“While we’re at it, ye may want a proper blanket. The standard issue is naught but a sheet in me opinion.” Sister Valencia pulled down a woolen blanket.
It was colorless and rough to the touch, but Mia was grateful for something more substantial.
Sister Valencia gave another look to Mia’s light clothes and pulled down another blanket. “’Ere, perhaps ye could use two then?”
Mia accepted the second blanket gratefully. With a nod, Sister Valencia looked her over. Mia’s arms were now laden with newly acquired necessities, and Sister Valencia dismissed them with a cheerful wave.
“Best be off then, m’dears. Ye both must have duties to be attendin’ to. I know I do.”
“You’d best change into those,” Cedar said, gesturing to the robes. “I can show you how prepare the sash, but hop to it. Lunch waits for no one!”
Upon their return, Mia surveyed the barracks. They were the only ones in the large room. “Where do the acolytes change?” she asked.
“What do you mean by ‘where’?” he said after a moment’s thought.
“Don’t we have a designated changing room? What about relieving ourselves?” She was mildly scandalized by the thought of conducting her business with an audience. Even in the close quarters of their hearthtree, she and Father had made provisions for privacy.
“You should see your face,” Cedar said, and laughed heartily. “We have a lavatory for relieving ourselves. It’s the room right across the hall. I don’t think anyone sees the point in privacy for changing clothing. It’s not something we haven’t all seen. Not sure I would want my billowing robes dragging around the floor of the lavatory anyway,” he muttered, wrinkling his nose.
“All right. Whatever,” she replied, feeling exasperated. “Will you at least turn your back?”
Cedar shrugged and complied. Mia removed her light tropics clothing and carefully folded each item, placing it in a neat pile on the bean-filled lump of a mattress. She pulled on the undershirt and loose pants. Although the cloth looked rough, it was surprisingly soft to the touch.
They’ve probably been worn by a hundred people
, she thought.
“Is there any special trick to this robe?” she asked.
Cedar turned and leaned against the wall. “Just pull it on over your shoulders, with the open side to the front, and wrap the right side around your waist and then the left side. Then secure it with the belt.”
She tried to follow his verbal instructions.
“No, no, knot it like this. See?” He brushed her hands away and proceeded to reknot the belt in an overly complicated fashion.
His proximity disconcerted her, and she slapped away his hand.
“That’s quite enough. What about the sash?”
“That you drape around your person, starting with one edge against the left shoulder. Sling the sash under your right arm, around your back, over your left shoulder, and pin it just so.”
Again, Mia was having trouble following his verbal instructions, so Cedar intervened to rearrange the sash and set the pin.
“You’ll quickly become accustomed to the process,” he reassured her.
How many times has he said that in the last hour?
“Yes, then. I’m positively famished,” she responded.
The dining room was one of those rooms with large branches traversing its middle. The faint hum was familiar when Mia entered the hall, and it brought a warm feeling of comfort with it. Her ears had pricked here and there at the occasional hum as she and Cedar had made their way along the tunnels and staircases, but this was the first sustained sound of the forest she had encountered since her arrival yesterday.
Her muscles relaxed a little at the sound, and even that slight reduction in stress was a welcome feeling. In the large branch at the center of the room stood a carved hearth that warmed the space and heated a sizable iron cauldron of something that smelled of meat and spices. The fragrance wafting from the center of the room drew her toward it—a harmony in concert with the humming tree.
“Do they actually cook meals here?” she asked Cedar.
“Oh, no, this hearth is much too weak for that. I expect it’s pretty far from the elder roots. We use it to keep the meals warm for serving, though. Someone always brings the provisions up from the kitchen. Only certain trusted clerics even know where the kitchen is located.” He gave her a wicked grin. “I expect they want to prevent midnight snacking among the acolytes. Some of us are still growing boys, you know?”
Mia ignored his joke. “Who assigns the duties?”
“Well, the Taskmaster does,” he said with a shrug and made his way toward the hearth.
She raised an eyebrow. “They actually have a position called the Taskmaster?”
