Death After Death PLUS 199-201

Ch. 199 - A New Beginning

Later that evening, Simon was finally allowed to meet his son. Before that, though, he was given a tour of the palace he already knew reasonably well and shown the apartments he’d be living in until such time as Seyom was grown or the Queen grew dissatisfied with his performance. While he certainly didn’t expect the latter to apply, he did note that she’d given him a room at the top of the tower, furthest from her own bedchambers, which was very clearly a message all of its own.

Don’t get any ideas indeed, he thought to himself. 

He didn't mind, though. The space was private, out of the way, and unlikely to be spied upon. It was even fairly defensible should he ever require that, and there was ample room for him to work on several of his art and magic-related experiments.

It was only later that evening when Simon had unpacked his possessions and sent servants to the library and the bazaar to retrieve the things he thought he’d need for the upcoming lessons Simon was actually introduced to Seyom, he was stunned for a moment. 

He could see plenty of the Queen in his dark-eyed features, but he could see something of himself, too, and it had more of an effect than he’d expected. Simon had tutored Gregor, Niko, and the Alexin children, but something about Seyom being his own flesh and blood, even if the child didn’t know it, changed that dynamic immediately.  

He’d had a short speech prepared about discovering the wonders of the world together, but he only got a few words out before it was clear the boy wasn’t listening, which ruined the moment. At first, Simon thought that his son had just grown up into a precocious brat, but as it turned out, he’d simply been coddled within an inch of his life. 

The boy clung to his mother’s skirts whenever possible, which wasn’t so unusual for a boy of eight, but even when he was apart from her, he was surrounded constantly by half a dozen servants to tend to his every need. He could not sneeze without being offered three handkerchiefs.

When it came to eating, he wasn’t even seated by Seyom; the boy was seated at a small table with three other servants, and he was put at the Queen’s left hand at the high table. “Well, what do you think?” she asked. 

“I think that you do not want that answer,” Simon mused, drinking some of his wine. 

She didn’t challenge him directly on it, and the polite conversation continued, interrupted only occasionally by their verbal fencing. It was only after the dinner was winding down after Simon was stuffed within an inch of his life by fine dishes of rice and lamb, that she asked to speak with him about his planned curriculum in private that he finally told her the truth. 

“I think that boy is being smothered within an inch of his life,” Simon exclaimed as soon as the door was closed. 

Elthena, for her part, only made a few excuses about how precious Ionia’s heir was before she grudgingly agreed. “What do you propose, then?” she asked. 

“Besides that, you cut the apron strings? Give the boy some friends!” Simon said, exasperated. “Why is he sitting with servants three and four times his age. Why is he not with other children.”

“Well, as you well know, I have no other children, Simon,” she answered playfully. 

“Your choice, not mine,” Simon shot back before adding, “I have no doubt your court is overflowing with other children whose parents would love to get into your good graces. Surely they will do.”

“We’d planned that, of course, but…” she hesitated. “When he’s older, you know?”

“Older? Impressionable?” Simon sighed. “Elthena, I love you, but you are going to ruin our… You will ruin Seyom. When he is still young and impressionable is exactly the moment you want him to be exposed to other children. That's where he will learn virtues like curiosity, independence, and masculinity.”

“That’s too harsh,” she insisted. “My son is very curious and intelligent. He often asks questions that men twice his age have not yet considered.”

“Oh?” Simon asked, “And when he asks these fine questions, what answers is he given?”

“I have the finest scholars of my court. They tell him whatever he wants to know,” she answered softly. This made Simon pound the windowsill he was standing beside in frustration. 

“Then all you have taught him is that he can rely on men smarter than him to explain things to him,” Simon sighed. “Is that what you want? To be led around by his advisors?”

“Well, of course not,” she insisted. “But I was raised much the same way, and I turned out alright.”

“And so will he, eventually,” Simon sighed, “But I want more than, alright. I want exceptional. I don’t think that’s asking too much. Not for my… pupil.”

When he was in public, he had no problem referring to Seyom as a near stranger, but in private, with the Queen, it was much harder. There, the secret was evidence of the life that he might have led. 

“How would you change things then?” Elthena asked. 

“Completely,” Simon said. “From top to bottom.” He spent the next few minutes laying out what he meant by that. To start with, he wanted the number of minders around Seyom to be slowly reduced. 

