Further though, our tale assumes that magic exists, both as a science that can be mastered by study and insight and as miracles gifted to people of especial faith and calling who believe in divine beings. Or, more properly, it assumes that such things existed until Christ’s New Covenant changed things. After Christ’s first coming, magic declined and faltered away. The faeries withdrew from the world. The undead were destroyed. The old gods faded and were lost. Without Christianity, that change never happened.
As Mirabelle mentions in this volume, there was a war, a terrible conflict that was consequence of these divergences from our own history and theology. The Dead Name, of whom little is revealed in our present story, rose to power in 1078 ab urba condita – that is one thousand and seventy-eight years after Rome’s legendary founding. The equivalent in our calendar would be A.D. 325, but without Christianity there is no count of years anno Domini. The War of the Dead Name began in the final years of Constantine the Great and climaxed in 1116 AUC when Julian was emperor, A.D. 363, Year of the Consulship of Iulianus and Sallustius, when St Temensus played some role in the horror’s overthrow.
A consequence of this conflict’s end was extensive tectonic activity, causing worldwide disasters that altered coastlines, destroyed cities, and changed weather patterns. The Roman Empire collapsed. Civilization fell into a dark age. Creatures of myth and legend escaped into reality, and magic once more became a force that scholars might harness and priests might be gifted with.
Many years have passed since everything changed. Padavas’ ill fated caravan makes its journey in 1755 AUC, six hundred and thirty nine years since the great fall and the cataclysms it wrought. The still habitable parts of Europe and Asia are divided into small fiefdoms and petty nation-states, some confederated loosely to a vestigial Roman Empire of limited authority and relevance. New cities like Venice and Paris have begun to take precedence over the crumbling older urban centres like Rome and Byzantium.
Magic, though known, is rare and controlled, principally by the Invisible College of the Illuminated. There is no international law, no universal religion. Latin remains the chosen language of scholars and diplomats. Ancient Greek is the province of mages and cultists.
This, then, is the troubled world through which our characters travel, in a history altered from our own and changed again by the cascade of consequences from that first divergence. The author hopes and trusts it might be an interesting place for the reader to consider for a while.
IW
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BYZANTIUM BOOK 1: DEAD MEN’S ROAD
by I.A. Watson
This story is part of the Single Shots Signature Series.
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