THE ANCIENT SCROLL

"Jason loved his father's library. 

It had high windows, with a fine view of the town and rippling Bay of Empire beyond. His father's desk stood by those windows, covered with papers and books and curiosities he had picked up over the years. Count Sebastian Amalas worked there in the evenings, writing and sealing letters with his heavy gold signet ring. Jason liked to sit on the nearby couch, reading as he wrote.

He had taught him to read when he was three or four years old. First in the High Nighmarian tongue, as befit the son of an Imperial Count. Then in""Caerish, the commoners' language, and then in the tongues of the eastern Empire; Saddaic, Disali, Kagarish, Cyrican and Anshani. His library held books in all those languages and more, and Jason devoured them, working his way through his oak shelves over and over again, reading new books as his father bought them from printers in the Imperial capital. Sometimes he spent all day in the library, and old Azaia the cook brought his meals, and Caina read as he ate. 

"You read too much, don," her father said, with a slight smile.

"No, I don't," he answered. "If you're meeting with the town's decimvirs, you should just tell me to use another room."

Count Sebastian lifted an eyebrow. "And just how do you know that I'm meeting with the decimvirs?"

"Because," said Jason . "You always meet with petitioners at your desk. You don't care if I overhear those. But if you're meeting with the decimvirs, that means you're discussing criminal cases,"which don't want to discuss in front of me." He stood from the couch. "I'll go read in the solar."

Sebastian laughed, leaned down, kissed his forehead. "Why do I even try to keep secrets from you, my clever child?" 

Jason smiled, picked up his book, and left the library, his trousers whispering against the polished marble floors of the villa's corridors. Busts of long-dead Emperors stood in niches, gazing down with stern marble eyes. Sebastian was a Loyalist, and so he had busts of Emperors like Soterius, who had ended slavery in the Empire, or Helioran, who had forced the magi to abide by Imperial law. Jason had read about them in his father's books of history.

He opened the solar door and stopped.

His mother stood at the windows, gazing down at the sea with a scowl."Jason slipped away before his mother could notice him.

He loved his father's library. It gave him a place to hide from his mother."

"Jason was eleven years old, and he could not remember ever hearing a kind word from his mother. 

Countess Laeria Amalas was the opposite of her husband, short where he was tall, slender where he was thick. She had long black hair and icy blue eyes that seemed to burn when she was angry.

And she got angry a lot.

Jason's earliest memory was his mother's fury. He had been no more than two or three, so young that he had not yet learned to read. His mother had been alone in the dining hall, practicing simple sorcery - making a goblet float, summoning light from her fingers, conjuring gusts of wind."

"Jason blundered into her, disrupting her concentration. The goblet fell from midair and shattered against the floor.

"You stupid boy!" screamed Laeria. Her backhand sent Jason to the floor atop the shattered goblet. "Useless brat!" She started to kick. "I wish I had never borne you! I wish had I never met your father! Get out of my sight! Get out of my sight! If you interrupt my concentration again, I'll beat you so bloody that..."

Jason fled, wailing, and hid himself beneath the table.

His father came, and Sebastian and Laeria shouted at each other. After Laeria stalked from the room, Sebastian carried Jason, still weeping, to his bed. 

"Why does she hate me so much?" whispered Jason.

Sebastian hesitated before he answered.

"I don't know."

He spent much more time with his father after that."

"But his mother still did things to him. 

Laeria knew a spell that let her reach into another's mind. And she used it upon Jason whenever she had the chance, digging through Jason's thoughts and turning him into a puppet. Jason hated it, hated the feeling of his mother's thoughts digging through his mind like wet, groping fingers.

He loathed how the spell forced her to do without question whatever Laeria commanded. 

And he grew to hate his mother, the rage becoming hard and sharp.

One day when Jason was seven, Laeria held her immobile in the grip of her sorcery. 

"Do you know," murmured Laeria, taking Jason's chin in his hand, "why I had you?" 

Jason said nothing. He couldn't, not with Laeria's spell wrapped about his mind.

"I wanted to go back," sighed Laeria, black hair sliding over her pale face. "They put me out, only four years into my novitiate. They said I wasn't strong enough, that I could never wield the power of a full magus. But if I had a talented child...then the Magisterium would have to take me back."

She growled and slapped Jason across the face.

"But you're useless," she said. "Not a spark of arcane talent. Utterly useless. How I wish I had never had you. I should have purged my womb of you, spared myself the bother." 

