Death After Death 175-176

Ch. 175 - A Feast for Paupers 

As the day drew closer, Simon did all of the rites that had been mentioned for the fictitious Silent Saint, no matter how trivial. These were carried out as faithfully as the text allowed, even though he wasn’t sure that anyone was actually watching him. He took a vow of silence for the winter, dressed in harsh sackcloth robes, and fasted for the week leading up to the feast, abstaining from everything besides water and, strangely enough, beer. 

In times such as these, it was apparently all the monks were allowed to drink. He supposed it made sense from a caloric perspective, but even so, it felt strange to be drinking that much after going so long without any alcohol. 

He even prayed to a Goddess that he didn’t believe in every morning, just to cover all of his bases, though he wasn’t sure that was strictly necessary. The few friends and acquaintances he’d made during his time in the city drifted away during all of this, but they weren’t important in the grand scheme of things. Not compared to the Unspoken and their secrets. The only thing that might have been enough to shake him free of this goal now that he’d set it would be a lead on his evil twin, and that didn’t seem likely. 

So, after all of those preparations were made, on the night of the new moon that occurred just after the start of spring, he made the long, cold walk to the Temple of Hypaltia. This was a holy day for the saint because it was the hungriest time of the year. Everyone had survived the winter, and the planting of fields had started, but the fruits of the harvest were still a long way off. 

The symbolism was interesting. Simon didn’t know exactly how it was supposed to translate to fighting the evils of witchcraft exactly, but he pondered it as he walked down the empty dawn streets toward his destination. 

Unlike some of the grander temples in the city of Darndelle, it was a small building that was barely more than a shrine with four walls and a roof. It was made of local sandstone instead of imported marble. 

Unlike everyone else, that, at least, made sense to him. Winter wasn’t nearly as sexy a concept to sell to prospective worshipers as war, prophecy, or disease. Famine and harvest weren’t even ascribed to this Goddess either, so there was no mortal dread to convince people to worship her beyond the endless cold of her season. As a result, the Gods and Goddesses of those things all had much cooler temples and shrines. 

When he arrived, he found the place empty, except for a few flickering candles on the altar. That didn’t discourage him. If this was a wild goose chase, there would be nobody here this time of day. On the other hand, if this was a test, and he really had been following a trail hidden across dozens of books and a handful of libraries, well… He hadn’t seen anyone else studying feverishly next to him in the library, so he doubted very much that there would be two people attending the Feast of Paupers. 

Simon knelt on the cold stone and prayed. Well, he mouthed the words to the prayers he’d memorized about the cleansing nature of winter and how it would sweep away pestilence and strengthen the hearts of men and all that, but there was no belief behind those words. He had to repeat them several times until the candles had burned out and the thin light of dawn was creeping through the door. That was when someone finally came for him. 

A white cloak came behind Simon, and after a tap on the shoulder, he helped Simon to his feet. Then, without a word, he escorted Simon to the back wall and revealed a secret door that led to a dark hallway. He’d been expecting, or at least hoping for, something like this, but still, the theatrical nature of the thing left him a little awed. It was like he’d been playing an open-world video game up until now, and he’d accidentally stumbled onto a real quest line. 

The hall led to a smaller room, and it took Simon’s eyes a minute to adjust to the gloom, but as he did so, he saw what he’d been hoping to see: a meager table set in the center of the room. It had twelve places set with dishes. At the head of the table, the place was set with fine china and a chalice. Things deteriorated rather quickly as his gaze drifted down the table, though. 

The seats closest to the head still had ceramic plates and glasses, and the ones further down had wooden bowls or mugs and mismatched utensils. It was only the seats farthest from that point, at the foot of the table, that were entirely empty. 

Besides the two of them, the room was empty. No one was seated at any of them. The white robbed figure said nothing either. He merely gestured for Simon to take a seat. 

Simon had expected this part. In the last few weeks, he’d reread all the parables he’d found and knew what it was he should do here, so without any deliberation, he walked over and sat in the rickety chair at the foot of the table. 

The virtues ascribed to the saint in the stories he’d read were quite clear. Silence was right at the top, Which meant that you had to display your virtue rather than speak it, but there was a whole laundry list of others, and right near the top was humility and poverty. So, he sat there, and he waited. 

He had a few ideas about what would happen next, but first, he had to endure another test of patience as they left him alone in the dark for some time. Later, other guests started to file in. All of them wore white cloaks and sat at the far end of the table. They ignored him, and though he pretended to do likewise, he studied them intently. There was nothing to be learned, though. Beyond the fact that he thought they might be talking together in several different languages, they were mostly discussing the feast and the coming year. The torment only truly became difficult when the food started to arrive. 

