Book 4 Chapter 49: Bonds of Blood

++It is no surprise that magician families as an institution evolved the way they did, between the heritability of magic and the insular nature of magicians the fact was all but inevitable. The only question is why they did not evolve sooner.++

- Excerpt from “The Nature of Man and Magic”, a historical treatise detailing the effects of changing conditions on Garamon’s magician class over the past five hundred years.

It occurred to me, quite strangely, that having no less than three near-immobilised ancient liches all staring at me as I demanded answers of them was not actually the strangest situation I had found myself in lately. Even still, the amount of my own kind I had met since my reincarnation was quite strange. We were both an uncommon and unsociable breed, liches.

But that did not mean we could not deal with one another. Getting the cooperation of a lich was as simple as getting the cooperation of any other magician, one simply had to be more powerful than them. If nothing else, I had demonstrated how powerful I was to all present, and I could tell by the flow of their mana that not one of them was in a hurry to put that power to the test again.

“DO I NEED TO REPEAT MY REQUEST?” I asked. The good thing about holding as much power in one hand as most naval fleets do in their whole munition stores is that it tends to inspire very hasty and very clear answers to any given question.

“We do not know why Shuo Meg attacked,” one of the enemy liches said quickly. “Nor why you aid her.”

Something was bothering me, now that I could see them all stationary and in the open. A little detail nibbling away at me that my conscious mind had yet to pinpoint. I dismissed it for the time being, having more pressing things to consider.

“LET US START WITH AN INTRODUCTION. I AM LORD DREAD, IDENTIFY YOURSELVES NOW BEFORE MY MAJESTY.”

I thought that I was being rather diplomatic, given the circumstances. Perhaps I had overdone it. Most liches would have taken my ridiculous niceties as a sign of weakness, mental if not magical or physical, but the trio before me now did not seem to care. Apparently these two unknown liches were more akin to Shuo Meg in disposition than they were myself.

“I am Qiao Zhen,” said the closest of them.

“And I am Xue Zhang,” said the other. They both spoke with a near-identical cadence, identifiable even with the deeply resonant intonations all of our kind had for voices.

And it was this that made me finally realise what had been bothering me about them.

“YOU ARE ALL SIBLINGS,” I observed. “I SEE IT NOW. YOUR FACES ARE NEAR-IDENTICAL.”

I must have been a fool not to have seen it right away, or else merely out of practice with observing the faces of my own kind. Their cheekbones, the proportions of eyesockets, they were all practically dead-ringers for each other. “NO,” I continued. “NOT JUST SIBLINGS. NATURAL TRIPLETS, CORRECT?”

The group hesitated, then three heads nodded to me in unison.

I had to admit, even after more than ten thousand years spent existing and travelling, that was a new one. Theoretically possible of course, but on a purely statistical level…

The odds of someone birthing a talent capable of becoming a lich were already low enough, back in the days before centuries-long breeding programs had given rise to families like the Vorets. That one such talent might additionally prove to be not only replicated once, into twins, but twice in the same womb? The odds were not incalculable, but they were extraordinarily narrow.

Then again, they could have been dectuplets and still not approached the infinitesimal likelihood of my own existence. What was that old saying about throwing stones in a glass house?

“We were all fascinated by necromancy as children, all taught both ourselves and one another using the ancient texts on it found in our mother’s library,” Xue Zhang explained, leading to a rather fascinating explanation of their birth-culture which I soaked up intently, then made a number of sensible deductions.

It could not have been more different from my own. The triplets were born some five thousand years ago and raised as magicians, their talents recognised from infancy. Unlike Sakhent, who had been part of an elite magician caste from birth, they were originally commoners. That fact changed when the Emperor of their day came to recognise their prodigious gift for magic. The three of them were given as extensive and complete an education on magic as anyone could have hoped for, raised up to meet their true potential.

What was more, necromancy was not illegal in their land. It was not venerated and incorporated into religious hocum, as it was in Ancient Estalia, but its study was not heavily restricted either, and so before the three young geniuses could even turn into three old women, they had already made the transition to lichdom and snatched immortality from the jaws of the world.

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From there, the story played out similarly, but drastically differently, to what I might have expected. They took on roles of leadership among the humans around them, but never as dominating rulers, and not just to satisfy some innate urge for power and control. Their society had been a relatively intellectual one to begin with, but within a century of the triplets’ ascension they had transformed it into a bastion of learning and ensured that every child, regardless of birth station, was granted an education in the arts, sciences and matters of magic from an early age.

Had they remained sisters in death as they had been in life, I was not sure how far they might have gotten. Each was a dreadfully great talent, almost the equal of Sakhent, and with the trio combined they would have been one of the most powerful forces in the world. Perhaps the united Gods of Garamon would have overthrown them upon reaching Asyran eventually.