“He should never be outnumbered by his own servants,” Simon explained. “He may have one servant, but not when I am teaching.” She balked at all of that, but he continued, explaining that henceforth, instead of being Seyom’s private tutor, their class was about to get larger. 

“I would like five to eight students around his age,” he insisted. “And some of them should be girls. An even mix will make him feel less special.”

“But he is special,” Elthena insisted. 

“He is,” Simon agreed, “But he should feel the need to prove that, not have it handed to him. He will go nowhere in life until we build that drive.”

They argued about it for some time, and Simon wasn’t sure he’d made any headway on the matter. He was certain that his insistence that his son have more men in his life hurt the Queen, but still, somehow, at breakfast the following morning, which he had with the Queen and her son in private, he was only waited on by a single servant. 

There, in front of a few of her advisors, she proceeded to explain to him that his duties would be expanded to include a few other boys and girls who were the children of court luminaries. Simon nodded along, agreeing to everything. 

In the end, only her Vizer protested the new arrangement in any serious way. He was a different one than Simon had known when he’d last been here, but the Queen dismissed his concerns about the increased risks of injury that came with roughhousing. “Our dear Mister Enniss is too talented to keep all to ourselves. Surely, the future of the Kingdom will be much enhanced if he helps to mold as many young minds as possible.”

After that, Simon hoped to get to work, but instead, he was tasked with going out to find more students for his class. A few of the Queen’s courtiers provided him with a list of names, which included all of the best families with children who were between six and ten, and then left him to his own devices. 

Simon spent the next week of his life having lunches and dinners with the crème de la crème of the city, discussing art and some of his travels, along with court gossip. It wasn’t wasted time, truthfully, he just did not care for it.  At his age, he could eat only so much rich food before he started to pay for it at night with heartburn and sleeplessness, and truthfully, all he wanted to do was spend time with Seyom. 

Eventually, he settled on five likely children to join his son and had the palace carpenter fashion six desks in a small out-of-the-way room near the gardens. “Do you really mean for the prince to learn in such a drab place?” the Vizer asked one day when the Queen was visiting to inspect his new classroom.

“Not at all,” Simon said. “We will only be in here to learn letters and when the weather is poor. The rest of the time, I plan to teach them outside.” 

“Outside?” the man asked. “What can they learn in the gardens that—”

“We’ll only be in the gardens for a few years,” Simon corrected the man. “When Seyom and the rest are a bit older, the city, the mountains, and the sea will be our laboratory just as much as everywhere else.”

“Wha-what?!” the man exploded. “Queen, surely this tutor has gone quite mad. He would risk the lives of the prince and—”

“Yes, explain yourself,” the Queen responded, only slightly annoyed.

“What can you learn of the world without being in it?” Simon asked. “How can you learn to swim without stepping foot in the water? I assure you, all of them will be fine. There is no safer place in the world than there is with me.” 

The conversation was dropped when workmen arrived to install the large piece of slate that he planned to use as a chalkboard, but it was far from resolved. In private, the Queen expressed her disapproval very clearly, despite further explanations. “You will have the chance to see the results for yourself from the garden sessions alone,” Simon promised her. 

Those started shortly after that. At first, they were little more than play time, with Simon functioning as a doting grandparent or elderly babysitter. He noticed the Queen would often watch from one of the windows on the upper story, but she didn’t interfere, which was for the best. 

Simon did very little teaching in those first few weeks. Instead, he did significant untraining that their servants and parents had unwittingly inflicted on them and taught them how to be kids again. At first, he dictated the games they would play and taught them tag and hide and seek, along with tug of war and a few others, but after a few days, they mostly handled that themselves and he could see friendships starting to form, which pleased Simon to no end. 

It was only after they were comfortable with each other and with him that the real learning could begin. It started in small ways, with discussions about where the rain came from and why the grass grew, just as it had with the Alexin children. He made finger paints for the children, which led to the briefest of discussions about alchemy, but it was a start, and once the children saw learning as a form of play rather than torture that involved words on a page, his job was halfway done.

