#“Why would I go back in the company of one who might challenge me for leadership?”
“Challenge you?” Cerlota chuckles. “Young ${fname},
*if int > 1
I may well advise you to give over leadership to another–but it would not be me.”
*if int <= 1
I am the last person who should be leading a rebellion."
“What does that mean?”
Cerlota tilts her head to one side and regards you for a few moments before replying. “Are you familiar with the name of Sarcifer? Sarcifer the one-time Ennearch?”
*fake_choice
#“Yes. A monster.” My mouth twists at the thought of the notorious Goete.
“The Flesh-Eater, don’t they call him? Ha. A ridiculous slander on a first-rate intellect.” Cerlota’s voice is faintly contemptuous. “He was no monster, ${lname}, whatever nonsense you’ve been told.”
“You knew him?”
The Theurge shakes her head.
#“Yes. One of the more successful rebels against the Thaumatarchy.”
Cerlota nods, an admiring glint in her eyes.
#“Remind me.”
“He was one of the Nine, the greatest archmages of the Hegemony. He passed all the tests, learned all the secrets, mastered one of the Border Wards. And after three decades at the heart of power, he chose to betray the Thaumatarch.” Cerlota smiles faintly.
"Sarcifer had just turned renegade when I came to Aekos for my training twenty years ago. He vanished on the day that ten assassins attacked the Thaumatarch. Half the masters of the Lykeion were out hunting for him, turning cities upside down whenever they heard any whisper of his passage.
“We heard all the stories they were spreading to the people, painting him as some blood-drinking demon. And we heard the truer stories, about the dozens of Theurges who caught his trail and turned up dead. The hunt only stopped after they lost another Ennearch.”
You can’t repress a shiver at the thought of that much power. “Why did he turn against the Hegemony?”
“The priests’ story is that he was maddened by Xaotic greed for power. This is nonsense. A man of this kind, who has already reached the penultimate pinnacle, does not throw it away on some unlikely gamble.”
*fake_choice
#“Truly? I’d have thought the question is why more Ennearchs don’t try. Who wouldn’t want to be Thaumatarch?”
“If you met the Thaumatarch, you might think otherwise. He has so Changed himself, his mind, to manage the affairs of his vast realm, that he no longer speaks, laughs, feels after the manner of a normal man… The Ennearchs have nearly the glory but keep more humanity.” Cerlota falls silent for a moment. “Also, it was said in the Lykeion that Kleitos holds the lives of the Nine in his hand at all times.”
“Does Sarcifer not disprove that?”
“Perhaps. Or perhaps it is just that Sarcifer is the only one to have found a way to break free.”
#“Was it so unlikely? Ten assassins had no chance against one man?”
“No chance at all.” Cerlota’s utter certainty is chilling. “We are speaking of the Thaumatarch, ${fname}. He is not one man. He has so Changed his own mind that he may handle dozens of tasks at once and still remain aware of every breath around him, every tensed muscle, every subtle shade of light. He is garlanded with Talismans. Ten assassins, or thirty, would be naught but a moment’s distraction.”
“A distraction from what?”
“If we ever meet Sarcifer, we may ask him.”
#“Even great minds can break.”
Cerlota shakes her head with dismissive impatience. “They would surely show some sign of cracking before so great an insanity.”
You can’t restrain a hollow laugh. “If even a fraction of the stories they tell are true…” Flesh-Eater, babe-killer, bathed in blood…
“But they are all lies, young ${fname}. Remember, I was there when those stories were made. I heard them grow and change. Sarcifer was no monster, and his betrayal no madness.”
“What was it, then?”
“Policy.”
#I only nod.
After a short silence, Cerlota continues. “When Sarcifer turned, most of his books were of course destroyed. But certain practical insights were too valuable to lose. Any Theurge of the Third Kyklos will have read his work on the teloi of human bodies.”
“That was his area of mastery?”
“A great healer, and the foremost Plektast of his age.” Cerlota nods. “And his surviving books are I believe the key to understanding his betrayal.”
*fake_choice
#“It had to do with healing?”
“Not literally, no. Only as metaphor.”
#“Why were they too not destroyed, then?”
