“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 casually. 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.”
D
ozens 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.
“My lord, I have reports here from brother and sister wizards. It does no harm now to tell you that the book was hidden in Sheatovra. I first heard from a wizard I know, Indrescala, who lives at some remove from that secret mountain. She sent me word of a poor farmer who came to her claiming that the cattle in his field had been cursed. My friend visited that field, and found that the animals had been transformed horribly, as if their flesh was clay and some child had decided to remold them but did not know how. The ones that were still alive were in terrible pain.”
Tildi let out a gasp with the other listeners.
“The farmer said that glowing words appeared on each beast. Hence, you see, their reality had become within a hand’s reach of anyone who might wish to meddle with it, and someone did. She wrote to me to see if I knew any destructive magic that could cause such deformation. It began to put ideas into my mind. I wrote to others of my order asking their counsel. I must tell you, we fought coming to the conclusion we did, but we had little choice, given the evidence.”
“What if it
was
just a curse?” Halcot asked.
“The chances of that are so slim, and slimmer still when I tell you the latest dire news I have from the south. I received this only two weeks ago from Indrescala, and I did not hesitate a moment before sending for all of you.” Olen raised a scroll from among the papers on his lap. “My lords and ladies, the guardians are dead. All of them. The mountaintop was breached. The book is gone.”
“Well, why don’t you just find it and put it back again?” the centaur lord asked with some asperity.
“We
have
been looking for it,” Edynn spoke up. “All of us wizards, as well as our friends and helpers all over the world.” She gestured around the room. The magicians bowed, but so did the more humbly dressed visitors, such as the troubadour and the merchants. “It is no trouble at all to conceal oneself from magical scrutiny. I can do it myself. This is much
more difficult. I could even have caused harm to a herd of cattle half a world away. That is very difficult, but not outside the reach of my talents. It is the glowing runes that prove that the thief went that way. The book must have been close to the herd for that to arise upon the poor beasts. That means that whoever did it is not only concealing his passage, but the trail as well. We must rely upon keen-eyed observers to tell us where to follow.”
“Why could you not scry out the path of this thief?” Halcot demanded.
“We have tried,” growled Komorosh, shivering in his bearskin. “The pulses of the earth tell us nothing but that a great power walks upon it, but not where.”
“How can you possibly miss something like that?”
Porrak, an older wizard in long brown robes, snorted. He had a long, gray beard that straggled over the breast of a worn, threadbare gray robe. “My lord, have you a spyglass?”
“Yes, I have. What does that have to do with it?”
Porrak pointed a long, broken, and chipped nail at Halcot. “Can you see all of a vista at once with it?”
“No, of course not. I can see what’s in front of my lens.”
“That is how it is with our magical farsight. We can see every inch of a landscape, but one inch at a time. I am sure in time we can spy out the thief’s passage. Soon, I hope.”
“Again, you say the thief,” Lindora spoke up. “Who took this book?”
Olen shook his head. “Alas, we do not know.”
“The thief must be a master wizard of the most high level,” Serafina said, rising to her feet. “In order to penetrate the book’s defenses, even to touch it, one must have magical safeguards that are out of the reach of ordinary beings. We fear, that is, my mother and I fear, that it could be one of the Shining Ones. Knemet may have returned.”
“But he’d be centuries old!” Balindor burst out.
“That would mean nothing to them,” Olen pointed out. “I’m a few centuries old myself. And they had the benefit of being able to rewrite their own runes to be rid of the pains and weakness of old age. There have always been rumors of Knemet walking the earth. No one ever knew when or
if
he died, you know. Nor most of his companions.” He shook the parchment roll until it rattled. “It does not matter
who
took it, my lord. The important thing is to recover it before immeasurable harm can be done. We must find it, determine that it is the genuine article,
and wrest it from its captor. On this the lives of every living being depends.”
“Very well, then,” Balindor said, smacking his palms upon his knees. “We are getting down to practical matters. What does it look like, so that if we encounter it we can, er, bring it back?”
“Ah,” Olen said. He flicked his hand, and a thick roll of parchment flew to his hand from the spot on the table where it had been waiting for just such a moment. Tildi watched approvingly as Olen drew a couple of runes upon the air and set the scroll between them. It unrolled and hung on the air like a line full of washing, but glorious washing, a fair analog for the garments worn by the lords and ladies in the room. Each of the runes had been carefully drawn in golden ink, and decorated with many colors, rendering it as beautiful as an illustration. She studied the open book briefly before it began to move slowly over the heads of the crowd, allowing everyone to see it.
“This is a poor copy, but an ancient one,” Olen said. Balindor stood up and put out his hands to catch the flying book for a closer look, then snatched his hands away before he touched it. “Oh, don’t worry, it’s quite safe. This one has none of the power of its original. The parchment is just that: parchment. I wish you could see the true book. I’ve seen it in visions evoked with the help of the ancients’ diaries. Astoundingly beautiful. A masterwork. The Shining Ones were artists as well as philosophers of great ability. Here, see.”
