Chapter Four - Chit Chatting

Cinder kept her gaze focused on my illusory eyes. It was a little strange... though perhaps not all that strange, but people tended to meet each other’s eyes when talking. It was a perfectly natural thing to do. Eyes told you a lot about a person, whether they were listening to you, their state at the moment, and since they were central to the way most people expressed themselves, it was easiest to read one’s expression while seeing the other’s eyes.

It was something people with faces took for granted.

No one realized how much they relied on others seeing their expression until their face was gone.

I set my illusioned face into a kindly smile. “You know, it’s not often that someone asks me for help,” I said.

“Really?” Cinder asked. “You’re quite powerful. And you have been powerful since before history was recorded.”

I brought my hand up, two fingers splayed out. “You raise two questions. I’ll put a pin in one of them, but allow me to come back to it later. To answer your more direct question; yes, really. While power may make one the target of those seeking help, it also comes with its share of people who would rather work to take that power away from you.”

“Oh oh oh, I suppose that does make sense,” Cinder said.

“Most of the time, when I heard of someone asking a powerful person or being for help, it was help to get rid of me.” I chuckled. “Those were the days. Back when I wasn’t quite at the height of my power and people still tried to get rid of me. I almost missed that once I went from being considered a threat to being considered something akin to a natural disaster.”

Cinder blinked. “I suppose that would change how you see things. You mentioned that you had two questions?”

“Less two questions and more two lines of discussion. One was to answer your own question, but this one is more of a self-indulgence.”

“Go on,” Cinder encouraged. She glanced out of the carriage’s window, at the city scrolling by. “We have another ten or so minutes until we arrive.”

“You mentioned that I’ve been powerful since before history was recorded. Which I know to be factually incorrect.” I raised a hand, abating Cinder’s concern. “No, don’t worry. It might just be a local thing, or perhaps that’s based on the history you’re aware of. Could you explain that further?”

“According to our histories, the proper, written history started some ten thousand years ago, with the onset of the Empire as a great guiding force for humanity in a time of great darkness. The actual records are mostly kept in the Jade Throne, but they’re viewable by all. Locally, we have only colonised the Ashen Forest for a few hundred years. That makes our sect... not new or young, exactly, but certainly not one of the ancient and venerable sects of the west.”

“Interesting. And these histories mention me?”

“No no no. Not at all. It’s the unofficial histories that mention you.”

I perked up at that. “Unofficial histories? I must admit to a certain weakness when it comes to forbidden lore, illegal texts, and any writings which have been deemed too dangerous to circulate.”

Cinder nodded slowly. “We don’t know how accurate these are. But... Shitake City wasn’t built at random. The location was a ruin, once. Much of this is gone. The ruins had carved stones, and when the city was founded, the founders discovered several basements and underground areas that were excavated.”

“I imagine this wasn’t done for purely archaeological reasons?”

“No, it was done for the stone. There are quarries nearby, of course, and we can make bricks, but it’s much easier to reuse ancient carved stones than to make new ones.”

That seemed perfectly reasonable. There was, of course, a lot of merit in preserving old sites, but at the same time, a brick was a brick. Shitake felt like it had found its balancing point at the moment. It wasn’t quite a thriving city, but they were surviving well enough.

I imagined that it wasn’t always the case. Founding a city in such an inhospitable place must have been a terrible burden on the first inhabitants of the region, and so I could hardly blame them for wishing to use the wealth of resources they just happened to stumble across.

“They found things within those ruins. Books, ledgers, ancient murals. Eventually news made it to the Jade Throne, and a group of cultivators showed up, taking everything away. Or almost everything.”

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“Ah, some of it survived?” I asked.

She nodded. “This isn’t something we advertise. But copies of those ancient texts were made before they were confiscated. The language was hard to decipher, but for the most part it was the same common tongue, only... different. Very different.”

“A few thousand years will do that to a language,” I said.

“I suppose. The sect suspected that there might be some hidden knowledge that could be of use, so we secretly hired some scholars.”

“To translate the works?”

“No, to train others in the art of translation. People we trusted. The likelihood that the scholars we hired from the capital were spies was far too high. It took a few decades to have a team of people able to translate, and then we set them to the task. That took even longer. The result, after several long years, was a set of some thirty books and ledgers from the distant past.”

“I can’t imagine they held that many secrets.”

Cinder’s brows drew together. “Not the ones we wished for, I don’t think. My grandfather, the then-sect leader, was very disappointed in the results. No teachings of cultivation or any secret techniques. The translations are in the sect now, available for most proper sect cultivators to read.”

“Did you?” I asked.

She nodded. “Of course. Most of us have. Well, perhaps not the ledgers. Those are just long lists of purchases. They paint an interesting picture of the prosperity of our ancestors, but that is all. Some items are strange, and it allows us to speculate, but that is all. Some of the texts are obviously fiction of one sort or another. Tales of heroes defeating cruel masters. The rest are biographies and actual historical texts. It’s the fiction that always intrigued me.”

“Oh?” I wouldn’t have painted Cinder as an enjoyer of storytelling. Personally, I enjoyed a good bit of fiction on occasion, but most of my reading was very much non-fictional.

“They talk of knights and adventurers and mages. Not a cultivator in sight. Only strong men and women, doing what is right and fighting against evil. I don’t know if they were truly stronger than the cultivators I have met, but they were certainly more... gallant. Yes yes yes, it filled my younger head with a desire for adventure. Of course, the villains are always you.”

“Ah,” I said. “Yes, I suppose there was a surge in popularity for stories which held liches as the great evil-doer. Honestly, it was quite flattering initially. I found the depictions of myself as a moustache-twirling evil doer quite amusing. Even if I’ve never been one for facial hair. Ohoho! Some of them even wrote me as quite dashing. One series had me kidnapping quite the number of young ladies. They never explained quite what a lich was supposed to do with so many innocent maidens. Other than locking them up in cages with a distinct lack of clothing.”

Cinder chuckled. “That seems like a strange twist on your character.”

“It is,” I agreed, shaking my head. “But humans have always been adept at weaving the most colourful tales. It amused me for a time, and then the stories just became too repetitive. The same trope over and over. ‘The dark lich and his desire to kidnap the princess’. It became more of a satire. You know, I don’t think I’ve ever kidnapped a princess. A few heads of state, certainly, but never specifically a princess.”

“You’re out of luck. The Emperor only has sons, I think. There are no kings from which princesses can be born right now.”

“Ah, well, that’s quite unfortunate. I suppose I’ll just have to wait. It’s one of the great advantages to immortality. You’ll get to experience things eventually if you’re just patient enough.”

The carriage pulled to a stop, and I could hear the gentle bustle of the city around us. Cinder glanced out of the window. “Ah. we’re here.” She shifted, gathering her belongings and then paused to touch Mem in the side. “We’ve arrived,” she said.

“Oh.” Mem said. “Mem was thinking.”

“About?” I asked.

The mantis wiggled her arms, paused, then wiggled them some more. “Mem must have been thinking so hard she forgot to remember.”

“I can’t say I’ve ever experienced that before, and yet I’m still somehow not surprised. Shall we? I think we’ve got some work ahead of us.”

***