Novels2Search

1. The Terrible Force Of Centuries

It Presses Upon Kingdoms Until They Are Smashed And Compresses Graves Into Curiosities

The past lay far below. Historians continually warn of the dangers in ignoring the past and just as continually are ignored because of their evident financial interest in the matter, but in that place even those who most fervently resisted the allure of memory, debtors for instance, conceded the justice of the claim, primarily because of its less abstract nature. A fall into that ravine where chance had exposed the ruins of an ancient settlement would surely kill anyone but the hardiest Brawny Knight, the deftest Acrobat, or the most tenacious Small Fry.

The wooden bridge across was at least no rickety thing thrown together ages ago, but rather a recent contrivance that, though temporary, was designed by an accomplished engineer familiar with modern methods and rated to handle not only foot traffic but a limited amount of freight as well. Knowing that, the latest group of workers and tourists felt nothing more during that leg of the journey than the usual deference owed to height, even while looking down at the remains of walls and suggestions of streets. Some remains were placed where the sun might glare; earthy ravine walls shaded others much as artifice had once sheltered parks where the builders of that vanished civilization rested for a time from their labors or else distributed the spoils gained by whatever crimes their primitive understandings could devise.

A guide led the travelers. That guide conceived his duty to be one merely of directing them to the excavation camp from the nearest town, that being Ividottlof, and nothing at all to do with explanation. He had cause for that beyond a mere disinclination to repeat himself for every new arrival. No one would cross that particular bridge who was ignorant of the site's significance: That it was a remnant of the civilization called today Ertith which rose, flourished, and succumbed to the fate of nations long before Egille led his followers across the forbidding ocean to the continent which now bore his name. Nothing else attracted visitors to those hills which even the locals disdained for any use but grazing the less admirable animals.

Still, every Ertithan site had its peculiarities, and every discovery was a tale worth recording in the pages of a periodical which published articles of archaeological interest. Owing to the guide's negligence, elaboration on all such points devolved to know-it-alls who gladly took up the tacitly shirked burden.

“That excavation a few years back gave up at the first breach. The funds behind it, well, there are wealthier institutions than Oplironmakti University, though in academic terms its reputation is impeccable. The lead hoped to make immediate progress and accrue backers in that way, but hope would stop being called such if always it met success. Of course the potential was an authentic thing, but what use is that to the underfinanced?”

“Really they wanted to label it Iflarent's Grave, but do you know? The body was recovered in the end and buried elsewhere. This Iflarent is no important personage of course, but only a brigand who dreamed. He formed the ambition to put every band in the region under him, admirable if he pursued a worthier occupation, and expand the natural caves and gullies and such into a hideout complete with its own barracks and treasury. His workers, and though we like to think they were compelled there are those who consider money to be clean no matter the hands that held it, had the luck to find caverns already enlarged by the ancient Ertithans. That luck was other than good for them. They dug injudiciously and triggered cave-ins that spread into landslides and wholesale terrain alterations such as this ravine here, which is young.”

“When Mr. Atkosol Tellanstal read a retrospective article written about the Iflarent's Hideout excavation, just from that, he decided everything had been done incorrectly and there was more promise here than anywhere else. The truly rich are that way, if you have ever noticed. They think the rest of us are poor through our total incompetence, and what upsets me is how often they prove the supposition correct. When Mr. Atkosol takes an interest, you can be sure he will make something of it, and now we have found possibly the most extensive underground passages in the continent, though the Hideout isn't overall the biggest or most intact of the Ertith ruins.”

“It's the verticality which distinguishes the Ertith from other pre-Egille civilizations. Their architecture has nothing in it necessary for us to learn, but they reached heights both upward and downward which are wondrous when the period is considered, two thousand five hundred years if they all fell dead the moment Egille stepped on land, an impossible event. The ziggurats are what they are, very handsome things, but even for their ordinary buildings five stories is nothing exceptional. The subterranean chambers and tunnels deserve their fame. All that while their contemporaries, so far as we can fix the time, packed together mud to make huts for a season before they moved on when the weather dictated.”

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

“Sometimes frustration and fascination are coiled in the same rope. It is similar to a novel that's almost good or the sculpture with misshapen eyes in that somehow they are the more compelling for their flaws. When you think of that Ertith paper that fades with age so that the writing is not the least bit legible or those mosaics we see only in pieces, are you not more desperate for some scholar to reveal the whole than for the next chapter of a gripping serial?”

