Stormcallers: Chapter 24

Now what of Atamato Cintiona? The Prezon’s Navigator did not remain with the ship when it reached port. So shaken was the poor boy by his experiences that he purchased passage home, to the Free City of Imbari. It is here that the boy who would soon be shackled found himself. Such was the fortune of the privileged navigator, that with but a promise of service did even the meanest merchant provide passage to wherever he wished.

When Atamato was young, he thought the streets of Imbari claustrophobic, filled to the brim with citizens going about their daily lives, talking and shouting and calling to each other. How he had hated the streets then; there was never any time to be alone. Now, the crowded streets of Imbari felt welcoming. It was here he had studied for eight years, learning about the systems and numbers that guided the islands on their path. Levers and springs, gears and slopes, brand new maths and sciences were constantly being discovered in the Free City. Great thinkers and philosophers created their own academies, spreading the gospel of science and math.

This was what Atamato believed: a great Enlightenment was sweeping aside the mists of superstition and magic. Myths and miracles were being unraveled. The unknowable made known. He had taken to sea with his areotlas, intent on studying the storms and the cloud-sea.

Then he had met Phalamili Rukiya, who told him that he didn’t know what Magic was. Suddenly he found himself wondering if he stood on an island and watched a ship sail past, who was moving? Who was standing still?

He had begged the pirates to leave him his charts and papers, they were not worth a single coin to anyone but him and his organization, what became known as the Ramshackle Heresy, but what he knew only as his mentor’s great theory: Wind-currents.

His mentor, Master Gentamo, was positive the cloud-sea was not as chaotic as the world assumed. “Disorder is the way to destruction,” he was so fond of saying. “The world’s continued existence is proof of an underlying reason and order.” They had been impossible to chart before, with the movements of the islands and the winding of the cloud-sea, but now with his every acolyte carrying an areotlas, they could finally mark the winds as they danced about the cloud-sea.

They had all joined separate ships, and spread across the cloud-sea, measuring and charting and crafting a map of the winds. The Winds! Who but a genius like Master Gentamo could have imagined such a thing; that the chaotic winds could be mapped and measured, trapped in cages of math and ink? They could be charted, codified, annotated, and defined. They could become known.

But poor Atamato, he had been gone for more than a year, and he had not concerned himself with traveler’s charms or similar magics. He had seen more than just the winds of the cloud-sea, and so the Atamato who now walked the streets of the Free City was very different than the Atamato who had left.

But different as he was, he still remembered the way to the Great Library, wherein lay the wonder of the age, the miracle of the cloud-sea, the Magnaprim Areotlas.

The Magnaprim Areotlas was the pinnacle of Imbari engineering. It stood three times the height of the tallest man, and each arm weighed more than a fully laden cart. Now, I do not know how the machine worked — such secrets are for the engineers of the Free City — but through their efforts did the intricately decorated brass and porcelain plates rotate about each other in a carefully constructed dance, perfectly mirroring the islands’ paths across the cloud-sea.

All throughout the day, the Magnaprim Areotlas was covered with navigators and engineers of every type. Climbing on ladders and pointing with wooden canes, readings were measured, charts consulted, and numbers were marked and crossed-out and marked again. The Magnaprim Areotlas was the standard by which every other Areotlas in navigation houses and trade halls across the cloud-sea was measured and set.

Here, in the Great Library’s hallowed sanctum, sat Atamato’s mentor, Master Gentamo, huddled in an alcove on the second story balconies, students and acolytes swarmed around him like bees. When he saw Atamato, he opened his arms wide, like this, and said: “Mister Cintonia, you have returned from your voyage! Have you come laden with charts and diagrams for your old Master? Do you come bearing news of a fruitful venture? Have you maths and measurements? Deductions and solutions?”

Atamato took the man’s hand and kissed his Academy ring, as was expected for an acolyte when greeting his master. “My voyage was cut short as my ship was assaulted by Madrainian Pirates, I’m afraid.”

Master Gentamo clapped a hand to his mouth in shock. “Pirates! Astounding! Amazing! But what of your measurements of the wind currents?”

Faithful Atamato held out his bag: “I measured the speed of the wind. I measured the temperature of the air. I measured the thickness of the clouds. I measured every day, and every night.”

How delighted Master Gentamo was! He clapped his hands in glee, like this. “Outstanding, my boy! I must add these to my calculations at once! But no, all in good time. You are home again, my student, and we must take wine! A cup! At once a cup!”

After they had each taken two cups of sour wine apiece, they returned to the matter once more. Now, Master Gentamo was a very old and experienced teacher. He had seen many students come and go through the halls of the Academy, and he had learned to see things that the students wished hidden.

“Tell me of your travels, my boy. I can see in you a hesitation, a loss of faith in the great work we are undertaking?”

Atamato had, indeed, been shaken free from his faith. So shaken was he, that he wasn’t sure how to explain it. So he said: “I saw the unreasonable.”

Master Gentamo did naught but laugh at hearing this. “My dear boy, nothing real is unreasonable. You saw nothing but phantoms. Ghosts. Tricks of the mind and the cloud-sea. It is not uncommon for those abroad to mistake themselves with what they have seen. Why, just a moment of reasonable thought will bring forth a suitable explanation.”

But Atamato had not paused in his thinking, and frightened was he that he had lost his reason, that the madness of the storms had affected his mind. “But I have tried all the methods of logic, and still a reasonable answer eludes me. I fear I have become storm-blown, and will become useless to the enlightenment we adulate. What else can I be, when the facts do not fit my reason?”

