They could barely make sense of it anyway. He flipped through several pages, copied exactly from his room. Adrotagia and her scholars had made notations here and there, offering theories on what various drawings and lists might mean. They wrote those in the women’s script, which Taravangian had learned years ago.
Adrotagia’s notes on one page indicated that a picture there appeared to be a sketch of the mosaic on the floor of the Veden palace. He paused on that page. It might have relevance to this day’s activities. Unfortunately, he wasn’t smart enough today to make much sense of the book or its secrets. He had to trust that his smarter self was correct in his interpretations of his even smarter self’s genius.
He shut the book and put down his spoon. “Let us be on with it.” He stood up and left the cabin, Mrall on one side of him and Adrotagia on the other. He emerged into sunlight and to the sight of a smoldering coastal city, complete with enormous terraced formations—like plates, or sections of shalebark, the remnants of city covering them and practically spilling over the sides. Once, this sight had been wondrous. Now, it was black, the buildings—even the palace—destroyed.
Vedenar, one of the great cities of the world, was now little more than a heap of rubble and ash.
Taravangian idled by the rail. When his ship had sailed into the harbor the night before, the city had been dotted with the red glow of burning buildings. Those had seemed alive. More alive than this. The wind was blowing in off the ocean, pushing at him from behind. It swept the smoke inland, away from the ship, so that Taravangian could barely smell it. An entire city burned just beyond his fingertips, and yet the stench vanished into the wind.
The Weeping would come soon. Perhaps it would wash away some of this destruction.
“Come, Vargo,” Adrotagia said. “They are waiting.”
He nodded, joining her in climbing into the rowboat for tendering to shore. There had once been grand docks for this city. No more. One faction had destroyed them in an attempt to keep out the others.
“It’s amazing,” Mrall said, settling down into the tender beside him.
“I thought you said you weren’t going to be pleased any longer,” Taravangian said, stomach turning as he saw one of the heaps at the edge of the city. Bodies.
“I am not pleased,” Mrall said, “but in awe. Do you realize that the Eighty’s War between Emul and Tukar has lasted six years, and hasn’t produced nearly this level of desolation? Jah Keved ate itself in a matter of months!”
“Soulcasters,” Adrotagia whispered.
It was more than that. Even in his painfully normal state, Taravangian could see it was so. Yes, with Soulcasters to provide food and water, armies could march at speed—no carts or supply lines to slow them—and commence a slaughter in almost no time at all. But Emul and Tukar had their share of Soulcasters as well.
Sailors started rowing them toward shore.
“There was more,” Mrall said. “Each highprince sought to seize the capital. That made them converge. It was almost like the wars of some Northern savages, with a time and place appointed for the shaking of spears and chanting of threats. Only here, it depopulated a kingdom.”
“Let us hope, Mrall, that you make an overstatement,” Taravangian said. “We will need this kingdom’s people.” He turned away, stifling a moment of emotion as he saw bodies upon the rocks of the shore, men who had died by being shoved over the side of a nearby cliff into the ocean. That ridge normally sheltered the dock from highstorms. In war, it had been used to kill, one army pressing the other back off the drop.
Adrotagia saw his tears, and though she said nothing, she pursed her lips in disapproval. She did not like how emotional he became when he was low of intellect. And yet, he knew for a fact that the old woman still burned a glyphward each morning as a prayer for her deceased husband. A strangely devout action for blasphemers such as they.
“What is the day’s news from home?” Taravangian asked to draw attention from the tears he wiped away.
“Dova reports that the number of Death Rattles we’re finding has dropped even further. She didn’t find a single one yesterday, and only two the day before.”
“Moelach moves, then,” Taravangian said. “It is certain now. The creature must have been drawn by something westward.” What now? Did Taravangian suspend the murders? His heart yearned to—but if they could discover even one more glimmer about the future, one fact that could save hundreds of thousands, would it not be worth the lives of the few now?
“Tell Dova to continue the work,” he said. He had not anticipated that their covenant would attract the loyalty of an ardent, of all things. The Diagram, and its members, knew no boundaries. Dova had discovered their work on her own, and they’d needed to either induct her or assassinate her.
“It will be done,” Adrotagia said.
The boatmen moved them up alongside some smoother rocks at the harbor’s edge, then hopped out into the water. The men were servants of his, and were part of the Diagram. He trusted them, for he needed to trust some people.
“Have you researched that other matter I requested?” Taravangian asked.
“It is a difficult matter to answer,” Adrotagia said. “The exact intelligence of a man is impossible to measure; even your tests only give us an approximation. The speed at which you answer questions and the way you answer them . . . well, it lets us make a judgment, but it is a crude one.”
The boatmen hauled them up onto the stony beach with ropes. Wood scraped stone with an awful sound. At least it covered up the moans in the near distance.
Adrotagia took a sheet from her pocket and unfolded it. Upon it was a graph, with dots plotted in a kind of hump shape, a small trail to the left rising to a mountain in the center, then falling off in a similar curve to the right.
