What are we, in this modern era, to make of the assertion that 25,000 people simply disappeared, leaving no trace of any struggle? Can it be believed? If the number were 1,000 could we believe it? The answer the honest historian reluctantly comes to is that the tale must be believed, because it happened. Not a single person escaped from the mushroom dwellers. More hurtful still, it left behind a generation known simply as the Dispossessed. The city recovered, as all cities do, and yet for at least 100 years, this absence, this silence, insinuated itself into the happiest of events: the coronations and weddings of cappans, the extraordinarily high birth rate (and low mortality rate), the victories over both Haragck and Brueghelite. The survivors retook their homes uneasily, if at all, and some areas, some houses, stood abandoned for a generation, never reentered, so that dinners set out before the Silence rotted, moldered, and eventually fossilized. There remained the terrible conviction among the survivors that they had brought this upon themselves through Manzikert I’s massacre of the gray caps and Sophia’s torching of Cinsorium. It was hard not to feel that it was God’s judgment to see Ambergris destroyed soul by soul.

Worst of all, there was never any clue as to the fate of the Disappeared, and in the absence of information, imaginations, as always, imagined the worst. Soon, in the popular folklore of the times, the Disappeared had not only been killed, but had been subjected to terrible tortures and defilements. Although some still claimed the Brueghelites had carried off the 25,000, most people truly believed the mushroom dwellers had been responsible. Theories as to how cropped up much more frequently than why because, short of revenge, no one could fathom why. It was said that the ever-present fungus had released spores that, inhaled, put all of the city’s inhabitants to sleep, after which the mushroom dwellers had come out and dragged them underground. Others claimed that the spores had not put the Disappeared to sleep, but had actually, in chemical combination, formed a mist that corroded human flesh, so that the inhabitants had slowly melted into nothing. The truth is, we shall never know unless the mushroom dwellers deign to tell us.

4

But what of Samuel Tonsure’s journal? What, after all these years, did it contain? Aquelus wisely had it placed in the care of the librarians at the Manzikert Memorial Library. In effect, the book disappeared again, as—hidden and known by only a few—it was not part of the public discourse. Aquelus made the librarians swear not to reveal the contents of the journal, or even hint at its existence to anyone, on pain of death. The journal was kept in a locked strongbox, which was then put inside another box. We can certainly understand why Aquelus kept it a secret, for the journal tells a tale both macabre and frightening. If the general populace had, at the time, known of its contents, they would no longer have had anything to fear from their imaginations—only to have their worst nightmares given validation. The burden on Aquelus and Irene of not releasing this information was terrible—Nadal, who was privy to most state secrets, reports that the two frequently fought over whether the journal should be made public, often switching sides in mid-argument.