Death After Death

Chapter 178: The Things You Hear

Three months after he’d had the Tome of Bahgmorrda taken away from him, the librarian returned it. Apparently, that was because it was written in five different languages, and the crude cipher worked differently on each of them. Simon had barely noticed that fact, but the person that they’d had working on it since was having great difficulties with translating it.

‘We’ll be relying on you to make continued progress,’ read the note that the Head Librarian gave him with it.

Simon nodded and made all the gestures that he would do his best on it, but he wasn't really interested in it anymore. Truthfully, translating the whole thing, line by line, would take months, or maybe even a year, and his time would be better spent reading new books to pass on. He didn’t have a choice in the matter. So, instead, he got to work.

Even though he didn’t really get anything out of it, there was something very zen about sitting in a library filled with other men who could not speak, scribbling away in the quiet as he attempted to make his writing as beautiful and readable as possible.

Simon had terrible penmanship for most of his lives. It was only after reading so many barely legible scrawls or awkwardly crabbed writing and trying hard to puzzle out its meaning over his last few lives that he’d tried to improve that small but important aspect himself. He hadn’t even used cursive since he was a child, but with every page he transcribed, he did his best to improve. The result after a few hours was something close to a trance.

He could think much faster than his pen could move while he tried to create something clean and clear that bordered on calligraphy. As a result, he had more than enough time to consider how each line might be reworded. For a time, he used that extra time to think about how he might clarify or obscure the meaning of the words. After all, he wanted to preserve knowledge, but he didn’t necessarily want the white cloaks to have it. It was a conundrum, but in the end, eventually, he opted to write largely what was written while he used that extra time to ponder the nature of magic.

That was mostly all he did anymore. Even his initial fervor for spending his spare time in the fighting yards slowly faded, and those workouts became less and less frequent. It wasn’t because he didn’t want to be in better shape or anything; it was because the nature of what he reflected on consumed him.

Each night, after work but before dinner, he would go on walks around the walls to try to clear his mind. He tried to think about Elthena and his son or daughter, who was not yet born. Sometimes he even reflected on other things, like the dragon, and what the point of that strange level was. However, invariably, those were forgotten in favor of questions about the nature of magic more and more as time went on. Eventually, it bordered on obsession, as strange symbols and words would dance in front of his eyes later that night while he tried to sleep.

In time, only the occasional words and shouts of the white cloaks intruded on his peace. Mostly, he could tune these out because people rarely asked him questions about what he was working on directly. He’d succeeded in fading into the background.

Sometimes, though, that solitude became impossible, such as the day that a patrol came back to the Broken Tower all but annihilated by zombies north of Schwarzenbruck. That was enough to pique Simon’s interest, and while they built a war party to counter the threat, he listened in to the talk. For a few days after the survivors came back it was all anyone talked about. Even the library wasn’t completely silent as commanders and other members visited, looking for more information about what it was they faced.

At times, it bordered on the apocalyptic. Though the leaders tried to downplay the threat, in private, many whispered that it was a sign of the end of the world and a fulfillment of the prophecies. However, through all of the chaos and panic, Simon mostly just smiled to himself. He knew that by the time the men they were assembling made it back to Schwarzenbruck, they’d find nothing at all to fight, thanks to him.

That didn’t stop him from leaping at the chance to dig through the section of the archive that dealt with necromancy and the dead when the Abbott came down and gave them all new orders. “Though all of your work is vital,” he explained to them sourly. “Right now, the urgent takes priority over the important. Effective immediately, all other research will cease, and we will focus solely on the dead and the foul necromancers that raise them until our expeditionary force departs.”

Simon didn’t mind those instructions at all. He was over a hundred pages into his grimoire, and it had long since become an exercise in patience and penmanship rather than anything scholarly. He was more than happy to see if he could find some bit of lore or information that could help the order in the trials to come. Unfortunately, all he ever found for them was remarkably unhelpful, though he didn’t share that with anyone.

“Are you taking this seriously, Ennis?” the man asked a little more forcefully. “People have died. Someone is to blame!”

‘They were both reading the same book when they died.’ Simon wrote finally. It wasn’t a question. He wasn’t sure, of course, but after thinking about it for days, he realized it was his best answer to this locked room mystery. No one had done it. Instead, a particularly dangerous book in the collection had, he just didn’t know how.

The man’s eyes narrowed as he looked at him silently for several seconds. Then he said, “How do you know that?”

‘I don’t know.’ Simon admitted in a quick flourish. ‘Just a guess.’

“Pretty damn good guess,” the man grumbled as he reached into a bag by his feet and pulled out a particularly evil tome. The thing was bound in dark leather and had no title. If Simon had been a betting man, he would have said the thing was human skin, but he couldn’t say for sure without a closer explanation. “Have you seen this before?”

Simon answered with a shake of his head. He’d remember a book like that.

“So you didn’t see it before, but you know that it killed them?” the inquisitor tried again. “How does that work?”

‘I’ve been translating a grimoire for months,’ Simon responded. ‘Ask the Head Librarian.’

“We already have,” the other man nodded. “But now you’re on this instead.”

‘Why me?’ Simon protested in one quick line, frowning that he’d smudged the ink on the y because he was in too much of a hurry.

“Because you were the only one to guess it had to do with a book,” the man answered smugly. “I’ve been through it myself, and though I can’t read all of it, I’m hoping you have better luck.”

Simon sighed and then nodded. There was no point in fighting this because he knew he wouldn’t win.

On the plus side, it beats transcribing any more of the Tome of Bahgmorrda, he told himself. That was soft-pedaling this more than a little bit, though, he noted grimly. If he wasn’t careful, this could definitely be one of those deaths that wasn’t just a death.