of good and bad traits. With a thousand years and at
least twenty generations, every noble's bloodline, and every royal's
bloodline, would have averaged out. Unless the de Magi's had secretly
been intermingling with peasants or burghers, their blood should be
strong as anyone's.
“So,”
Lilith thought aloud, “since all
the nobles are of roughly equally pure blood...” Something in her
did not dare to say it out loud. She flinched away. Dreams like these
were never fulfilled, only destroyed. But just because she had
believed something for false reasons didn't mean it couldn't be true.
That was a logical fallacy. The fallacy fallacy, in fact. “If all
nobles are of roughly equally pure blood, then I am
a noble,” Lilith said, “Hell, I could be queen. My
blood's as pure as Rurik's. So is Adelbern's, for that matter. I
don't have the estate,
but I deserve it. I'm
smart and probably stronger than peasant girls anyway.”
But
how had the average noble fallen so far since Thorn's day? Perhaps
there were more exceptional specimens, more lucky winners, than
Lilith thought. Maybe the difference in blood strength between nobles
and burghers was much slighter than she had been led to believe, it's
just the families that became noble happened to have an exceptional
progenitor. They wouldn't have to get very
lucky to just rise above the average, and considering noble families
were outnumbered by burgher families ten to one, it entirely made
sense that if you took a group of people with completely equal blood
strength and shaved off the ten percent who were most capable by
happenstance, you wouldn't actually increase the purity of the blood
at all, you'd just
enshrine a couple of them as having access to the weapons and
training they'd need to keep the others one rung down forever.
“I'm
a noble,” Lilith said again. But...What did that change? She might
deserve an estate, but she didn't have one. What was she going to do,
walk up to her parents, summon Zachath, and tell them they had to let
her back in because it was logically impossible for her blood to be
impure? Even if they wanted to, it wasn't actually legal. There was
never any getting out of slavery. It's why slaves were killed so
often, it was the only way to keep the population low.
“I
guess I should see what the Hell Mhenlo wanted,” Lilith said, and
then kicked herself for having gotten in the habit of talking to
herself. She had only been alone a couple of days.
Mhenlo
was within the Abbey's large clerical hall. The one entirely devoid
of light except for the one place where the sun shone through. It had
to be some magical effect, or perhaps some clever mechanical
contraption, because it was much later in the day than when she had
first come here. The cruelty of the Ascalonian monks was legendary.
But Mhenlo had never done worse than be impatient with her. The de
Roblis family and Prince Rurik de Rex had both done worse. “Abbot
Mhenlo,” Lilith said.
“Yes?”
Mhenlo asked. He did not look up from his paperwork.
“Neither
of us were entirely correct about bloodlines,” Lilith said.
“Is
that so?” Mhenlo responded. He still did not look up.
“I
contacted the dark spirit Zachath and asked him how blood worked,”
she said, “there's traits that are strong in the blood but weak in
the world, and vice-versa, and some traits which are strong in both
or weak in both, and...” she trailed off. If Mhenlo wasn't tuning
her out, he should be. “Well, the short version is that there's
more to it than just blood. There's also luck. And that element of
luck means that nobles and burghers are probably from more or less
the same stock, and the ones lucky enough to be born stronger than
people of the same blood when Thorn was around, they became the
nobles. And even if certain families had stronger or weaker blood,
they've been mixing together for so long that it's all averaged out
anyway. Blood does make a difference, but all the noble bloodlines are dead. So is the royal bloodline. All of them. No survivors. Have been for centuries."
"Interesting," Mhenlo said.
"Yes, so...What do you want from me?" Lilith asked, "I'm a noble, I have the education, turns out I have as much blood as there is to have and Rurik and my parents can both go to Hell. Now what?"
"Well that depends," Mhenlo said, looking up from his work, "who do you want to see wearing the crown?"
"Myself," Lilith said.
Mhenlo smiled. "Between Rurik and Adelbern," he said.
"Neither. Or either one," Lilith said, "I really don't care. Both of them seem perfectly happy to keep me property of the de Roblis estate for the rest of my life."
"And what if one of them could be persuaded to promote you to a worthier station?" Mhenlo asked.
"Then I'll support whichever one will make me a duchess," Lilith said, "are you noticing a theme here?"
"I just wanted to make sure your thirst for revenge did not overshadow your ambition. I will not pretend that you haven't been wronged by both sides," Mhenlo said.
"Then let's make one thing clear," Lilith said, "on the off-chance it's Adelbern you're shilling for, he gets me or my parents. Not both."
"It is convenient that I am shilling for Rurik, then," Mhenlo said.
"And Rurik will make me a noble again?" Lilith asked, "legally?"
"Replacing the de Magi family with a more sympathetic scion will be much easier than exterminating them," Mhenlo said, "elevating a slave to nobility is a risky move, but it would be riskier to annihilate an entire bloodline outright."
"Okay," Lilith said, "what's the catch? What's my end of the deal?"