“I took your last five hundred days’ test results and assigned each one a number between zero and ten,” Adrotagia said. “A representation of how intelligent you were that day, though as I said, it is not exact.”
“The hump near the middle?” Taravangian asked, pointing.
“When you were average intelligence,” Adrotagia said. “You spend most of your time near there, as you can see. Days of pure intelligence and days of ultimate stupidity are both rare. I had to extrapolate from what we had, but I think this graph is somewhat accurate.”
Taravangian nodded, then allowed one of the boatmen to help him debark. He had known that he spent more days average than he did otherwise. What he had asked her to figure out, however, was when he could expect another day like the one during which he’d created the Diagram. It had been years now since that day of transcendent mastery.
She climbed out of the boat and Mrall followed. She stepped up to him with her sheet.
“So this is where I was most intelligent,” Taravangian said, pointing at the last point on the chart. It was far to the right, and very close to the bottom. A representation of high intelligence and a low frequency of occurrence. “This was that day, that day of perfection.”
“No,” Adrotagia said.
“What?”
“That was the time you were the most intelligent during the last five hundred days,” Adrotagia explained. “This point represents the day you finished the most complex problems you’d left for yourself, and the day you devised new ones for use in future tests.”
“I remember that day,” he said. “It was when I solved Fabrisan’s Conundrum.”
“Yes,” she said. “The world may thank you for that, someday, if it survives.”
“I was smart on that day,” he said. Smart enough that Mrall had declared he needed to be locked in the palace, lest he reveal his nature. He’d been convinced that if he could just explain his condition to the city, they would all listen to reason and let him control their lives perfectly. He’d drafted a law requiring that all people of less than average intellect be required to commit suicide for the good of the city. It had seemed reasonable. He had considered they might resist, but thought that
the brilliance of the argument would sway them.
Yes, he had been smart on that day. But not nearly as smart as the day of the Diagram. He frowned, inspecting the paper.
“This is why I can’t answer your question, Vargo,” Adrotagia said. “That graph, it’s what we call a logarithmic scale. Each step from that center point is not equal—they compound on one another the farther out you get. How smart were you on the day of the Diagram? Ten times smarter than your smartest otherwise?”
“A hundred,” Taravangian said, looking at the graph. “Maybe more. Let me do the calculations. . . .”
“Aren’t you stupid today?”
“Not stupid. Average. I can figure this much. Each step to the side is . . .”
“A measureable change in intelligence,” she said. “You might say that each step sideways is a doubling of your intelligence, though that is hard to quantify. The steps upward are easier; they measure how frequently you have days of the given intelligence. So if you start at the center of the peak, you can see that for every five days you spend being average, you spend one day being mildly stupid and one day mildly smart. For every five of those, you spend one day moderately stupid and one day moderately genius. For every five days like that . . .”
Taravangian stood on the rocks, his soldiers waiting above, as he counted on the graph. He moved sideways off the graph until he reached the point where he guessed the day of the Diagram might have been. Even that seemed conservative to him.
“Almighty above . . .” he whispered. Thousands of days. Thousands upon thousands. “It should never have happened.”
“Of course it should have,” she said.
“But it’s so unlikely as to be impossible!”
“It’s perfectly possible,” she said. “The likelihood of it having happened is one, as it already occurred. That is the oddity of outliers and probability, Taravangian. A day like that could happen again tomorrow. Nothing forbids it. It’s all pure chance, so far as I can determine. But if you want to know the likelihood of it happening again . . .”
He nodded.
“If you were to live another two thousand years, Vargo,” she said, “you’d maybe have one single day like this among them. Maybe. Even odds, I’d say.”
Mrall snorted. “So it was luck.”
“No, it was simple probability.”
“Either way,” Taravangian said, folding the paper. “This was not the answer I wanted.”
“Since when has it mattered what we want?”
“Never,” he said. “And it never will.” He tucked the sheet into his pocket.
They picked their way up the rocks, passing corpses bloated from too long in the sun, and joined a small group of soldiers at the top of the beach. They wore the burnt-orange crest of Kharbranth. He had few soldiers to his name. The Diagram called for his nation to be unthreatening.
The Diagram was not perfect, however. They caught errors in it now and then. Or . . . not truly errors, just missed guesses. Taravangian had been supremely brilliant that day, but he had not been able to see the future. He had made educated guesses—very educated—and had been right an eerie amount of the time. But the farther they went from that day and the knowledge he’d had then, the more the Diagram needed tending and cultivation to stay on course.
That was why he’d hoped for another such day soon, a day to revamp the Diagram. That would not come, most likely. They would have to continue, trusting in that man that he had once been, trusting his vision and understanding.
Better that than anything else in this world. Gods and religion had failed them. Kings and highlords were selfish, petty things. If he was going to trust one thing to believe in, it would be himself and the raw genius of a human mind unfettered.
It was difficult at times, though, to stay the course. Particularly when he faced the consequences of his actions.
They entered the battlefield.
Most of the fighting had apparently moved outside of the city, once the fire began. The men had continued warring even as their capital burned. Seven factions. The Diagram had guessed six. Would that matter?