Ch. 200 - Playtime

Within half a year, all of the children could spell their names, however poorly, and some of them knew all of their letters, though reading was still beyond them, and when the time came for stories, only a few would even try to sound out the smaller words, leaving him to do the reading on his own. Simon was in no hurry, though. He had a decade to get them where they needed to go. 

With these things, there is always the temptation to rush them, he told himself. But you must resist. There is no need to hurry.

There really wasn’t, either. Since he’d started, he took one weekend a month to go into the mountains. He told the court that he needed alone time to gain inspiration and ponder the stars. He sometimes even did those things, especially at first when he was sure he was being followed. Truthfully, though, he went for bloodier reasons. 

Those little camping trips didn’t always find beastmen or bandits. Both were in short supply this close to the city, but he found them both often enough that he was very slowly reversing his aging. As time passed, he was becoming younger. While Simon doubted he’d even be a year younger by the time his son reached eighteen by this rate, he would at least hold himself steady in the stream of time, and that was enough. 

Truthfully, he didn’t want to do much more than that. While it would have certainly been convenient to be a little young around so many children who were constantly trying to wear him out, it wouldn’t do to start rumors. The last thing he wanted to bring to the Queen’s court were whispers of witchcraft and heresy. 

There were already enough troubles brewing, and for once, none of them were of his making. While, at least, he was pretty sure they weren’t of his making. He did worry about his doppelgänger, though. The evil version of Simon hadn’t just disappeared. He was out there somewhere, causing no end of trouble. He was certain of it.  

He also started taking small hikes with the children up the mountain during this time. The Queen forbade him to take them beyond the nicest parts of the high city, so they mostly walked to the shrine at the very end of the main road, at the foot of the mountain he’d almost died at so long ago. Even then, they were trailed surreptitiously by a handful of guards at a distance. 

Still, it did all of them good to see life outside the palace walls, even if only a few steps. They probably weren’t ready to interact with commoners, or worse, poor people, but from so high up, he and his little gaggle of students could sit on the rocks on sunny days and talk about volcanos, mountains, and all the little sailing ships that came and went, which made it time well spent. 

He also sought to channel the occasional argument between Sayom and some of the other boys into exercise. He did not use the opportunity to introduce them to sword fighting, though. The last thing he wanted to do was to see someone lose an eye, and none of them had the discipline to learn the blade yet, even in wooden form.

Simon had been in the palace acting as an instructor for almost a year when the news reached him that Brin was at war with their neighbors to the north beyond the black bridge. It was a place he’d never been, though he’d once almost gone as far as the Bahmed pass with Kell and his mercenary company before all that had gone to shit. 

According to the books he’d read on the subject, past those mountains and the desert beyond them were the lands of the Murani. They were largely nomadic, and the trade road that connected the kingdom was dominated by high-valued luxury goods like silk and spices. 

He certainly hadn’t seen that coming. From this distance, information was inconsistent, so it was hard to say much about it beyond the fact that it would impact land-based trade. Ionar didn’t engage in too much of that, though, and the fighting didn’t spread too much by sea because neither of the combatants were large naval powers, so sea trade was largely unaffected. 

Simon wondered how the fighting would be affected by an Ionar that was still thriving rather than one that had been destroyed by a certain eruption. However, without viewing the same events from a different timeline, it was impossible to say for sure. 

Both kingdoms sent envoys, pleading that Ionar ally with them for their mutual benefit, but the Queen told both sides no, politely but firmly. Simon made no attempt to advise her in these matters. He knew that she wouldn’t listen and that even the attempt would upset her. She was the Queen, not him. Still, she let him attend both audiences, so that was nice. 

From the back benches, he could study the mysterious northerners and the more familiar envoys of the Kingdom of Brin. Their King did not attend, but from the way they spoke, at least, it sounded like the brat he’d scared half to death in one of his past lives had turned out to be an okay ruler, giving Simon that much more hope that Seyom would be okay. 

The horselords of the north were a proud people, and they offered the Queen extravagant gifts to change her mind. In the end, both sides settled for neutrality, but only grudgingly. Queen Elthena made it quite clear that if either side crossed into her mountainous territory, they would regret it. 

Simon doubted that, given that Ionar had a smaller army than either of the other sides. Fortunately, their territory was very defensible, and the other nations were in the dark about their true capabilities. Still, after that, Simon suggested that they expand the nation's small army, and she agreed, leaving much of the details in the hands of her general and Vizer. Though she occasionally asked Simon’s opinion on things after that, he largely left those matters to her and her people and returned his focus to the children where it belonged. 