Simon hadn’t eaten in over a week now, and his stomach growled audibly as the first course came in and was served to the already initiated on the far side of the table. Twenty feet wasn’t enough to spare him from the smells of grilled meat and roasted vegetables, and his hunger was magnified five-fold before they even put a plate down in front of Simon. 

That was a cruel move. The feast had started extravagantly at the head of the table, and as it moved down, each man had been given smaller and less appetizing portions, though they ate them just the same. For Simon, though, they had heaped the delicacies high. Looking down, he could see he had his choice of roast pheasant, braised ribs, warm bread, hot buttered potatoes, and half a dozen other sides. 

It was a true feast, but he couldn’t have any of it, and he marveled at the cruelty of the thing. It was as tormented as he’d ever felt in a situation in the Pit where pain wasn’t involved. His stomach protested his restraint loudly as he sat there with his head bowed and his hands folded in prayer.  

Simon was forced to endure that scene for the best part of an hour. It was only when everyone else had cleaned their plates, and the food on Simon’s plate had long since grown cold, that the other guests left, taking their oil lamps with them and leaving him in the dark. He was there for just long enough to wonder if he’d fucked something up before the hooded man re-entered and, with a gesture for Simon to follow him, led him down a different hallway. 

This one led to an even smaller room. There was no food here, just a roaring fireplace and two chairs set in front of it. 

The white-robed man took off his hood then and sat down in the far chair. “You’ve done well to follow our clues, Ennis,” the man said in the same voice that Simon had thought of as the boss in their encounter the year before. He wasn’t quite as old as Simon imagined him. He had close-cropped black hair with only a sprinkling of gray to go with his piercing green eyes. “I thought you would make it this far, though, So that’s no surprise. Did you enjoy your feast?”

Simon sat there quietly, then, after a moment, decided to nod once. This was likely some other strange test, and it would be a shame to blow it at the finish line like this. 

That response made the other man laugh a little. Then he said, “That’s fair enough. Silence is the one trait that all members of the unspoken must have, though in your case, it will have to be rather more strictly enforced.”

Simon looked at him with a raised eyebrow, but the white cloak was already speaking again. “Let me explain,” he continued. “You already know that we are witch hunters and that we keep the evils of magic from corrupting society in all the lands we hold sway. That’s why you want to join us, yes?”

Simon nodded again. That much wouldn’t hurt. At this stage, he expected that if he rejected their offer, death would come swiftly. 

“Well, all of that is true, but that’s only the most surface level. Up until now, you have only discovered the brothers who do the fighting and dying. You might have even discovered a sister or two. There are other roles, though,” the man nodded. “You lack the gift of the gods to be a proper brother, and you’re completely unfit to be a whisperer, but I knew from the moment we figured out you weren’t a warlock waiting to happen that you would make for a perfect archivist.”

The man went on to explain what that role was exactly, and with each revelation, he found it harder and harder not to salivate. The brothers killed the witches and warlocks, but they rarely destroyed the trappings of either on their own. Instead, they brought those things back to be understood and disposed of. Sometimes, that meant rewriting fake histories to replace real ones, but more often, that meant unraveling the mysteries of relics and grimoires so that the Unspoken would be better prepared for such tricks. 

“We cannot entrust these secrets with any who might actually use them, though, you understand?” he repeated. “Every brother in our order might use the words of power if he sought to damn his immortal soul. So it falls to people like you to organize and safeguard knowledge that will forever be beyond you.”

Simon nodded again, sweating now from the heat of the small room. He wasn’t nervous, though; he was certain that this was the right path. He didn’t even need to follow it for years if he didn’t want to. Just a few days or weeks in such a forbidden library, and he might be able to answer dozens of questions that had been a mystery to him up until now. He was more than eager to start down this road, even if he had to keep up this silly vow of silence until it was time to turn back toward Ionia. 

“Do you understand, then?” the green-eyed man asked, reaching over and picking up a hot iron from where it had been resting among the coals before practically holding the burning red metal in Simon’s face. “You are a bright young man and good with words, but from each of us, a sacrifice is called for, and in your case… well, you can’t do the job we require if you are capable of whispering those secrets to another soul, can you? If you want this, there’s only one way forward.”

Simon nodded, slowly understanding. This is going to fuck up my run, he thought to himself as he considered the man’s words. They didn’t just want a vow of silence. They wanted something more irrevocable than that. That made sense. Whoever they entrusted this knowledge to would be incredibly dangerous if they could actually use it themselves. 

Still, it’s worth it, though, right? He argued with himself. If I do this, I get a look inside - I could find out all kinds of insane things, even if I can’t use them until my next life. I can see Elthena then…

It was a terrible decision, but once he’d made it, there was no going back, and he bit his tongue off.

