Compendium Read online

  “I also feel most at home in the forest,” Taryn said. She patted Mia’s elbow again. “You’ll adjust to this place eventually. We all do.”

  “Everyone says that,” she muttered, and told Taryn about Brother SainClair discovering her in the lower corridors. “The whole business was very weird. He was acting completely paranoid.”

  Taryn’s eyes narrowed slightly. “What could have made him think you’re a spy? I mean, are you?”

  “No!” She uttered her response with unnecessary and probably damning force.

  Taryn cleared her throat and gave Mia a pointed look before returning her gaze straight ahead. “We all have our reasons for being here. Some different from others.”

  “Everyone knows I didn’t come here for the love of it. I only serve the Order so that my father can receive medical treatment.”

  Taryn acknowledged her statement with a nod but didn’t speak.

  “So Brother SainClair believes I must be spying for some other group.” She lowered her voice. “Who would even bother spying on the Order? It’s an out-of-touch, dusty, old fortress.”

  “I suppose he could think you’re a Druid.”

  “A Druid?” Mia mulled that over. “Aren’t Druids some sort of fairy story?”

  Taryn laughed, producing a light tinkling sound, and slipped her arm into Mia’s, hooking it so they were elbow to elbow. Her grasp was surprisingly strong and equally unyielding, and its proximity suddenly felt a little intimidating. Mia fought the urge to wriggle free.

  “Mia, you’re so wonderfully silly.”

  Mia hardly thought so, but there was no point in trying to contradict the statement. It was just a fact that people in Willowslip assumed she was a total bumpkin. And she supposed she was about some things.

  “So what did he do after he caught you?”

  “I thought he was going to kill me, but he hauled me off to the brig for the night. It was filthy and horribly uncomfortable. This morning he marched me up to Dominus Nikola to plead his case.”

  “Well, the Dominus must’ve believed you,” Taryn said, tilting her head. “Else you’d be in the dungeon now.”

  “Apparently I’m not the only one who thinks Brother SainClair is prone to paranoid flights of fancy. Although I suspect it would have been a close call if Brother Cornelius hadn’t vouched for me.”

  “I knew I liked Brother Cornelius,” Taryn said with a bright smile, and steered Mia down a corridor that she would have missed otherwise.

  “I like him too,” she said. “Quite a lot actually.” She was surprised to hear herself say it and even more so to know it was true.

  Mia was more than a little embarrassed by the state of her appearance in the looking glass and was glad Taryn had found her in the hallway and not Cedar. She never put too much stock in formalities, but she looked a fright, even by her standards. After bathing and combing out her hair, she put on a fresh set of smallclothes and her only spare robes. She would have to go sashless until she made it to the laundry. Perhaps a maintenance detail in the brig every once in a while would be a good idea. She donned her lapin bag and stuffed Compendium inside. She plaited her fiery hair into a long braid down her back. Strands here and there glinted in the dim light of the wash chamber, but the mass of it looked like wet blood. She took a deep breath and fought back the shiver that crept up her spine.

  That’s appetizing.

  Her face was pale and reflected a bluish cast, and the cold whiteness of her skin caused her blue-green eyes to pop more than usual. Dark smudges hugged the hollows under those eyes. She looked even less a person than usual, like a scrawny, pale creature dredged up from the bottom of the sea.

  “Well, there’s no help for it,” she said, and hastened out of the room.

  When she finally burst through the door of the Archives, Taryn was there, and the dear girl had brought her food. Brother Cornelius had placed the stew on a cake to keep it warm, and it was steaming gently, smelling fantastic, and waking Mia’s stomach from the deep slumber that had allowed her to get through the last eighteen hours.

  “There she is,” he announced, beaming his usual smile in her direction. “I was overwrought.”

  He clucked and fussed, and Mia smiled softly.

  “I’m totally fine,” she said, brushing aside his concern. “Famished but fine.”

