On the fourth and final floor of the Titemore manor was a room seldom used. Overlarge, the room saw little use even during the reign of Sylvana, relegated to storing miscellaneous furniture and a healthy coating of dust. The manor’s attendants, superstitious in the manner that commoners often were, avoided the room and the fourth floor as best as was possible, believing, without evidence, that the room boasted some dark secret that was the reason for its infrequent use.
And though the rumor was born long before Mina’s ascension to nobility, it could no longer be said that the room was some mere ordinary room. She had given it a purpose, a dark purpose that her attendants might call sinister had they known what was happening within its walls, or were allowed to enter the room at all. The only one allowed to enter the room now was Mina herself, and then only during the night or during dark storms.
Outside, rain pattered against the ceiling and outer walls while wind rattled the window panes. A cool breeze went through the room, despite the window being sealed, and Mina wrapped her dress tighter in search of warmth. Her legs squeezed together unconsciously, rubbing together to generate the barest amount of friction and heat. Her left hand, which throbbed with dull pain every other moment, was tucked neatly beneath her armpit, while her right pinched the bottom corner of the page her eyes were scouring for knowledge.
The book, written ages ago on pages now withering away, was written in a strange manner and a stranger language. Like water, the words and letters flowed together in a rounded way, curving inwards and outwards, stretching across the page. Mina had obtained the book a week back, a gift from her new master, and had delved into it immediately, disappearing into her own quarters for days as she attempted to solve the riddle of this foreign language. But the book’s first page proved too much for her, who had only fragments of knowledge to go on stripped from the musings of her master.
Failure was unacceptable, and so she had the room on the fourth floor cleared out, after which entry was forbidden to all except herself. The book’s details were dangerous, or at least seemed as much. Interruptions were to be avoided.
As another breeze passed over her and she drew her dress even tighter around herself she found herself wishing she had started a fire.
The book’s first page, which was the only one yet deciphered, detailed a ritual, to which Mina had begun the first attempt to recreate. Empty of furnishings, the room was to contain only the book itself and the ritualist, whereupon the book was to be placed in the center of the room. Surrounding it was to be a red circle, drawn with the ritualist’s own blood.
Mina gnawed at the edge of her lip. The symbols of the second page, unlike the first, danced in the shadowy light of the room, stilled only by the flash of lightning. Then the brightness receded, and the words began their dance once more.
An hour passed, or two, and the details of that second page began to come into focus. Feeling the heavy weight of tiredness pulling on her eyelids she rubbed them, then, glancing out the window, saw that the storm had gone some time ago.
“It’s morning,” Mina said to herself. Closing the book, she stood to the sound of her knees popping and an ache that stretched from her ankles to her shoulders. Deciphering the book required too little movement and too much focus, making the act of pulling one’s self away from the book feel as if they had just awoken from a restless sleep.
Descending the stairs to the first floor, where the dining room was, she ordered the chef to cook up a morsel of food. “Something small and light. I haven't had an appetite, lately,” she said, carrying under her arm an altogether different book than the one that occupied her night. A brighter book, one unlikely to cause a stir should she be seen with it.
Halfway through her meal, and more than three-quarters through her book, she was finally greeted by the Knight Captain.
“What is the agenda for today?” Knight Captain Aelfed asked, stifling a yawn.
“More books,” Mina said. Aelfred rolled his eyes. “I’m always in need of books.”
“What you’re in need of is money,” Aelfred said. He pulled out the chair beside her and sat with undue familiarity. “How much is the debt this week?”
Mina sighed and closed her book, feeling suddenly annoyed. “We borrowed another 20,000 this week,” she said.
“For a grand total of 253,000 impera,” Aelfred said. She was ashamed of the number, despite its necessity. Titemore Barony was on the verge of growth. A single domino was waiting to be pushed, hidden from view, and she was about to discover it.
“I need two history books, this time. An Empire Analyzed, which should be easy enough to obtain. Every copy has a green cover, so I’ll hear no fretting about getting the right one. The second is…”
She was stopped by Aelfred’s hand, which rose quickly to her mouth and firmly pressed two gloved fingers against her lips. “Money,” the Knight Captain insisted.
The hand moved away, and Mina regretted that she did not bite those two fingers off. But, despite the rudeness of his action, Mina understood his concerns.
“All in due time,” she said.
Aelfred was unconvinced. “When, perchance, will that time be?”
“I had no idea you cared so much for my barony, Aelfred.”
Aelfred snorted. “What I care for is my pay,” he replied. She knew the true meaning of his words. They were lies, of course, to disguise his true intentions from the rabble that filled the manor. Highharrow was thinking of another war, but Hilva’s many agents, Mina included, were not ready, or else too afraid of potential Vigilant interference.
The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.
“My books,” she said again.
“Are there coins in these books of yours?”
“In a manner of speaking.”
Aelfred took the cup of tea that had been hers, which had long grown cold, and drank it whole, then motioned for a refill, to which the fat Sylvana obliged. He sat in disgruntled silence until the tea came, steaming hot and exceptionally fragrant. He drank the second one slower, savoring the heat of it and appearing almost pleased. Mina, too, savored the moment. Silence in Aelfred’s presence was hard to come by.
