Armand’s First Letter. Amelia’s First Letter.
27 December 1018
17 Rue Thomas, Toulouse
My dearest cousin Armand,
I feel that I am walking in days of myth and legend! As if the vast run of history has condensed down to a single point, and its wonders are revolving before me!
But if I continue in this vein you will think that I have run mad, and you will begin to use hard words like enthusiasm, and so you will please permit me to primly change the subject.
Thank you indeed for the delightful surprise you included in the Amelie‘s most recent cargo!
I speak, of course of Jérôme’s return to us; for we had no notion of it, and having him home put quite the cap on this festal season. It is plain to see that he put his time with you to good use, for our usually taciturn companion has been chattering without pause seemingly since he touched Provençese soil.
During your visit this past year we conjectured that King Guy’s artifact served to empower the ley lines that meet at that node, gathering what you call effort and transforming it into some kind of sorcerous power; and it’s this latter bit that is now in question: what kind? Answering this appears now to be a matter of slow, painstaking work.
So far as Jérôme can discern there is no point of contact between the Fleuve de Belazel , that is, forming, and the Fleuve de Johannes that he and I have studied under Fr. Laguerre. (Given my own experience with the power of the Fleuve de Johannes and Le Maréchal‘s fleet I find this a comfort.) He will have to seek points of congruence in the other streams of Provençese wizardry; but it seems most likely that only Cumbrian wizardry will give him what he seeks. Indeed, he is already talking about seeking a place at Edenford.
And now, you will be wanting to hear of my miracles and wonders!
If I were to ask you what you know of the Iturians, as I was asked last week by a gnome-like historian from the University of Toulouse, I have no doubt you would come up with the bit of scripture we have all heard in the last few days: that Kaisaras Augoustos, autocrator of the Iturians, called for a census of the “whole world”.
But if I probed further, it is unlikely that you would know any more than this—and I hasten to say, not simply because you did not what my Maximilian calls the “dubious privilege” (and Jack calls the “damn shame”) of a Cumbrian public school education. Even the scholars at Edenford would have little more to say, for the Iturians are a great mystery.
Ruins with Iturian inscriptions have been found all over the Old Lands, so the gnome-like Dr. Nicollier informs us: not just in Cumbria and Provençe, but in all of them. From these inscriptions we know that they lived; we know that they held sway over a vast realm; we even know the names of many of the Kaisaros. And from scripture, of course, we know that their rule extended to that holy Land, now lost, where Our Lord once walked.
And that is almost all we know, it seems, barring a scant few passing mentions in the texts we have received from antiquity. They lived; they conquered; and then, somehow, this mighty people passed away. We know they ruled in the days of Our Lord, and perhaps for some few centuries after; and then there is a great blank in our knowledge, an “age of obscurity” as one scholar described it to me, an age of which nothing at all is known, not even its duration.
Historians have many theories as to the causes of this obscurity, many of them reflecting a thoroughly cynical view of human nature, I fear. But if we are right, if the fracturing of the ley lines was accompanied by a great calamity, a catastrophe that shook the world, then perhaps we have not much farther to seek—for what less than a world-shaking catastrophe could cause the peoples of the world to lose the reckoning of the years?
Dr. Nicollier pooh-poohed this idea, accusing us of dealing in the tales of old wives; for he is one of those scholars who still holds the ideals of the Provençese revolution in his heart.
And yet, the few hints we do have in the ancient texts are simply tantalizing. The Iturian realm, the autocratoria in the ancient tongue, is said to have been won by force of arms. The Iturians raised legions of troops who—you will see the point immediately, I am sure—were known for their ability to march. There is no mention in this texts of the Abyss; no mention of ships able to cross the Abyss; no mention of sky-ships at all.
In the view Dr. Nicollier, this lack is unremarkable. Of course they must have had sky-ships; after all, they left inscriptions in many Lands of the Abyss and they had to get from one to the next somehow. But of course, he says, no one writes about what everyone takes for granted.
But according to the ancient sources, where the legions traveled, they traveled by road.
If the catastrophe that shattered the ley lines has left any mark in the history of the world, it can only be this; there are no other candidates.
Your astounded and wondering cousin,
Amelia
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Photo by Clemens van Lay on Unsplash
Zymurgia House 