“What’s so odd about that?” he asked.
Mia shook her head, brushing off his remark. “What are your duties then? It doesn’t appear as if you do anything but travel off the grounds on special business and act as a tour guide for wretched new recruits.” Mia tried to prevent it, but the last word came out sounding sardonic.
“Yes, well, I was the only one who volunteered to show you the ropes, so I got a reprieve from my normal duties,” he replied. “I’m usually assigned to an engineering team.”
When they reached the center of the room, Cedar grabbed a bowl and spoon from a table to the left of the hearth. He swirled a wooden serving spoon in the cauldron then ladled himself a hearty portion of a brown stew. He topped the stew with a scoop of rice from a wide carved bowl atop a separate table on the right side of the hearth. Mia followed suit.
“I thought you said you didn’t know firsthand the exact location of the elder trees,” she pressed, as she ladled herself heaping servings.
“I don’t,” he replied.
Cedar picked out a spot at a table nearby. They sat alone. It didn’t appear as if the clerics and acolytes took the midday meal simultaneously, as many of the tables were empty. Mia spotted a small gathering of faces she recognized at a table across from the hearth, all acolytes. They whispered among themselves and averted their eyes when they saw her watching. Mia turned her head and saw Brother SainClair on the other side of the room, taking his meal with some of the other clerics. He sneered derisively when he caught her looking in his direction. She turned her attention back to Cedar.
“So how is it that you work in engineering?” she asked.
“Oh, well, there are many access levels in engineering. I focus on the tunnels primarily. Along our walking corridors, we have a parallel network of tunnels where the roots run. Given the delicacy of stretching the roots as far as we do, they’re often in need of repair or support. It’s only grown harder to maintain, as our numbers have dwindled and our elders aged.”
“I see,” Mia said through a mouthful of stew.
“Well, at least you like the food,” Cedar said, and chuckled.
“’Tis not half bad,” Mia said reluctantly. “And I didn’t even have to cook it.”
“Well, you might have to yet. You’ll have to see where the Taskmaster assigns you.”
9
End & Begin
Lumin Cycle 9551
Melia
Kannon massaged
her knuckles against the hard wood of the chair’s armrest in an attempt to alleviate the stiffness in her fingers. The Compound of the Order was cold, and time hadn’t been kind to her joints. She sat for a long while, looking at the volumes in the Archives, the dim light of the portable gourd throwing the table it sat on into stark relief. The room was a silent refuge from the bustle of the busy Compound. Over the past fifty cycles, Melia had painstakingly collected books from the rubble and decay of Lumin’s civilization. From forays into the cities fraught with danger, to ventures far and wide, each book had been excavated carefully and protected from the Druids in a battle for knowledge. Other volumes had come to Melia from the personal collections of the great families and lineages, scraps gleaned from the splendor that once had been her glowing planet, cherished beyond measure.
The Druids had expanded their limited mission of restoring the Network to an entire belief system, one that had them at odds with the Order on more than just the Network. The Druids now styled themselves as preservers of the old ways, keepers of Lumin, and restorers of peace and prosperity. The tune sounded similar to Melia. The Order had equivalent mandates for its membership. Thus, the constant tussle over knowledge, whether in the form of books or in relics of pre-Fall Lumin. It amazed her how cycles of bad blood had further divided those that strived toward the same goal.
If she had anything to say about it, and a glance at the wrinkled, gnarled hands resting on her armrests signaled that perhaps she didn’t, Lumin would rise again. Melia had done all she could to protect its future. There was just one thing left. She reached into the sash of her robes, her aching hands fumbling. She pushed aside her white braid of hair and pulled the ornate leather volume from her sash. She gently rubbed a rigid thumb over the medallion on the cover, which was bright as the day Minister SainClair had first thrust the book into her much younger hands.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered to the dead. Hans was certainly spinning in his alcove in the Catacombs. “I know this isn’t what you want, but I can’t, even after fifty cycles, shake the feeling that this is the best place for it. I know you will forgive me.”
