by Ian Irvine
“How can you bear to wait?” he said, jumping up and down.
“At my age the only thing that excites me is soaking my aching feet. Besides, it’s three years since the last new page appeared.”
“The next page could come today. It might be there already.”
Though Wil’s eyes made reading a struggle, he loved books with a passion that shook his bones. The mere shapes of the letters sent him into ecstasies, but, ah! What stories the letters made. He had no words to express how he felt about the stories.
Wil did not own any book, not even the meanest little volume, and he longed to, desperately. Books were truth. Their stories were the world. And the Solaces were perfect books—the very soul of Cython, the matriarchs said. He ached to read one so badly that his whole body trembled and the breath clotted in his throat.
“I don’t think any more pages are coming, lad.” Ady pressed her fingertips against the blue triangle tattooed on her brow. “I doubt the thirteenth book will ever be finished.”
“Then it can’t hurt if I look, can it?” he cried, sensing victory.
“I—I suppose not.”
Ady rose painfully, selected three chymical phials from a rack and shook them. In the first, watery fluid took on a subtle jade glow. The contents of the second thickened and bubbled like black porridge and the third crystallised to a network of needles that radiated pinpricks of sulphur-yellow light.
A spiral on the basalt door was dotted with phial-sized holes. Ady inserted the light keys into the day’s pattern and waited for it to recognise the colours. The lock sighed; the door opened into the Chamber of the Solaces.
“Touch nothing,” she said to the gaping youth, and returned to her engraving.
Unlike every other part of Cython, this chamber was uncarved, unpainted stone. It was a small, cubic room, unfurnished save for a white quartzite table with a closed book on its far end and, on the wall to Wil’s right, a four-shelf bookcase etched out of solid rock. The third and fourth shelves were empty.
Tears formed as he gazed upon the mysterious books he had only ever glimpsed through the doorway. After much practice he could now read a page or two of a storybook before the pain in his eyes became blinding, but only the secret books could take him where he wanted to go—to a world and a life not walled-in in every direction.
“Who is the Scribe, Ady?”
Wil worshipped the unknown Scribe for the elegance of his calligraphy and his mastery of book making, but most of all for the stories he had given Cython. They were the purest truth of all.
He often asked that question but Ady never answered. Maybe she didn’t know, and it worried him, because Wil feared the Scribe was in danger. If I could save him, he thought, I’d be the greatest hero of all.
He smiled at that. Wil knew he was utterly insignificant.
The top shelf contained five ancient Solaces, all with worn brown covers, and each bore the main title, The Songs of Survival. These books, vital though they had once been, were of least interest to Wil, since the last had been completed one thousand, three hundred and seventy-seven years ago. Their stories had ended long before. It was the future that called to him, the unfinished stories.
On the second shelf stood the thick volumes entitled The Lore of Prosperity. There were nine of these and the last five formed a set called Industry. On Delven had covers of pale mica with topazes embedded down the spine, On Metallix was written in white-hot letters on sheets of beaten silver. Wil could not tell what On Smything, On Spagyric or On Catalyz were made from, for his eyes were aching now, his sight blurring.
He covered his eyes for a moment. Nine books. Why were there nine books on the second shelf? The ninth, unfinished book, On Catalyz, should lie on the table, open at the last new page.
His heart bruised itself on his breastbone as he counted them again. Five books, plus nine. Could On Catalyz be finished? If it was, this was amazing news, and he would be the one to tell it. He would be really special then. Yes, the last book on the shelf definitely said, On Catalyz.
Then what was the book on the table?
A new book?
The first new book in three hundred and twelve years?
Magery was anathema to his people and Wil had never asked how the pages came to write themselves, nor how each new book could appear in a locked room in Cython, deep underground. Since magery had been forbidden to all save their long-lost kings, the self-writing pages were proof of instruction from a higher power. The Solaces were Cython’s comfort in their agonising exile, the only evidence that they still mattered.
We are not alone.
The cover of the new book was the dark, scaly grey of freshly cast iron. It was a thin volume, no more than thirty sheet-iron pages. He could not read the crimson, deeply etched title from this angle, though it was too long to be The Lore of Prosperity.
