Lights. A world of lights. A great plane of lights, shifting, growing, blaming, flickering, burning calm and true. They hurt his dark-craving senses. Some were trying to save the world. He could have told them. He could have. But they didn’t ask. Just went right on, headstrong, casting impossibility. It was going to break! They were going to break it!
He reached out. To stop it. To touch it. The light. And cracked open like a shell. Bloomed like a flame after the first tinder caught. Swell of golden radiance, eclipsing the sparkling world of lights, joining it, spirits, joining
never noticed the shy boy in the shadows
breaking the world in the saving of it
He screamed a name as the world-shell shattered and a burning hooked blade stabbed up through him and twisted, trying to withdraw, trying to core him like an apple, a blinding searing agony that left not ache, nor cold, nor thirst, nor hunger, nor shadows, nor anything at all beyond a yawning tunnel of darkness.
But it was only a dream, thought Mellas, spread flat on nightstone inside a dreaming mountain, a cruel fang of fired river clay clutched biting in his palm, and woke, shrieking, into the abyss.
The Isle
Falowen 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.
[34] 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 a 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, [35] 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 a 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 [36] 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 topple
d 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.
* * *
[37] 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 [38] 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.
I
Gir Doegre
“Ei!” Jiondor Stallholder’s shout set sheets of tin trembling, rang walls and roofs like coarse bells, jingled in the trinkets down Vanity Short. “Come back here, you!”
Pelufer danced.
With a hop and a skip-turn she had cleared two sprawled waysiders and switched direction to eel through a clutch of gawpers at the opposite stall. Why did hungry people with nothing to work at spend all day ogling food they couldn’t afford? Why did waysiders even come here, stuffing the longstreets with their skinny bodies and their need? All right, the maur had risen, the mountains had quaked—but flooded banks brought sea-things you could eat, and she’d rather be crushed than starve. Waysiders all had the same arch in their necks and slump in their shoulders. Their bodies were shaped into an appeal. They came here looking like somebody should take care of them.
She rounded a stall piled with bulbs and tubers, evaded the blur of a kick from the stallholder, chewed the candied sedgeroot she’d had off Jiondor. He was still thundering. She swallowed, and belched up a grin. Too late, she sang in silence, too late. The treat was in her belly now. She shot back across Hunger Long, a quick deft weave through the sluggish current of people. A keeper loomed between her and escape, the little alley between Jifadry’s soups and Toudin’s stews. His arm was bent into a crook, his mouth a slice of smile that meant I’ve got you. Her grin widened. She picked up speed. She [42] hurried toward him. His body set for impact. Then a skidding whirl in the dust, a dip, a twist, and she was away. He was braced too firm to turn in time.
She was through Scarves Short, out the other side, and to the middle of Tin Long before nine breaths had passed. A good dance: the pouches at her belt bulged with loaves, her pockets sagged with plums and nuts, her belly was full of treats.
Hunger Long was still Harvest Long, for her—its old name, from before the floods and quakes and waysiders, from before the poisoned rivers. She was small, and she knew how to move in a crowd, keep tall folk between her and her target until the moment came to snake a hand out and pluck her choice from fryspit or hangline. She looked like every other ragged child in this Strong Leg tradertown, neither boy nor girl, hair neither blond nor brown, face and arms so dirty that her skin had no color of its own. The town keepers never bothered to learn the children one from another, wouldn’t know her when they saw her again. Tomorrow she’d dance down Copper Long, then Bronze Long, and shortstreets thereafter, and in a sixday Hunger Long would have forgotten her, and she would dance there again.
If they left here, as they had to, had to, soon, no matter what Elora said, she would need quick and practiced steps. No one else would feed them. No one else would take what they couldn’t charm or barter. No one else would see Caille safe and sheltered by night, fed and watered by day. Elora’s shoulds-and-shouldn’ts would be the end of them if Pelufer’s steps faltered.
Elora’s rights-and-wrongs came straight from Father’s mouth, and they’d been lies when he said them. Elora believed them; Elora believed in honesty, and fair trading, and Elora believed in Father. But belief and honesty didn’t fill a rumbling belly. And anyway, Father was dead.
Tin Long was not as thronged as Hunger Long. Waysiders stayed clear till nightfall or were swept aside or trampled. Copper Long was buffed and rounded, pliable; Bronze Long was muscular, shining; Tin Long was sharp and brittle, all glints and angles, sheets of metal hammered so thin that they’d cut you just for thinking of them. It stretched from its Bronze Long point to its Copper Long end through sticky air hazed with dust: a muted sparkle of pots and spoons and plates glinting in the humid sunshine, a rattle of tin and tinsmiths’ calls and here and there a tinkers’ wagon creaking back from some long overland journey only to restock, turn around, go out again. Horse sweat and the drone of flies thickened vapors of mold and rot. The shacks and houses climbing the upleg hills in jumbled wedges would not block the sun until well after noon. Noxious mists rolled through the streets [43] like tumbleweeds, never higher than a man’s head, never climbing the hills. Heat off the tin roofs made a lazy shimmer in air almost too dense to breathe. All the water in the world hung suspended in that air, absorbing grit and dull-baked sunlight until you’d think it would just go solid and all movement would grind to a halt. No rain since harvestmid last; just this laden air, and dewmongers to harvest it, and drip pits with their tarps and stones, and whatever they could import across Maur Lengra, from the Weak Leg, where folk had marshes to drain, or from the Girdle, where the rain never stopped.
The Binder's Road (The Sequel to 'Illumination') Page 4