A soldier handed him a scented handkerchief to hold over his face as they passed the dead and dying. Blood and smoke. Scents he would come to know all too well before this was through.
Men and women in the burnt-orange livery of Kharbranth picked through the dead and wounded. Throughout the East, the color had become synonymous with healing. Indeed, tents flying his banner—the banner of the surgeon—dotted the battlefield. Taravangian’s healers had arrived just before the battle, and had started ministering to the wounded immediately.
As he left the fields of the dead, Veden soldiers began to stand up from where they sat in a dull-eyed stupor at the edges of the battlefield. Then they started to cheer him.
“Pali’s mind,” Adrotagia said, watching them rise. “I don’t believe it.”
The soldiers sat separated in groups by banner, being tended to by Taravangian’s surgeons, water-bearers, and comforters. Wounded and unwounded alike, any who could stand rose for the king of Kharbranth and cheered him.
“The Diagram said it would happen,” Taravangian said.
“I thought for certain that was an error,” she replied, shaking her head.
“They know,” Mrall said. “We are the only victors this day. Our healers, who earned the respect of all sides. Our comforters who helped the dying pass. Their highlords brought them only misery. You brought them life and hope.”
“I brought them death,” Taravangian whispered.
He had ordered the execution of their king, along with specific highprinces the Diagram indicated. In doing so, he had pushed the various factions into war with one another. He had brought this kingdom to its knees.
Now they cheered him for it. He forced himself to stop with one of the groups, asking after their health, seeing if there was anything he could do for them. It was important to be seen by the people as a compassionate man. The Diagram explained this in casual sterility, as if compassion were something one could measure in a cup next to a pint of blood.
He visited another group of soldiers, then a third. Many stepped up to him, touching his arms or his robe, weeping tears of thanks and joy. Many more of the Veden soldiers remained sitting in the tents, however, staring out over the fields of dead. Numb of mind.
“The Thrill?” he whispered to Adrotagia as they left the latest group of men. “They fought through the night as their capital burned. It must have been in force.”
“I agree,” she said. “It gives us a further reference point. The Thrill is at least as strong here as it is in Alethkar. Maybe stronger. I will speak to our scholars. Perhaps this will help pinpoint Nergaoul.”
“Do not spend too much effort on that,” Taravangian said, approaching another group of Veden soldiers. “I’m not sure what we would even do if we found the thing.” An ancient, evil spren was not something he had the resources to tackle. Not yet at least. “I would rather know where Moelach is moving.”
Hopefully, Moelach hadn’t decided to slumber again. The Death Rattles had, so far, offered them the best way that they’d found to augment the Diagram.
There was one answer, however, he’d never been able to determine. One he’d give almost anything to know.
Would all of this be enough?
He met with the soldiers, and adopted the air of a kindly—if not bright—old man. Caring and helpful. He was almost that man in truth, today. He tried to do an imitation of himself when he was a little dumber. People accepted that man, and when he was of that intellect, he did not need to feign compassion nearly as much as he did when smarter.
Blessed with intelligence, cursed with compassion to feel pain for what he had done. They came inversely. Why couldn’t he have both at once? He did not think that in other people, intelligence and compassion were tied in such a way. The Nightwatcher’s motives behind her boons and curses were unfathomable.
Taravangian moved through the crowd o
f men, listening to them beg for more relief and for drugs to ease their pain. Listening to their thanks. These soldiers had suffered a fight that—even yet—seemed to have no victor. They wanted something to hold to, and Taravangian was neutral, supposedly. It was shocking how easily they bared their souls to him.
He came to the next soldier in line, a cloaked man clutching an apparently broken arm. Taravangian looked into the man’s hooded eyes.
It was Szeth-son-son-Vallano.
Taravangian felt a moment of sheer panic.
“We need to speak,” the Shin man said.
Taravangian grabbed the assassin by the arm, hauling him away from the crowd of Veden soldiers. With his other hand, Taravangian felt in his pocket for the Oathstone he carried on his person at all times. He pulled it out just to see. Yes, it was no fake. Damnation, seeing Szeth there had made him think that he’d been bested somehow, the stone stolen and Szeth sent to kill him.
Szeth let himself be pulled away. What had he said? That he needed to talk, you fool, Taravangian thought to himself. If he’d come to kill you, you would be dead.
Had Szeth been seen here? What would people say if they saw Taravangian interacting with a bald Shin man? Rumors had started from less. If anyone got even a hint that Taravangian had been involved with the infamous Assassin in White . . .
Mrall noticed immediately that something was wrong. He barked orders to the guards, separating Taravangian from the Veden soldiers. Adrotagia—who had been sitting with crossed arms nearby, watching and tapping her foot—leaped to stride over. She peeked at the person under the hood, then gasped, the color draining from her face.
“How dare you come here?” Taravangian said to Szeth, speaking under his breath while maintaining a cheerful pose and expression. He was of only average intelligence today, but he was still a king, raised and trained to the court. He could maintain his composure.
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