Specula Scatinavia, Bass Rock, pathetic little square block of stone in the middle of the bloody sea.
The Kingdom of Lothian, Alba, beyond the walls of civilization.
September 2, 535, four hours away from a decent amount of sleep.
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Somebody was shaking me awake. I was face-down on my desk, my head buried in a stack of scrolls and parchments, a quill clutched tightly in my left hand. I sat up, still half asleep, and knocked a pot of ink into my lap, which brought me the rest of the way awake.
"Time to wake, Mr. Wizard," said my valet, Fox, reaching up to slap me on the shoulders. Fox was a dark-haired, dark-eyed halfling, the top of his head barely coming up to my waist. Although he slight and smooth-cheeked and overall looked as though he still had most of his baby teeth, he had looked exactly that young since the first day we met, some fifteen years ago. I never asked, but I suspected that he was at least twice my age. "The sun has just gone down, and soon the stars will come."
I made a noise that couldn't easily be spelled, coming from deep in the bottom of the lungs and bringing a pipeful of mucus with it. I blinked the sleep from my eyes, looking out my bedchamber window to the ink-black sky.
"You know it's funny," I said, pausing to suck on my cheeks and get some saliva flowing. "I took this job because I'm not a morning person. Turns out mornings are relative. Anything on the itinerary for tonight?"
"Nothing of significance," said Fox, taking a sheaf of notes from his waistcoat pocket. "Neptune is in Aquarius, but that won't be directly visible."
"And the astrological community is really dragging their heels on that one," I said. "Somebody discovers more planets and they get pissy about having to adjust all their theories."
"Theoretical planets aside, it should be a routine night, Mr. Wizard," Fox said. "You may even get back to sleep before the sun rises."
"Would be a nice change," I said, adjusting my hat. I looked down, noticing I had fallen asleep on my journal. On this very journal, the one I'm writing now. With my mind. I had been toying with the dictation enchantments, attempting to get it to work from my thoughts instead of my voice. Flipping back on previous entries, I was that it was effective enough to even record my dreams. Not bad at all. And to think that the app store called me mad.
I'll have to find some way to filter out recurring dreams. I relive that night enough already.
Then my eyes slid further down, toward my trousers, where a dark black cloud was spreading through the fabric.
"Ahh… dammit… it looks like a squid wet itself," I said, attempting to dab at my crotch with an inkblotter. "Damn, this isn't working. Fox, do you know how to un-ink my pants?"
"White vinegar and surgical spirits, sir," said Fox, reaching up to set a towel and a washbasin on my dressing-table. I stood up and stretched, the audible cracking from my vertebrae reminding me why people invented beds. "Leave them by the wash-basin; I'll take them down to the watercourse. Unless you're able to snap your fingers and magic the stain away."
"Wizards are good, but we're not that good," I said, still dabbing in vain at what had once been my nicest pair of breeches. I just had to fall asleep wearing khaki, didn't I? "I'd need to be a fifth-level haberdashamancer to even work on mustard stains. Ink is just beyond the ken of sorcery. It's the work of the gods, my friend."
"Well, I've got breakfast going, Mr. Wizard," fox said, trotting down the stairs. "Come down whenever you're ready."
I smiled to myself and got changed. I didn't really bother with trying to select an outfit, I just grabbed whatever shirt and trousers and waistcoat were on the top of the clean pile and covered it all with a voluminous blue greatcoat that weighed as much as I do. I was on a tiny island in the middle of the North Sea in fall at night, anything that wasn't inch-thick wool was an over-tailored undergarment. I straightened my well-worn, standard issue pointy wizard hat and looked my reflection square in the face. Such as it was.
I had never given much thought to my appearance, before the final battle with Pteratos, before… before Witney died. As the days went, I found it harder and harder to keep it from my mind. Wasn't all that much, mind, just your average face. Skin (dark). Hair (unmanageable). Eyes (two). Beard that never got past the fungal stage. Reasonable collection of teeth. It was kind of a miracle I ever attracted any attention at all. But then I was just bad enough at magic to be pathetically lovable, so that evened things out somewhat. But regardless of any perceived deficiencies, it was still my face, and it was… well, it was my face. That's the least I could say about it. I couldn't even say that now.
Ever since the accident, my face – every inch of my skin – was covered with a living film of darkness. They called it the Shroud. It wasn't even proper to say it was smoke or fog, for it had no real substance to it, only color and shape. I couldn't feel it, my vision wasn't obstructed by it, but it was there. Staring back at me every time I looked in the mirror and saw this hole where I used to be. I couldn't stand to look at myself.
