Summa Elvetica: A Casuistry of the Elvish Controversy and Other Stories (26 page)

Reply to objection 4.
To give life effectively is a perfection simply speaking; hence it belongs to God, as is said (1 Samuel 2:6): “The Lord killeth, and maketh alive.” The order in which the production of the animals is given has reference to the order of those bodies which they are set to adorn, rather than to the superiority of the animals themselves. Further, it is said that life is more perfect in the elves than in man inasmuch as it is the soul that gives life to the body. Whereas the span of man is but threescore and seven, the span of the elves is in excess of five centuries. Therefore the elves have souls naturally united to them.

This novel did not proceed according to plan. It was originally conceived as an epic philosophical trilogy, in which the reader would be immersed in medieval scholastic thought and explore various facets of some of the great philosophical debates that took place both within and without the Catholic Church.

Misunderstood by most modern intellectuals and ignored by the irreligious authors of modern fantasy fiction, the great scholars of the church were no close-minded ideologues, but rather brilliant men who conceived and refined many of the rational mechanisms that we today take for granted. It is not a coincidence that William of Ockham, author of the
Summa Logicae
and known for the logical principle that bears his name, was a Franciscan monk.

While the logic of churchmen such as William of Ockham, Aurelius Augustinus Hipponensis, and Thomas Aquinas most certainly has its flaws, the fair-minded reader must admit that their philosophical methods, however alien they may appear to modern eyes, are rather more reasonable and straightforward than the shamelessly manipulative Socratic method made famous by Plato. Unfortunately, my initial goal of assigning roles for the diverse schools of philosophical thought to each of the conventional fantasy races foundered on my inability to meaningfully connect it to the story of the prospective young priest traveling to the elflands.

Fortunately, I had long been fascinated with the problem of a medieval Church-dominated society forced to come to terms with the existence of traditional fantasy concepts such as elves, orcs, dragons, and dwarves.

It has long been my contention that the superficial medievalism of fantasy fiction has crippled the genre, rendering its settings incoherent and its characters shallow and unconvincing even in the hands of writers much more talented than I can ever hope to be. It is absurd, for instance, to base a plot that turns on a nominal Divine Right of Kings where there is no Divine from which the right is derived, and modern fantasy is littered with nonsensical priests without gods, who might as well be white wizards.

So, the part of the original story that concerned the conflict between medieval Church and medievalesque fantasy not only survived intact, it became the central point of the plot. Needless to say, this notion of centering a story around primarily philosophical action would have rendered the book all but unpublishable, were it not for the fortuitous emergence of Marcher Lord Press.

I had originally planned to title the book
Sublimus Dei
, which is the name of the papal bull issued in 1537 by Pope Paul III that declared the primitive people of the Americas to be rational beings with souls. Its text, somewhat altered, appears in the final chapter. The original translation of the Latin encyclical can be found at Papal Encyclicals Online as well as the Catholic Encylopedia at New Advent.

One day it struck me, however, that while the book could be presented as a metaphorical argument for the ensoulment of the elves, the structure of most philosophical arguments tend to be inordinately one-sided. There was, however, an exception.

Thomas Aquinas in his
Summa Theologica
makes use of a particular method that provides, or at least appears to provide, the opposing side with a fair hearing.

Happily, this provided me not only with an obvious title for the book, but also a useful means of structuring the story in a manner that was at least tangentially connected to the argument. In the unlikely event one has not noticed, each chapter in this book has a Latin header. Each header is a part of the single article presented in its entirety—and in English—at the end of the story.

Here I must once again express my gratitude to Meredith Dixon, whose Latin expertise filled in the gaps where I could not simply lift the relevant text from Saint Thomas himself. For the reader who happens to be curious about where various concepts were derived, note that Questions 51, 71 and 90–96 of the
Prima Pars
were particularly useful.