Wil choked and had to bend double, panting. Not just a new book, but the first of the third shelf, and no one else in Cython had seen it. His eyes were flooding, his heart pounding, his mouth full of saliva.
He swallowed painfully. Even from here, the book had a peculiar smell, oily-sweet then bitter underneath, yet strangely appealing. He took a deep sniff. The inside of his nose burnt, his head spun and he felt an instant’s bliss, then tendrils webbed across his inner eye. He shook his head, they disappeared and he sniffed again, wanting that bliss to take him away from his life of drudgery. But he wanted the iron book more. What story did it tell? Could it be the Scribe’s own?
He turned to call Ady, then hesitated. She would shoo him off and the three matriarchs would closet themselves with the new book for weeks. Afterwards they would meet with the leaders of the four levels of Cython, the master chymister, the heads of the other guilds and the overseer of the Pale slaves. Then the new book would be locked away and Wil would go back to scraping muck out of the effluxors for the rest of his life.
But his second shillilar had said the Scribe was in danger; Wil had to read his story. He glanced through the doorway. Ady’s old head was bent over her engraving but she would soon remember and order him back to work.
Shaking all over, Wil took a step towards the marble table, and the ache in his eyes came howling back. He closed his worst eye, the left, and when the throbbing eased he took another step. For the only time in his life, he did feel special. He slid a foot forwards, then another. Each movement sent a spear through his temples but he would have endured a lifetime of pain for one page of the story.
Finally he was standing over the book. From straight on, the etched writing was thickly crimson and ebbed in and out of focus. He sounded out the letters of the title.
The Consolation of Vengeance.
“Vengeance?” Wil breathed. But whose? The Scribe’s?
Even a nobody like himself could tell that this book was going to turn their world upside-down. The other Solaces set out stories about living underground: growing crops and farming fish, healing, teaching, mining, smything, chymie, arts and crafts, order and disorder, defence. They described an existence that allowed no dissent and had scarcely changed in centuries.
But their enemy did not live underground—they occupied the Cythonians’ ancestral land of Cythe, which they called Hightspall. To exact vengeance, Cython’s armies would have to venture up to the surface, and even an awkward, cross-eyed youth could dream of marching with them.
Wil knew not to touch the Solaces. He had been warned a hundred times, but, oh, the temptation to be first was irresistible. The book was perfection itself; he could have contemplated it for hours. He bent over it, pressing his lips to the cover. The iron was only blood-warm, yet his tears fizzed and steamed as they fell on the rough metal. He wanted to bawl. Wanted to slip the book inside his shirt, hug it to his skin and never let it go.
He shook off the fantasy. He was lowly Wil the Sump and he only had a minute. His trembling hand took hold of the cover. It was heavy, and as he heaved it open it shed scabrous grey flakes onto the white table.
A mud-brain like himself would never decipher the protection. Frustrated, Wil flapped the front cover and a jagged edge tore his forefinger.
“Ow!” He shook his hand.
Half a dozen spots of blood spattered across the first page, where they set like flakes of rust. Then, as he stared, the glyphs snapped into words he could read. Such perfect calligraphy! It was the greatest book of all. Wil read the first page and his eyes did not hurt at all. He turned the page, flicked blood onto the book and read on.
“I can see.” His voice soared out of his small, skinny body, to freedom. “I can see.”
Ady let out a hoarse cry. “Wil, get out of there.”
He heard her shuffling across to the basalt door but Wil did not move. Though the crimson letters brightened until they hurt his eyes, he had to keep reading. “Ady, it’s a new book.”
“What does it say?” she panted from the doorway.
“We’re leaving Cython.” He put his nose on the page, inhaling the tantalising odour he could not get enough of. It was ecstasy. He turned the page. The rest of the book was blank, yet that did not matter—in his inner eye the future was unrolling all by itself. “It’s a new story,” Wil whispered. “The story of tomorrow.”
“Are you in shillilar?” Her voice was desperate with longing. “Where are the Solaces taking us? Are we finally going home?”