Ch. 176 - Broken Tower

It hurt like hell, but that didn’t stop Simon from doing it. Even the idea that he’d be cutting himself off from his most powerful abilities for the rest of this run wasn’t enough to change his mind, as his mouth filled with blood. 

The white cloak that sat across from him was nonplussed when Simon spit out the piece of ragged meat that had once been his tongue. He just smiled and then shoved a leather-wrapped stick as far back between Simon’s teeth as he could to hold his mouth open before cauterizing the wound. 

It was a painful experience, and Simon groaned, but even as terrible as the pain was, it wasn’t nearly as bad as some of the deaths he’d had up to this point. So, he endured it with as much dignity as he could muster. Even when he smelled his own burning flesh, he didn’t scream or try to turn away. 

“Excellent,” the man said, “I knew you were sterner stuff. If the infection doesn’t claim you, we’ll have someone take you to the Broken Tower, where I think you’ll find answers to questions you didn’t even know you had. The truth of the world awaits you, son.”

Simon nodded, but even as the pain assaulted him, all he wanted to do was lie down. It had been a rough day on top of an exhausting week. 

Yeah, I’m sure I’ll be asking lots of questions from now on, Simon thought as another white robbed brother was called. 

The younger man took Simon away and brought him to a smaller room somewhere deeper in the maze of claustrophobic hallways. When they reached their destination, it was a small, windowless room with a straw palette and a keg of sour beer. 

“This is for the pain,” the man explained. “That, and it will be a week at least before you can handle solid food again.”

Simon nodded, both in understanding and gratitude, but didn’t get drunk. That could wait until later. For now, the shock was holding the worst of the pain at bay, and his body was crying out desperately for sleep, so that’s what he gave it. 

The days that followed that awful experience passed by in a blur. The fact that in all that time Simon never saw the sun, just made it all that much more confusing, but he endured. I’ve been in worse situations before, he told himself. It was true. He’d been much worse off than this. At least here, he could drink away the pain, and people checked on him somewhat regularly. Still, it was at least a week before he was eating soup and, eventually, real food. 

When he was alone, he tried forming words sometimes to see just how badly he’d mutilated himself, but after a few attempts, it became clear that though he might be able to make himself understood to a determined listener, he’d never again speak the words of power. 

That’s okay, though, he told himself. This will be worth the tradeoff. 

Whether that optimism would be rewarded or not, though, was an open question. After the first week, boredom became a bigger problem for him than pain. Despite that, It was almost two weeks before Simon saw the outside world again. Even that time consisted of short errands to put the rest of his affairs in order so there would be no loose ends. His minder watched closely as he sent off letters to those who mattered, informing them that he was returning to his liege’s lands without the hoped-for breakthrough. Then, he burned most of his papers without any apparent concern. It was easy for him to do that, though, when he’d already scanned everything that mattered into the mirror. 

It was only when all of that was done, and another group needed to go to the Broken Tower four weeks later, that he was allowed to depart. They sent him off with several other riders to the north-east. The ride there was short, but it didn’t go exactly as Simon expected. He thought they were riding toward some hidden valley in the distant mountains to the north-east. They were the main geological feature of the area and marked the boundary between the Kingdom of Montain, where he was now, and the mysterious Kingdom of Chiara, which he never quite got around to exploring. 

They never reached there, though. Instead, they stopped at the ruins of an old castle in the foothills. A small village clung to the ancient, falling down place like barnacles, but otherwise, it was unremarkable; it didn’t even have a tower left standing. Then, they dismounted before walking their mounts through the half-fallen-down gate. 

It didn’t seem very impressive to Simon, and he thought that this might be another test of sorts. That opinion only held until he was escorted inside one of the buildings and found a hive of activity. To anyone passing by, the place appeared to be utterly unimportant, and now he could see how calculated that was. 

Simon was introduced to the Abbott, who handled the day-to-day operations, as “Ennis, an archivist in training, with great potential.” 

“We’ll see about that,” the senior man said sourly. “I recall you promising that about the last one you sent me, but he can only read three languages!”

Simon obviously had no chance to defend himself in the conversation that followed, but he cared little about what this man thought of him, and the longer he was in this place, the less he cared. He hadn’t thought much of the common hall where the brothers and sisters had their meals. Likewise, the politics of the place, as they explained who was beneath the Grandmaster and how Simon should address them, mattered little to him. Not when there were other wonders to see. 