“One week,” Aelfred said, ending the peaceful moment.
“For?” Mina inquired.
Aelfred scowled, and at once Mina noticed the broadness of his shoulders and the tightness of the fist his free hand made. He was serious, for a first, and that fact alone intimidated her. That he could kill her with a single swipe of his hand only added to the effect.
“Trusting you comes with great difficulty. So, to ensure that you are still…serious about the matter, I need assurances.” Leaning forward so close that Mina could see the individual hairs of his eyelashes, he tipped the empty cup over and watched as it rolled across the table, stopping just at the table’s edge. “One week. That’s all the time I’ll give you. In that time you’ll need to raise 10,000 impera, to be used towards your debts. I don’t care how you acquire it, only that it’s acquired, and that it’s done so without drawing too much attention.”
“A mighty sum, that is,” Mina replied.
“Then you’ll have to work mighty hard.”
She said nothing as he left her, not even to ask for her books again despite her need for them. Anger emanated from Aelfred’s every motion, no longer hidden behind a lackadaisical air of an unconcerned knight. She had taken too long in her efforts, bringing about a domineering pressure as the situation grew ever more dire, a pressure that had apparently hit Aelfred worse than herself.
After breakfast Mina returned to the room on the fourth floor with renewed vigor. Closing the curtains so that only a thin stream of light entered the room, she spread the pages of the dark book once more with her left hand. In her right she clutched the smooth surface of her mana stone, its surface aglow with faint white whispers.
Even with a stream of sunlight filtering in she could see the letters dance to and fro, changing from moment to moment. Pouring her mana onto the page, she felt for the presence of ink; a difficult technique, achieved only after many weeks of study and practice. Yet unlike proper ink, which left a thin but discernible layer atop the paper, the dark book’s letters sunk into the page like mini chasms.
Redirecting her magic into the letters themselves, she felt her mana flow over the paper’s edge like a cliff. Yet, as her mana creeped down the cliff into the dark void below, she felt something pull her mana deeper and deeper until it disappeared.
She recoiled instinctively from the book, her knees scraping hard against the wooden floor, and stood. Her breathing was slow and haggard, as if it were her breath and not her mana that had been pulled into the book. Steadying her breathing, she found that her hands were trembling and, just as upsetting, her dress had been torn at the knee, where a stain of blood was steadily growing.
The book, now possessing a starkly more sinister air of darkness in her mind, remained perfectly still. The faintly yellow pages, as well as the inky black voids that were words.
She rushed to the book with a feral drive, her knees crying out with unheard pain as she knelt. Magic flowed from her hands and onto the page and then, ceaselessly, down into the word-voids. The words, stopped in time, became, for the moment, translatable.
In her time studying languages, an affair spanned half her life and covered more than four languages, Mina had come to learn that most possessed what she referred to as “filler” words. Words that connected one idea to the next, or which determined the direction of a word’s meaning. Words that, with a small degree of accuracy, could be removed entirely while still maintaining the overall meaning of a sentence.
Applying such a process to such an unusual language was dangerous, but she did so regardless, pulling from the mystical text only the verbs and nouns already known to her. The rest, those words still foreign to her, as well as those which began their dance again as her magic dwindled, were cast to memory.
As the last of her mana reached inside those endless voids she closed the book. Her heart throbbed in her chest and in her ears like a drum, and her hands shook. Exertion, she’d have told herself if she hadn’t known better. But fear was an unmistakable emotion, and the only one that made her weak in the knees and cautious of shadows.
She retreated to the dining room on the first floor, calling for another cup of tea that she wouldn’t drink and a plate of cake she wouldn’t eat. It only served to get the servants out of the room, but not so far away that Mina would feel entirely alone. The dining room, with its many large windows and numerous lanterns, was well lit even at dusk and astoundingly bright during the day.
By the time the tea came to her, leaving a trail of white steam in its wake, Mina had already pondered the various words of the second page. The ones she recognized were, as of yet, unhelpful. The first two words, whose context Mina still needed to decipher, meant blood and ritual. The third, whose context she easily deciphered, meant mana, or, in this particular instance, the application of mana.
The rest of the text, which to her was more of a puzzle, sat safely within the confines of her mind as an image. Another trick she had been taught in Hilva, it took immense focus to the point of distraction. Even with her fingers wrapped neatly around the cup of steaming tea she felt no heat, despite the steam that rolled off the top.
“Careful, my lady, it’s still hot.” the chef said. Mina shooed him away with a hand, and he left without a fuss.
Dusk fell before she had deciphered enough to understand the purpose of the second page, by which point she had ordered the three Sylvanas to remain in the room with her. For once their dull faces did not irritate her, though her buttocks ached against the seat of her chair despite the cushioning. Night fell soon after. There was the small desire to keep at least one of the Sylvanas in her room as she slept, an idea that crept into her mind no matter how many times she dismissed it. She could hear the rumors already.
In bed she rolled to her side so as to gaze into the fireplace. Basking in the subtle warmth that emanated from it she closed her eyes. In her vision she saw those dancing letters, which now began to sing an almost coherent tune.