The argument presented is nonsensical, of course, but it is nonsensical in very much the same manner that so many of the philosophical and theological arguments presented by the great minds of the medieval ages were. But we should not scoff; it is deeply ironic that the leading atheists of our day happen to subscribe to this same method of argument, wherein empirical facts are ignored in favor of specious rationalizations that appear to be convincing so long as the logic is never weighed against the observable evidence.

Hence the description of the book as a “casuistry”, which can mean either “oversubtle and fallacious reasoning” or “the application of general ethical principles to particular cases of conscience.” One could reasonably argue for either definition, and I gladly leave it to the reader to decide which is the more fitting.

Luckily for the elves, man is in little possession of any evidence against which to balance the reasoned argument of the
Summa Elvetica
made on their eternal behalf. Therefore, we have no choice but to conclude with Marcus Valerius that
aelvi habent animae naturaliter unita
.

The rest of this volume consists of eight more tales from the land of Selenoth, which are considerably less ambitious than
Summa Elvetica
, but on the whole, rather more successful. And for those who are interested in following the progress of Marcus Valerius, his story continues in Book I of ARTS OF DARK AND LIGHT,
A Throne of Bones
.

BESSARIAS CAREFULLY HELD the calengalad balanced a half-hand above his palm, studying it closely as the delicate structure rotated slowly widdershins, its blue-green lattice of light sparkling like a precious jewel. The tiny giloi were flowing rapidly in, around, and through the dark center of the structure, and occasionally he could see a glowing red streak as the sequence he’d marked happened to flash past his eyes.

He whispered a word, and the rotation slowed, almost imperceptibly. He frowned, still unable to properly track the tiny ruby-red lights that whirled about inside the luminescent spider’s web. Then he found them, but, infuriatingly, not where they should be. In fact, if his eyes did not lie, they were precisely somewhere they could not possibly be. It was hopeless!

The temptation to hurl the damnable construction from his high window overlooking the river was almost overwhelming, but he resisted the urge despite his great frustration. A mere physical smashing couldn’t harm the calengalad itself, but any force inadvertantly released from it could endanger anyone passing by. Furthermore, such an incident would attract far too much unwanted attention.

“Darro, be gone!”

The calengalad disappeared, safely banished into the aether from whence it had been summoned. Arilon, his legendary master, dead these past two hundred years, taught that everything in the material plane was constructed of miniature grains, far too small for the eye to see, and yet large enough to contain all the secrets of the universe just as the seed of an animal carries within itself the secret of life. Grains upon grains, bound together by a magic beyond magic, everything was made of it: the stone walls surrounding the great keep, the dancing flames ensconced in the stairwells, even the flesh that had long ago rotted from the bones of an elven archmage.

“They are like the dots of the Ponschule,” Arilon explained to him once, referring to an artistic style that had reached the height of its brief popularity when Bessarias was still a young apprentice. “One dot, in itself, is nothing. But thousands upon thousands of dots, placed in a particular order by the hand of a creative adept, can be a truly meaningful construction indeed.”

“And who is the creative adept, in this case?”

The archmage had frowned at his impertinence, properly recognizing it as such.

“This silliness does not become you, Bessarias. If you would amuse yourself with debates of gods and origins and forms, there are masters who will be delighted to indulge you. I am not one of them.”

So chastened, the great one’s student had ducked his head in apologetic submission. And now, centuries later, Bessarias found himself smiling at the thought that his question, however silly at the time, had perhaps not been so far adrift.

In twelve hundred years, the Collegium Occludum had never known a mind so great as Arilon’s. Less accomplished masters of magic had left behind legacies of greater fame in the outside world, but although demon lords, masters of the Deep, and vauderistes cast terrible magics that annihilated armies, sank mighty fleets, and otherwise decided the fate of nations, there was not one that did more than make skilled use of the Who, the What and the Where. Arilon had been the first to plumb the secret depths of the Why and the How.

