“Infamy,” snorted the female centaur beside Lowan, her jade-green eyes flashing in her dark-hued face.
“I cannot dispute that, dear lady,” Olen said. “Nor would I try. These eight wizards were very powerful and focused people. They discovered, after many years of study, that there is a vital link between a thing and a written symbol for a thing. They learned that, under the appropriate magical circumstances, to visit changes upon that symbol, or rune, was to visit the same changes upon the thing itself. Their studies, over many decades, not only confirmed their hypothesis, but allowed them to experiment upon the nature of reality itself.”
“Perversion,” growled one of the elves, a male with a perfectly young face framed by silky silver hair.
“Again, I cannot disagree with you,” Olen said. “In light of the outcome. Wizards are by inclination observers, as many of you have complained when we have refused to perform functions that you see no reason to refuse. The reason we refuse is what immeasurable harm can come from meddling inappropriately. Alas, the measure of a true philosopher is whether or not he ever stops asking questions to take action. You would think that they would be content only to study what they had discovered. They were not.”
“What did they do?” Halcot asked impatiently. Olen spread out his hands.
“Why, what any alchemist would do when given a number of reactive chemicals: they mixed them together to see what would happen.”
“What is the problem with that?” asked Balindor curiously, hoisting his glass. “When you have a few good liquors you can make better drinks than with one.”
“Yes, but what we are speaking of here are not liquors,” Olen said patiently. “We are speaking of living beings. The Shining Ones combined species, to see what would live and what would die.”
“Impossible!”
“Not impossible.” Olen sighed. “Look around you. The world is full of the products of their imaginations. They came up with new kinds of plants, but also many, many kinds of animals. The very symbols of your houses are products of those studies. The pegasus race of Rabantae were horses given the wings of swans. The gryphon of Melenatae is a lion mated with an eagle. Countless others, successful and many less so. But the Makers did not even stop there. They began to experiment with themselves, and create new races of men bred with animals to produce intelligent beings. Centaurs. Werewolves. Mermaids. Dwarves. Borrens. Thraik. Smallfolk. They are the work of these eight wizards. Brilliant as it may have been, as viable as these species have become, the question still remains after all these centuries: was it right to do?”
“Blasphemy! How can that be true?” a hairy-faced man demanded. Tildi noticed that his canine teeth were long and unusually sharp. Another werewolf. “We are natural beings, as old as humanity!”
“You are only as old as humanity because you are part of humanity, Timmish,” Edynn spoke up from her place. “In the form your people wear most of the month. The three days of the full moon, your other part manifests itself. It was a less successful bonding than many.”
“It’s a lie,” he snarled. “I will kill you for saying such nonsense.”
“Truth,” the wizardess said simply, with a sigh. “It would not matter at all if you did kill me. The truth would remain unaltered. Unlike Olen, I would rather have allowed this generation to go on having forgotten about its origins, as you have for thousands of years, and just faced the immediate problem at hand. I have studied this knowledge all my life, as have most of my magical companions here.”
The other wizards in the room nodded gravely.
The Chief Lycanthrope, Timmish, was not appeased.
“The werewolf was brought into being to assuage the curiosity of the Makers—and disaster has befallen many because of it. You know your history. You know your behavior. There are tribes of your people whom you cast out because they refuse to control themselves when the change is upon them, isn’t that true?”
Timmish was too offended to reply, but many of his people nodded to themselves.
“The alterations that the Shining Ones made caused many species to come into being. See all these symbols?” Olen began to draw them upon the air with his fingertip, and they hung there, shining in silver. “All of them descend from the rune for human”—he drew them on the air with a fingertip—“Dwarves, smallfolk, centaurs …”
Tildi studied them, astonished. She had noticed the similarities between the species’ symbols before, but had passed them over as coincidence, thinking that all sentient beings must have something in common. She never dreamed that it would be because they were all variations on one general rune, that for human.
She was surprised to be able to consider the matter with such dispassion. In her belly was a cold lump of lead. Like the werewolves, she did not want to believe that her race had not descended from antiquity as she had been taught from childhood. How could it possibly be true?
“Elves, too? I’d heard that elves also were a product of the Shining Ones’ work,” Cadwallan said, from the second row. The elf marchioness in the front tier turned a scornful face in the noble’s direction.
“The legends say yes—” Olen began.
“No!” the elf lady, Lady Urestin, snapped, interrupting him. “We created humans, back in the time before the skies were filled with smoke. It was a joke. Alas, it went too far, and you vermin were able to interbreed. Who could have guessed that a perversion of nature would do so? Do you see? The human rune is a mirror image of elf.” She put out a hand and the rune hanging in the air before Olen turned around to face the other way.
“Why, so it is,” Magpie exclaimed. “I never noticed that before.”
“That means nothing!” Cadwallan exploded.
“Oh, yes, it does,” Olen said. “I have always believed that elves and humans are complements to each other. Each has strengths that the other lacks. We have been both allies and enemies for millennia because of them. I am not saying that it is because one made the other, but that they are twins of Nature herself.”