“We’re going—” In an instant the world turned crimson. “It’s the one!” Wil gasped, horror overwhelming him. “Stop her.”
Ady stumbled across and took him by the arm. “What are you seeing? Is it about me?”
Wil let out a cracked laugh. “She’s changing the story—bringing the Scribe to the brink—”
“Who are you seeing?” cried Ady. “Speak, lad!”
How could the one change the story written by the Scribe Wil worshipped? Surely she couldn’t, unless… unless the Scribe was fallible. No! That could not be. But if the one was going to challenge him, she must have free will. It was a shocking, heretical thought. Could the one be as worthy as the Scribe? Ah, what a story their contest would make. And the story was everything—he had to see how it ended.
Ady struck him so hard that his head went sideways. “Answer me!”
“It’s… it’s the one.”
“Don’t talk nonsense, boy. What one?”
“A Pale slave, but—”
“A slave is changing our future?” Ady choked. “Who?”
“A girl.” Wil tore his gaze away from the book for a second and gasped, “She’s still a child.”
“What’s her name?”
“I… don’t know.”
Wild-eyed and frantic, Ady shook him. “When does this happen?”
“Not for years and years.”
“When, boy? How long have we got to find her?”
Wil turned back to the last written page, tore open his finger on the rough edge and dribbled blood across the page. The story was terrible but he had to know who won. “Until… until she comes of age—”
“What are we to do?” said Ady, and he heard her hobbling around the table. “We don’t know how to contact the Scribe. We must obey The Consolation of Vengeance.”
The letters brightened until his eyes began to sting, to steam. Wil began to scream, but even as his vision blurred and his eyes bubbled and boiled into jelly that oozed out of his sockets, he could not tear his gaze away. He had longed to be special, and now he was.
She tottered back to him, wiped his face, and he heard her weeping. “Why didn’t you listen to me?”
He took another sniff and the pain was gone. “Stupid old woman,” sneered Wil. “Wil can see so much more clearly now. Wil free!”
“Wil, what does she look like?”
“She Pale. She the one.”
“Tell me!” she cried, shaking him. “How am I to find this slave child among eighty-five thousand Pale—and see her dead.”
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Contents
Cover
Title Page
Welcome
Paladins of the Powers
Dedication
Epigraph
Maps
Synopsis of The View from the Mirror
Part One
1: The Arrow
2: The Way
3: The Void
4: Frozen FOOD
5: The Thranx
6: The Lorrsk
7: Operating Theater
8: A Transformation
9: Confinement
10: Pale Ghosts
11: The Stinging Tree
12: The Faellem
13: A Bloody Footprint
14: A Feast in the Forest
15: Reality and Illusion
Part Two
16: An Unusual Form of Treatment
17: The Apprentice Scribe
18: Fortelling and Prophecy
19: The Ring
20: A Stroll in the Country
21: Gyllias
22: Reunion
23: The Paradox of the Mirror
24: Reminiscences
25: The Three Tasks
26: Like a Row of Dominoes
27: The Burning Mountain
28: The Assassin
29: A Time of Choices
30: The Golden Flute
31: Saludith
32: Breaking The Code
Part Three
33: The Fifth Way
34: Carcharon
35: My Enemy My Friend
36: In The Mines of Shazmak
37: The Key
38: Ecstasy and Agony
39: The Sounding of the Sentinels
40: The Nanollet
41: Extinction with Dignity
42: The Thrice Betrayed
43: Liebestod
44: Going Home
45: The Fate of the Faellem
46: A Genuine Hero
47: Forever Exiles
48: The Great Tale
49: The End of the Tale
Epilogue
Author’s Note
Glossary of Characters, Names and Places
Guide to Pronunciation
Meet the Author
Also by Ian Irvine
Bonus Material
Newsletters
Copyright
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 1999 by Ian Irvine
Excerpt from Vengeance copyright © 2012 by Ian Irvine
All rights reserved. In accordance with the US Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher is unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
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First Orbit eBook edition: August 2013
ISBN 978-0-446-55694-1