There was apparently a convent where they trained whisperers further on, along with vaults for the more dangerous and less well-understood artifacts they’d found over the years. None of that mattered, though, compared to the library. Once he was shown that, he had very little interest in anything else. The place wasn’t beautiful or even frightening, but with row upon row of books and scrolls on shelves labeled things like demon summoning, secret histories, and spell books, he was instantly in love. 

Unfortunately, his heart was broken not long after that when the head librarian explained his new duties to him. Those words took longer than he would have expected because the white-haired man couldn’t speak any more than Simon could, so the conversation was in writing. Still, it was clear almost from the beginning that he wouldn’t get to peruse the shelves at random. 

‘Your task is to take one of the books that are brought here, review it, and decide which section it belongs in,’ the old man explained, one sentence at a time. ‘The minder of that section will then review the book and decide whether it can be revised and released, and if not, whether it should be stored or destroyed.’

Simon nodded, but it was hard not to be disappointed; the older man somehow detected that immediately, and rather than getting angry about it, he sympathized. ‘I get it,’ he continued unexpectedly. ‘Thirty-four years ago, I stood where you stand now. In time, if you do a good job, you’ll be promoted to a section minder, and perhaps one day, if you serve the Unspoken well, you will have my job. None of us were ever meant to know all of these secrets, but I’ve learned more here than I ever would have out there.’

Simon was somewhat mollified by that display of concern. Unfortunately, he didn’t get to read anything that day. Eventually, he was shown to dinner and his new room. On the following day, though, he was finally allowed to see what it was he’d done all of this for. 

On the shelf, labeled Unknown, were more than two dozen books, and every one of them was a chance to learn something he didn’t know before. There was one other man working on this task. 

That’s probably the one that the Abbott complained about, Simon thought, evaluating the man before walking over to introduce himself with a brief written note. The other man was a little older and a little balder than Simon, but he seemed to have little interest in being sociable. Instead, he waved him off as he continued to peruse the scroll that was open before him.

Simon didn’t fault him for that. He’d much rather read as well. So, he picked up the first book on the stack and got to work. That was the point where hours blurred into days, and days blurred into weeks fairly quickly as Simon lost himself in the forbidden knowledge that was on offer here.  

The first book was largely a bust. It was a heretical treatise of medicine that had some correct ideas about nutrition and disease but no witchcraft or words of power. He rated it as Naturalism, which was the closest category they had on the subject, and then moved on. 

The next book offered him no forbidden secrets either, though it was an unredacted copy of a chronicle he’d read before. This one, though, rather than attributing the victory to “A miracle brought about by holy champions on wings of light,” told the story about a warlock who had animated the corpses of an entire graveyard with “a baleful sign carved into the earth,” and used his impromptu army to turn the tide against the rampaging beast men that would have otherwise sacked the city. 

Even though Simon had to remove those pages and add in false ones afterward, taking up days of precious time that he could have spent reading, he still found the account insightful. The chronicle didn’t mention what words the mage had used, and Simon didn’t think he had everything he’d need to do the same feat, but the execution was interesting and made him think about what he’d done to heal Freya’s dying body a few lifetimes back. 

In time, these things became almost mundane. The books here might make for more interesting reading than the ones he browsed at random in Darndelle, but at the end of the day, he was still just going through the motions. By day, he would read, then join the others for a communal meal. After that, he would sleep until he did it all again. It got to be a deadly dull routine. 

I don’t have to make money here, at least, he told himself. But I can’t use my mirror anymore, either. 

It wasn’t something he bargained on when he’d made this decision, but he wasn’t here long before he’d figured it out. As soon as he saw an interesting map, he wanted to make sure he didn’t forget before he incorporated it into his main map; he realized that, for now, that ability was lost to him. 

No time for second thoughts now, he told himself. 

Eventually, he started sparring with the Brothers in the side courtyard just to have something to do. That was apparently something that wasn’t done often, but there were no rules against it. For the first months, they wiped the floor with him, further demonstrating how soft and out of shape he’d grown as he spent all of his time in Libraries. 

Truthfully, Simon was starting to have second thoughts. The books that he was going through were not what he’d hoped to find. They were heretical, not diabolic. At least, that was the case until he hit pay dirt on his eighth volume, halfway through his second month in the Broken Tower. Unlike all the other heretical tomes he’d read so far, it was an actual spell book. 

He didn’t realize it at first, though. Not until he figured out that the letters were written in a sort of code that wasn’t much more complicated than pig Latin. After that, it all fell into place fairly quickly. This tome had apparently been sitting on the shelf for quite some time, and the Librarian tasked Simon with cracking it specifically because no one else had. 

The fact that he did so in less than forty-eight hours would have been a cause worth celebrating, too, but Simon didn’t want to tip his hand too quickly. Not when there was so much here to learn.