|
 alowen
n'Tedra stared for many shallow breaths at a stray panel in what was
assumed to be a dry accounting of inventory.
The threaded bamboo strips weren't
the most unusual recording medium she had seen. In her time as a scholar,
which was as long as the codices had been kept on the Isle of Senana,
she had come across a variety of materials, from triangular oak rods
to the most delicate rice parchment. She had seen a few of these bamboo-strip
assemblages--but they were useful mainly for researching numeric representations
rarely found in the codices proper, and otherwise considered mundane
ephemera of little scholarly value. None of them had been well preserved
since their mage wardings failed, and this one was suffering in the
unsuitable damp.
It had clearly not been opened to
its full extent in lifetimes; laid out with the strips laddered one
above the other, it covered the width of the worktable. Its bindings,
of animal gut or sinew, had crumbled despite the care she'd taken in
unfolding it, and she'd spent the morning removing the rotted strings
and binding it afresh. The bamboo panels now ran freely along waxed
hemp threaded through holes to either end, knotted under the top and
bottom strips. The original had been neatly constructed; grooves in
each strip compensated for the bulk of the threads, allowing the unfolded
whole to lie flat. She'd replicated the binding as closely as possible,
right down to the knots.
She was proud of her work--the old
pride she had taken as a binder in crafting good casting materials--but
at the same time reluctant for anyone to see her do it. It had taken
much to overcome the head scholar's blind adherence to the triadic disciplines.
Because of his strict prejudices, there were few binders on the scholars'
isle, and the others kept mainly to the workshops, restoring and preserving
the materials. She had stayed--but for many moons, even as she learned
to read and scribe, she had feared she would never be permitted to do
research. Her chief interest lay in the theory that bindsongs once had
words of their own, separate from the rendering of wordsmiths' glyphs
in sung form. Having earned her way at last to the privilege of exploring
rather than maintaining the codices, she felt uncomfortable--and oddly
ashamed--to do anything that backslid into her former role.
She had been close. So close. She
had found verses unrelated to the wordsmiths' canon, and aerate marks
that could translate as singing notation. She had sensed incipient discovery,
as awesome as the rediscovery of a lost language. Song was language,
or it could blend with language, with rules and forms and patterns as
intricate and powerful as words'. She knew it.
But she would not have the luxury
of proving it now.
She was the first scholar of the
new age to examine the inner panels of this collection. She had only
bothered because a similar bamboo codex was arguably collection of songs,
perhaps kept as an aid to memory by some binder or singer of old. She
had hoped to find additional materials to support her belief.
And perhaps she had. But she had
found much more than that.
The center panel did not match the
others. Some binder's error of old, a simple mixup, the panels of two
codices switched in the midst of rethreading such as she had done. The
other strips bore the discrete blocky glyphs of Ghardic, the language
of trade. The center panel was scribed in curling, exuberant, lyrical,
ornamented Celyrian. She'd repaired the binding anyway; the switch might
prove to be an historical clue, and she would inform the keeper of codices
in case a panel of Ghardic turned up in a Celyrian codex.
Then she read the panel. It was
a verse of such profound magnitude that reading it for the third time
left her feeling faint, as though her own body had dissipated and she
hovered in the midday air, weightless, suspended between exultation
and terror.
It's quite a day for shocks,
she thought, firmly prosaic, to ground herself. We're all reeling.
I'm no exception. Jhoss n'Kall's departure had rocked the island
to its foundations. That the enigmatic former beekeeper had been at
odds with Graefel n'Traeyen, the head scholar, was well known. But no
one expected him to break with Graefel outright. That he should leave
Senana entirely was unthinkable. Yet this very dawn his solitary form
had been seen descending the winding trail to the limestone beach, and
boat tenders there said he had taken a coracle to the mainland, bound
for his Heel home. It was a dangerous crossing in winter.
She would have to make that crossing
herself.
The certainty of it stabbed her
like a blade of ice, cruel and chill. She had not left the island in
five and half years. She had never left the island at all; she had come
here, and stayed here.
She could seek out the seeker. She
could show her this. She should show her this. Nerenyi n'Jheel
had taken her side when she had begged admittance to the scribed mysteries.
Nerenyi had been illuminator as well as seeker, and her battles with
former wordsmith Graefel were legendary. Falowen trusted her wisdom
and relied on her backbone. But Nerenyi did not abide secrets. The philosophy
of seekers was disclosure. They talked compulsively, without discretion.
It would be all over the mainland in a matter of ninedays, and this
had to be handled with more care than that.
It would change everything. It could
not be entrusted to the head scholar; he would hoard the knowledge,
perhaps use it to gain leverage over those he felt threatened their
scholars' way of life. She would go to Graefel, and he would take the
bamboo codex from her and lock it up, telling no one, forbidding her
to tell.
Graefel would hide it. Nerenyi would
shout its contents from the hilltop.
Only Jhoss would know what best
to do.
Send him a message, she thought.
It would be madness to make the journey herself. Leave it to some runner
who traveled for a living.
Yet runners could not be trusted
to refrain from reading the messages they bore, and Jhoss could not
be trusted to believe a message sent by a third-rung scholar. He would
certainly not return to Senana at her behest.
She could leave it here, and go
to him. Probably no one else would look at it in the meantime. But he'd
be no more inclined to believe her story in person than in a message,
and she would have wasted too much time in the journey.
He would have to see this for himself,
and she would have to bring it. Bearing an artifact off the island,
though it was not a bound parchment or vellum codex, was forbidden.
When the appropriation was discovered, as it would be, quickly, she
would be hunted down, relieved of her stolen goods, and prohibited from
returning. Then she would have no proof to show Jhoss, and either Nerenyi
would make its contents known or Graefel would bury it.