“Dear boy,” Master Gentamo shook his sorry head. “Facts are curious things; everyone has a thousand and they all may contradict the other. Truth is not found through collections of facts, but by reason and logic, the only reliable sources of truth. If what you think you saw flies in the face of what is reasonable, then you must not have seen it.”

Now perhaps this could have been the end of Atamato’s story. Perhaps he could have nodded his head at his mentor’s words, and returned to the welcoming embrace of the Acadamy, and fulfilled his place in the Ramshackle Heresy.

But no, Atamato could not keep his tongue still. Instead, he pointed with outstretched hand: “I know what I saw, Master Gentamo, and others saw it too.”

With a heavy sigh, Master Gentamo took up his glass and nodded his head. “Then tell me boy, the madness of your eyes, and I shall show you how reason may bring order and predictability to all things.”

This was of course what Atamato desired, for his mentor to take away the uncertainty of his heart, so he gladly spoke thus: “On the ship, there was a servant; one of the people of Lergos. I taught her writing, and math. I explained the turning of the Islands to her, and she called it Magic.”

Once more, Master Gentamo thought he understood, as he knew many promising students’ careers had been halted through the presence of a young woman. “Of course she did; women are not beings of logic and reason, my boy. Look around you, do you see a single woman in this room? No. Why not? Logically, it is because their brains are not structured the same as a mans. It is not their fault, no more than it is my fault that my hair grows thin, or my wrinkles grow deep. It is an immutable fact of nature, my boy, that our brains are suited to facts, reason, and results, while theirs are suited to emotions, irrationality, and flights of fancy.”

“She did not seem so to me,” Atamato protested. “She withstood a life of brutal beatings and slave-work, and she weathered it like no one I had ever seen. She demanded answers of me, and when I gave them, she made me question how I knew.”

Master Gentamo laughed at this, and said, “anyone can ask questions, my boy. Our work is not magic, because it produces reliable results!”

But Atamato had said the selfsame thing to Rukiya, and he remembered well her answer; “When confronted with a storm she fought with a courage that seasoned sailors did not share. Is that not a result? Perhaps we expect something different of magic than what it does?”

Master Gentamo shifted in his chair. He was not comfortable to hear such praise bestowed upon a woman. “My boy, think logically. How can a mumbling chant affect the currents of rain and flame of the storms? Even if some savage chants at a storm and it goes away, if it doesn’t work every time how can you logically say it ever worked? That’s Magic, my boy. Unpredictable and unreliable. Why else do the savages always have women as their spell-weavers? Why else do women become Beldams?”

“Beldams do not exist,” Atamato protested.

“Well, no, not in point of fact,” Master Gentamo smiled kindly, “but it is not for lack of these savages trying. Come now and tell me truly, did this girl of yours discover some new mathematical proof? Some scientific law? What did she do that has so befuddled your mind?”

Atamato felt ashamed to voice it, but there was nothing else he could do: “She called math and words magic. She called the areotlas magic. And I wonder if perhaps she was right?”

Master Gentamo laughed again, though this time he did not find Atamato’s words amusing. No, he forced himself to laugh, to keep the atmosphere light and friendly, or else his frown would have darkened the room. “Right that powders in flame, that knots in strings, that chanting and dancing affect the world beyond what we have achieved? Absurd. We are not beholden to such superstitions, my boy, and that is all the difference.”

But Atamato was not finished, for he had many hours to consider the truth of it: “But we memorize tables and formulas, charts and graphs. Are these not chants of a kind?”

His Master was not convinced. “Your words are those of a poet, my boy. Very pretty, but flawed. Anyone can learn the formulas, the charts, the tables. If we did not know the formulas, they would still work. We know how they work. Magic does not.”

Atamato knew that his master was correct, but something within his heart knew he was wrong. “But I wonder, do they not affect the dancers? The chanters? The listeners and practitioners? I only wonder if, in our devotion to what we see as rational, we might be missing something fundamentally true.”

Master Gentamo heaved a great sigh. He was tiring of his student’s foolishness, and wished to return to his familiar and comfortable charts; so he said: “Enough, my boy. Truth is rational, and what is rational is truth. Your conclusion is unreasonable.”

Atamato was not tired, and so he shouted: “Then perhaps some truths are unreasonable!”

The low hum of the room ebbed, as students and scholars alike turned from their papers, navigators and engineers gaped up at the balcony where Atamato stood, staring at his teacher with aghast eyes.

“I beg your pardon?” Master Gentamo gaped.

Atamato bowed his head, clasping his hands at his front, leaking shame from every pore. “Forgive me, Master Gentamo, I meant no disrespect, but to our ancient kin, a boat that could fly through the cloud-sea must have sounded unreasonable. Gunpowder must have been unreasonable. Steam-engines, coal, even alloys like brass must have been unthinkable to them, in their ignorance. I cannot help but wonder; you call her an unreasonable savage. You say Magic defies logic. But if we say that something is true only if it sounds reasonable to us, that all truth must be comprehensible to our own worldview…is that not a superstition? Is it not possible that we simply do not understand what Magic is for?”

Master Gentamo stood up, his nostrils flaring. With a single hand, he pressed down on the book in front of him, like a preacher at the pulpit. “I am a rational man, Atamato, and I will not accept any theory that is built from such nonsense as the irrational ramblings of a young student who just hobbled off his boat. If you have a theory that is not so dependent on the supposed intelligence and logic of a primitive, then I will be more then willing to hear it. Until then, I suggest you leave these hallowed halls at once.”