"What makes you think we need something more than a sympathetic de Magi heir?" Mhenlo asked.
"Are you trying to get me on your side or not?" Lilith asked, "don't try and lie to me. Of course you wouldn't go through all the trouble of convincing me I can murder with the best of them if you didn't expect me to go out and do it for you. You told me what you're offering, I like it, you're getting somewhere. So tell me what you want in exchange."
"And Rurik will make me a noble again?" Lilith asked, "legally?"
"Replacing the de Magi family with a more sympathetic scion will be much easier than exterminating them," Mhenlo said, "elevating a slave to nobility is a risky move, but it would be riskier to annihilate an entire bloodline outright."
"Okay," Lilith said, "what's the catch? What's my end of the deal?"
"What makes you think we need something more than a sympathetic de Magi heir?" Mhenlo asked.
"Are you trying to get me on your side or not?" Lilith asked, "don't try and lie to me. Of course you wouldn't go through all the trouble of convincing me I can murder with the best of them if you didn't expect me to go out and do it for you. You told me what you're offering, I like it, you're getting somewhere. So tell me what you want in exchange."
“I didn't intend to deceive you,”
Mhenlo said, “I only wanted to see if you could determine for
yourself that we needed more than just an heir. I'm pleased to see
you were.”
“Oh, so it was all just a test?”
Lilith said, “well, if you say so. Next time you withhold
information for me I'm just going to assume you're trying to stab me
in the back.”
“And do what in retaliation?”
Mhenlo asked.
“Well, stop doing whatever it is you
want me to do, mostly,” Lilith said, “look, I know you can have
me killed basically at-will. But you want my help, and I hope
you're smart enough to realize that you never put people who hate you
on your front line.”
“Indeed
I am,” Mhenlo said, “I find your lack of trust concerning. As it
is, however, we can use every competent soldier we can get, and
you're worth a small handful of guardsmen on your own. The catch,
Lilith, is that we need your assistance now
and it is dangerous work. You are not fully trained. You do not have
time to be. If this is an issue, I'm sure you have a decent enough
life ahead of you as a grave watcher.”
Lilith
glanced aside. Beneath her mask, she bit her lip, then spoke. “I
still don't trust you.”
“I
can hardly blame you,” Mhenlo said, getting up from his desk and
walking towards her, entering the gloom of the Abbey. “I am a
conspirator, after all. There are many things I will not tell you,
because I cannot risk Adelbern's supporters getting them out of you
if you should be captured. You will often be expected to complete
your missions using only the information relevant to doing so, which
in some cases may not even include the ultimate goal of the
operation.” Mhenlo stopped in front of her. Lilith could see him
only because he was silhouetted against the light behind him, his
features obscured. “You have ultimately only one strong reason to
suspect I am being honest, and that is that I would gain little from
deceiving you. Why go through all the trouble to bring you into the
fray only to take you out of it? It's not like you'd end up fighting
for Adelbern if I just left you in the catacombs. And even if there
were some hidden reason why you would,
I could always just have you killed. You're a slave. It wouldn't be
hard.”
“Thanks
for rubbing it in,” Lilith said. “Okay, you're right. There's not
really any way you benefit from tricking a third party to join a war
just to remove me from it immediately afterward. And since the de
Magi estate is going to be emptied anyway,
you would only undermine your trustworthiness among your own
underlings if you didn't follow through. So what exactly
do you want me to do?”
“It
is obvious that Green Hills County will not swing our way,” Mhenlo
said, “even with the duchess de Barradin betrothed to Rurik, the
Duke himself is an ardent supporter of the King.”
“She's
also firstborn, though,” Lilith said, “can't you just have him
killed?”
“No,”
Mhenlo said, “I cannot go into details as to why, but suffice it to
say that killing him is either impractical or unwise.” Lilith
shrugged. Mhenlo continued. “It is no secret that Ascalon City
supports the Prince and Rin the King, so it is likewise no secret
that Regent Valley and Fort Ranik are therefore vital to securing our
flank in the event of open warfare. Lord Darrin is reclusive and has
not declared for Rurik or Adelbern. We'd like to get him on the
Prince's side, if only in secret. Your job will be to feel out his
loyalties.”
“So
what, I walk up and ask him if he's considered insurrection lately?”
Lilith asked. “Unless he happens to be a ghost, I'm not really
trained to persuade him to do anything.”
“Lilith,
we wouldn't send a sixteen-year old as an emissary,” Mhenlo said,
“if we were that
desperate, making any kind of move against the King would clearly be
impossible. Your job is reconnaissance, and you do it by asking
questions of his underlings. Help them with something and they will
come to trust you just enough to spread some gossip. Ask them about
politics. Let them talk. Contribute nothing, no matter how stupid and
internally contradictory their opinions are. If they do not criticize
the opinions of their peers, ask them. When you've asked around
enough, you will know who is rumored to support Rurik, and you can
use them to feel out
the position of Lord Darrin, without ever speaking with someone who
can have your head cut off at-will.”