In the second year, the war dragged on, with no side gaining or losing much ground, while Simon focused on teaching his charges the basics of math. He did this first with colored beads and later with exercises on the chalkboard. 

No one took to this quickly. Instead, they much preferred playtime and story time. Simon couldn’t blame them for that, of course. They were children, after all. Instead, he set about devising new stories that incorporated simple word problems and riddles he could use to engage their minds that much better. He also hired a carpenter to make wooden blocks, and then he painted them in colorful ways to allow for more learning games. This world might not have Legos for another few centuries, but he was determined to fill that gap any way he could. 

Over time, those blocks largely served a different purpose altogether. Though he’d long since drawn them a fairly accurate world map of the region to study, when news of a major battle would come in, Simon would take it down from the hall and then use the red and blue bricks to map out the forces as best he understood them, to explain the events to the children, as the ebb and flow of battle, moved around the edges of their little mountainous kingdom. 

“Don’t you think they’re a bit young to be worrying about such things?” the Queen asked after she caught him explaining it to them once.

“Certainly,” he agreed. “But these are your future leaders, and the longer it drags on, the more likely it is to be their problem.”

“This will not be the first time the Murani have tried to claim southern lands, nor will it be the last,” Queen Elthena sighed, not bothering to refute his point. “Their last attempt was in my Grandfather’s time, so I do not expect that Seyom will have to worry about it.”

“I hope not,” Simon agreed, but he had his doubts. He’d read accounts of that previous war, and it didn’t drag on as long as the last one had. Either Brin was weaker, or their enemy had grown stronger. Simon didn’t have enough information to say. 

He did, however, use the ongoing war to eventually introduce his pupils to swordsmanship, causing another scandal in the process. It would seem that the elite of Ionar had a problem with their daughters learning to fight with swords. That surprised Simon, even though he knew that it shouldn’t 

“I've known many women that can fight,” he insisted, leaving out the fact that most of them were peasant girls who needed those skills a lot more often. 

Not even Elthena accepted that excuse, though, strange as it was for a woman to be enforcing sexism on his students. In the end, Simon relented because it wasn’t a fight he could win. So, they compromised. Instead of teaching his female students swordsmanship, he would teach them archery. The bows he had made for this had laughable pull strengths, but it sufficed to make sure that no one felt left out. 

So, on those days when he forced Seyom and the other boys to practice their forms when all they wanted to do was duel with each other, the girls practiced marksmanship, and everyone was happy. Well, everyone except for Simon. 

He’d come here to teach Seymon reading and art. He’d planned on raising him up to be an independent young man like Bertrand, but the longer the war dragged on around them, the more likely it was that he was going to have to train a warrior instead of a man who could choose his own fate. Simon didn’t care for that at all, but he still found time to take a measure of pride in the boy’s advances. 

He was no longer the timid, distractible young boy Simon had found when he’d first arrived. Instead, he was fast becoming a decisive young man, and though Simon was concerned that the whole “heir to the Kingdom” thing was going to his head, he did not often try to invoke that authority during his studies, which was as a small victory. 

It was at about this time that Simon took to walking with a cane. He didn’t need it but felt it wise to age gracefully, as much as he enjoyed using it to duel his students on occasion. He was as spry now as he’d been in years, but no matter how softly he trod within the social sphere of the palace, he was sure he was building enemies and wanted them to underestimate him as much as possible. 

Unfortunately, that meant that when it was time to review new units for the army, he could do little but watch. The last thing he wanted to do was give the generals cause to grow concerned with him, too. In a time of war, they were becoming ever more influential. 

Ch. 201 - Hints and Warnings

As time went on, it became increasingly apparent that one of the reasons that Brin was losing was the white cloaks. It wasn’t them directly. Though Simon had no inside knowledge in this regard, he was sure that they were fighting alongside their countrymen against the external threat, given the dark rumors that were becoming increasingly common. 