Instead, I went down to the kitchen and had breakfast. No man who has never had a full Halfling breakfast can ever say they truly lived. The average Halfling breakfast has more courses to it than most humans eat all day. I have no idea where they all put it. I've seen hummingbirds that didn't consume as much mass relative to their body weight as Fox. I don't know where the mage's council found him or why they thought a tiny observation post like this needed a full-time valet or how on earth he managed to pay for all of this, but by the gods I was not going to question it. On most days I would tuck in with abandon and instantly forget all the temporal worries of the day, but something was subduing my appetite.
"Profound timing, Mr. Wizard," said Fox, carrying the last platter of fried meat and turnips to the table. I sat down in my usual seat and Fox put a hot mug of mead into my hand. I stared out at the delicious, six-course heart attack before me and had no desire to eat it. "…something troubling you?"
"What makes you say that?"
"It's all over your face."
I stared at him for several seconds. His face never broke.
"I dreamed about Witney last night," I said. "About when she died."
"Oh dear," said Fox, pulling himself up to sit in the chair beside me. "I had so hoped that your nightmares had stopped troubling you. Do you have any idea why they might have returned?"
"I don't know, Fox," I said. "Dream interpretation was always beyond my talents. But it's not even that it's come back, it's… stronger this time." I took a long sip and held it for a while before swallowing, letting the stinging warmth circulate in my mouth. "Tell me, Fox, do you ever remember your dreams?"
"Sometimes," said Fox. "I had a dream last night of a giant bronze duck that talked to me in my mother's voice."
"Really?" I said. "Wow, that is messed up. What did she say to you?"
"Well I… I don't remember, sir," Fox said. "You know how dreams are. You wake up, utterly convinced that your mother was a giant duck statue but you've all but forgotten it by lunchtime."
"That's the way with most dreams," I said. "I can remember everything that happened in that dream as if it had happened not three minutes ago. There were details in that dream I didn't remember before I started having the dreams again. I could read the seal on a jug of wine I hadn't thought about in over a decade. Every day I've woken up and it…"
I took a long drink.
"It's like picking at a long-healed wound."
"Perhaps there's some underlying meaning to this dream that you simply don't realize," said Fox, refilling my tankard. "Dreams and prophecy walk along the same path."
"Well…"
"You cannot tell me that a Wizard such as yourself has no faith in prophetic dreams," said Fox.
"…no, but dreams and prophecy enter the mind from separate gates," I said.
"Your people have your version, my people have mine," Fox said, gesturing with half a sausage. "And one other thing my people say is that the gods never send insignificant portents. If this is a sign of something to come, it surely means that the life you know will soon be no more."
"I hardly think my life has much room for change," I said, aimlessly pushing my food about my plate. "Certainly nothing related to Witney."
"There's another Halfling saying–"
"How many sayings do you have?"
"We're a very talkative people," Fox said. "Another thing we like to say is that even the smallest change can change the world in turn. I have a story about one of my ancestors who went on a quest to–"
"Oh not the ring story again," I said. "Do you know how many times you've told that one?"
"It's a very significant story," said Fox. "I've studied it since I was small."
"You're still-"
"You know what I mean," said Fox. "It's… like your stories of Odysseus, or Gilgamesh. You read this story and you understand what it is to be a Halfling. You see what our people are like and why we live the way we do, and how we see the world and all the other peoples in it. This story isn't just a part of Halfling culture, it IS Halfling culture. You can't find anything that isn't in some way drawn from the legend of the ring."
"Yes, but stories like Gilgamesh and the Odyssey are thousands of years old," I said. "Your story is even older, I don't think there are any human tales that old. The world's not the same as it was then. My people had thousands of petty kingdoms all fighting over some princess and human sacrifice to fit the whim of some invisible thunder-god, and your people used to live in holes in the ground."
"We still live in holes in the ground," said Fox. "They're very nice holes, with indoor plumbing, and they are ruddy warm. And you can't look outside your window and say that time has changed your nations any."
"…okay, yeah, that was a poor example," I said. "But at least we're both doing better, even incrementally, even a single step in the right direction. They didn't have proper wizardry in the Trojan War. If Pteratos had got out back then the world would be doomed, Achilles and his stupid wooden horse couldn't do bloody skyte against Pteratos. Instead, people took the time, studied magic, learned how to use it, and then I helped save the whole bloody world with it."
"That's right you did, Mr. Wizard," said Fox, patting me on the shoulder. "You were a true hero you were, you, and Witney and all your friends. Just like in the stories."
I sighed.
"Neither one is going to make any headway with the other?" I asked.
