"I think it can be done," Eknie said as they opened the gate to the desolate manor that Ted was supposed to take care of.
"I think so too, because I am not letting one stupid god control the rest of my life," Ted said and closed the creaking cast iron gate behind them. "I am going to start a cult."
Eknie laughed, her soft chuckle jingling in the air like the music of the fae. It was around four or five in the morning. Ted did not know for sure. They had been walking all around Neul to distract themselves.
"What's so funny about that?" Ted teased his friend. "You think I actually think that way of myself? That I am fit to be a leader?"
"Do you not?" Eknie shot back, tilting her head. "You have superficial charisma, good looks and bad ideas. For me, you are the penultimate cult leader material. Why, do you think you can buy souls like people sell newspapers, door to door, hello, please, hear what I have to say, I offer you seven thousand gold coins for a soul? Bring your friends for extra benefits?"
Ted admitted that he did not see this becoming a service like that.
They reclined in the empty great hall of the old Tobias family manor. The only people living here regularly were the servants, and they might as well have been ghosts. The only way to tell a human walked in the staircase and in the occult-infested library every day was the stunning lack of dust. Like with all mysterious things that Ted so greatly liked, it was not there unless one paid attention to what was indeed not there.
"I feel peckish," Ted complained. "If I could get a hold of the servants, they could fix up something."
Eknie raised her eyebrows. "Your appetite is not at all bothered by what happened down there?"
"Is it ever bothered by murder and bloodshed? Listen, we could not leave anyone screaming about bloody witches. Not like I consider myself a witch…I think girls are witches and boys become occultists."
Ted winked at her.
"Fine by me, I could eat a pastry," Eknie said with a dainty shrug of her shoulders.
This did not solve the problem of actually catching one of those elusive servants. The two friends embarked on a journey through the manor, even though Ted would have liked to get some sleep already.
They found a servant girl just outside the library, cleaning and clearly suffering from a bad case of insomnia.
"It's not healthy to stay up all night," Ted chastised the young woman. "Just because me and Miss Gulthroat do it, it doesn't mean it's good for you."
"I know, cor," the girl said meekly, using the dusty old honorific "cor" to refer to her master. After all, Ted was of noble blood. If the girl had been blue in blood, there would have been no need for that, but for a hundred years, this term from the Great Eastern Diamond Kingdom had persisted in the speech of the lowly and the pretentious.
Ted did not mind being cor Ted Kranich Tobias. It made him feel in control.
"I just wanted to be there to find you something good to eat, cor," the young woman explained. "There are pastries, and they are almost warm still…"
"That is just what we need. Bring some to the library and get some sleep, for the sake of all seeds in the garden of our god."
As the servant left them to their own devices, Eknie yawned.
"You are going to have an all-nighter, are you not?" she asked. "Might as well have us some coffee while we're at it."
"I was thinking that you would do the hard work of finding that book you talked about," Ted said. "You can have all the coffee you need if you can do that for me."
Ted was of noble blood, that much was true. His big brother, who had been the first candidate for the successor in the line, had wanted nothing to do with him or the manor when their parents had passed from a fever sickness. Ted didn't want anything to do with his preachy brother, either, and the wills had stated clearly that the manor would go to Ted Kranich if there was any animosity between the siblings.
Ted enjoyed being rich and not having to explain his actions to anyone. Although the reputation of the Tobias family had been declining, there was still enough of it left to place Ted firmly in the upper circles of the Neulian society.
Occasionally, he did travel south, but the subtropical environment suited him much better.
He sat down in the best armchair in his library and waited for Eknie to go through the material on the upper shelves.
There were all kinds of books there, books that were not as forbidden as they were discredited. No one took spell jars seriously any longer, for example. Any housewife could do the same, that's what they said, they thought the jars were no different from regular jars full of pickled whatever. There was no such thing as deadrousing anymore, and frankly, Ted did doubt the entire thing himself. It just did not seem feasible in the light of what modern science knew. That a dead man could walk – well, even to the solar deity, that would have been quite a feat.
Then there was sigilwork, of course. It was Ted's personal strength, the act of fashioning abstract symbols from concrete intentions. The intention had to be clear. The occult forces always found loopholes, if there were any. The matter of actually constructing a piece of art that got the message across to the other side was not simple, either, or perhaps it was too simple to be understood by simple human minds.
"I got another book on the subject of arcane deities," Eknie hollered. "Where is that girl? I am starving."