Somehow she would have to keep ahead
of them until she'd caught up to Jhoss and shown him. Then the decision
would be his.
He was qualified. He had served
as advisor to Torrin Wordsmith himself, the liberator of the codices.
Some on Senana, following Graefel's lead, held that Torrin was the dark
betrayer, the man who drove the light from Eiden Myr and toppled the
Ennead that protected it from disaster and storm. Falowen knew otherwise.
She had spent long evenings listening to Jhoss recount the tales. She
felt the great mage's death as if she had known him.
Could he have been aware of the
information this bamboo flitch contained? He was deeply learned; he
had read as many of the codices as it was possible for one man to read
in the time he'd had, and made a start at translating several of the
old languages. She had pored over the notes scribed in his flowing,
slanted hand. But he had known the old Ennead might read them. He had
been circumspect. He had kept secrets. Like Graefel, who had stored
vast tracts of knowledge in his mind in the days when all triadic scribings
dissipated in castings, he had done most of his work in his head. And
he had not had access to everything they had here.
He could not have known. He would
not have kept something like this from his closest folk. He would have
told Jhoss.
She must tell Jhoss.
"Something interesting?" Bofric
n'Roric leaned over from the table behind her to peer at what had thrust
her into contemplation.
Somehow Falowen managed not to snap
the codex shut. Bofric was a meddling old man and she didn't like him.
She had no grounds for mistrust, beyond his tendency to stick his knobby
nose in things that didn't concern him, but his insatiable thirst for
languages came with a furtiveness that made her uneasy even when she
had nothing to hide.
With a sigh, she obscured his view
with a weary wave of her forearm. "Accounts," she said. "And in a numeric
system that's been well researched. I fear I've wasted my time repairing
it." She folded it with unrushed care, closing in the lines of verse.
"Pity," Bofric said, and returned
to his own work. Had his sharp eyes lingered just a bit too long?
Falowen packed up her materials
and went out the door that led to the collection she had drawn the bamboo
codex from.
Then she slipped through an adjoining
door, hid the codex under a heavy stack of sedgeweave on a storage shelf,
and proceeded to her dormitory to dress for a brisk walk.
The brisk walk became a terrified
descent to the limestone beach, burdened with the codex she had retrieved
and the light snack that was all she could justify bringing with her
beyond the wool outerwear and thick cloak she wore. She was certain
she was followed, but glances behind her showed nothing. If there were
no boats at the dock, all was lost. The evening check of the collections
would show that she had not returned what she had left her mark for.
The community of scholars had grown to several nonned, but that was
not so many that a quick check wouldn't turn up that Falowen n'Tedra
was missing, too. Someone would remember that she had gone for a walk
down the hill. Someone would be sent to check the docks. In winter,
there was nowhere to hide.
One coracle remained.
She did not take the time to call
or search for its owner. She got in, unmoored it, laid oars in oarlocks,
and rowed.
The seas were rough. Her arms burned
after a dozen strokes. The coracle took on water. She feared the light
craft would overturn and dump her into the whitecapped swells in her
heavy woolens. She feared the willow laths would break apart in the
chop. She feared she would freeze. She feared the current that bore
her Headward of where she meant to land, then the winter waves that
gouged the beach she thought to choose instead. This was madness. She
was mad. She was a scholar, she wasn't fit. But she had been a binder
once. She had been strong once. Somehow she gained a shell-strewn strand
on the mainland, tethered the coracle to a spike driven deep in the
sand, and made her way on foot up the dunes and onto a semblance of
road before the light failed.
She rested, and when the moon rose
she began the long journey across the Hand to where she might ship for
the Strong Leg, in the heel of which was Jhoss n'Kall's home.
She was haunted by what she sensed
as a shadow, but she could never trick it into revealing itself. No
one could have followed her so far. If Nerenyi's folk had tracked her,
they would confront her directly. You'd make a conspiracy of the
cracks in a stone, she told herself, and continued on, day after
dogged day.
Illness was everywhere, but she
stayed nowhere long enough to court it. She missed her studies; she
missed her colleagues. She thought often of turning back. Then she looked
at the verses on the bamboo strip and continued on. Jhoss must
see this for himself. Jhoss would know what to do, how to keep the knowledge
from being misused. Jhoss would know how to deliver to Eiden Myr the
salvation this slim strip prophesied.
One day, two-thirds of the way to
her destination, she coughed up black phlegm, and knew that her race
was lost.
Still she went on. She redoubled
her pace. She begged rides, she told lies. As her health failed, she
sought a runner. Better to entrust her burden now than die with it on
her person, to be consumed along with her body in the bonefolk's arms,
or have it stolen from her while she lay ill. But she could find no
runner to the Heel before she fell.
She lay insensible for days. Her
lungs came out of her in hacking pieces, black and rotten. Fever seared
her, then subsided, then returned. Her extremities swelled. Unknown
folk took care of her. They should shun her contagion, but they bathed
her, warmed her, cooled her, fed her, administered herbs to ease her
pain.
"The children," she babbled, "it's
the children, I must tell Jhoss." No one answered. "The children are
our salvation," she said, her wasted fists clenched in a linen shirtfront,
shoving her face up close to a caretaker. "You must find me a runner!"
"Of course," the woman said, and
disengaged. No runner came.
"It's the children!" she cried,
and someone said, "Hush, now. You're dying. Don't make it harder on
yourself. Give me the codex."
She couldn't understand the blunt
words. She must have misheard. "Jhoss...must handle...with great care...this
knowledge...proof...the children..."
"Leave it to me, scholar. I'll see
it gets into the best possible hands, and no other." She felt the threaded
bamboo stack slip from her. Had she been reading? Had she fallen asleep
reading? It was too dark to read. Silly of her, to try to read in the
dark.
"The children," she said for the
last time, as the dark closed in.
|