Melia struggled to her feet, holding on to the table for stability. Everything and everyone she loved was long gone—and with it the oaths she had sworn. She had outlived them all. But this was just the beginning. Lumin had a much longer journey ahead, and all histories started somewhere. She tottered over to the shelves of the Archives and slipped the ornate book into a space between two others. Its binding held no title, and the small tome instantly disappeared among the other volumes, blending into the body of words surrounding it. With that addition, the Archives now held the collected knowledge of pre-Fall Lumin. She leaned over the table and fetched the gourd from its center. With cane in one hand and gourd in the other, she foraged her way to the stairs and gave the dim room a sigh and one backward glance before proceeding back down the narrow stone steps, disappearing into history with the Archives itself.
10
The Archives
Lumin Cycle 10152
Of
all the jobs.
Mia Jayne looked around the massive, dim room with endless rows of shelves that led back into the darkness and up to the ceiling. Cedar hadn’t exaggerated when he’d described the Archives. It was huge. And this chamber was only the ancient texts chamber. The main chamber was down a set of stone steps behind her.
The main chamber was better lit, but the dull amber of the special orange gourds that Brother Cornelius, the Archivemaster, specially cultivated for the Archives was engineered to minimize light damage to the old volumes contained in this room. Mia had been surprised by the agility of the old brother’s mind, despite his decrepit body. He looked at first glance to be so frail that a strong breeze could break his leg. His hands were bony, almost claw-like. His beard was long and shaggy and a mottled mix of gray, white and yellow. His hair was long and unruly but tied back with a leather strap. But these trappings of age fell away instantaneously when Brother Cornelius engaged Mia with his hazel eyes that oscillated from gray to green, even if they did so behind delicate silver spectacles slung low on his nose, and infectious enthusiasm for his special inventions.
Brother Cornelius instructed Mia to remove all the spore growth afflicting the ancient texts. The amber gourds did well in preserving the old volumes’ paper and ink, but the benefit it provided the tomes was equally advantageous to a low-light spore that conducted itself through the air ducts and settled on the books. Brother Cornelius taught her the laborious process required to kill the spores. She had to remove each book from its shelf, scan the binding and pages for signs of spores, and administer a flash of light from a special gourd. This particular gourd was long and thin and emitted twice the brightness of standard lighting gourds, but it produced a bright light only for a moment when shaken. As soon as the shaking stopped, the light did as well.
“How does this work?” Mia asked him, amazed at the old man’s ingenuity.
“’Tis a simple matter of the agitation that causes a chemical reaction,” he said simply. “Nodes of separate chemicals are clustered inside each gourd, and the shaking makes them bounce together and release the chemicals, which when mixed, cause the flash of light we see. I created it through a system of iterative breeding. I call them wands.”
Awestruck, Mia nodded. “You’ll have to show me your garden,” she said, giving the wand a shake to produce the sparkling flash of light.
“I don’t keep a garden, my child,” he said, and chuckled amiably. “I keep a laboratory. When you complete the delicate task of ridding our most treasured historical tomes of the spore infestation, I’ll take you to it and show you all my secrets.”
His eyes sparkled, and Mia smiled for the first time since arriving at the Order. Savoring the happy thought, she proceeded with him toward the back of the dark room.
“So how far back to do the books go?” she asked.
“The oldest of the tomes in the Archives dates back thousands of cycles. There are precious few from that far back, though. Much was destroyed.”
She looked at him quizzically. “Destroyed?”
“My child, you really must sit in on the history lectures that we offer the acolytes.” He gave her a reproving look then sighed and continued. “Many hundreds of cycles ago, Lumin was thrown into chaos. Now all that’s left are the remnants of what was, and the Order was established more than five hundred cycles ago with the sacred duty to protect those remnants and learn from them what we can to restore our future.”
Mia nodded and smiled. “I’ll be sure to sit in on some lectures then.”
She had no intention of doing any such thing. Most acolyte study was individual. Each of them was allotted private study time that could be conducted in laboratories, reading rooms, the barracks, or the library. Alternatively each acolyte had the option to attend any number of subject lectures held by clerics for the benefit of the others. To date, Mia’s study time primarily had been composed of snooping around the Compound and listening carefully for the sounds of trees. As a benefit, her job in the Archives provided ample time to think through her present situation.