  She sank into a chair at the reading table with Taryn and Brother Cornelius, filling the empty seat in front of the bowl of stew.

  “You’ll pardon my less-than-exemplary manners,” she said through a mouthful of stew.

  It was hearty and spicy and warmed her bones like it always did. Taryn watched serenely as Mia shoveled stew into her mouth and mopped drippings up with a piece of crusty bread.

  “I was just telling Brother Cornelius about your awful night,” the girl said, and patted one of Brother Cornelius’s gnarled hands.

  Apparently she wasn’t the only one Taryn was grabby with.

  “Yes, yes. Ms. Windbough here was giving me the full details. Most perplexing that Brother SainClair would make such accusations. I should almost think a visit to the medical corridor might do him some good. If nothing else, perhaps he needs to rest up.” He looked at Mia’s neck and tilted her head up with a long finger. Disapproval flickered in his hazel eyes, which looked a pale green at that moment, as his throat clicked.

  “I bruise easily,” Mia said, trying to minimize his worry. “’Tis been that way since birth. Father says I get it from my mother.”

  “Still, there is no need for such behavior. We are a unit here. We are a family, and one does not harm one’s family.”

  “I guess he doesn’t consider me family then.” She twisted her mouth and narrowed her eyes.

  As much as she might enjoy being family to Brother Cornelius and maybe even Taryn, this place wasn’t her home, and these people weren’t her family. Perhaps Brother SainClair understood that better than the rest of them. Maybe he had sensed a truth that clung to her like the reek of sweat, as if he could smell a taint infecting his family, disrupting his quiet enjoyment.

  Unsure why, Mia struggled with the thought that SainClair maybe was justified in his reactions. Perhaps it did matter that she didn’t care to join the Order, to make them her family. She had a family. No matter how small or how tenuous the link between her and Father grew, she had a family. Mia was a pretender, and perhaps that meant something, not just to SainClair but to her as well.

  Brother Cornelius made a dismissive noise and waved his hand as if knocking aside the fog of her thoughts. “Poppycock,” he said.

  “What time is it?” Taryn asked suddenly. “I’m most certainly late for my afternoon duties with Brother Valentine.” Her voice held a hint of panic.

  “Nonsense,” said Brother Cornelius. “Just tell that old coot that you were assisting me with a particularly delicate matter and that if he needs more information, I’ve said to come speak to me directly. No one wants to bother coming here and having to deal with me. Outliving everyone has its advantages.”

  “I can’t imagine why anyone doesn’t find your company utterly enchanting,” Taryn said, smiling coyly at Brother Cornelius.

  “Don’t mock me now, my child,” he said, his neck reddening slightly under his voluminous whiskers. “Flattery is wasted on a codger like me.” He looked pleased nonetheless.

  Mia rolled her eyes at the scene. Taryn bid her farewells and departed the library, leaving Mia and Brother Cornelius alone at last.

  “Now,” he began, his tone turning serious, “what actually happened? I got the children’s fairy-tale version just now.”

  Mia smiled at his pointed look and swallowed the bite of stew rolling around in her mouth. “First, let me say thank you for covering for me. I think Brother SainClair would have had my head on a stake if it weren’t for that.”

  “’Tis fine,” he said, waving a hand to dismiss her thanks. “Do not try to distract me from the question,” he added.

  “I was just curious about
how this place works. I’ve never been in an electrical system this large before. It was just simple curiosity.” She took another bite of stew.

  “Ah, well, a little curiosity now and then is a virtue, but I don’t suppose Brother SainClair sees it as such.”

  “There was this amazing moss down there,” she said, eager to turn the conversation away from SainClair. “It covered the walls like a springy blanket. Is it used as camouflage?”

  Brother Cornelius chuckled at her description. “It’s an insulator for the walls that lead toward the elders and has the lucky property of covering openings. ’Tis nothing so special really. Born of necessity, like much else in our world.” He rubbed his whiskered chin. “I suspect your poking around in that area would have aroused some suspicion in Brother SainClair, who’s mistrustful by nature. But still, his reaction seems entirely out of range, even for him.”

