Death After Death

Within half a year, all of the children could spell their names, however poorly, and some of them knew all of their letters, though reading was still beyond them, and when the time came for stories, only a few would even try to sound out the smaller words, leaving him to do the reading on his own.

Simon had no idea if that was fast or slow. He couldn’t remember enough about his own childhood to say, and school wasn’t exactly common in this world, no matter which region he dwelled in. He was in no hurry, though. He had a decade to get them where they needed to go, and in scales he thought of things that was all the time in the world.

With these things, there is always the temptation to rush them, he told himself. But you must resist. There is no need to hurry.

There really wasn’t, either. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the only temptation. There was also the temptation to favor Seyom, or spend more time with him than the other children.

That could have been natural, because he was the Prince and the heir to the country of course, but Simon held back. It was a slippery slope and he knew he’d been tempted. Instead, if anything, he held him further at arms length than the other children. Simon still greeted each of the boy’s small triumphs with a patient smile and questions about what they would learn next, but it was a hard balance.

Time alone helped with that balance. Since he’d started, he took one weekend a month to go into the mountains. He told the court that he needed alone time to gain inspiration and ponder the stars. He sometimes even did those things, especially at first when he was sure he was being followed. Truthfully, though, he went for bloodier reasons.

Those little camping trips didn’t always find beastmen or bandits. Both were in short supply this close to the city, but he found them both often enough that he was very slowly reversing his aging. As time passed, he was becoming younger. Simon doubted he’d even be a year younger by the time his son reached eighteen by this rate. He would at least hold himself steady in the stream of time, and that was enough.

Truthfully, he didn’t want to do much more than that. While it would have certainly been convenient to be a little younger around so many children who were constantly trying to wear him out, it wouldn’t do to start rumors. The last thing he wanted to bring to the Queen’s court were whispers of witchcraft and heresy.

There were already enough troubles brewing, and for once, none of them were of his making. While, at least, he was pretty sure they weren’t of his making. He did worry about his doppelgänger, though. The evil version of Simon hadn’t just disappeared. He was out there somewhere, causing no end of trouble. He was certain of it.

He also started taking small hikes with the children up the mountain during this time. The Queen forbade him to take them beyond the nicest parts of the high city, so they mostly walked to the shrine at the very end of the main road, at the foot of the mountain he’d almost died at so long ago. Even then, they were trailed surreptitiously by a handful of guards at a distance.

Still, it did all of them good to see life outside the palace walls, even if only a few steps. They probably weren’t ready to interact with commoners, or worse, poor people, but from so high up, he and his little gaggle of students could sit on the rocks on sunny days and talk about volcanos, mountains, and all the little sailing ships that came and went, which made it time well spent.

“Why do you think the sky it red only in the morning and the evening but the stones are red all day long?” Simon would ask. “Do you think its a coincidence that the sky and the water are the same color?”

These were the sorts of questions that Simon would ask his little flock of students, and though the answers were never particularly accurate, it did get them thinking, which was the whole point. Once Seyom suggested that one was probably a mirror of the other, and Simon was forced to agree with him, though he did not remember the true reason that the sky was blue.

He also sought to channel the occasional argument between Sayom and some of the other boys into exercise. He did not use the opportunity to introduce them to sword fighting, though. The last thing he wanted to do was to see someone lose an eye, and none of them had the discipline to learn the blade yet, even in wooden form.

Simon had been in the palace acting as an instructor for almost a year when the news reached him that Brin was at war with their neighbors to the north beyond the Black Bridge. It was a place he’d never been, though he’d once almost gone as far as the Bahmed pass with Kell and his mercenary company before all that had gone to shit.

According to the books he’d read on the subject, past those mountains and the desert beyond them were the lands of the Murani. They were largely nomadic, and the trade road that connected the kingdom was dominated by high-valued luxury goods like silk and spices.

He certainly hadn’t seen that coming. From this distance, information was inconsistent, so it was hard to say much about it beyond the fact that it would impact land-based trade. Ionar didn’t engage in too much of that, though, and the fighting didn’t spread too much by sea because neither of the combatants were large naval powers, so sea trade was largely unaffected.

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Simon wondered how the fighting would be affected by an Ionar that was still thriving rather than one that had been destroyed by a certain eruption. However, without viewing the same events from a different timeline, it was impossible to say for sure.

Both kingdoms sent envoys, pleading that Ionar ally with them for their mutual benefit, but the Queen told both sides no, politely but firmly. Simon made no attempt to advise her in these matters. He knew that she wouldn’t listen and that even the attempt would upset her. She was the Queen, not him. Still, she let him attend both audiences, which was enough for him.