"That's the way I see it," said Fox.
"Alright, let's call it off," I said, picking up my fork. "We've got work to do, and time is a factor. Let's just hurry and finish breakfast."
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Two hours later I was climbing the spiral staircase to the top of the tower. According to some of the local tour guides, the building we called home had once been an old Roman lighthouse called Specula Scatinavia, or the Norse Watch. It had been built somewhere on the order of four hundred years ago and showed very little signs of aging. It was constructed of stone, unpainted, but it had a look of something classical and timeless, something that would look every bit as it does now after the passing of a thousand years. Its proportions were perfect, with a base of a perfect thirty-foot cube and a five-story tower that stood up completely straight and square, leaning neither to one way or the other. In many ways, it was beautiful, even majestic.
In many other ways, it was a big, gray, square stone box with no room for anything inside of it but some big, gray, square stone rooms and a big, gray, square stone staircase with one hundred and sixty five big, gray, square stone steps that I had to climb up to the very top of to get to the big, gray, square stone astroscopia every single big, gray, square stone day. I would kill for some wallpaper. Seriously, I have made some very well-thought out plans and need only the right offer.
I pushed open the trap door and stepped forth into the orange morning sunlight. The tower was in the middle of what the locals call the Firth of Forth, the vast gulf of water that separated the kingdoms of Fife and Lothian. The coastline was a mile away, on the southern island, the only real transport off a boat that came once a week to sell dried meats and vegetables. I hadn't been to the mainland in months, if not years, not since the last time I made a group of children scream and throw feces at me.
The tower was built on an island that, much like the tower, was massive, made of stone, and very much a square. It was almost totally barren, a tremendous lump of rock with high, sheer cliff faces on three sides, and only a tiny slip of land that people could even live on. It was simply enormous, utterly staggering to look at. It was as though some god had cut out a rectangular slice out of a mountain range like he was carving a birthday cake and plopped it down in the middle of the water.
I read that the Romans never really extended far into Alba, but at the height of their conquest they controlled everything south of this point. Or at the very least the people who lived there tolerated their presence enough to not kill them. The Romans even built a wall at the northernmost expanse of their territory that stretched from coastline to coastline, cutting the country neatly in half. The natives drove them back after only twenty years, besting the strongest empire in history with nothing but blue paint, strong alcohol and a penchant for waving their genitalia at their foes. They tried to take it back a few times, but could never hold it. In many ways, it was the first blow against the Empire. The first barbarians to push back their legions since Augustus. And then the Orks appeared…
I'm getting away from myself.
Standing in a place like this with nothing but the stars and the sky and the sea… it made me aware of how little this place had changed over the centuries. Sometimes I felt as though I could close my eyes and step back into the days of Hadrian.
Some days, the big, gray, stone square is worth it.
Work continued as expected. The moon failed to explode. Hellfire refused to rain down upon civilization from the night sky. Orion, the mighty hunter, refused to give up his futile quest across the sky for the mighty scorpion and embrace his doomed love for Cassiopeia. The sky was the sky.
Fox was a regular guest to the astroscopia, bringing me tankards of hot mead and mulled wine to keep my spirits up and ward off the chills of the Lothain night. Still, despite his best efforts I did need a roaring brazier and several blankets to ward off the creeping fingers of night, as I lay back on my soft, padded couch, staring up at the infinite sky. It was to my complete surprise that I only shut my eyes for the barest second and the opened them to find the sun protruding over the horizon as offensively as a maths class erection that also shot beams of fire directly into my eyes. No idea at all how that happened.
Of course, over the course of my time here I had been able to weave certain enchantments into the tower that observed and recorded all of the events of the night sky, much like how I record my thoughts in this journal. All I needed to do really was edit them… again, like I'm doing to this journal. I certainly didn't think of that erection line first thing in the morning. I was inspired, though.
Anyway. The effect of all this was to turn my job into little more than a custodial position for my own spells. They observed the night, they recorded the data, I edited the documentation into something a human being could actually read, I got paid every week for the labors of a jury-rigged Minerva Engine. The council of mages, or the slapdash collection of venerable mages left over after Pteratos was done with them, wrote me a beautiful letter about how my innovations had completely revolutionized the field of experimental astrology but said I need to still physically be up here every night while the spells were processing in case something went wrong. With the sky.
I protested, of course, but they insisted, and they backed up their position by informing me of the current employment prospects for a former child savior.
I sighed to myself, like I do every morning when I re-live that conversation in my head, and went back down to the living quarters for a change of clothes and a liquid breakfast.531Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡJGMypPTDQK
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