Mightiest of Swords (The Inkwell Trilogy Book 1) (30 page)

*     *     *

We returned to Springfield on a rainy Halloween and packed our apartment.  Joy and I had come to the conclusion that we needed to move back into my dad’s house; our house.  I hired movers who moved us out of the apartment and into our house three days later.  I found that staying in the apartment those few days worse than staying in the hostels and hotels across Europe: it was much more foreign to me now.  Though, I thought, maybe so was Springfield.  I had yet to discover why, but my ancestors saw fit to abandon their ancestral home in Occitane and settle here.  

                    The third day together in our house, once we had unpacked our belongings and unpacked two of the storage units back into the house, Joy and I descended to the basement.  I had already replaced the
Sucikhata
immediately upon our return to the U.S. (which involved a little magical smuggling getting it through airport security). 

                   Mania had given me a strange necklace that I continued to wear, though I did not understand why. I thought I would place it in the vault, but thought better of it. Still, I wanted to show Joy the vault and explain to her how she would need to reset its lock in case something were to ever happened to me.  I also wanted to share with her some if its other secret contents.  

Down in the basement she first noticed the markings over the door.

“What is the significance of these?” Joy pointed at a peculiar set of runes.

“Alchemy.  They are wards that protect it.  Or the ones that keep it shut.  Or the ones that operate the memory lock,” I answered.  “Truth is, I have no idea. Still.”

“No, they don’t match anything in logomancy or arithmancy, do they?” she remarked.  She stepped back beside me.  “Does that mean there might be a living alchemist somewhere?”

“Maybe.  Hopefully.  There is so much of The SUB I simply do not know,” I realized.  “I used to think about there being other mages all the time, though it’s been years.”  I had long thought that the markings on the vault were some esoteric form of logomancy. Clearly, I too have much to learn.  “Are you ready to go in?”

“Interesting,” she mused, stepping forward, tracing some of the markings with her index finger.

I cleared my memory and opened the vault.  

I showed her the artifacts and scrolls the vault contained.  Though the items scattered about looked like detritus, there really was a rhyme and reason to it.  Joy suggested we buy some shelving to help organize.  I protested that these items had likely rested there for centuries.  But she was right.  I resolved to buy some shelving and other archival materials.  

When we left the vault, the door swung closed as soon as I was clear of it.  

“Where’d that come from?” Joy asked.  

I squinted to adjust to the well-lit basement.  “Where’d what come from?”

She turned to look at me and pointed to a rectangular opening in the floor.  I surveyed it, “I don’t have any earthly idea.” I bent down to look at the opening.  The hole was about three feet by three feet.  It was about one foot deep.  Resting in the middle was some sort of package wrapped in leather.  I removed it from the aperture and unwrapped the package.

It was a book.  In fact, it was more than a book.  This was one of those oversized productions that could only be classified as a
tome
.  

“What’s this?” Joy asked, voice hinting at accusation.  

“What?  It’s not like I forgot this was here.  I’ve never seen this hole.  Ever!” I asserted.

Joy’s demeanor was one of amused reproof: “Okay, Grey, okay.”

I opened the tome.  There was an envelope in the front cover.  It was addressed to Grey Theroux and Joy Hansen.  “What?”

“Open it!” Joy commanded.  “That’s my dad’s handwriting!”

We huddled so close together, we jarred heads against each other.  Then, we read:

      Dear Grey and Dear Joy,

Ladies, if you have found this, it means Jonathan Hansen and I have been murdered.  I cannot tell you for certain by whom. There are shadows rising. Or it could be the Trick Into exacting their pound of flesh. I chose to leave you in the dark about a great many things in order to protect you. Grey—for that I am deeply sorry.   I have not told you these things I am about to tell you because I have tried to keep you safe.  I once hoped that if I never told you about your heritage, about our family, it would insulate you from the danger.  If you are alive and reading this, then that plan, at least in the short term, worked.  The truth is—our family are the keepers of something called The God Well.  This book will tell you everything you need to know about it.  I have also hidden its coordinates as well as the key to the Well in my old copy of Gulliver’s Travels.  You will need to protect this book and my Gulliver’s Travels at all costs.  In case something were to happen to it, you must travel to the British Museum and find a woman who works there named Dr. Piridis.  In her possession is a coin upon which I have hidden the coordinates of the Well.  She can also help guide you.  She is to be trusted.  Do not trust any mages other than Shred. Do not trust the Trick Into.

The handwriting shifted to a different penmanship:

Joy, if you are reading this, you have welcomed your destiny.  You should know—not everyone truly has one.  Yours, however, is intertwined with Guy Theroux’s daughter.  You should
embrace
becoming her apprentice—you must not. To do so would endanger both of you.  Yet, she will need all of your intelligence, your savvy, and your energy.  She will know how to guide you.  And, if she is anything like her father, and you are anything like me—you will be as sisters.   Guy has become the brother I never had.  My sincerest hope is you two have the same opportunities for friendship.  I love you ineffably, Butterbear.

The close of the letter shifted back to my dad’s handwriting:

I have made this trap door as a hiding place.  The reason why you have found it is that we are both gone and that circumstances are now dire enough that you have asked Jon’s daughter for help. There are far too few allies out there for us, kid.  