  “That’s not all,” Mia said.

  She wasn’t sure how much she should say about Compendium. She had genuine affection for Brother Cornelius. He was like the grandfather she might have had in another life, kind and doting and full of supremely interesting stories and bits of gossip. Her logical mind told her she was a fool for trusting anyone here, but her longing for someone to confide in and dote on her fought valiantly and ultimately landed the killing blow to caution.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t say so at the time, but I took a book from the ancient texts.” She pulled Compendium from her bag and set it on the table.

  Brother Cornelius picked up the book and examined it carefully. “You say you found this in the Archives?”

  “Yes, a couple of weeks ago, while I was removing spores. It was one of the books I tested. It struck me at first because it was completely spore free. Something about it made me think I should spend more time with it. So I took it but neglected to say anything. I didn’t think you would mind, but I should have said something earlier.”

  He cracked open the book and examined the pages and the binding, spending more time on the book itself than its contents.

  “It’s in remarkable shape for a book from the ancient texts,” he finally said. “Perhaps it was just misfiled. It certainly is unusual. This scrollwork on the outside isn’t something one usually sees. What does this have to do with Brother SainClair and the incident?”

  “Well, there are a couple of things,” Mia said. “Brother SainClair seemed enraged that I might be researching lineages. I found that reaction completely odd. He was especially derisive about my family name, Jayne.”

  “Ah, well,” Brother Cornelius said, scratching a long bony finger across his chin whiskers in thought. “He himself has lost all his remaining family,” he continued. “And if I recall correctly, his sister’s name was Jayne. She was killed in the war.”

  “Really?” Mia picked up Compendium from the table and opened it to the SainClairs. “So his first name is Thaddeus?” she asked.

  Even as Compendium hid itself as an ancient volume, its family lineages were accurate up to the current generation. Poor design, that is. Not much of a disguise.

  “Yes, I believe that’s correct. How did you know that?”

  She showed him the page and pointed to Thaddeus and Jayne SainClair.

  “How is that possible?” he said. “Has someone been updating this? I’ll have the head of anyone who’s been sneaking into the Archives to deface the texts.”

  She forced herself not to smile. It was hard to imagine Brother Cornelius having anyone’s head for anything.

  “There’s even more to this book,” she said, and told him about activating Compendium.

  If Brother Cornelius thought she was unhinged, he didn’t betray it in his manner. He pondered Mia’s words carefully and scratched his perpetually itchy chin whiskers.

  “So you’re saying the book altered itself? The ink moved around on the page, and the text changed? And you spent a large amount of time communicating with it, but then in the morning, when Brother SainClair picked it up, it had returned to its previous state?”

  “Yes. And I know it sounds positively mad.”

  “It’s certainly unusual, but life is full of strange happenings.”

  “You mean you believe me?” Mia asked incredulously. She wasn’t even sure she believed it herself at this point. As she looked back, it just didn’t seem possible.

  “Of course,” he said. He raised his shaggy silver eyebrows in her direction. “The Order’s primary mission is to protect certain ancient artifacts. This may very well be one of those artifacts.”

  “What exactly do you mean by ‘artifacts’?” she asked, curious.

  “Well, that’s indeed a long story.” He rubbed a finger against his temple then scratched his whiskers again.

  I should research whisker anti-itch balm, Mia thought.

  “Are you familiar with the details of the Great Fall?” he asked.

  Mia shrugged. She had heard bits and pieces here and there. The folk in Hackberry weren’t much for ancient history. Nothing that couldn’t be eaten or traded for provisions or used to warm a body’s feet on a frigid evening—not that there were too many of those in the hammocks—was valued.

  “I heard there was a before and an after. At home we don’t give much consideration to what came before, as it hardly seems to matter at this point, with us being so far removed from it. Taryn would disagree,” she added, thinking back on Taryn’s admission that history was her favorite subject.