“They contain hints, only. Easily overlooked.”
#I wait silently for her to explain.
Cerlota offers a smile. "In one obscure passage he writes on the need for a balance between teloi. What if the telos of the eyes was allowed to dominate the whole body, Sarcifer asked in seeming whimsy – what if the eyelids refused to close and no limb was allowed to move into darkness, lest seeing become impossible? Or what if the telos of the gut dominated, so that every orifice of the body was repurposed solely to convey food to the stomach?
“Such a monstrous body, he wrote, could only survive with increasing need for Theurgical intervention. It would demand more blood with each passing year, and eventually it would fail. And here he writes: ‘Would not the other limbs reproach above all that greedy organ which demanded its needs and function should be supreme? Surely they would blame it and reject it, however vital, even if the loss of that organ meant the doom of the body.’” She pauses. “He is I believe widely interpreted here as making a joke.”
@{helot “I was laughing already.”|“Indeed, I could barely restrain my laughter.”}
Cerlota grimaces. “Few have the courage to tell an Ennearch when their efforts at wit fail. But I do not think Sarcifer was trying to joke here. Some pages later again he writes, ‘The wise Plektast on encountering such an imbalanced body will know it is doomed, will be humbled by the recognition, and will begin at once to prepare a more balanced successor.’” She stops, raises one eyebrow significantly.
*fake_choice
*if int > 1
#“And you see reference to the Hegemony in that? An imbalance, a monstrosity?”
“Demanding more blood every year. It is I think becoming increasingly hard for a Theurge not to recognize ourselves in that mirror.” Cerlota shakes her head.
#“And he wrote this just before he vanished?”
“To prepare a more balanced successor.” Cerlota savors the words.
#“Isn’t this all Theurgic good sense? What’s the sedition in it?”
“Precisely the reaction that kept the book from being destroyed.” Cerlota smiles thinly.
#“Where is the balance in a Plektos?”
“You’ve been speaking to M’kyar? The Abhumans’ sense of superiority, deserved or otherwise, does not affect the metaphor.” Cerlota wrinkles her nose.
#“Be clear, kuria–what do you think he meant by it all?”
“Our nations, and the whole Hegemony, are in a certain sense a body, a grand organism.” Cerlota’s voice becomes low and intense.
“We live in a body, a community of nations, that has been shaped for centuries by Theurgy. Today Theurgy is treated as the solution to every problem, and the needs of Theurges overwhelm all other considerations. Trade, military strategy, religion… all are distorted to fit the logic of blood extraction, as if that were the first purpose of every nation and its people.”
“And you think Sarcifer saw this as a problem?” You try to keep the skepticism from seeping too harshly into your voice. “A Theurge, at the heart of a ‘body’ whose purpose is to ensure Theurges have everything they need?”
“A Plektast, who understood that a body only works as a balance of teloi, not a single dominant one.” If Cerlota is not being earnest, she is an extraordinary actress. “Even if I were wrong about Sarcifer – and I am not wrong – I recognize that a stable new Hegemony cannot be a Thaumatarchy. It must have a less monstrous balance, in which Theurges are not the sole dominant force. In which our interests are challenged by others, by the merchants and nobles and generals and priests, all with their own purposes. And where even the peasantry has some voice when the hand of authority falls too heavy on them.”
*fake_choice
*if int > 1
#“So you don’t think I should lead a rebellion either?”
“If we return alive, and you can take up that mantle once more… I think you must not lead alone, nor with a Theurge like myself sharing power with you. I think you must lead in a way that brings others alongside you who can open your eyes to other purposes beyond those you already know.” Cerlota folds her arms.
#“And this is why I should trust you not to usurp me? Because of what you read into Sarcifer’s book?”
“Because I see no value in seeking to replicate today’s imbalance, yes.” She stares at you unamused.
*if helot
#“And the helotry? Can your balance include those whose blood is harvested?”
“The new balance must include all in one form or another. We will need blood; and if we do not want to replicate the Hegemony’s eternal war, we will need it from sources that do not rise up against us.” Cerlota meets your gaze.
#“Thank you for the explanation, segnura. Truly fascinating.”
She nods briskly.