“But we are unique among species,” declared Balindor, getting heated.
The marchioness regarded him with disdain. “No. All this is our fault. It was a jest. We should not have let it run this far, but there you are. We have a reverence for life, even that we brought into being as an error. Once born, we did not feel we could let it die. So it prospered and multiplied. And look at the trouble it caused. For that we are truly sorry.”
“What?” Balindor was joined in his outrage by other humans. “No, humans created elves. Tell her, Olen!”
“You will never agree on the first part, my friend,” the wizard said with a gentle smile. “And I cannot prove my thesis, either. I cannot give you proof, until the day comes when we can ask one of the Makers face-to-face what they did and did not do ten thousand years ago regarding elves and humans, but the others are all products of their endless curiosity.”
“I don’t believe it,” Halcot said, stroking his beard. “Dwarves, centaurs, smallfolks, all made from humans? It’s a fairy story.”
“But that part is undeniably true,” Olen assured him. “Tildi, show him your foot.”
“What?” Halcot demanded.
Every face in the room turned toward Tildi. She felt her cheeks glow with embarrassment. Olen gave her an encouraging smile. Troubled as she was by his strange tale, she trusted her master. Shyly, she stripped off her shoe and stocking, and showed her foot to the room. Everyone burst into speech at once.
“She has no toes!” the dignified Halcot exclaimed, his ruddy face paling.
“How dainty,” Magpie said, with a little smile for her. “Her foot looks like a lady’s in a pale stocking.”
Olen nodded, studying Tildi’s upraised limb as if it was a curious specimen he had on display. “I believe that must have been the pattern for the design. All the muscles and bones are there to give her balance. They spread and ripple under the skin, but they are not separated into individual digits.”
“
But why?”
Olen settled into the attitude Tildi recognized as his lecture-giving mode. “Look how small she is, barely thirty inches tall! I have studied ancient documents that were the notes of the Shining Ones. A few survive, though there are not many scholars who have ever seen them, let alone have the skills to read them. I can show you the documents in which it is recorded.”
He held up a much creased and rolled sheet of parchment, one corner torn or burned away.
“I regret that the language is difficult. Even a few hundred years makes a difference in how words are interpreted, let alone ten thousand. The diarist whose jottings I read reveal that the wizard whose work it was to breed human beings to the size you behold here, and combine them with a type of plant—which, as an aside, I must note that I have not been able to identify—as you might be able to tell by her ears, believed that their fingers and toes would be too fragile to coexist with nature. Further experiments, which sound horrible and inhumane to our modern ears, proved that these small beings could not live happily without fingers, but, as you see these dainty feet are not prone to stubbed or wrenched toes. Tildi has better balance than you, and better grip with the point of her foot than you have with your fingers.”
“Really?” Magpie asked with interest. “Can you climb walls?”
“You have toes?” Tildi asked, faintly horrified. “Like animals?”
The minstrel let out a hearty laugh. He stripped off his big muddy boot and shoved his foot in her direction. The pale tan growths at the end wriggled at her. They looked like maggots in a piece of bread. The minstrel saw her disgust and laughed again.
“Ugh!” Cadwallan exclaimed.
“Please, highness, behave yourself in company,” Olen chided mildly.
Tildi noticed that both Cadwallan and Magpie were startled at his scolding, and sat back obediently. Magpie tied his boot on again.
“You see, that could not have happened by accident,” Olen continued. “Most creatures have some kind of pedal digit. All other humanlike beings do, except smallfolk. That was by intention.”
The big centaur prince stamped his polished hoof.
“Come sit with us, little sister,” Lowan boomed. “I have no toes, either. We are siblings in grievance against the human meddlers. As you see, we are descended from horses, but I defy any human to call our honor into question!”
“None would, my lord,” Olen said, bowing to him.
“This … cannot help but change the way I see these people,” Halcot said, shaken. “They are thralls of humankind?”
“Stop that line of thinking immediately,” Olen said sharply, pointing a finger at the king. “You no more control them than you control the growth of any child. If you grant them their human roots, they are as autonomous as yourself.”
“It could be natural breeding,” Balindor mused aloud, studying her foot, but even Tildi could tell he didn’t believe it. She had a lot to deal with in her own mind. Smallfolk not a natural race? Made of humans coupled with plants? How … terrifying. How … confusing. She felt as though she no longer knew herself. It felt as though her history had been stripped away. Hastily she put her shoe back on. Realizing he had been staring, Balindor gave her a sheepish glance.
“These Shining Ones must have been mad,” he said at last.
“Madness or genius,” Olen replied. “Yet some of their changes have proven to enrich the world, not besmirch it. Who can say what this world would have been like without the merfolk to guide humankind across the waves? Who would not have missed the wisdom of the centaurs, the indomitableness of the dwarves?”
“All this is undeniable, wizard,” Cadwallan snorted, “but the workings of wizards long dead have little to do with us now. Get to the point. Why have you called us together?”
