The Land of Broken Roads - Subtle Powers - Chapter 4

Dirt had no idea where to start. The room was too full to get around in, and most of the stacks of stuffed boxes were taller than he was. All the silverware and gold cups and carved stone trinkets and so on were impressive, and they’d be fun to sort through later, but what he really wanted were the scrolls, and he’d have to climb to get any. He really needed to figure out how to move stuff with his mind like Socks did.

“How did you find all this stuff? I’m guessing you found the stones of the city sunk into the ground and pulled them back out and put them together. But how did you find little stuff, like this quill stand?” asked Dirt, lifting the first thing his hand rested on. In fact, that box was full of them, and inkwells.

Callius gave him a smirk. “The answer would be more complicated than it’s worth. Let’s just say we felt around for it.”

“I guess that makes more sense than just digging everywhere to see what you find,” said Dirt. They must have used their roots and grown something like a net. That was his guess. “Okay, let’s see if I can…”

Now that he got a closer look, the boxes looked like the dryads had grown them all of one piece. They would be sturdy, for certain. But they were all different sizes and not quite flat around the edges, so they didn’t stack very well. Dirt stepped up on the rim of the nearest and wondered if he dared pull himself up. The top of the stack was wobbly, and if it fell over on him, then he’d have a mess and no progress.

“Okay, everyone, I don’t think that’ll work. If I try to climb over I’m just going to break something, so let’s move all this stuff to the lecture hall. Maybe we can build shelves in one of the villas or public buildings and turn it into a museum. But the thing I want the most is the scrolls,” he said, “and they’re the farthest thing in the back.”

“At least we organized it all first,” said the dryad, shrugging.

“You did? How did you know what everything was?”

“We had someone to show us many human styles and dwellings, dear Dirt. We saw similar things being used. Did we not?” said Home.

“Right, I guess that was a silly question. You probably noticed more than I did, since I can only look in one direction at a time and there’s only one of me to notice anything,” said Dirt.

“Just so,” said Home. Her demure half-smile gave her a truly dignified air. Dirt was sure that if she made an adult-sized dryad, it’d be like having a second Duchess around.

“We don’t know what all of it is, though,” said Dawn, picking up a gold ring from a basket on the floor and slipping it onto her little finger. It was far too big and she spun it around like a toy. “I know what this is. But some things, we organized by shape.”

“So what do you want to do?” asked Callius, hands fidgety like he wanted to go play. “Do you want us to move all this now?”

“At least enough to get to the scrolls. I can read them later, but I want to find out what they are first.”

With that, Dirt handed the box of writing tools to Dawn and waved her out. She took it in one hand like it weighed nothing at all, and Dirt placed a second box on her other hand, one full of… bathing implements, it looked like. Out she went.

Callius was next, and then Home, and then all the others Dirt had named in the weeks before he and Socks left the forest to begin their journey. Sunset, a quiet girl who was always hanging around near Dawn; Dancer, a flighty girl who seldom looked like she was paying attention, even though she always was. Votorla, who had made up her own name from random sounds and wore a longer rough-spun tunic than anyone else, black with dirt along the bottom hem. Tooth, a boy who only interacted with Dirt if Callius wasn’t around, since apparently one male was enough. Starwatcher, another girl. Chaser. Pathway. Gift.

Dirt thought progress would be faster than it was, since another dryad appeared with arms outstretched as fast as he could turn around. But there was simply too much. This was more gold than the Duke had, by far. And more silver.

And it wasn’t all things for daily living. A chest, complete with lid, held spearheads, some in surprisingly good shape. A container that was more like a barrel held swords, one of which was in perfect condition, gleaming like it had been made yesterday. But most were things like jewelry, lamps and candlesticks, cutlery, cooking implements, and so on. Objects of gold or silver that a normal household might only have a few of, to bring out on special occasions. But with a city the size of Turicum, it was wealth to fill a temple’s treasury several times over.

A few boxes held hammerheads and similar tools, but they were so rusted, cracked, and flaking, that they’d never be restored. Someone might want to look at them for ideas, though, so it couldn’t hurt to keep them around. Scissors. Dirt had forgotten all about scissors. He grabbed a lock of his dark brown hair and wondered if he needed a haircut. No one in Ogena had said anything, so probably not.

Finally, Dirt could climb over the last few things and get to the scrolls. The dryads continued clearing the room while he rubbed his hands and gently looked them over to see what they were. Many of them were not preserved against time like the primer on magic in his backpack—they were only preserved by not having been touched for three thousand years, except perhaps by Prisca’s bony fingers. Those, he lifted with extreme care and opened just far enough to see what they were.

The library was a treasure greater than anything else in the world, to his eyes. Things Avitus might have known once, but which were likely completely lost to the world. Biographies and genealogies of emperors and noble families. Accounts of wars. Medical treatises, natural philosophy documenting birds or plants, mathematics and geometry and engineering.

