“Ashlachma morkolyo ehlnofai.”

“Ehlnofey,” Cato corrected.

“Ashlachma morkolyo ehlnofey.”

“And what is its meaning?”

Shortly after they arrived in Beroli, Cato began tutoring Father Andrea in the Book of Zevon. At least, that’s what Andrea thought was happening. Really, he was helping Cato remember what his body already knew; like the lyrics to an old song buried deep in his memory, needing to be jogged a bit before they could be strung properly back together.

The words themselves and their pronunciation came back just from reading the tome. Their actual meaning took many repeated readings along with Andrea’s prompting. But the Book of Zevon wasn’t an esoteric tome for nothing. Its words were riddles that had to be interpreted in the context of thousands of years of philosophical, religious, and mystic traditions which overlapped to form modern church dogma. He had acquired as many of these other texts as he could from collections here in Beroli, mainly from the Lord Vicar’s palace collection and the local chapels, but going through them was a slow process of recollection. Pretending to teach Father Andrea to poach his interpretations was faster.

Cato suppressed the now-familiar feeling of fraudulence. He needed to know more about this world, and it would do him no good to reveal just how ignorant he was, even to one of his closest supporters. Maybe especially to his closest supporters.

“It means that the sinner seeks out the place called morkolyo.”

“Go deeper. What are the literal words on the page?”

“This… the turned-away-face morkolyo… looks-for. But it’s a type of looking like trying to look over the horizon. It’s impossible.”

“Impossible for an ordinary human, but possible by the grace of God.”

“Yes, exactly,” Andrea agreed. This was a well-worn rhetorical trick they had encountered dozens of times earlier in the book.

“What does ‘morkolyo’ break down into? What about the text makes you think it is a place?” Cato continued.

“Well, the construction-”

“The Book of Zevon breaks the norms of middle Achaean grammatical construction. We know this.”

Cato immediately regretted snapping at Andrea. He was lucky to find anybody in the Inillo parish that could read Achaean at all, never mind translate and interpret esoteric mystic texts. The priest’s book learning was excellent even by the standards of the Beroli church, and was totally out of place in a rural town of less than ten thousand. Though he hadn’t asked Andrea why he had been assigned to such an out-of-the-way parish despite his talents, he suspected some conflict as an acolyte was to blame.

“Apologies, my lord.”

But at the same time, Cato felt very strongly about this. Just hearing someone else recite the words made his fingers twitch. Sometimes, reading the text aloud, he could feel a phantom pain on his knuckles. At first he thought it was one of the villagers in danger, but he soon learned to distinguish between them. It was his body’s memory again, warning him not to make the same mistake twice.

Someone had done a real number on this guy.

Cato took a deep breath.

“No, Andrea, I should apologize. I’ve been driving you through the Book too quickly.”

“What? No, my lord, the error lies with me.” He was obviously desperate not to lose these moments. For a young priest cast out into a dead-end parish, the chance to study with someone he believed was a living saint was an opportunity he couldn’t afford to miss. Cato was taking full advantage of that delusion.

“There is no error,” he lied. “You need time to digest what you have learned. Tend to vespers tonight and take a rest. The Book will still be here tomorrow.”

Andrea bowed and stood up, but stopped at the door to Cato’s study.

“Morkolyo means a place of spiritual refuge. In the Triptochyte of Celadorn it refers to the inner sanctum of a temple, and is also used to refer to the heart of the highest Heaven. But its literal meaning relates to the root for sight, so we should understand it as the place which God observes most closely. For the Book of Zevon, that place is the human soul, not a physical location. So the sinner is looking for his own soul.”

Cato was taken aback. It was a solid interpretation, perfectly in line with the rest of the Book.

And it was wrong. Listening to Andrea speak those words was like hearing nails on a chalkboard. His tongue itched. The true interpretation was right there, closer than the veins in his forehead, but he just. Couldn’t. Remember.

Cato forced a smile.

“Go. We will continue tomorrow.”

Andrea beamed and exited with a bow. Cato slumped back in his luxurious chair with a sigh.

A cautious knock came at the door.

“Enter, Myshkin.”

After a shave, new clothes that fit properly, and a lot of bathing, the shepherd cleaned up quite nicely. They had sold all the flocks soon after arriving in Beroli, leaving him and Inna, for the first time, with no work. Cato took them in as servants. The villagers had interpreted this as a show of great humility, permitting lowly shepherds to serve and live with him, but that couldn’t be farther from the truth.

