Chapter 9 #2
“That’s a great idea.” Ezra gently closed his book and eyed the stacks of tomes around him on the table.
“How to narrow our search down, though. The skull manifests an uncontrollable blizzard, so perhaps looking through what information exists for the Elder fae clans that lived in regions with such weather events might be prudent?”
Raum continued his thought. “An Elder fae with the ability to control such a powerful weather event would stick out in tropical zones in the mythological and historical records but would blend in amongst dozens of others in the lands closer to the poles and with distinct seasonal changes. The Elder fae peoples’ magics were often aspects of the natural world when they were born.
An Elder fae born in Northern Scandinavia would likely have aspects that were indicative of the clime, like blizzards on the steppes, mountain ranges and glaciers, things like that.
Their magics were often manifestations of the immediate environment into which they were born.
Not always true, but more true than not. ”
That was a tidbit of information Ezra never knew, but to hear it from Raum made it seem less like a hypothesis and more like an established fact. Fae magic, biology, and cultures were nothing like human practitioners’, despite the species living alongside each other for millennia.
Raum sifted through the books and pulled out a folder stamped with the university logo, opening it to read a report from the archaeology department.
“Extrapolating from the location the skull was found, the storm skull was in the hands of white colonizers in the 1800s, traveling across rough terrain. There’s no mention of the skull being with them, but a reliquary of the size and strength necessary to contain the storm skull would have been a high-value item, and there’s no record of any person of substantial wealth being among the people who died when the fur trading outpost disappeared, or in the original roster of those in the group. ”
“Maybe a family heirloom?” Ezra guessed, thinking out loud. “Its potential value would be enough for people to risk carrying it across the country, even with limited space and resources. Where were the settlers from?”
Raum pulled out a photocopy of what looked to be an antique parchment, and he handed it to Ezra.
He took it and squinted at the antiquated penmanship.
He was terrible at reading handwriting from previous centuries, even with his history degree.
It made his head hurt. He genuinely couldn’t see past the minuscule and tight lettering with all the flourishes.
There was an imposed line of modern type set at the top of the page, identifying the image as a land charter from a fur-trading company based in Edmonton that controlled the region at the time, deeding the settlement to the families listed on the charter.
Ezra set the paper down between him and Raum, trying not to show his frustration. “Is there a typed-out list or translation of the charter I can read?”
Understanding dawned in Raum’s eyes, and without hesitation he dug through the file and handed Ezra a few pages of paper, the information typed out with footnotes identifying the corresponding words in the scanned document.
“Thanks.”
Employees of a fur-trading company were deeded land with the intent to set up a new trading post and a supporting town.
They were hoping to establish a stronger foothold in the region, allowing for supplies and storage of furs and goods to bolster against potential losses due to accidents or competing fur-trading companies.
Nearly a dozen families, along with trappers and support staff for the outpost set out in the early 1800s, several decades before most European colonizers reached the area to homestead.
Fort Edmonton existed, founded by the Hudson’s Bay Company in the late 1700s, and it was the only place at the time to find non-indigenous people for hundreds of miles.
It was also the place the expedition set out from.
“This part of the province was largely uninhabited by colonizers at the time,” Raum said when Ezra set down the papers after reading them through.
“There were many indigenous bands and nations in the area, though their histories of the time aren’t part of the university’s records.
First Nations historians would probably have some idea of what happened in the area, as a storm that big could probably be found in their historical record, but Simmons never reached out to the local indigenous peoples or even the First Nations members we have in the History Department for help.
” Raum explained with a grimace. “Fur traders and small exploration teams funded by the trading companies were the few white people to make it out this far prior to the expedition. The file contains Simmons’ theory that it was a very early attempt to establish a monopoly of the region beyond what the Hudson’s Bay Company held at the time.
Simmons drew all his research from the records and personal accounts from the expedition members, the trading company, and those funding the mission. ”
“Money and the acquisition of power,” Ezra set the papers next to Raum. “Led to so much destruction and death.”
Raum nodded in agreement. “There was no support system in place for the expedition, and the mysterious choice to bring the relic ultimately destroyed them all. The blizzard theory for the expedition’s disappearance seems sound—though it was no random act of nature, but rather magic, and from a relic they brought with them.
And definitely not from the indigenous peoples in the area.
That was another of Simmons’s theories—that it might be inimical magic from a nearby First Nation people attempting to stop the invasion of white settlers. ”
“Simmons is an asshole,” Ezra stated loudly in disgust. “Anyone with a measure of empathy and common sense wouldn’t have unleashed a massive blizzard on the region, killing everything.”
Ezra stopped speaking and shut his mouth with a snap. His thoughts stopped spinning and stumbled up against the confusion he first felt when he saw the incomplete drawing of the chest being unearthed by Simmons and Blevins.
