Armand’s First Letter. Amelia’s First Letter.
16 April 1022, 22 Merton Street, Edenford
My dearest cousin Armand,
I have found it! I have found the link for which I was searching.
It is in the Chronicles of the Venerable Aelfric, which claims to be a “complete tally of the years of these lands, from their founding until now.” Aelfric begins with the founding of Eburacon by Brut and his followers, who came hither from a “land of flowers”!
According to Aelfric, Brut’s arrival was followed by a deal of fighting, as you can imagine, but in time the noble Brut was the victor, for “his arm was long and his hand was heavy.” I shall spare you the details of what followed in the lives of Brut and his descendants, as they were of little interest to me, and, I would guess, of even less to you; but Brut’s realm was put on a sound footing, and sometimes there was peace.
But here is the link: Aelfric records that at the end of his life Brut regretted his quarrel with his brother Enius, and wished he could return to the “land of flowers” and make peace with him; but he could not, for “his limbs were too weak to return as he came” and “the ways of the Iturians were not yet established.”
Do you see it, Armand? It is all here. It says “his limbs were too weak to return as he came.” Brut used his limbs on the journey from Florentia to Cumbria, that is, he walked or perhaps rode; he did not come by ship. And that means he came by land: he could not have crossed over the Abyss on foot or on horseback, and therefore the Old Lands were at that time one single land.
And then, Aelfric says, “the ways of the Iturians were not yet established.” I wrote you last November about a dispute in the Academie Provençese over the meaning of the phrase “the ways of the ancients”, with one scholar claiming that “way” meant a way to travel somewhere, i.e., a road, and the rest asserting that no trace of such roads had ever been found, and that the “ways of the ancients” clearly referred to their practice of statecraft.
But here, Aelfric is clearly saying that if the “ways of the Iturians” had been available to Brut he could have used them to travel to the “land of flowers” without walking there—and so the lone scholar was correct!—”but they were not yet,” that is, had not yet been made. Why not? For they were made, we conjecture, in later days by the descendants of Enius: the Iturians.
You might object that Brut and Enius are figures of legend, not of history. What of it? For Aelfric was manifestly not legendary—we have his Chronicles—and Aelfric was not only aware of the “ways of the Iturians,” but moreover he expected his readers to be aware of them too, yet ignorant enough to have asked why Brut didn’t make use of them.
Don’t you see? Aelfric wrote at a time when the “ways of the Iturians” were either still in use, or more likely had not yet been forgotten.
Oh, Armand, my heart is full, and I feel that I might burst.
I am now convinced that the ley lines were indeed constructed as a means of travel; that the Iturians used them to bind their empire together; that in their day the Old Lands were One Land. And then, we know not why, came the cataclysm, the breaking of the Land and the ruin of all things.
Maximilian and Dr. Tillotson are well on the way to showing how the ley lines worked, though there is much more to be done; that will be proof of our conjectures. And then, what of the cataclysm? What caused it? Was it due to the “ways of the Iturians,” or was it due to something completely other? We must find out; I am minded of your friend Marc’s crash when one of your first sky-sleds shivered to pieces beneath him.
I wish I could inform the long dead scholars of the Academie Provençese that the ley lines, the obsession of budding students of wizardry throughout the Old Lands, are in fact the traces of the ways of the Ancients, just to see the looks on their faces. I should be assailed by a chorus of harrumphing, and it should not anger me in the slightest.
Your vindicated cousin,
Amelia
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Photo by Solen Feyissa on Unsplash
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