From the back benches, he could study the mysterious northerners and the more familiar envoys of the Kingdom of Brin. Their King did not attend, but from the way they spoke, at least, it sounded like the brat he’d scared half to death in one of his past lives had turned out to be an okay ruler, giving Simon that much more hope that Seyom would be okay.

The horselords of the north were a proud people, and they offered the Queen extravagant gifts to change her mind. In the end, both sides settled for neutrality, but only grudgingly. Queen Elthena made it quite clear that if either side crossed into her mountainous territory, they would regret it.

Simon doubted that, given that Ionar had a smaller army than either of the other sides. Fortunately, their territory was very defensible, and the other nations were in the dark about their true capabilities. Still, after that, Simon suggested that they expand the nation's small army, and she agreed, leaving much of the details in the hands of her general and Vizer. Though she occasionally asked Simon’s opinion on things after that, he largely left those matters to her and her people and returned his focus to the children where it belonged.

In the second year, the war dragged on, with no side gaining or losing much ground, while Simon focused on teaching his charges the basics of math. He did this first with colored beads and later with exercises on the chalkboard.

No one took to this quickly. Instead, they much preferred playtime and story time. Simon couldn’t blame them for that, of course. They were children, after all. Instead, he set about devising new stories that incorporated simple word problems and riddles he could use to engage their minds that much better. He also hired a carpenter to make wooden blocks, and then he painted them in colorful ways to allow for more learning games. This world might not have Legos for another few centuries, but he was determined to fill that gap any way he could.

Over time, those blocks largely served a different purpose altogether. Though he’d long since drawn them a fairly accurate world map of the region to study, when news of a major battle would come in, Simon would take it down from the hall and then use the red and blue bricks to map out the forces as best he understood them, to explain the events to the children, as the ebb and flow of battle, moved around the edges of their little mountainous kingdom.

“Don’t you think they’re a bit young to be worrying about such things?” the Queen asked after she caught him explaining it to them once.

“Certainly,” he agreed. “But these are your future leaders, and the longer it drags on, the more likely it is to be their problem.”

“This will not be the first time the Murani have tried to claim southern lands, nor will it be the last,” Queen Elthena sighed, not bothering to refute his point. “Their last attempt was in my Grandfather’s time, so I do not expect that Seyom will have to worry about it.”

“I hope that is the case,” Simon agreed, but he had his doubts. He’d read accounts of that previous war, and it didn’t drag on as long as the last one had. Either Brin was weaker, or their enemy had grown stronger. Simon didn’t have enough information to say.

He did, however, use the ongoing war to eventually introduce his pupils to swordsmanship, causing another scandal in the process. It would seem that the elite of Ionar had a problem with their daughters learning to fight with swords. That surprised Simon, even though he knew that it shouldn’t.

“I've known many women that can fight,” he insisted, leaving out the fact that most of them were peasant girls who needed those skills a lot more often.

Not even Elthena accepted that excuse, though, strange as it was for a woman to be enforcing sexism on his students. In the end, Simon relented because it wasn’t a fight he could win. So, they compromised. Instead of teaching his female students swordsmanship, he would teach them archery. The bows he had made for this had laughable pull strengths, but it sufficed to make sure that no one felt left out.

So, on those days when he forced Seyom and the other boys to practice their forms when all they wanted to do was duel with each other, the girls practiced marksmanship, and everyone was happy. Well, everyone except for Simon.

He’d come here to teach Seymon reading and art. He’d planned on raising his son up to be an independent young man like Bertrand, but the longer the war dragged on around them, the more likely it was that he was going to have to train a warrior instead of a man who could choose his own fate. Simon didn’t care for that at all, but he still found time to take a measure of pride in the boy’s advances. It had been only a couple years, but he was making great strides.

He was no longer the timid, distractible young boy Simon had found when he’d first arrived. Instead, he was fast becoming a decisive young man, and though Simon was concerned that the whole “heir to the Kingdom” thing was going to his head, he did not often try to invoke that authority during his studies anymore, which was as a small victory.

It was at about this time that Simon took to walking with a cane. He didn’t need it but felt it wise to age gracefully, as much as he enjoyed using it to duel his students on occasion. He was as spry now as he’d been in years, but no matter how softly he trod within the social sphere of the palace, he was sure he was makeing enemies in the background and wanted them to underestimate him as much as possible.

Unfortunately, that meant that when it was time to review new units for the army, he could do little but watch. The last thing he wanted to do was give the generals cause to grow concerned with him, too. In a time of war, they were becoming ever more influential.

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