Where to start? Cracking the code in which the Verses were written promised to be difficult at best. The text was sprinkled with Bible verses, so those could potentially function as clues, but that might not be enough without additional context. Iris had also provided her with the link for a playlist he had listened to when he was alive--an unexpected bonus--but even that was still bullet points. Again, she was likely to need context. Long though the path might be, Sophia concluded that it was best to start with the paperbacks.
She had resigned herself to a boring slog, but the Prologue for Volume 1 caught her attention almost immediately.
Another salute. This one to the Sartan. You hesitate to drink. Come, I insist. Your rage is your strength. Use it, it will give you energy. Therefore... To the Sartan. They made us what we are. ... And I came across the books. Unable to read them at first, I worked and taught myself and soon learned their secrets. I read of the Sartan and their "hopes" for us and I laughed aloud--the first and only time in my life I have ever laughed. You understand me, Haplo. There is no joy in the Labyrinth.
The parallel was uncanny, almost spooky. Had he engineered that, or was it coincidence? The Sartan were the villains, then, or so the Prologue suggested. More riddles. She read on. The descriptions her parents and grandparents had given of Lazarus often reminded her of Haplo, the protagonist, but Haplo belonged to precisely the wrong race (Patryn) to make perfect sense of the word "Sartanic". She would have to see what happened when these mysterious Sartan started actually appearing in the story as characters.
Near the end of the first book, she finally found one in Alfred Montbank, the lone surviving member of his race in the gaseous world of Arianus. He didn't fit the classic Lazarus profile very well, but there was something about him that tugged at her, something poignant. He was very much alone and his fear was palpable. Had Lazarus felt that way as the lone oyinbo in an otherwise Black family? And then there were flashes. Every once in a while, Alfred would cease to be the mouse that he usually was and become an absolute lion for a few crucial minutes. During those few minutes, the last place you wanted to be was on Alfred's bad side. Even sociopaths like the aptly named human child Bane flinched under his gaze. As the story arc progressed, it looked more and more like a toss-up between Haplo and Alfred on which character best served as Lazarus' analog. Did he relate to both?
"A why is a dangerous thing," said Haplo. "It challenges old, comfortable ways; forces people to think about what they do instead of just mindlessly doing it. No wonder your people are afraid of it."
"I think the danger is not so much in asking the why as in believing you have come up with the only answer," said Alfred, seeming almost to be talking to himself.
Volume 2 introduced her to the bright greenhouse world of Pryan and a second Sartan: Zifnab, who was frequently ridiculous but had brief moments of extreme lucidity and gravitas, as well as hints of something far beyond the magical talents one might normally expect of his kind. Divine protection, perhaps. Other Sartan also made appearances, but only as holographic recordings. One such recording stood out.
A single form sat there, shoulders bowed beneath an unseen burden. ... You of our brethren who may one day come into this chamber are undoubtedly lost in amazement at what you have found--or failed to find. You see a city, but no people living within its walls. You see the light ... but its energy is wasted. Or perhaps you will not see the light. Who knows what will happen when we are no longer here to guard the citadels? Who knows but that the light will dim and fade, even as we ourselves have done? You have, through your magic, viewed our history. We have recorded it in the books as well, so that you may study it at your leisure. ... You now know the terrible mistakes we made. I will add only what has occurred in these last days. ... We ourselves are being made to leave the citadels. The force that opposes us is ancient and powerful. It cannot be fought, cannot be placated. Tears do not move it, nor do all the weapons we have at our command. Too late, we have come to admit its existence. We bow before it and take our leave."
Volume 3 featured Abarrach, the eternally dark world of stone, and there she saw Sartan everywhere. Indeed, they were the only people in that world, and therein lay a clue to the problem. Abarrach was hostile to life in general. Everyone else had gone extinct. Even the numerous Sartan were struggling. Worse, they were in a horrifyingly literal death spiral. What little magical strength wasn't needed for basic survival was invested in the morbid practice of necromancy, which while granting some semblance of life to the dead, was also killing off those who still lived. It was a grim read, made considerably grimmer by a small note Lazarus had left. Where Alfred stumbled across a volume called The Modern Art of Necromancy, Lazarus had underlined the title and written on the margin next to it three words: "Say Their Names".
Where had she heard that phrase before? Wasn't it at school? Yes...yes it was! That was a rallying cry for the heroes of her Social History textbooks! If this note meant what it seemed to, he was calling that slogan a necromantic ritual! Was there any truth in that assertion? Had he made it as an accusation or out of approval? Either way, it was an explosive parallel to draw.
It was also in this volume that she found a brief account of Sartan and Patryn origins.
"Wizards, male and female, banded together in order to bring hope to lives lost in darkness. They called themselves Sartan, meaning in the rune language, 'Those Who Bring Back Light'. ... The task proved enormous. We Sartan were few in number. In order to facilitate the rebirth of the world, we went forth and taught the most rudimentary use of magic to the lesser peoples, reserving the true nature and power of the Wave for ourselves, that we might retain control and prevent the catastrophe that had occurred from reoccurring.