On the one hand, he still felt bad for the horrible scare he’d given them. They were the first people he’d met after arriving in this world, and he had started out by chasing and terrifying them. Even so, they had stood up for him and were in large part responsible for the position he was in today, even if they didn’t know it. Without their intervention, his arrival in Inillo could have turned badly violent.

On the other hand, they knew witchcraft. Taking them into his household made it much easier to learn their spells without arousing suspicion.

“How is Girolamo doing?”

“Little Girolamo was awake when I visited, my lord, and his injuries were gone. But he was beaten badly, and it took him some time to speak properly.”

No surprise there. Cato could take away the wounds and the pain, but he couldn’t do very much about the shock and humiliation. The boy’s family would have to help on that front.

It was infuriating. He didn’t need to hear Girolamo’s testimony to know those wounds didn’t come from a fight. He was thrown to the ground and beaten with clubs while he tried to protect his head and vitals, without so much as bruising or scuffing on his knuckles. Moreover, he hadn’t been robbed: the guard confiscated the silver when they took him in.

This was an ambush, one deliberately targeted at a young man walking alone. The implications were obvious. Somebody wanted the villagers from Inillo out of Beroli, and they had the protection of a sitting councilman.

Myshkin turned his head away, and Cato realized that he had dug his fingers into the hard wood of the desk, leaving a shallow gash. Cato relaxed his hands and cleared his throat.

This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

“Continue, Myshkin.”

“My lord. He said what you expected. He was walking home from the market when a band of men, maybe five or six, came up from behind him with clubs and beat him. They ran off when the guard arrived, and he was taken in for disturbing the peace.”

Myshkin stopped, hesitating.

“What is it?”

“My lord… the boy said that, while they were beating him… they called him a devil worshiper. And…”

“They called me the devil, is that it?”

“Yes, my lord.”

Cato had detected some resentment and suspicion among the local population. While everyone else lived in fear of the plague, watching their neighbors and loved ones dying off one by one, nobody in Beroli was so much as touched by it. Already, dozens of locals had joined to listen to Father Andrea’s sermons, and even more were planning to join their next baptism by the river. They were desperate for anything that would protect them. But Cato wasn’t bound to any of them, and he wasn’t able to purify or heal them.

Seeing others untouched by common misery was bad enough. Once they realized that joining with the villagers didn’t extend them any protection, the backlash would mount. That was one reason Cato was still adamant about moving on to Anthusa, where it would be easier to blend in.

But he hadn’t expected Beroli to turn on him this early. Rather, he hadn’t expected the city as a whole to turn so quickly. Clearly, whoever was behind these bricklayers took offense at Cato much more quickly.

What a pain.

“Does Remiro know?”

“Not yet, my lord.”

Cato weighed his options

“Then inform him, and set a rule. From now on, nobody walks the streets in groups smaller than three. Add a curfew after sundown. And…”

Myshkin waited patiently.

“Draw me a bath. Tell Andrea I will be missing vespers today.”

⚜ ⚜ ⚜

There was more to this than just his own relaxation and indulgence, though those couldn’t be overlooked. As Cato sank into the polished brass tub, perfumed with jasmine and lavender, he centered himself, collected his thoughts, and-

“Well well, look who came crawling back.”

There it was, always there right before he even thought about calling.

“That’s us, kid. Two peas in a pod.”

He was pretty sure his reflection was talking again, but Cato had enough dignity to keep his eyes closed and just listen.

“Kiddo, I’m hurt. But hey, you don’t want to look me in the eye, that’s fine by me. We’re already way closer than that.”

This voice, whatever it was, ought to skip the chatter and get down to the damned point.

“Hey, language. Really, kids these days.”

Cato was hanging up.

“Woah woah woah, easy there. You think I’m going to answer every time you ring me up, you’ve got another thing coming. I just wanted to tell you how proud I was.”

Proud? Of what?

“What do you figure? You’re enjoying yourself! Indulging. Mind you, not quite what the guy before you did, but baby steps. Good food, nice baths and nicer clothes, it’s a solid start. And while I would have definitely preferred cutting down the size of your little tamagotchi collection, watching you give that guard what for was just great.”

Ah, right. That wrath, and the satisfaction he’d felt humiliating that man. It was-

“Deserved, one-hundred percent. Don’t think for a moment it was anything else. I mean, those bozos were planning to steal the kid’s money after imprisoning him for nothing. They needed to get shoved around to learn who’s boss around here.”

And who exactly was the boss?

“You, obviously.”