If one side was using evil magics and the other was not, then it was like waging a war with arrows against forces that had gunpowder. The odds were against it. Simon knew that better than anyone. Even as an old man who could barely fight three guards at once anymore without a good chance of success, he could fight ten if he used magic subtly, and he could probably kill hundreds if he went all out and used words of power indiscriminately. 

It was a troublesome development, and when that news reached the court, it was one of the few times she placed his counsel above those of her generals and even Vizer. “What should I do?” she asked. “To refuse to take sides in a normal war is the right answer, but in something like this…”

Simon believed that she should throw in with Brin directly, but he also knew that as open to that as she was, she would bristle if he tried to tell her what to do. Instead, he offered her advice that would lead to that eventual conclusion. “Send more spies,” he advised. “Dispatch more patrols along the main roads and in the passes. If they truly wield mages in their army, then one or two men sneaking into Ionia could cause as much damage as a hundred soldiers.“

She listened to his advice and did as he suggested, even though her other advisors chaffed at it. Some of them had started to advise openly that they should throw in with one side or another before the extended stalemate took that choice out of their hands. 

That’s probably what would have happened without me here, Simon thought, realizing that he’d already changed the future in a fairly substantial way. Or maybe Ionia would never have been a player to begin with because of the eruption. 

With everything that had happened and all the different versions he’d seen, it was getting hard to determine which event caused or stopped which other event. Even looking at the notes his mirror held at night after everyone else had gone to sleep didn’t clear that up. 

One thing that was totally clear, though, was how much magic was starting to shape things. Until now, he’d gone back and forth as to whether or not the mage killers were doing more good than evil with their secretive, murderous ways. On the one hand, almost all of the warlocks he’d met or read about seemed to be pretty awful people. Power corrupted, and absolute power corrupted absolutely, and denying that seemed like a net good if you ignored how they achieved it. 

In light of some of the things he was hearing about the war, though, that was less certain. He knew for a fact that the White Cloaks were not a world-wide, monolithic organization. They had power in Ionar and the lands to the south, but to the east, west, and north, they had only occasional dealings with those powers, and hedge mages tended to flourish more there. 

That didn’t mean that Ionar tolerated magic, of course. They still burned witches now and then or banished hermits. Both of those seemed unlikely to be true mages, though. If you had words of true power, you were unlikely to get taken alive in his experience. 

But now, there were rumors of necromancy and war mages at key engagements. One thing was clear to Simon after spending more time in the library; these Murani were not the same ones that had attempted to invade the region a half-century before. Those men had been part of a simpler, more martial culture based on light horse and lightning tactics. These invaders might look the same and speak the same language, but they acted very differently. 

Simon dearly wished he could go to the fronts and learn firsthand. He wished even more than he’d taken the time in previous lives to learn about this group. Hell, for that matter, he wished he knew exactly where he was in relation to other levels. 

As near as he could figure, the levels were mostly a year or two apart, which meant that he was somewhere around the time that he slew the basilisk probably, but there was no way to know for sure. 

A war would sure be a good reason for people not to notice that thing dying one day, he decided. 

Ultimately, he was pretty sure that Brin won, but he didn’t know that for sure. He was just pretty sure that the country still existed based on his limited interactions with the powers that ruled the area in a couple of decades when he’d fought to purge the centaurs. 

Poor Brin, he told himself. Zombie apocalypse, civil war, then invasion, followed by centaur outbreak. They can’t catch a break. 

Simon couldn’t investigate personally. Not only did he have duties here, but he was enjoying watching his son shape up into a fine young man, and he was not willing to sacrifice that. 

Still, the idea that Brin couldn’t catch a break did not leave him, not during lessons, art, or even his time spent tinkering on various experiments. 

Between lessons with the children, he began to spend more and more time in the Queen’s library, researching it, and slowly but surely, he came to an inescapable conclusion: those large lowland plains between Ionar’s mountains in the west and Charia in the east were sort of a crossroads of history. 

Everything that happened only seemed to matter when it was there. Ionar’s disasters and curses rarely reached beyond its borders, but what happened in Brin, or even Montain to the south, spread far and wide thanks to the easier routes and more extensive trade network. 

He had no idea if that trend continued to the north, in the Murani lands. He’d never found a book in any library that had covered the northlands or anything but the most important trade cities across the sea as anything more than a passing reference. 