Bulwer-Lytton said the pen is mightier than the sword. He was wrong—it has always been the words themselves. The words are the power and mightiest of swords. I love you, Grey.  

    The letter closed with two signatures that both read
Dad
.  

Joy wiped a steady stream of tears from her face.  “They never meant for us not to know.”

                  “And if I had not moved us out of this house, we would have found it almost immediately.” I slumped my shoulders, but Joy resituated so she could hug me.  “I’m sorry,” I sobbed.

We stayed like that until our knees were numb and our curiosity regarding the book overpowered our melancholy.  

Epilogue: The Present

His guest entered the study whistling.  Progress thought he recognized it—Beatles, Maye?  “It happened much like you said it would.” Progress was seated at his favorite armchair.  Its position in the room allowed for guests to be within line of site at all times.  He kept typing on his laptop. “Your abilities are precognitive, surely?”

                  The elder god was dressed in a tailored suit that fit crisply on his body.  He leaned on his new umbrella like a cane and winced at Progress’ suggestion.  He removed the watch stuffed in the pocket of his waistcoat and began to rub it with the cuff of his sleeve.  “No.”  His voice was haughty, dismissive.  “It was only logic.  Have you prepared to give the arithmancer to The Triginta?”

                  “He is under key.  So, we are not saving him for a rainy day, then?” Progress inquired as he wasn’t entirely sure what the young man could not yield useful information for his organization, especially now the bird escaped.

                   “I have made arrangements.  Surely you see the necessity in this?” asked the visitor, his dulcet voice absorbed by the books in the study. 

                    “To a limited degree, I do, though I cannot help but think he is a liability wherever he is.” Progress set down his laptop.  “Your machinations have created the desired effect,” Progress sank into the Queen Anne where he currently sat.  “We have eliminated so many gods.  What more could you want?”  He had been asking himself that same question since his own inception. 

                  It was the best kind of question.  The god with the faux-English accent and the gold-gray hair seemed to catch Progress in his reverie.  He spoke: “I don’t believe you’ve ever told me about your upbringing?”  He continued to pace slowly around the study, stopping to examine titles with each step. 

                  
Upbringing
was a strange word for the youth of a god, but it sufficed.  Progress was very young for a god, and his most prolific memory was…  “My first memories are of overseeing American and Chinese and sundry other laborers laying tracks for those steam-powered behemoths…”

                   “Ah, the locomotive.  Really?  Fascinating,” the god quipped.

                  Progress continued, “…on the way to Utah.  Every one of the laborers who died along the way to Promontory Point strengthened my body, my mind.  With each sacrifice laid at my alter, my thoughts gained clarity.  A while later, I found myself coasting from factories on the East Coast of America and then to the stygian-black fog that covered the factories of Manchester, England.”

                   “Were you as cruel and ignorant as some of us were upon your inception?” he asked.

                  Progress turned, craning his neck slightly to keep pace with god’s scrutiny of his library.  “At first, yes, very much so.  So many children.  I was terrible in that Classical sense you might appreciate.”

                  “How very Old Testament of you, Progress.”

                   “Back then, I demanded sacrifices of blood.  In due course, however,” Progress paused, taking a moment to admire the first edition his guest held in his hands.  “
Pride and Prejudice
, though I admit I do not understand much of it,” Progress confided, then spoke once more as the guest reshelved the novel.  “I confess—my feelings of superiority over the past,” he contemplated saying
gods
, but decided against it, lest he offend the elder god. “…led to my immersion into education and the wisdom of the ages.”

                   “Mortal wisdom?  Is that an oxymoron?” he asked.

                   “Ha!  Hardly!” Progress resounded.

                   “Yes.  I agree,” another book closed and reshelved behind him. 

                   Progress no longer tracked his visitor, but continued his story.  “I grew dispassionate by the blood sacrifices—not only did I find myself drawing less strength from them, they simply no longer moved me.  To answer the question I just asked you, what I want, simply is to progress with them.

                   “For each technological advancement their species has made, I have found my power and even my determination growing,” from behind him, Progress heard a noise from the god behind him that sounded like assent.

                   “Though when the human beings went to the moon, they recognized other gods there.  The program itself was named for Apollo,” he reminded.

                   Progress allowed himself to gloat, albeit for only the briefest of moments—Apollo had been the first to fall.  Apollo was only the beginning.  The gods were all hurdles to be overcome; even his present ally when it came to it.  What Progress most wanted was to clear those hurdles.  If the humans were to progress, the old gods would need to be extirpated.  “Yes, the past is commemorated in such a way.” Progress noticed his ally was whistling again.  What were those words? 

                  He began to sing, “
There's nothing you can make that can't be made.  No one you can save that can't be saved.  Nothing you can do but you can learn to be you in time
…”

                  The very last thing Progress reckoned in his life was Cupid’s arm reaching around him with that obsidian-spike—and burying it in his abdomen.

            “
It’s easy…All you need is love!”

If I speak in the tongues
of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal…
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.
 
Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.
It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails…And now these three remain: faith, hope and love.

But the greatest of these is love.

I Corinthians 13