Fondly, we believed that we were the Wave. Too late, we realized that we ourselves were only a part of the Wave, that we had become a bulge in the Wave, and that the Wave would take corrective action. Too late, we discovered that some of us had forsaken the altruistic goals of our work. These wizards sought power through the magic; they sought rulership of the world. Patryns, they called themselves, 'Those Who Return to Darkness'. ... The Patryns named themselves thus in mockery of us, their brethren, and because in the beginning they were forced to work in dark and secret places in order to remain hidden from us. They are a close-knit people, fiercely loyal to each other and to their one abiding goal, which is the absolute and complete domination of the world."
Scornful laughter shook her frame. So, the Sartan had taken upon themselves the White Man's Burden! One could scarcely have dreamt up a more classically white position to take. They even used the same old Light/Dark analogies to fuel it! Damn right the Patryns were corrective action! Karma was a bitch! The Sartan had done such a hilariously fine job governing that surely the Patryns couldn't help but be an improvement!
Nevertheless, through his traumatic experiences on Abarrach, frequently owing his continued existence to Alfred, and a seemingly freak occurrence on the way to Abarrach in which he and Alfred lived each other's memories, Haplo began to doubt the wisdom of his mission and thereby to doubt his Lord.
A smirk played across her face. Was this the angle Lazarus was working with these books? Undermining Black Solidarity through Haplo and his awkward but growing relationship with Alfred? Maybe, but the story was still less than half told, she reminded herself, the Sartan had their own totally villainous elements (such as Kleitus of Necropolis), and the jury was still out on whether Haplo or Alfred was the better personal fit for Lazarus. Time would tell...hopefully.
In Volume 4, the water world Chelestra seemed almost like heaven. The "mensch" races (elf, human, dwarf) were all at peace with each other, and as an added bonus, the humans of Chelestra (the cream of the human crop, seemingly) were Black! Phondra was effectively Wakanda! The omnipresent water was even breathable. It did nullify rune magic, though, so Haplo had to keep himself dry if he was going to use the talents that made him special as a Patryn.
The almost unbreakable peace of Chelestra also promised to make Haplo's job especially hard, as his job was to breed chaos so his Lord could quell it as the incoming messiah. Fortunately for Haplo, a sleeping community of Sartan on a formerly frozen continent would be awakened by Alfred and they would end up doing a lot of his work for him. Come to find out, this was not just any group of Sartan. This was the very one that had sundered the ancient world into these four realms and sent Haplo's people to that house of horrors called the Labyrinth. Samah, the hated mastermind himself, lived here.
By awakening these ancient Sartan, Alfred had finally found his people, the kind that he recognized, unlike those pathetic necromancers on Abarrach who made his skin crawl. He could live here and be happy...or could he? As hospitable as these Sartan were, as much as they reminded him of home, Alfred couldn't help but notice that something was off. Samah, though friendly, was not transparent and there was an unspoken rift in the group. Having unlearned the old Sartan custom of blind trust, Alfred could not let the dissonance go unexamined, so he investigated for himself and discovered things Samah didn't want him to know. This combined with his knowledge of Haplo to brand him a traitor in Samah's eyes and ultimately get him sent to the Labyrinth.
Just when she thought she had Lazarus pinned, here he was throwing curveballs! It was not to be a total defense of the Sartan as a group after all, and those peaceful Black humans further complicated the narrative she had begun to construct. She found herself thinking that like Alfred, he had felt betrayed by his own somehow. Was it racial or something else? Maybe it was both?
As the plot sped up in Volumes 5, 6, and 7, the details, though fascinating in their own right, became less personally relevant and though Sophia continued reading, she gradually stopped taking notes. She picked up her pen one final time when she arrived at what seemed to be the final moral note of the series:
Both the Sartan and the Patryns had thought too highly of themselves, assigning themselves rights and responsibilities which were not theirs to claim. They shared this universe with angels (the dragons of Pryan), demons (the serpents of Chelestra), and a true God. The post-Sundering world, broken though it was, could not be restored to its earlier form without touching off another holocaust. Its inhabitants would have to make the best of what remained as found, moving forward in a spirit of harmony and not backward in one of revenge.
She closed the last volume with a wince. Of course it would end that way. Rough, messy, triangular. She should have seen it coming. He would stake out a position like that. Far enough from the popular consensus to assert himself, close enough to it to avoid getting pigeonholed. Honestly, though, given his position in the family, what else could he do? He wouldn't have gotten very far, going all-in for the Sartan position, so to speak, and he was legendarily stubborn in his refusal to bend the other way. Would it have killed him to simply accept his lot and fully defect? But maybe she was getting ahead of herself. These were not his own words, after all, though he had seemingly endorsed them, and his use of the word "Sartanic" to mark his property after having read the series, knowing how imperfectly they come off in it, suggested something deeper than the story itself as simple allegory. This series was the backdrop; the actual play had not yet begun.
In terms of character identification, she was similarly stuck in an uncomfortable middle position, as if she were sitting on a wicket fence. Was he Haplo? Was he Alfred? Was he some strange mixture of both? A naughty thought crossed her mind, pulling the right corner of her mouth upward in sly amusement. Was he Zifnab?