“Ezra?”
If the storm killed everyone in the original expedition, and the location of the nascent outpost had been lost to time and undiscovered for over two centuries, fading into local legend....
“Ezra!” Chase’s loud voice snapped him out of his epiphany. Chase and Harlan were frowning in worry, and Raum was looking at him as if he were a mystery he wanted to unravel.
“Who buried the relic in the first place?” Ezra asked, looking between his companions, matching expressions of dawning realization growing on Chase and Harlan’s faces.
“The entire expedition and the outpost they made disappeared completely, lost until Simmons and his excavation team found it in the modern day. Everyone in the original expedition died, right? So who the hell was left to put the storm skull in the reliquary chest and then bury it, wrapped in chains and locked? And it was buried deep, several feet at least, and no amount of erosion and topsoil buildup over the centuries would account for its depth.”
Chase set aside the MERS laptop Grendel had issued him and reached for his phone.
“Let me pull up the files we have on that. Everything Simmons had in the way of research on his excavation and the grant proposal to the university was uploaded to our system. I don’t trust him to have shared everything pertinent now that we know he was the asshole that unleashed it this time around. ”
“Does it matter who buried it?” Harlan asked, though not unkindly, more genuinely confused as to Ezra’s urgency. Ezra nodded, though he held a hand out and waffled it back and forth in a maybe kind of way.
“Whoever buried it did so in such a way that made it clear they knew it was dangerous, they knew it was the source of the storm, and people were dying. Whoever locked it up did their best to make it as hard as possible for it to be found again and opened, though Monica and Simmons had no magic of their own, so either locking spells were cast that long ago wore off, or it was probably a mundane human or someone of a species without overt magical abilities who buried it. It was sealed and hidden in a very non-magical way. How did that person survive the apocalypse long enough to get their hands on the skull, lock it up, and bury it? That speaks to me of either someone extremely desperate, extremely durable, or they had some working knowledge of the cursed relic and how to manage it without getting drained like Monica did when she opened the chest. Maybe a combination of all those traits.”
Ezra paused, then took a deep breath and thought about it. “I could be wrong, but my gut says that’s what happened, or close to it.” He grimaced, then shrugged. “Or they had a fortune in nullifier charms like Simmons.”
Harlan nodded thoughtfully at Ezra’s explanation. “Someone like that might’ve known more about the skull, like its origins, or how it was made, maybe who it once was.”
Ezra nodded sharply in agreement. “And hopefully they lived long to tell others or write it down somewhere. A journal, a diary, business records if they made it back to Fort Edmonton.”
“Or maybe that person is still alive,” Raum said quietly, fingers slowly tapping on the cover of a book in front of him.
“It might have been two hundred years ago, but that doesn’t mean much when it comes to an immortal, or one of the sentient undead.
Maybe even a fae, or an indigenous supernatural being. ”
That was enough to make Ezra nearly giddy with excitement.
Many different fae peoples were gifted with longevity and endurance, with physical strength and stamina that far outdid even the strongest of humans, and even if they had little in the way of overt expressions of magic like a practitioner did, they were still impressively capable and adaptable.
And the knowledge of indigenous supernatural peoples of the New World was held close by the remaining First Nations peoples, and what little was known was skewed by biases from white colonizers.
“That’s true!” Ezra explained, and he flew to his feet in excitement. Lilith immediately stole his seat and sat in the warm spot.
He paced, restless, needing to move, and he watched as Chase scrolled through files on his smartphone, moving through them faster than Ezra could manage on his own.
Chase stopped scrolling, thumb stopping on the screen, and he frowned hard.
Ezra knew there was nothing in the files before Chase even looked up and confirmed it.
“Nothing in Simmons’s files. Seems like an odd oversight to have, right?
He went right to the spot where the chest was buried, too, remember?
There wasn’t anything around to warrant digging there, and the first hole they dug up in that random location happened to contain a reliquary with a cursed artifact of extreme power. Ain’t no way.”
Ezra nodded. “Simmons knew where it was. There is a record of it being buried somewhere, which means that the person who buried it survived long enough to write it down, or told someone else and they wrote it down, or hell, maybe Simmons talked to the person who did it face to face.” He paused, shaking his head.
“I want to know how Simmons learned about the skull. That can lead us to the source of the information, and maybe even give us some insight into how to handle the storm skull now.”
“I’ve got everything the university has access to, and Simmons’ office and apartment are being searched as well,” Chase said.
“We can go search both places any time you want, say the word. We’ve also requested his phone and internet use from the past year, and we can get analysts working on it ASAP.
We can’t account for anything he took with him, but what he left behind we’re searching through. ”
Ezra nodded quickly, his mind spinning as he thought about what to do next, and it wasn’t until someone shouted that he realized he was listing to the side and about to hit the floor.