“I’ll need to fix that one of these days,” Simon told himself, pondering the expeditions he could make to explore the world and better flesh it out. 

He promised himself he’d get ready for that by taking advantage of the city he was in to learn a bit more about sailing, but he never quite found the time for it. He was just too busy teaching. The only times that he found himself even touching on ships with them was when he taught the children about the stars and how to navigate by them. 

What he wanted to do was take them on a camping trip so that they could navigate by them. Unfortunately, the Queen forbade it. “These are not commoners, Simon,” she sighed after the third time he brought it up in as many weeks. “Skills that are valuable for peasants, like foraging and navigation, will never be used in the palace!” She didn’t ever say it was too dangerous, but he knew that's what she really meant. It was a common refrain in their disagreements about his curriculum. 

Simon thought that such an impulse was overprotective and totally unreasonable, of course. At least, he did until the war expanded to impact Ionar directly. The news of an entire unit far to the north being crushed was as unexpected as it was impactful. Of course, the ambassadors of both nations denied having a hand in it, but the writing on the wall was clear. Brin had been pushed far enough east that there was no way they could have reached out to cause such a devastating blow. 

This was worrying. Thanks to their naval power and the oceans to the west and the mountains to the east, the easiest and perhaps only way to attack Ionia was by sweeping down along the coast from the north in force. There were various fortresses erected to prevent exactly that, of course, but magic made planning and forecasting that much more complicated. 

Ionia wasn’t at war yet, but it soon would be, he feared. Simon continued his updates about the war as an academic topic, but he did his best to shield his students from the realities of how close it might be to affecting them, at least at first. It was one thing for the Prince to understand war and how it should be dealt with. It was another to go to bed afraid of what was going to happen any earlier than had to.

All of that changed when he was ambushed one chill fall night when he was deep in the mountains to the northeast of the city during his usual monthly expedition. 

Simon had heard the subtle sounds that he was being tailed for an hour before it happened. Here, he’d see a few rocks clattering down the slope, and there, he’d hear a little scree giveaway under heavy footfalls when the breeze was just right. He wasn’t afraid. He was out here to kill, after all. If he didn’t, he wouldn’t be able to keep celebrating his fiftieth birthday every year for the foreseeable future. 

He’d assumed that it was a timid group of beastmen, not sure of their ability to take him down. It wasn’t until dark that they actually struck, and when they did, it was not the brute force charge he’d expected to face. Instead, it was a flurry of crossbow bolts. 

No, he corrected himself as one bit deep into his liver while he lay in his bedroll pretending to be asleep. Poison crossbow bolts. Seven or eight struck the dirt around him, but only one hit him in the side. 

He screamed in pain as he rolled away from his tiny fire, but only to cover up the sound of him ripping the thing free. The wound was painful, but from the way the liquid fire raced through his veins, he could tell that it would be fatal in short order. 

Simon used a word of healing and cure to repair the problems, using more magic at once than he had in years in a single moment. Then he whispered, “Aufvarum Barom Aufvarum,” and faded from view. 

The illusion wasn’t quite invisibility. It was something he’d worked on a few months ago. In a well-lit room, it mostly just looked disturbing. The spell was actually lesser anti-light, and except for his eyes, his body did its best to reject light. This made him look almost like a blurry, animate shadow, but at night, he was basically the predator. That was good because he wasn’t as fast as he used to be. 

Simon took a moment to fling his bedroll over a large stone that might have been big enough for a person while his attackers reloaded, and then he slipped off into the night. He wasn’t planning to retreat or to flee, though. Instead, he retraced his footsteps back along the goat path he’d used earlier that day even as they loosed another volley, and then he started to outflank his attackers. 

He had no idea who they were, but they clearly knew who he was, or at least had some idea. Bandits didn’t use poison arrows from a distance, and monsters didn’t even use crossbows. This is a hit, he decided. He was certain of it. Someone wanted to kill him, specifically, and they knew he was enough of a threat that attacking him from a distance was the best way to make sure he didn’t make them explode. 

“You should have been a better shot,” he whispered to himself. “It might have worked.”

Even the one arrow that had struck him was still hurting despite the magic he’d used. He suspected he didn’t get all the poison out, but he could always do that again later. It's not like it will be the only wound I get before this battle is done, he told himself as he closed on the enemy.