“Okay,”
Lilith said, “then what?”
“Then
you report back here and tell me what was said and by whom,” Mhenlo
said, “as I said, your only job is reconnaissance.”
“Okay,
one problem,” Lilith said, “specifically, this is going to take
like a week and it's all going to happen in Regent Valley, which is
past the edge of the catacombs, which is where I live and work.”
“Do
you intend to continue living and working there?” Mhenlo said.
“Munne
spends as much time teaching me as I save her doing actual grave
watcher work,” Lilith said, “and that's being generous. I haven't
even begun to repay her for all the time she spent teaching me when I
hardly knew enough to help with anything, plus, the catacombs are
calmer than they've been in decades.”
“That
sounds like the perfect time to leave them understaffed,” Mhenlo
said.
“Yeah,
except that the grave watchers are supposed to be honoring the dead,
not fighting them,” Lilith said, “there's hundreds of
thousands of ghosts down there,
and half of them are part of the maelstrom. They never feel anything
anymore except anger and spite and bitterness and they deserve
better. Now could be the last chance we get for another hundred years
to actually calm that maelstrom. Permanently.”
“Unfortunate,”
Mhenlo said, “because now is also the last chance we will ever
have to get Ascalon in the hands of someone who will run it someplace
other than the ground. Adelbern only ever plans one season ahead and
his repeated catastrophic failures are catching up to us.”
“So
what am I supposed to do?” Lilith asked.
“Choose,”
Mhenlo said, “between the living and the dead.”
“Ascalon
won't last another year? Won't last two?” Lilith asked, “I've
walked into the endgame of this thing with the catacombs. We don't
know what Oberan's up to, but it's our window of opportunity and
we're taking it. It won't take long to resolve one way or another.”
“And
our window of opportunity is likely to be only days long,” Mhenlo
said, "quite possibly less. If we are not prepared to act immediately when it comes, we will fail. It could happen tomorrow. It could be too late already. If you aren't with us when we need you, you aren't with us."
Lilith
sighed. “I'm sick of people asking me to choose,” she said.
“That's
your problem,” Mhenlo said, “whatever your choice is, hurry up
and make up. One way or another I'll need to deal with the
consequences.”
“How
long will it take?” Lilith asked.
“The
mission to Regent Valley?” Mhenlo asked, “a day to get there, two
or three to get a general read on how the county in general and Lord
Darrin in particular feel about the King, and a day back. If we
wanted longterm infiltration, we'd be sending a mesmer. Call it a
week, to be safe.”
“Munne
will be back from her trip to Verata in Wizard's Folly in four days,”
Lilith said, “if I hurry I can get done what you need done and be
back here before Munne returns.”
“It's
no good if you do a slapdash job,” Mhenlo said, “we need
information we can rely on.”
“I'll
get it to you,” Lilith said, “I just need to find a way to keep
the ghosts in the catacombs tended to while I'm gone.” She'd been
left in charge of maintaining the peace in the Sect War Corridor and
the foothold they'd carved in the Black Corridor in addition to her
usual duties in the Labyrinth and the Temple Corridor. It was
reasonably possible to quickly train up some peasant to perform the
basic rites while she was gone, but not overnight. And really,
overnight wasn't fast enough. She needed a replacement now.
Worse, the trickiest duties were also the ones that were most vital.
Losing the Sect War Corridor or the Black Corridor would quite
possibly mean that the opportunity that Munne and the other grave
watchers planned on pouncing upon would evaporate. “Where's
Paulus?” Lilith asked.
“Paulus?
In hiding. I won't even confirm that I know exactly where he is. I
won't even confirm that I knew he was also a member of the conspiracy
at all, or that he is
a member of the conspiracy,” Mhenlo said.
“He
can tend the spirits while I'm gone,” Lilith said, “or at least,
most of them. The ones in the Sect War Corridor are mostly in plague
water that he isn't immune to, but they actually like me rather a lot
and I think I can leverage that to get them to hold down the fort on
their own while I'm gone. He knows the catacombs and he can read,
which means I can leave written instructions for him and he should be
good.”
“Leave
those instructions with me,” Mhenlo said, “I will see that he
gets them. But do not
rush your work in Regent Valley. Take as long as is required, and not
a moment shorter. And if you breathe a word of any of this to Munne
by way of explanation, I shall have little choice but to arrange an
accident for her. And see your head cut off.”
“No
point in leaving loose ends,” Lilith said, “I get it. If it takes
me longer, I'll think of some explanation. Or I just won't explain,
and hope Munne sees too much promise in me to kill me out of spite.
Or I just won't go back to the catacombs at all. Or something,
I'll figure that out when I have to, if I have to.”
“Fine,”
Mhenlo said, heading for the door, “write your instructions for
Paulus and be off immediately. I shall fetch a horse for you, try to
bring it back alive this time.” Lilith helped herself to some blank
parchment and the quill.