Chapter #9Kenandandran Know-How by: imaj   You wake to the smell of bacon. Freshly cooked, delicious bacon. It wafts up from the kitchen below, just like it has every other day or so for the last week. It is a tasty recompense for the otherwise Spartan living conditions. Reluctantly you put the scratchy bedcover to one side and climb out of bed.
You fumble around in the tiny little cell, searching for some clothes. After a few seconds you find yesterdays tee. A sniff test suggests it’s wearable, so you pull it on along with some comfortable jeans. There’s a cracked mirror hanging over a set of splintering old wooden drawers, so you quickly check yourself before you head out in search of bacon. Yep, it’s the same goofy looking face and flyaway hair that you’re used to – if back to front. You snatch up the bizarre pair of goggles you’ve been working on for the last couple of days and head downstairs.
Since you arrived here, you’ve taken your meals on the little table in the kitchen along with Nash and John. That’s not possible today though, as someone has placed a large parcel on the table. Some five feet long and a good foot and a half in breadth and height, it reminds you of something but you cannot work out what.
“That’s uh… some… something…” you say to Nash, who is busy frying the bacon on an elderly cooker.
“Sure is,” replies Nash. His accent hasn’t changed since you first met him. Having spent a lot more time with him you no longer find yourself replaying his words over in your mind till you understand them.
“Aren’t you going to open it?”
“You ganna have your breakfast first,” he replies, grinning at you.
“It’s kind of in the way,” is your answer.
“Sure it is,” says Nash, still grinning. “Guess we’re ganna have to eat standing up.” He stabs several pieces of bacon with a fork in turn, lifting each one from the pan and placing them in a sandwich. You lick your lips hungrily as you wait for him to cut the sandwich with a sharp knife. Then you grab half of the sandwich and bite deeply. The bacon crunches satisfying, the melted butter of the sandwich running off the corners of your mouth.
“So what is it,” you ask him between mouthfuls.
“Well it sure aint a book for John to shove on a shelf somewhere,” answers Nash. He’s eating a sandwich of his own now. “Near as I can tell it’s something from the boys.”
“Frank and Joe,” you ask excitedly. It’s been over six months since you saw either of them.
“Sure, something they found on their travels,” explains Nash. “We’ll crack it open after lunch and have a good look at what makes it tick before we warehouse it.”
“What are we going to be doing before lunch,” you ask. You know Nash well enough to now to spot an omission like that.
He chuckles in response. “I thought we’d take a good look at what makes you tick,” he says with a smile
“And then you put me in the warehouse?”
Nash laughs out loud at that. “Yeh got a hankerin’ for being shoved on a shelf with some dusty antiquities then.”
That’s what the Stellae do here. This is the archives, a tiny cottage in the middle of nowhere built on top of a vast storehouse of artefacts and tomes. Whenever something is found or collected or prised away from the hands of an unwilling warlock, it ends up here. In a sense it is a prison, but one for knowledge. Nash Carnes and John Reilly are its wardens.
Though you are “here”, you have no idea where “here” is. Getting to the archive involved a blindfolded trip in Nash’s car. It took three hours from Charles Brennan’s house in Olympia but that tells you nothing: Whatever custom job Nash has pulled on his car, it is more than capable of exceeding a hundred miles an hour all while still being an impossibly smooth ride inside.
But that’s what Nash does. He’s a Perelandra and a Kenandandra, skilled at both the conception and execution when it comes to enchanting items. That’s the reason you’re here, to learn about Kenandandra as an ousiarch.
*****
“You thought about unlocking any more of the Libra sigils,” asks Nash as he pokes and prods at you with one his odd looking tools “Say ‘ah’ for me,” he adds before using it to depress your tongue.
“Yes and no,” you reply once Nash is done with you. He raises an eyebrow at the answer. “Meaning yes I’ve thought about it, and no, I’ve decided not to do it. The book’s bad news Nash. I feel bad enough about what happened in London with Maria and Hal. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life looking over my own shoulder because I can’t trust myself.”
“Some of them are useful Will…” he begins.