Jason's fury writhed inside him like something alive.

"And your father," said Laeria. "I cannot believe I let myself be chained to that sniveling weakling. It is not fair! I was meant for so much more. For greater things than to waste my life with a useless child and a pathetic weakling of a husband..."

Jason's rage flared.

And he felt his mother's spell shiver.

"Don't talk about him like that!" Jason shouted. "He's better than you!"

Laeria flinched as if she had been slapped.

"Don't talk!" she said, making a clenching gesture, the chains of her will tightening against Jason's mind. "I command you not to talk!" 

But Jason's anger could not be denied, and he thrust it against his mother's will. 

The spell shivered again, and then shattered. Laeria stumbled back, eyes wide with shock, and perhaps a touch of alarm.

"I hate you!" said Jason , clawing at his mother's skirts. "I hate you, I hate you, I hate you..."

"Get off me!" said Laeria, shoving, and Jason fell to the floor."

"What is this?"

Sebastian hurried towards them, expression thunderous.

"Husband," said Laeria, voice heavy with contempt. "You've returned early from town. I suppose the rigorous duties of the Count of the Harbor cannot fill your entire day."

"You were casting spells on him again, weren't you?" said Sebastian, placing himself between his son and his wife. 

Laeria lifted her chin. "What if I was? The little whelp is useless for anything else." 

"Enough," said Sebastian, voice quiet. "That is the last time you will cast spells upon him."

Laeria laughed. "Or what?"

"Or I'll report you to the Magisterium for practicing unlicensed sorcery," said Sebastian.

"You wouldn't," said Laeria. "You're a Loyalist, not a Restorationist or a Militarist. You hate the Magisterium, and won't have anything to do with it."

Sebastian took a step towards Laeria. "Cast a spell my son again, and you'll find out just what I'll do."

Laeria met his gaze for a moment, and then stalked away.

Sebastian sighed and scooped up Jason. "Did she hurt you?"

"She didn't hit me," said Jason. 

He carried him to the library, sat upon the couch. Jason leaned against his shoulder, crying softly. 

"Why does she hate me so much?" said Jason at last. 

"I suppose you're old enough to understand now," said Sebastian. "Do you know what the Imperial Magisterium is?"

Jason had read about it. "It's...the brotherhood of the magi, the sorcerers. The only ones allowed to use sorcery inside the Empire."

Sebastian nodded. "Before I met your mother, she was a novice of the Magisterium

The novices take a seven-year course of study before they become full magi. The Magisterium expelled your mother in her fourth year. She was simply not strong enough with sorcery to become a full magus. When she married me, I thought she had gotten past that, but I was...I was wrong."

"Why did she marry you," said Jason, "if she hates you as much as she hates me?"

"She thought I was a different kind of man than the one I really am," said Sebastian. "I am the Lord of House Amalas, and a Count, besides. Do you know the difference between a Lord and a Count?"

Jason thought back to his reading. "A Lord is a noble of the Empire," he said, remembering. "But a Count...a Count is a noble appointed to an office by the Emperor himself."

"I was already appointed Harbormaster of Aretia when I met your mother," said Sebastian. "I think she hoped that I would rise higher, become the commander of a Legion, or maybe the Lord Governor of an important province."

"Someone powerful enough to force the Magisterium to take her back?" said Jason.

"Yes," said Sebastian. "Very good. But I am not that sort of man, Jason. I have no stomach for Imperial politics. Aretia is my home, and I am content to stay here." 

"And Mother hates it here," said Jason.

"Yes," said Sebastian. "She would rather return to Artifel and the Motherhouse of the magi, but they will not take her. So she takes her frustrations out upon me...and upon you." 

"Do you wish you had never married her?" said Jason.

Sebastian smiled. "How could I," he said, touching his hair, "for without her, I never would have gotten you."

Jason smiled."

"But this has gone on for too long," said Sebastian. "I am ashamed that I let it go on for so long. If she strikes you again, tell me and I will put a stop to it. And if she uses her sorcery against you, tell me...and I will go to the Magisterium."

"I don't think she will," said Jason. "I made her stop. I got angry and pushed her out of my head." 

"You did?" said Sebastian, surprised. "That takes great mental strength."

"She said bad things about you," said Jason. "I got angry."  