  “As would I,” said Brother Cornelius. “We have much to learn from our forebears, and there’s much that we could do if we could recover even a fraction of what they knew.”

  “Was it really so great back then?” Mia asked. “I mean, how do we even know?”

  “Books of course…those that weren’t destroyed in the chaos or lost to the Core. In some ways, it was very similar, but in many others, it was very different. Our ancestors lived off the land the way we do, but they possessed an advanced grasp of biochemistry and biomechanics, and they were able to use it to stunning effect in ways we may never understand.” His voice held a sad, wistful note.

  Mia supposed she would be sad too if she had some knowledge of what was lost.

  “Our forebears were also part of the Central Counsel, which is described in some ancient texts as a counsel of peers comprised of delegates from all over Lumin. We ruled Lumin in peace as one body. After the Great Fall, the Central Counsel was…well, no one is really sure what happened to the counsel,” he said, his face marked with concern. “Now no city-state benefits from trade with the others, and there’s very little communication among us. Willowslip is essentially on its own.”

  “What caused the Great Fall?” Mia asked.

  “Ah, now that’s the real question, is it not?” Brother Cornelius rubbed his chin, but his eyes narrowed. “Alas, whatever was responsible for the Great Fall impacted the record keeping of our forebears. We have some texts from before the Great Fall and many that start perhaps fifty cycles afterward that discuss the political changes that occurred, but we don’t have much that describes the loss of technology, what happened to the Counsel, or other questions that remain largely unanswered. The texts we can find that describe those times are generally personal memoirs rather than official historical records and, as such, contain little in the way of definitive answers. It’s been a perplexing study for many of the scholars of the Order for some time.” His eyes slid down, and he examined a bony finger with interest.

  He’s not telling me something, she thought.

  “So how does all this relate to the artifacts?” Mia asked.

  “Well, artifacts are the remnants of society before the Great Fall. They were likely common-day objects in antiquity, but now they’re marvels of technical magic and mysteries to be solved and protected. There are clerics who would hide them away from the outside world under the guise of safety, others who would study them and learn their secrets, and yet others outside the Order, like the Druids, who would try to possess them. And still fu
rther I suspect there are those who would use them for mischief and trouble.”

  “Which are you?” she asked.

  Brother Cornelius gave her question some thought before responding. “I suppose I’m the type who would use them as they were intended to be used by their makers, to better society.”

  Mia said gave him a big smile. “I think that’s a sound position.”

  “If,” Cornelius said, pushing Compendium back toward Mia, “this book is one of the rare artifacts left from before the Great Fall, it clearly has chosen to reveal itself to you. What reason it might have for that, I cannot say, but perhaps you’ll be able to find out.”

  “So you’ll let me hang on to it?” she asked. She was relieved but tried not be too obvious about it.

  “I don’t see why not,” the old cleric continued. “It’s of no use to anyone except you. Just take good care of it. And for all our sakes, best keep a wide berth from Brother SainClair in the future. Be more careful where you snoop next time, child!”

  16 The Seed

  Lumin Cycle 10152

  That evening Mia Jayne dragged herself down the dining room to scrounge up some dinner. In penance for her tardiness, she had worked through the afternoon and into the early evening. Her neck was still sore and bruised and her body achy from Brother SainClair’s rough handling and the discomfort of the brig cell. If asked before yesterday if she’d ever look forward to climbing into her stone cubby atop her lumpy mattress under her rough-spun blankets, she would’ve told such person that he or she needed their head examined by a healer or possibly an exorcist. However, with Compendium and a fresh cake from Brother Cornelius tucked into her sash, she was anticipating the gray barracks and her hard pallet like never before.

  Upon feeling her stomach gurgle inside her robes, she patted it and said to herself, “There, there, I suspect tonight will be a nice roast with root vegetables and some rice. I can just tell.” Despite everything that had happened, she was in excellent spirits.