“Shapechanging,” you interrupt. “That’s useful. Putting a golem shell round a person? No fucking way,” you add vehemently.
“Even that has its uses,” says Nash mildly, not reacting to your outburst. “Put a shell round someone to protect them from something dangerous then remove it once the danger is gone.” You glower at him, but dark looks never stick to Nash. He whistles cheerfully and pulls a small wooden box from under one of the work benches. “If it’s about trust then I made sometink for you.” He opens the box and shows you the contents.
“A pair of white gloves,” you say nonplussed. “Really, you shouldn’t have.” Nash grins. “No really, what are they?”
“Put them on when you unlock a sigil,” explains Nash. “You won’t be able to use it again without putting the gloves back on.”
“So, what, someone else holds onto them,” you ask sulkily.
Nash shakes his head. “You hold onto them. Way I see it, they make you think twice about using a sigil.”
You nod in agreement before taking the gloves out of their box. Then you pull down your goggles and examine them closely. They’re beautiful, or at least Nash’s handiwork is beautiful. The gloves themselves look like tacky stage magician’s gloves. With a glance you can see the complexity of what Nash has done, with detailed study you start to see how it works.
With a sigh you spot the flaw that renders them useless.
“There’s a loophole,” you say sadly. The gloves use some of the same ‘copy protection’ wards in the Libra, or something similar anyway. It’s inverted in a way, such that you can’t use a sigil without the copy the gloves make themselves. Now that you see the loophole though, it would be laughably easy to spoof a copy and trick the sigil into thinking you were wearing the gloves when you weren’t.
You explain it all to Nash.
“Well I’ll be damned,” he says after checking your work. He’s still smiling though. “I guess that means you were listening to me last week then,” he adds. You nod. “The offer stands though. Your loophole only works if you pick Kenandandra as your second ousiarch.”
“I haven’t thought much about it,” you admit honestly.
“Have you noticed,” asks Nash. You give him a puzzled look. “Well, this is the least glamorous place on the face of the planet, yet it’s the most comfortable you’ve been since Christmas, goin’ by what you’ve told me. And you’ve been yourself throughout. No pretending to be someone you aint.”
“So?”
“So Kenandandra is your original ousiarch,” he explains. “The one that got cut clean away. Explains why you’re so good with it. Something to think about.”
*****
“Lets see what’s inside,” says Nash prying open the crate from Frank and Joe. It wasn’t back breaking, moving it through to the workshop, but it was awkward getting it through the narrow doors and corridors. You help Nash with the lid eager to see inside. When it slides off, you realise just what it was the package reminded you of.
It looks like a coffin.
Inside the crate lies what looks like a marionette, if it had its strings all cut off. The doll is made from smooth wood and has no distinguishing features save an intricate tattoo like pattern that loops and whorls over the surface. You and Nash stare at each other, for you instantly recognise what it is: A golem, but one the size of a teenager.
“There’s a letter here,” says Nash picking up an envelope that sits on the wooden golem’s torso. He picks it up and rips it open with a dirty thumbnail.
You examine the wooden golem in more detail, flipping round the lenses of the goggles to get a better look. Perhaps the most disturbing aspect is that you recognise some of the elements. You’ve seen them in the Libra. Your attention is drawn along the curving lines to a circular element four inches across. You feel your jaw slacken as you realise what that circle contains.
“This has imago,” you say, moving one hand towards the circle.
Nash looks up from the letter. “Don’t…” he begins, too late. You coax the golem into life with just the tiniest spark of essentia. The wood pales and turns into flesh. A boy, barely in his teens stares back at you with dead eyes. You barely hold his interest for a few seconds and the eyes start flicking around.
“What is this,” you ask in horror.
“It aint even alive Will,” says Nash. “Not really.”
“Where did they find this, what was it being used for,” you ask, your face hard.
*****
“What was it being used for,” asks Rosalie.
“It was sick,” answers Frank gravely. “And that’s all I’m going to say.”
“That put me off Kenandandra,” you add. “No matter what you make, someone will always find a way to pervert it.”
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