She had questioned Cornelius extensively about his methods when he first had described the amber gourds to her, and her attention pleased him. He mistook Mia’s enthusiasm for deep interest in the archival process. Of course her fascination was derived entirely from the idea of modifying flora to suit her needs. She’d never before considered the possibility that she could modify the flora around her to accomplish such specific tasks. Most of her skill lay in repurposing existing roots for different ends, such as rerouting power from damaged roots to functional ones or encouraging them to grow in specific ways to establish hearths and the like. The idea of creating entirely new types of roots and gourds completely fascinated her.
“Do the Archives contain books on modifying flora?” Mia asked Brother Cornelius.
“Well, working this job, my child, you’ll quickly become familiar with where all the tomes are stored, but there’s no harm in showing you around now, I guess.”
He ushered her through the vast number of shelves and alcoves, describing all the sections. Mia made note of ones to peruse on her own. All the brothers and sisters apparently referred to the acolytes as their children, regardless of age or prior station in life. The intent was harmless, but their tone and method of address sometimes set Mia’s teeth on edge. She overlooked such endearments from old Cornelius, though, because he seemed genuinely pleased to have someone to talk to during the day.
No other acolytes were stationed at the Archives, and it appeared none had been for many cycles. He’d been left alone for decades to tend to the tomes. Mia suspected many clerics of the Order had little patience for his measured speech and economy of movement and thought. They preferred the bustle of the younger clerics, with their heated discussions, physicality, and generally zealous passions. That wasn’t Cornelius by a mile.
Cornelius was no longer as sure of foot, however, and he had complained to the Taskmaster that spores were taking over the ancient tomes.
“If I don’t receive some sort of assistance, I’ll die out of spite, and the Order will be left with no one who knows his or her way among the stacks,” he recounted to Mia.
When she had come along unexpectedly, the Taskmaster had brushed aside her plaintive requests to be stationed with the engineering crew or even the maintenance crew and had assigned her here with Cornelius.
“But I have ample experience repairing and maintaining conduits, as well as detailed knowledge of the types of shunts and methods of their insertion,” she had insisted. Sister Penelope would hear none of it, though.
I should have told her I can hear them, but she’d have thought I was crazy.
Mia tried to tell her father that once, and he had chucked it up to the wild imaginings of a child.
That is utter poppycock!
Mia imagined Sister Penelope’s high, squeaky voice.
And for such a ridiculous lie, I’m changing your duties to emptying latrines and chamber pots. You’ll wish with your entire being that you had been stationed with kindly Brother Cornelius after two days of that job.
Something in Mia’s gut told her to keep silent about the sounds of the roots.
I’ll have time to prove my usefulness, or I’ll be gone from here.
Either way, it was best that the Order knew as little about her as possible.
She pulled another book from the shelf and checked it for spores. Although it didn’t seem to be badly damaged, she gave it a couple flashes with the wand just to be certain. It had been a fortnight since her arrival. Mia supposed that meant she was settling in, as much as one could settle in where one was not wanted, apparently not needed, and essentially ignored. Other than the occasional companionship of Cedar at meals and during their limited free time, none of the other acolytes spoke to her. A couple of times, she had caught Mallus, a young man with a boyish face and sandy-blond hair, looking at her when he thought she wasn’t aware. If she turned to look at him, though, he would avert his eyes and hunch his shoulders. Even Cedar’s interactions seemed hesitant and conflicted. When pressed, he had hemmed and hawed and finally admitted that Brother SainClair’s loud and continuing insistence that Mia was a fraud had put everyone off a bit.
“Then why do you continue to associate with me?” she asked.
“Well,” he replied, weighing his words carefully, “I feel some sense of obligation, I suppose. I kind of feel responsible for you. If I started ignoring you entirely now, what would that make me?”