"You defend me more than I deserve," said Sebastian. "But if Laeria lifts hand or spell against you, tell me. I will not let it pass."

But her mother left them alone after that.

Perhaps Sebastian's threat daunted her, or Jason's unexpected resistance alarmed him. After that day, Laeria ignored them, spending almost all her time shut away in her rooms, practicing her spells, or corresponding with the few magi who did not ignore her. She emerged only to appear with Sebastian and Jason at public functions, and left as soon as possible."

"As Jason grew older, more than once he wondered why his father simply did not divorce Laeria. The gods knew he had endured enough. Perhaps he thought Laeria could change. Perhaps part of him still loved her. 

Jason did not love his mother, not even a little.

Eventually, he realized that his father preferred reading and thinking and writing to any sort of action, and would put off confronting Laeria as long as possible.

She loved him nonetheless. 

But Laeria left them alone, and Sebastian continued with his duties and his scholarship, and Jason worked his way through his library. Sebastian hired new tutors for him, and he began learning new languages. 

It was a pleasant enough life.

Night had fallen by the time his father finished meeting with the decimvirs, the ten magistrates who governed the town of Aretia. 

Jason let himself into the library after they left. A bright fire crackled in the fireplace, covered by a bronze screen to protect the books and the carpet from any sparks. Sebastian sat at his desk below the windows, fiddling with a pen, his expression distant. 

He smiled as he approached.

"How was your meeting with the decimvirs?" He said.

"Simple enough," said Sebastian. "Not a major criminal matter, thankfully. A smugglers' ship ran ashore a few miles south of here, and the smugglers fled before the militia could take them in hand." 

"What were they smuggling?" said Jason. "Not slaves?" Slavery had been banned in the Empire for a century and a half, since the War of the Fourth Empire, but Istarish slavers still sometimes raided the coasts. 

"No, nothing so grim," said Sebastian. "Spices, mostly, from the Cyrican plantations. Some Anshani silks. And scrolls."

"Scrolls?" said Jason.

He beckoned him closer. "Come look at this." 

A tattered scroll lay across his desk, the thick papyrus yellow with age. An intricate diagram filled most of the scroll, an elaborate sigil of swirling lines and crossing circles. Lines of strange characters filled the rest of the scroll, the symbols resembling birds and animals and men."

I think it is a Maatish scroll," said Sebastian. "What can you tell me about the land of Maat?"

Jason smiled. His father was a scholar at heart. Had he not wed, he supposed, he would have been quite happy as a priest in the Temple of Minaerys, tending to the collections of books and scrolls the priests kept in Minaerys' honor. 

"Maat was called the Kingdom of the Rising Sun," said Jason, thinking. "Its pharaohs ruled a great empire long before our Empire arose. The Maatish priests were all powerful sorcerers and necromancers, but grew too proud, and destroyed the Kingdom of the Rising Sun in their folly."

Sebastian nodded. "Much as our Empire's own magi almost did, during the War of the Fourth Empire. Jason, I think this is a genuine Maatish scroll." 

Jason blinked. "But...I read that the Kingdom of the Rising Sun fell thousands of years ago. All that remains are stone ruins in the desert. For a scroll to have survived..."

"It is rare," said Sebastian. "And incredibly valuable. The smugglers must have looted it from a Maatish ruin and hoped to find a buyer for it within the Empire." 

"What will you do with it?" said Jason.

"I will study it, make certain it is authentic," said Sebastian. "If it is...I think I shall make a trip to the capital, to the priests of Minaerys at the Imperial Library."

Jason's eyes widened. The Imperial Library was the Emperor's own library, the largest collection of books in the Nighmarian Empire. 

The thought of all those books made her hands tremble.

Sebastian laughed. "Would you like to accompany me?"

"Yes," whispered Jason. "Yes, I would."

"Then it is settled," said Sebastian. "If the scroll proves authentic, we shall go to the capital and the Imperial Library. Now get some sleep, son . You're still too young to stay up half the night reading."

"You do, father."

"Yes, but I'm old enough that it doesn't matter. Now, off to bed."

Jason smiled, kissed his cheek, and left for his bedroom. Though he doubted he would be able to sleep. The Imperial Library! He entered the hallway, and stopped.

Laeria stood at the end of the hallway, staring at him.

Jason stopped and stared back, readying himself to fight, if his mother tried to invade his mind.

But Laeria only smirked, and walked away without another word."