Ontogeny

Chapter 9b

     ‘So you’ve come all the way from Helberion,” said Parcellius when the Brigadier had finished explaining the reason for their visit. “I spent some time there back in my youth, long enough to learn the language. Never went to Marboll itself. Spent most of my time in Embry, on the river Bale. Know the place?”

     “Been through it a few times,” replied the Brigadier as Parcellius produced a bottle of wine and offered it around. Malone accepted gratefully but the Brigadier declined. The rest of the men had gone back outside, to give them some room. “You come from Vendugal, unless I’m very much mistaken. Your accent...”

     “You have a good ear,” the archaeologist said, raising his glass and taking a sip. “I haven’t been there in nearly forty years. Thought my accent had well and truly gone by now. Guess it’s true what you say. You can take the man out of Vendugal... Anyway, your beautiful country is famous as the world’s greatest seat of learning, and learning is what I wanted to do, so as soon as I was fully human I went there. What do you remember of Embry?”

    “I remember it had a university.”

     “That’s the place,” said Parcellius. “Nice place, nice people. There was a bit of a war going on with Carrow at the time but it didn’t impact Embry much, except to make the food more expensive. I studied under Crawley, in his class on ancient cultures. That’s where I developed my fascination with archaeology. Been digging in ancient ruins ever since. I came down here twenty years ago when I heard of this place. One day I’ll go home and present my findings, but there’s so much still to find...”

     “I had hoped that your speciality might be in ontomancy. We heard that you were a wizard. We came all this way in search of a man who might be able to help Princess Ardria.”

     “I'm no wizard I'm afraid, but it’s just possible that your journey wasn’t wasted. We had a man here a few years back who learned he had just a couple of years to live. He wanted to speed up the raising of his son so he’d be fully human before he died. He hired an ontomancer to put a blessing on him. The blessing failed. In fact, he regressed all the way back to a goat. The ontomancer told us this wasn’t the first time it had happened. There have been quite a few similar cases over the years, and all in this general area. He did a bit of research and discovered that every case had one thing in common. The adoptee had eaten bluecoat mushrooms either just before or just after the blessing.”

     “So it worked even after the blessing?” The Brigadier said, leaning forward hopefully. “Even several months after the blessing?”

     “That I don’t know,” admitted the archaeologist. “I would suggest a small dose at first, then increasing it if it doesn’t work. We can find plenty of bluecoats down in the valley, and anyone in town can give you some good recipes.”

     “Is this ontomancer still in the area?” asked Malone. “He might have more he can tell us.”

     “His name’s Traglor and he lives in Crammoth, but he travels around a lot. He could be anywhere within a hundred miles of here. It might take months to find him.”

     “We can’t take the time,” said the Brigadier. “We have to get back to Marboll as quickly as possible. Would you come with us? It would be helpful if you could tell this to the King in person.”

     “My work isn’t finished. There’s a whole city down there, under the ash. Buried thousands of years ago when the volcano erupted, buried deeper and deeper with each subsequent eruption. It's perfectly preserved. Everything! An entire city of the Hetin folk. The locals let me dig down and tunnel around so long as I don’t disturb the surface, but so far I've barely scratched the surface  Why just the other day I found...”

     “We are more concerned with the present and the future,” interrupted the Brigadier. “The city will still be there when the Princess has been cured.”

     “Yes, yes, but I simply can’t leave. I’ll go with you back to the village, though. Show you the mushrooms you need. They can be tricky to find, and there are several kinds that look alike, but then I have to come back here to continue my work. I’m learning things about them that no-one ever suspected! Their science was far in excess of ours. They could do things that seem miraculous to us. Machines that could fly, machines that could think. Machines that could transmit a man's voice across the world, allowing people thousands of miles apart to speak as though they were in the same room.”

     “Is this one of them?” asked Malone, picking up the statuette of the deformed woman and the strange animal. He rubbed at some of the dirt that still covered her arms and back.

     “I'm not sure. She may be a mythological creature, like a centaur or a dragon. I suppose they had myths and legends, just like we do. I've found all kinds of creatures that have no counterpart in the modern world. Did they actually exist and have since gone extinct, or were they just mythological? There are some strange omissions, though. Here, look at this.” He reached down under his cot and pulled out a couple of old books, the paper brown with age. “I found a library a few days ago. Most of the books have been destroyed by age. All that knowledge lost for ever, but a handful have miraculously survived. I've sent most of them back to town, there‘s a chap there who’s helping me translate them. Used to be my assistant, then he and his wife decided they wanted to raise a child. Here, look at this.”

     He handed one of the books to the Brigadier, who took it reluctantly, not wanting to become sidetracked. Their mission had lasted weeks already, and the need to get help back to the Princess  as soon as possible nagged insistently at him. He turned the pages of the book, though, and Malone smiled to himself. The Brigadier knew that the way to engage with an academic was to pretend to be interested in their field of study.

     “Did you find any texts on weapons? Firearms?” he asked. “Something that could give us an advantage against the Carrowmen if hostilities break out again?” The text was in ancient Hetin and badly faded, and large parts of each page were covered with black mold, but there were illustrations on virtually every page that told him that it was a school textbook on animals and wildlife. “Very interesting,” he said, closing it and handing it back.”

     Parcellius chuckled. “You have both the virtues and the weaknesses of a military man,” he said. “This is indeed very interesting. Very interesting indeed. You know why?” The Brigadier shook his head. “There is no mention of Radiants. None whatsoever.”

     The Brigadier’s eyes widened and he took the book back, searching through the pages again, his eyes occasionally flicking back to the statuette of the deformed woman. There it is again, thought Malone. He knows, or suspects, something, but what?

     Parcellius nodded, pleased by the Brigadier's reaction. “That book contains references to every form of life you’ve ever heard of. Birds. Farm animals. Pond life. Insects, worms and head lice, but there are two that are conspicuous by their absence. Radiants and globs. As far as the people of that city were concerned, it was as if they just didn’t exist.”

     Malone stared at the Brigadier, the glass of wine frozen halfway to his lips. The news clearly held some significance for his commander and he tried to catch his eye so as to prompt an explanation, but the Brigadier ignored him. “When can you leave?” he asked the archaeologist.

     “First thing in the morning," the archaeologist replied. "The sooner I sort you out with what you need, the sooner I can get back here.”