His response certainly didn’t quell Mia’s increasing loneliness. If her only companion maintained their acquaintance out of a sense of pity and obligation, she certainly had no confidants or friends among her. She reminded herself that she wasn’t here to make friends. Setting yet another book on the shelf, she moved to the next one, methodical in her actions.
Her mind wandered to Father. She was here because he needed her here. She gritted her teeth.
He might already be dead
. Her throat felt dry and scratchy the way it did every time her thoughts turned in his direction. She had drafted a rather angry letter a couple of days after she’d arrived, but since post made its way to Hackberry by messenger, she had yet to find anyone willing to carry it to him.
What if Dominus Nikola lied to me, and Father’s letter had asked no such task of me? What if Father’s scared for me? What if he thinks I abandoned him to his most hated enemy?
Seeking an audience with the Dominus was significantly harder as an acolyte than as a message bearer. No good ever came of these thoughts. Her mind twisted and turned through the labyrinth of questions and potential answers, none of which gave her any peace. She squeezed her eyes shut and rubbed them hard, hoping to brush away the unpleasant thoughts and return to the task at hand.
Mia had worked out quite a rhythm. She examined the binding first, read the title, and checked for signs of spores. If she saw any sign of contamination, she’d set the book out so that the pages were splayed then flash the exterior and interior of the book with the wand. Then she’d check again and replace the book in its spot. These older books were particularly susceptible, and all the books she’d encountered thus far had at least a little bit of spore contamination, although it varied by tome.
She put back a burgundy book titled
A Treatise on the Peoples of the North
, which had been particularly full of spores, and proceeded to the next book on the shelf. It was a smallish brown leather volume with an intricate leafy design in faded gold on its binding and across the cover. Centered on the front was a large golden medallion of an open lotus flower with an owl crouched in the center, wings spread as if to take flight.
That’s an odd combination of symbols. What is this?
Mia looked at the binding, but it had no title or text of any kind engraved on it. She opened it and flipped through. On one of the pages, she saw a long list of names. She turned to the title page, and on it was written
An Exhaustive Genealogy of the Families of the Realm
. The book was compact for an exhaustive genealogy.
Something was off about this book. Mia skimmed it again but saw no sign of contamination on the outer binding or any of the pages within. This was the first book in the entire Archives to be entirely clean of contaminants. That wasn’t the only odd thing about it. The book felt warm to the touch, like a plant root that pulsed with energy under her hand. She put it up to her ear, but it didn’t hum. The warmth was subtle but constant.
Although Mia had no great interest in the genealogies of the families of Lumin, she slipped the book into the large pocket formed by the folds of her sash, suddenly unwilling to part from it.
A
gentle, deliberate cough came from behind her. Her body stiffened momentarily in surprise and fear. She turned her head to peer over her shoulder. One of the other acolytes was standing near the entrance. It was the acolyte with the bunk next to Mia’s. In two weeks they’d never spoken to each other; she kept to herself mostly. At first Mia thought perhaps she was just shy, but when Cedar confided that SainClair was warning the others about Mia, she assumed the other acolyte was avoiding her on that account. Still, here she stood at the doorway to the dusty, spore-ridden Archives, giving Mia a tight smile. Her short pale hair, peachy skin, and gold eyes emanated an ethereal glow. The acolyte’s robes added to the effect. Mia didn’t even hear her come up the stone steps or enter the room. Mia blinked her eyes a few times, clearing her mind of random cobwebs.
“Can I assist you?” Mia said, trying to sound polite and not menacing.
This is my chance to engage another acolyte.
“I hope so,” she said in a soft, musical voice. “I was just telling Brother Cornelius that I had interest in some of the ancient texts. He told me we store all historical texts in the Archives up here, and I should come speak to you, as you can tell me which books are safe to take.” She smiled again, this time more naturally, and added, “He actually kind of lost me when he started showing me a strange long gourd that made flashes when he shook it.”
Mia smiled back. Brother Cornelius was a horrible show-off. Well, those gourds were fantastic, so Mia would probably do the same. She held up a wand as she arched an eyebrow at the other acolyte.