Don’t be coy. That wasn’t me, it was the body’s old-

“Now let me stop you right there, champ. First off, that’s lousy bait. Oh no, that wasn’t you dearie, you’re not responsible, is that what you expected me to say? Pull a little good intentions routine? I’m not a cartoon devil on your shoulder.”

Funny, that’s exactly what you sound like.

“Rude.”

Rude doesn’t mean wrong.

“It means you’re not looking. Actually, you know what, I should just show you.”

Cato felt a jolt. It seemed to almost come from outside his body, as though his perception extended outside of his own skin. It sent a current through his body, from his right shoulder down the arm and into his fingertips.

“Oh yeah baby, that’s the good stuff!”

What the-

“Language!”

What the heck was that?

“That, my fine, feathered friend, is what happens when you meet me in the middle. Another bridge rebuilt and open for business!”

You like that metaphor far too much.

“Granted, it’s just one lane right now, but it’s a solid start. Thunderbolts, here we come!”

Cato felt a thrumming power inside him now, like another sense. With just a slight effort of will, crackling energy erupted between his fingers.

“Careful where you test that, by the by, it’ll burn down half the city if you aim it wrong.”

Cato was less than fully impressed. What made this any different compared to the golden lions, or the spells Inna and Myshkin taught him?

“Oh, if you could see my eyes rolling right now. First off, those little witch-knacks are the bottom of the barrel as far as magic goes. They just enhance your natural capacities. More to the point, there’s hard limits there. Those shepherds don’t have enough magical oomph to get anywhere near those limits, but there’s only so far you can enhance the human body before you start burning it out. You’ve got to purify and reinforce the body and soul both to do more, but by the time you’ve done that, tricks like those don’t get you much farther anyway. You’ll want to drop those as soon as possible and switch to something custom made for your hardware.”

And I have, as you put it, different hardware?

“There’s no getting anything past you, is there? That’s how you could learn those spells so fast and use them so easily: you’re operating way below your actual limits.”

And the golden lions?

“Those are another story. That spell is a gorgeous piece of work, if anything it’s way beyond your capacity right now. Like a three-year-old in the cockpit of a fighter jet. Even if you had manual control of those, you couldn’t do much more than manifest them, though even that is enough to take down pipsqueaks in a backwater like this. Whoever put those on you wanted you safe, and wanted to keep you from tearing yourself apart by using them, so they put it on autopilot. They probably would have taken the training wheels off in a few decades when you were up to the task.”

You mean when the body’s old-

“Yeah yeah, same difference. But look here.”

Cato felt that jolt again, but it was smoother this time. He felt powerful. In control.

“This isn’t a magical parlor trick, and it’s not a piece of military supertech you don’t know how to operate. This stuff is the prima materia. Formless and malleable, perfectly suited to your body as it is right now. Just learn how to manipulate it properly, and you can take your first steps as a cultivator.”

He’d heard the villagers use the word a few times, but the meaning escaped him.

“The path of surpassing your human limits. Transcendence. Immortality. Defy heaven, or become the heavens.”

That… was loftier than Cato expected.

“You came into this world right after half of the most powerful cultivators on the planet all got killed at the same time, and you’ve spent every day since then with peasants who won’t reach a hundred. No wonder you didn’t have a clue. Remiro is the closest thing to a cultivator in Inillo, and he was only qualified to be a servant managing the peasants for the old baron. But you- or rather, your old body, belonged to someone who was very, very far advanced. Hell, you’d probably live to a thousand even if you never cultivated another day, with just the few decades of serious practice this guy did. But if you can relearn what that guy knew-”

Fly, throw thunderbolts, win staring contests with volcanoes?

“And more. Way more.”

Cato dismissed the voice and sank back in the water.

That was really, really tempting.

He supposed it wouldn’t be the devil on his shoulder if it wasn’t. He’d damn near forgotten that there had been a point to that conversation, and it wasn’t to become more powerful. It was to learn exactly what kind of relationship he had with this body, and how strong an effect its old memories and habits had on him. In other words, how much of his current actions were really him, or something else.

Who was in control of whom?

He had to give the voice credit, it had distracted him with something that really merited thought. It was a good thing he’d cleared out this evening-

“My LORD!”

The bathroom door slammed open as Inna pushed in. Even as she averted her eyes from his bathing form, she yelled.

“Soldiers came into the chapel, my lord. They took Father Andrea and the others prisoner!”

Somewhere deep in his gut, Cato felt that voice laughing. His fingers twitched, lightning at the ready.

So that was the way it was going to be.