Each scroll he touched filled him with a sense of recognition, but incomplete, which longed to be fulfilled. Each one was harder to put down than the last. Each subject reminded him of something he had once known but had since forgotten. He had known all about cattle husbandry, once. And olive horticulture. And arguments on the nature of Being.

The nostalgia was so powerful that he was almost surprised at the size of his child-sized hand as he held the scrolls. Avitus yearned to stop and pick one—any one at all—and race to his villa, plop down in his favorite divan, and read it the whole way through without moving, even if it took all night. Fabia was young enough to stay up with him and keep the lamps lit, and she enjoyed hearing him read. She was wasted as a handmaiden. He’d probably have to sell her to a…

Dirt tried to hold on to the memory, but of course it slipped away. It had never really been there, just the outlines, like everything else. A name with no face, a memory of smelling but without scent, of touching but without sensation. Empty lines with no color inside them, lines made of ash that blew away if disturbed.

Then he found what he was looking for, and his hands trembled so much at the recognition that he almost dropped it. Pomponius’ Natiuitas Deorum. The birth of the gods, giving the most accepted account of how all things came to be.

Fear kept him from unrolling it any farther at first, not even far enough to read the first line. Avitus knew he loved the gods, whatever they were. They were no longer recognized or even spoken of, leaving a strange gap in public life among the Duke’s people that everyone pretended to ignore. Even so, there was still something there, a shadow resting in the undercurrents of human thought and society. The Duke had claimed to know nothing of it. Avitus suspected, however, that he did so more out of duty than conviction.

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And furthermore, Avitus had a strong suspicion that he himself had harmed the gods, or cast them out somehow, or even killed them. From the scraps of information he’d been able to gather so far, that seemed the most likely cause of the death of the Empire. The rise of the great trees, the freedom of the great wolves, and his own face on that great Enemy—how much had Avitus caused, for good or ill? Mostly ill.

It almost seemed blasphemy to him, who was perhaps the gods’ enemy, to read of them now, so long after their calamity and ruin. A true offense, marked by deeper justice than his mortal heart could measure. But despite all that, he unrolled and read:

Due to the increasingly popular belief, by which unthinking men are led into folly by fools, it is appropriate to lay out at the first what the truest cause of these things is. For many say that all things were once a single, raw, confused mass, which they call chaos. But this is not the case. For if there were matter in that eternal before-time, even unformed and immeasurable, then there must also have been thought, and time, and space, and knowledge, and truth, for those things are as fundamental as matter, and indeed, more so, for they measure it. And if there was a mind to measure chaos, then it was never chaos.

And if there were never truth, or thought, or knowledge, in the beginning, then whence could these things come? The Critians say the Great Primeval is he who brought himself into being, but he could not have done it, for before he existed, he did not exist to cause anything, even himself.

No, if a world there is, a world there must always have been. This earth, speaking only of itself and its form and not any particular thing that was ever found upon it, is perfectly eternal. For even as we poor creatures farm our grain from the dust only to ourselves rot away into dust in the end, the land itself always remains, sometimes above water, and sometimes beneath; sometimes rich and sometimes poor, once rock, then sand, then soil, then sand again, which blasts away in the wind to reveal the rock.

The gods are the mighty ones who take possession of a part of it, as a man claims a field. This one claims the clouds and rain, and that one claims the farmland; this one claims the men of war who conquer, and that one the peaceable women who nourish.

They must be eternal to claim lasting dominion over that which is eternal and reshape it to their will. Thus we—

WHAT YOU ARE READING IS NONSENSE, said Father, his voice piercing Avitus’ growing reverie so strongly that he became Dirt again.

Dirt blinked and lowered the scroll. Home was watching him patiently, a soothing, placid look on her face. If she’d heard the great wolf, she gave no sign of it.

SKIP TO THE LISTS IF YOU WANT TO KNOW THEIR NAMES, BUT MOST OF WHAT THE HUMANS SAY ABOUT THE GODS IS NONSENSE. NONE OF THEM WERE THERE.

“Thank you,” said Dirt.

YOU ARE FILLING MY SON’S HEAD WITH TOO MUCH NONSENSE ALREADY.

“For what, dear Dirt?” asked Home.

“Nothing. Never mind,” he said. It was a strange feeling, having so much cast into doubt before he’d even had a chance to digest it. Was he relieved, or annoyed? He couldn’t tell. But if there were false things in here, then he didn’t want to believe them, and if Father was going to offer him the slightest bit of help, then Dirt wasn’t going to be anything other than grateful.

So he put a smile on that quickly sank into the rest of him, and rolled through the scroll, skipping the long discussions about the nature of matter and so on. It didn’t take long for the smile to be completely sincere, either, because how lucky was he to know a falsehood from the start, especially such an important one? It didn’t take long to find the lists.