With a wave Olen created another book. The copy resembled it somewhat, in the way that the retelling resembles an adventure. The colors were more vivid yet. It seemed almost alive to Tildi. The visitors caught their collective breath. “Do you see? It is an integrated whole. Every part of it is lovely, well made, and well thought-out, and deadly dangerous.”
Olen caused the book to spool slowly from one stick to the other. Tildi caught a glimpse of a rune she knew almost as well as she did her own name.
“Stop!” she cried, then blushed, ashamed of her outburst. Olen turned mildly quizzical green eyes to her. She was ashamed for bursting out in public, without the permission of her master.
“Go on,” he said. “You have the right to speak, Tildi.”
“I know that sign,” she said, “or something very like it.”
“You saw one of the runes in the Great Book? Where did you see it?” Olen demanded.
With every eye following her, Tildi dashed out of the grand hall. She
hurried up to her small room. From Teldo’s books she unearthed the precious leaf and carried it back past the curious faces to Olen. His brows rose almost all the way up his face.
“Do you see?” she asked, holding it out to him and pointing to the hovering vision. “It is the same.”
“Why, so it is,” Halcot said, coming up to peer from one to the other over the top of her head. “By the stars, it is beautiful. Pity there’s so little of it left. Is this the fate of your so-called Great Book, Olen? Was it cut up and scattered around the world for people to find?”
“No,” Olen said. “Ah, Tildi, what a find! Let me make certain.” He beckoned, and the parchment copy floated back to him. He wound through it briskly, until he came to the page. “Yes, indeed. My soul, I never dreamed …” Tildi stood at his elbow, looking down at it. The single leaf practically glowed beside the copy. He gestured toward it. “May I?”
“Certainly,” Tildi said, holding out the leaf to him. Olen made it hover in the air and turn about so he could see every angle, but Tildi noticed that he did not touch it.
“Yes. My word, a true copy. Where did you get this?”
“My—” Tildi stopped herself. She almost let the truth about Teldo slip. “My mother bought it for us from a peddler many years ago hoping it was a storybook. It’s been in our household all this time.”
“Ah. Is this what you learned the true language from?”
“No, sir. We couldn’t read this leaf. I’ve got other books, plus a few other texts bought from traveling peddlers and from a shop in the Tillerton.”
“You didn’t go there yourself, did you?” Lakanta asked shrewdly.
Tildi met her eyes, much more comfortable to be addressed by a woman. “Oh, no. My brothers did all the trading outside the Quarters.”
The blond woman nodded. “I thought so. Never saw a female smallfolk in all my days of trading. You’re the first.” She grinned, and Tildi smiled shyly back.
“So you couldn’t read it,” Olen asked.
Tildi shook her head.
“Indeed not!” snorted a large, black-haired wizard, wrapped in a heavy fur cloak despite the day’s heat.
“Indeed, yes.” Olen smiled. “Oddly enough, your mother’s instinct was correct. It does tell a story. Masawa, I believe this is your speciality.”
One of the dark-robed scholars came up to look at it and studied it with a smile on his face. “I believe, yes, this describes the giant yew tree
that stands with its roots in the stone on a small island in the center of the fork of the River Moor. I’ve seen it myself.”
“In
my land,
” Lowan boomed.
The scholar turned to bow to him, one hand upon the breast of his robe. “Yes, my lord. The tree is ancient, older than you may dream. It was born more than six thousand years ago. Its whole story is here in one beautifully drawn rune.”
Tildi examined the rune. For the first time she was able to see
tree
separate from the rest of the image, as well as
river
and many other general signs, including the one that depicted sixty centuries. If she had written out this tale, she would have used several word runes and a few individual signs to spell out unfamiliar words such as Balierenn. It was an art to combine them as this scribe had done. She was pleased to be able to understand a little of it, after so many years. If only Teldo could have lived to be here and know all this about his most treasured possession!
“It’s a story that can be told in many ways,” the scholar explained.
“And you handled this?” Olen asked, with a glance of respect at Tildi.
“Yes, we all did. It hurt a little at first. Tingly. Burning. But it was so pretty Teldo and I kept trying until we could.”
“A mystery begins to reveal itself,” Olen said, nodding. “There have never been many wizards among your kind. It’s possible that this fragment of the Great Book, by mere contact, has unlocked talents in you that might never have come out in other circumstances. Time and Nature alone know what years with the book itself would have done.”
Tildi was crestfallen. “I thought we … I mean, I thought I was
meant
to be a wizard.”
“Tildi,” Olen said gently. “It’s a rare gift, no matter how you came by it. What you did, beginning at a very early age, might have killed a weaker person. You have increased your grasp of magic. That did not come by accident.”
“Don’t see what all the excitement is over a shred of parchment,” Halcot snorted. “May I see it?”
“Certainly,” said the wizard. “Go ahead.”
The lord of Rabantae plucked the leaf out of midair, and immediately dropped it. His face contorted and his hands began to tremble. “Feels like fire,” he gasped. “My hands!” Tildi sprang up to see if she could help. The king’s fingertips were burned almost black.
The young female wizard bustled forward and spread her hand over Halcot’s burned flesh. “Easy, now. Easy.”
When she moved back, the skin had been restored to pink. “You’re going to have to build those sword calluses up all over again, my lord.”