Even so, his fantastic conception had been an errant one. Seventy-six years ago, Bessarias proved it false, beyond any shadow of a doubt. It was not entirely wrong, for the calengalad, as his master had named his hypothetical grain, was real enough. The problem was that it was more truly a seed than Arilon had ever imagined, for it was not so much an object in its own right as a little world containing worlds of its own. It was an accumulation of other, smaller elements, ethereal sparks of light that danced and whirled like maddened fairies intoxicated on the bacchanal blood of a toadstool. It could even be broken, as Bessarias learned to his horror when he accidentally created the Glass Desert.

It was a dreadful mistake, but a significant one. In more ways than one. Indeed, the ghastly cataclysm brought about by his experiments marked only the third time in recorded history that Elebrion’s High King had dared to intervene in the affairs of the Collegium. But on this occasion, there were no protests from the proudly independent college of magicians. Indeed, open relief was expressed throughout the college. A royal decree was made—there would be no more experiments involving the shattering of the sphere—as was Bessarias’s fame.

Or perhaps infamy would be a more accurate term. His name was known throughout all Selenoth now, and feared, as if he had meant to call up devils from that unknown plane of unthinkable power and knowingly penetrated the veil that should have at all costs remained inviolate.

But fear had brought him more than fame. It brought him power too. Now he was of the Seven, a member of the college’s ruling council. He was only the fifty-third archmage to hold mastery in two of the eight formal disciplines of the Octovium, and the fifth to do so in three. Arilon had been the fourth. He lacked for nothing. And yet, at this very moment, would he not trade everything for a simple answer that would tell him why the cursed giloi were behaving so strangely?

He had tried everything, drawn upon every single one of the Collegium’s vast resources. He had lashed demons with whips of celestial fire, mercilessly ripped speech from the lips of the dead, sent scores of apprentices digging through the college’s most ancient archives, and still he had learned nothing. The truth, whatever it was, would have to be found some other way.

There was a soft knock on the door. He waved a hand, and the door opened in obedience to his will.

“Greetings, Magistras.” The hooded elf bowed respectfully as a large grey cat leaped out from his arms. “Mastema suggested you might be finishing soon. I trust I do not disturb you?”

“Ah, Kilios. Come in, come in. I am already disturbed, though not by you.” He sighed heavily. “I wrestle with the pillars of the universe, and they are less forthcoming than your visions.”

“Such is the burden of greatness, Bessarias.” The cat’s yellow eyes were mocking. “Pillars aren’t generally known for their elocution. Perhaps that’s your problem.”

“Silence, Mastema,” Kilios rebuked his friend’s familiar. He was a gaunt wizard of great height, with eerie pupilless eyes set deeply in their sockets. He was a seer, a powerful one, and not all of his visions were pleasant. The knowledge of evil yet to come is perhaps the hardest wisdom of all, and over the years it had left its bitter mark on his haggard face. Blind, but not without sight, he walked the winding corridors of the great tower as easily as any other mage possessing more conventional vision.

“He tells me you have been holed up in here for three days. Will you eat?”

“Soon, I think. I am not yet hungry.”

“Of course. It is always hard to return to the world of carnate concerns.”

“It is indeed. Now tell me of the latest gossip. I remember there were rumors of an incipient battle in Nordfall.”

“Were there? I did not know. I was meditating alone yesterday, until Mastema did me the honor of paying his respects.”

“Don’t flatter yourself, seer.” The cat looked up from the paw it was washing. “There was a rat on your corridor.”

Bessarias smiled affectionately at the large feline. The demon had been with him for nearly two centuries, always inhabiting the body of a grey cat with black markings. How he managed to find them on such a regular basis, Bessarias didn’t know and was not inclined to ask.

“He is too proud to admit it, but I suspect he gets rather lonely when I’m occupied with my studies.”

The cat snorted loudly.

“I wasn’t lonely. I was hungry because you hadn’t fed me for two days. And in answer to your question, yes, there was a battle yesterday, and the Red Prince’s knights crushed the wolf-breed. Ethaleas set his students to scrying it as an exercise, and I watched them. I imagine the wolves had never seen cavalry before, because the Savondese rode them down like unarmed peasants.”