The situation recalled the classic novel Astride a Gilt Cow to traveler Dirant Rikelta. When he first read it, he considered it to be an incomparable work of genius which exceeded its considerable reputation. In the years since, not so many years, his estimation of it had descended. The primary cause was that it lost its exclusive position as the sole novel older than he was which he had read, but secondarily, its clever skewering of society and the vapid participants therein impressed him less now that he had joined them. He hoped he had not himself become insipid enough to be the target of satirists, but after spending more time in the company of people who surely qualified and many who did not, he had learned the usual choice either way was not between inanity and profundity but between speech and silence. Though silence was often preferable, prattles made themselves valuable by providing the option, as natural it was to feel superior to those who indulged their didactic tendencies to the point of boring their listeners without possessing the awareness to realize it.

Further, the presumption that everyone would be bored by what bored him or a witty author had not withstood the test of experience. Right then, as an example, the recipients of those lectures appeared to be doing so with good humor or even appreciation he could not dismiss as feigned. After all, the information contained therein, while basic, he knew because of research he conducted as a professional responsibility and was no part of the average citizen's armament. The speakers moreover had a ready audience while Dirant traveled alone and silent in the manner of a hermit driven from his refuge by a more popular hermit, and altogether he suspected himself to be the inferior.

Dismissing the entire matter on the grounds that it would contribute to a mood incongruous with the fine weather, Dirant crossed the long bridge and followed the guide along unmarked but unobstructed trails which passed scrub and scrawny trees just wide enough to conceal a single brigand each. Even if ignorant of the history of the hopeful bandit king Iflarent, now deceased, any Adaban would have described exactly those surroundings if asked to propose a base for a robber band. Someone tried a joke on the subject and regretted it; a sure knowledge of the chief's death did not entirely prevent trepidation, and the laughs he received were nervous. If a traveler's emotions became disarranged to the point that he considered it necessary to adjust his broad-brimmed Adaban traveling hat and wipe his forehead, the others affected not to notice. The day was warm, after all.

Reason won over the inchoate survival instinct, for once, and the group progressed steadily along the wandering path till it resolved itself into a straight street unsuitable for criminals who desired regularity only in their escape routes. Moreover, the band capable of such organized infrastructure had better prospects in the commercial sphere. To the traveler unaware of the location's archaeological interest, the place may have seemed a boulevard surrounded by an invisible fairy village if he turned and left before he saw the street's cousins intersect it to create blocks of buildings, all one or two stories and fashioned in the plainest mode from wood which smelled as fresh as a young Adaban off to his first archery practice. Then again, perhaps fairy villages followed the same plan. The stories frequently omitted detailed descriptions unless a banquet occurred.

So regularly ordered was the base camp that the guide, without having heard in his life of any such company as Stadeskosken, pointed Dirant toward the likely vicinity of its warehouse with total accuracy. The commercial quarter hosted it, and while most archaeological endeavors did not incorporate a commercial quarter, it was only because Atkosol Tellanstal was not backing them. There was a visitors' quarter also, an administrative quarter, and then the labor quarter which constituted far more than a fourth of the camp, the name notwithstanding. The labor quarter had by itself reached a size sufficient for a permanent community to have considered electing a mayor.

Dirant became truly alone rather than simply isolated when he set the commercial quarter as his destination, for the other travelers went straight to the administrative quarter in the hope of meeting Mr. Atkosol himself, his wife, or one of those experts on Ertith whose names radiated sophistication as the sun did warmth. He did not long remain so, since the Stadeskosken warehouse was easily found and naturally had personnel inside.

His fellow employees received him cordially. “You are then the new Ritualist.” Stadeskosken insisted on regular internal communication, and so what might have been a question was not. “There's nothing for you to do today. There won't be enough to do any day to justify bringing you out here, but Mr. Atkosol's jingling pockets have this entrancing quality to them.”

Indeed, a facility too small to have its own manager rarely demanded its own Ritualist, let alone the company's sole Itinerant Ritualist, a title which signified nothing but that someone was available for temporary assignments. Since it implied no superiority of position or salary, Itinerant Ritualist Dirant Rikelta met on equal terms the common hands Onhavant Ikladaf, Tifnir Kaofenpleda, and Goskol Megranap. He had never met any of the three before and yet would remember them forever. They had such distinct names. Whether Megranap was even an Adaban name was a question full of distraction during tedious hours.