But then again, perhaps not. Three heads will grow and learn at a rate one could scarcely fathom.

In any case, it was not to be. The nature of liches assassinated any chance of long-term unity. Minor disagreements became major, ideological drift followed the pattern of continents. By their second century of unlife the trio was now three singles working independently to uphold the same kingdom. In another millennium, they split apart and each pursued their own goals. The passing generations turned this mutual separation into animosity, and everything good about their ascension became bad.

The three got far less done, not more, compared to if they had been alone, each needing to worry about the two other liches neighbouring their lands and threatening them with their very presence.

I did not ask what the specific disagreements that separated them had been, that would come later. For now it was enough for me to know that each of them was under my own power. I had to admit, the trio united would have forced even Lord Dread to retreat for the not-insignificant risk of defeat. But they had not been united for a long time.

“WELL THAT HARDLY MATTERS NOW,” I noted. “AS OF THIS MOMENT YOU ARE ALL SUBJECTS OF LORD DREAD.”

Liches do not stiffen the way humans do. Our bodies lack the physical muscles, moving by the locomotion of our own wills rather than any primitive tensing of ligaments and fibres. Even still, there were fractional, near-microscopic shifts in how the others held themselves as I said that. It was enough information for me to know without doubt that, had they not all been exhausted and outmatched, they would be turning on me for the very suggestion.

Good, I had been worrying they were unlike the liches I had come to know. Apparently I could count on them to behave predictably.

“Why would we do that?” Qiao Zhen demanded.

“BECAUSE YOU ARE ALL GOING TO GIVE ME YOUR WORD TO DO SO THIS VERY INSTANT, OR ELSE YOU WILL ALL PERISH.”

Each specific ritual for attaining lichdom is, in some way, unique, but there are commonalities to all the ones descended from my own original teachings. I recognised those commonalities in the bodies of Shuo Meg and her siblings. However the trio had attained undeath, their techniques were based on the ones I had devised.

And so I was confident their culture would be as well. One trait of magicians that permeates all stratas of all societies is the value of a given oath. I imagine that is more material than anything else, magicians simply have a strong incentive to find some way of guaranteeing that we can turn our back to one another without repercussions.

The animosity I felt from the three siblings made me certain that I would have to slap one, probably two of them down at some point in the future. Perhaps more than even once each. That was fine, I was accustomed to dealing with subordinates who bucked under my command.

In the end, each of them gave me their word, as I knew they would.

“What are your first orders then?” Shuo Meg asked me, doing a good job of feigning neutrality and apathy at her new bonds of servitude. I made a note of that. Subordinates who knew to keep their contempt hidden, let alone so immediately after having it inspired, were generally the most dangerous kind.

“I WILL NEED YOUR AID IN CONSTRUCTING SOMETHING,” I declared. “BUT THAT IS A TOPIC FOR THE FUTURE. FOR THE TIME BEING, I WAS TOLD THERE IS AN ARTEFACT HERE THAT I WAS LOOKING TO PROCURE. FETCH IT FOR ME NOW.”

The sisters seemed to bicker amongst themselves for a moment, or so I thought at least. They mainly stared between each other and made tiny little shifts of posture and bearing, remaining silent all the while. I had heard tell of human twins almost being able to read one another’s mind, even in families with a total absence of magical talent. It was not hard to piece together what was happening; a century spent as close as triplets, another millennium as familiar acquaintances, then periodic meetings as adversaries repeated for several millennia still. Even an imbecile would get good at reading their fellows’ body language under those circumstances, and no lich was an imbecile.

Except Sascithius.

It was Qiao Zhan who went to retrieve the mask fragment once she and her sisters had finished their silent debate. Even with the mana of our battle still lingering in the air, my senses cut through the ambient dregs to notice the divine flare of it as she moved over while clutching the artefact. The magic of a God or Demigod, even a Godtouched, stands apart from the arcane powers of any magician, in category if not in power.

It was almost enough to make me doubt my decision to help bring another God into the world.

I took the mask before my weakness could show outwardly, then turned back to the trio while stashing it away in my pocket space.

“THE THREE OF YOU WERE CRUSHED WHEN THE GODS OF GARAMON CAME TO THIS LAND FIRST, WERE YOU NOT?”

They did not deny it.

“I AM GOING TO CRUSH THE GODS OF GARAMON. YOU ARE NOT THE FIRST OF OUR KIND THAT I HAVE TAKEN INTO MY FORCES, YOU WILL LIKELY NOT BE THE LAST. THE ANCIENT LICHES HAVE BEEN RETURNING FOR TWENTY YEARS NOW, AND THIS MODERN AGE BOASTS SECRETS OF MAGIC THAT DID NOT EXIST BEFORE WE WERE FIRST DEFEATED. THE TIME OF THE GODS IS GOING TO END SOON.”