“There is a matter that concerns those of us who are alive today,” Olen said. “The Shining Ones’ studies, alas, did not end with their experimentation on the engendering of new beings. These wizards recorded all of their observations—the runes—into a single document, consisting of every object, being and feature of the world around them.”
“They made a book?”
“They did,” Olen said. “The Great Book was meant to be a reference. From the beginning it became clear that it was more than a mere book: it was a connection to all nature. At the suggestion of one wizard they amassed a single document that contained a description of all reality. It seemed to them to be the most useful and fascinating object to study, but they soon came to realize how vulnerable it made reality. Such a book is a powerful focus, like a burning glass. The runes in the book are exactly like the runes on which they performed their workings, but it had a further effect. Contact with the book causes one’s rune to be revealed. Some of us can see them naturally, but near to the book itself, everyone can see them. The book unlocks one’s reality, makes it possible to change one when the rune is visible.”
“What could be the meaning of those changes?” the werewolf lord demanded.
“The runes describe living creatures. In fact, the entire book describes all of creation—everything. The runes alter slightly when the object does, say a child growing a tooth, or a tree losing its leaves in the autumn. If you studied a single rune over the years, you would see the differences over time. It is most fascinating to study a true rune.”
Impatient murmurs ran through the assembled.
Olen smiled apologetically.
“Forgive an old scholar rambling on. If one did change a rune, it would be conceivable to improve its subject, perhaps, but also to pervert. We do not know all the ramifications of any change. It would require years of study to understand completely. We do not undertake such a task lightly. Few outside our order understand what a responsibility it is.
“The Shining Ones did understand. They realized what a dangerous thing that they had created in the Great Book. They argued about what to do with it. All of the surviving texts say the same thing. Knemet had fallen in love with his creation and did not want it to be destroyed. The others were afraid for posterity. What would befall existence if the book one day came into the hands of someone who did not have the well-being of the entire world at heart? By that time other wizards and magicworkers had joined the original eight in their studies. Many of these were understandably frightened by the power that had been unlocked by the creation of this book. The group divided into three factions: one under Knemet that wanted to keep the book and continue to study it, following wherever those researches led. One wished to destroy it, and one wanted the book hidden away so securely that it could never cause the twisting and rending of nature that they so feared. There was a terrible war among the Makers that shook the earth. Unable to agree or destroy one another, they went their separate ways. A century later they met again in battle, some wishing to destroy the book, others to continue their work with it, and one who wished to use it to rule.
“Knemet raised armies from inanimate objects and called down destructive forces—in other words, doing just exactly what the other seven feared might happen if the book fell into the wrong hands. In the end, he was defeated because the other two factions were so horrified by his actions that they joined forces. Dozens were killed, or changed beyond all recognition. That is why there is so little written matter left by the wizards. Much was destroyed.” Olen’s voice coarsened with emotion. “Whole countries had been ravaged by the battles. The wizards who had such a reverence for life had caused thousands of deaths.”
He paused and poured himself a glass of wine. Tildi felt as though she could see the ruined countryside in her mind’s eye, and shivered. She became aware of how still the room was.
“What did they do after the war was over?” Magpie asked, his voice breaking the silence as softly as distant birdsong.
Olen smiled at him. “The only sensible thing: they took the book away to the most remote location they could find. They secured it with spells and laid half a mountaintop upon it to prevent anyone from coming upon it casual
ly. Then they set guardians around it. These protectors were gathered from the most powerful beings in the world, such as dragons, serpents, and lionelles, all bespelled to live as long as they were needed. These true hearts gave up their eternity to spend guarding that book. It is believed that even a few of the Shining Ones took up posts beside this mountaintop, changed beyond humanity. They saw it as their duty to see that the book never saw daylight again. They realized—too late—that it should not have existed in the first place.”
“Why are we concerned about a magical book ten thousand years old surrounded by indomitable and immortal guardians?” Balindor asked, bored with the narrative.
Olen raised his voice so all could hear him. “The trouble is that the book is free, my lords and ladies. It is on the move. To what purpose I do not know.”
Chapter Fourteen
Dozens of voices burst out at once.
“Where is it?”
“Who could have taken it?”
“Why?”
“Why is the one obvious question, my lords and ladies,” Magpie said over the rest. “For power, of course.”
“But why are you concerned about this book, Olen?” Timmish asked. “What does it mean that it has been taken?”
Olen looked old and tired. “It could mean the end of all existence, my friend. That is why it was shut away in its fastness. And why it must be found and returned thence, before harm can befall it.”
“Why? What does it matter where it is?”
“Because it’s not immutable in and of itself. It is vulnerable. That was the one thing that the Makers discovered. If it is destroyed, all of that which is described within it is destroyed, too.”
Everyone in the room fell silent.
Halcot shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “You have yet to convince me with your fairy stories, Olen. How can a mere book cause trouble? We have hundreds of books in my castle. Thousands throughout my kingdom! Not one has ever caused a problem. It’s the people who read them that cause the trouble.”
That evoked a chuckle from many of the visitors. Olen gave him a sad smile.
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