Above them first is imperious Caelpater, whose vastness outstretches all things, who is the unending sky of Day, beneath whom even the conquering sun rides in obedience.

Those who rule are called by the name of his wife, Domina, who is Domina Noctis. The stars are her jewels, more glorious than every other creation. She joins hands with her husband to encircle all things in the cycle of dawn and dusk.

Just the names, remembered Dirt. Whatever was said about them might be wrong. So he had two so far, a father and a mother, Caelpater and Domina, rulers of day and night.

Next was their daughter, Lucina, a goddess of lamps and indoor light, and also of midwives and childbirth. Then a son, Pastorus, the shepherd of the dead, whose twisted statue Dirt had encountered in that giant tomb.

He started skimming. These weren’t the names he wanted to see. He could come back and memorize them later, and there were plenty. He could sense the proximity to the information he most desired, the lines he most wanted to read, and skimmed faster and faster until he found it:

Least of these is bright Melodia, also called Mistress of Song, whose daughters by Oraculus are the Muses, inspirers of art. The Muses could inspire nothing without her, for she is the truth behind them all, the harmony of many voices and the rhythm of life and movement. The steady drumming of footsteps upon the earth is hers, and thus it is she who watches over travelers by day and night, eager for the cheer they know at journey’s end.

Avitus lowered the scroll and stared at nothing, wondering at the affection he felt toward the name. No, not affection—reverence. Melodia. Why did that name hold such meaning for him? It sounded like gods were people, of a sort, so maybe he had known her? Or was it because he was a traveler now, and she was a goddess for travelers?

“Home, do you know anything about the gods?” he asked.

“I do not. But I am sure you will find what you wish to know among these writings,” she said.

Now that he looked around a bit more, the room was nearly empty now, only a few stray baskets or pots here and there. He’d been so focused looking at all the scrolls that he’d missed all the work.

“Oh, was there a collection of little figures? Little statues of people?” he asked, quickly rolling the scroll back up and setting it in its nook.

“There was. Come,” she said, holding out her hand. He took it and she led him out of the library, down the shadowed hallway, and back into the main room, the lecture hall. The dryads had set all the boxes and chests and baskets out in an orderly grid, with just enough space to walk between them. Seeing the whole floor filled with treasure reminded him once more just how much it was.

Home led him right to what he was looking for, a wide box full of figurines of gold or tarnished bronze or silver. Dirt pulled them out one by one, hoping he’d recognize the one he was looking for. A soldier in armor. A nude boxer. A woman carrying a jug. A man captured by writhing snakes. A shepherd and a wolf. A boy sitting and pulling a thorn from his foot. A woman with bird wings in a flowing dress. A nude young man with bird wings. A nude woman bathing.

A woman with a crown of stars caught his eye. That must be Domina, the goddess, judging from the star shapes all over her dress. In the statue, her legs had been broken and she was kneeling on raw bone, weeping upward. It made him feel sick and he quickly put it back and kept looking.

Then he found another god, which he recognized only because of how deformed and injured it was. It was a nude man leaning on a staff, but his whole body was punctured by swords and arrows and one of his shoulders was dislocated. A shirtless goddess on her knees trying to gather her guts back up, a god holding his own severed leg against his chest, face twisted in despair.

He found her. Melodia, the Mistress of Song. He knew it was her at once but couldn’t say how. She was nude except a crown of flowers in her hair and shoes that made him think of dancing. Both arms had been severed at the elbow and lay on the ground near her feet. Her eyes had been stabbed out, complete with trails of gold to mimic the blood leaking down her face. Her ears and nose had been cut off and were nowhere to be seen, and her mouth was open in an eternal scream.

Avitus knew he’d feel something when he found her, from the first moment he’d thought to look. But he wasn’t sure what it’d be. Sadness, perhaps. Revulsion, terror, relief. Perhaps all or none of those. He had not expected guilt, though, and guilt was all he had in him. Terrible guilt, like the reckoning of Heaven standing over him awaiting the merest whisper of Justice to come and crush him.

He had caused this somehow, either directly or indirectly, and if anything still remained of the gods, surely it was the curse of their wrath, waiting only until it found him to give him suffering greater than their own.

Guilt like physical pain wracked him, coupled with cruel terror at what that guilt meant. He couldn’t escape it, nor could he find relief in tears or laughter. He was sick with it.

Avitus had wondered somewhere in the back of his mind whether he might someday undo what he’d done. Now he trembled to think he might actually succeed and bring the gods back into the world in the fulness of their power and glory. He was a living sacrilege. The idea of facing them, revived and whole and angrier than storms, made his fingers tremble so bad he dropped the little golden statue of Melodia. It clattered as it fell among the others in the box.

“Dirt, are you all right?” asked Home, her face now full of worry.