The Last Page (2 page)

¹
A homographic ambiguity in Dark Tongue: “Write or right/correct the math . . . write or right/correct everything your eyes foresee.” I.e. possibly, “Fix/change our fate.”

THE LAST PAGE

Caliph Howl carried a thin paper-wrapped package across the well-tended lawns of the High College. Today was the day of his revenge.

Tattered shadows slid back and forth under a canopy of danson trees. The old stone buildings of Desdae warmed themselves in the sun like ancient mythic things, encrusted with gargoyles and piled with crippling tons of angled slate. Thirty of the buildings belonged to the township. The other eighteen belonged to the college. Two camps with an uneasy truce watched each other across the lake that separated them; collectively known by one name, Desdae: the gray hamlet of higher learning that crouched at the foothills of the mighty Healean Range.

Behind the campus’ thick walls, Caliph knew theory-haunted professors wasted away, frisking books for answers, winnowing grains of truth, pulling secrets like teeth from deep esoteric sockets. This was a quiet war zone where holomorphs and panomancers cast desperately for new ideas, compiling research with frenetic precision.

Desdae might be far away from the mechanized grit of cities like Isca, it might be quiet and sullen, but it wasn’t simple. It had small-town villains and small-town gossip and, he thought, small-town skullduggery as well.

Caliph tugged the library’s massive door and cracked the seal on the tomblike aromas: dust, buttery wood polish and ancient books.

He scanned for the librarian and slunk smoothly into the aisles.

The system that organized the library was like most other products of northern bureaucracy: a premeditated torture inflicted by the personal preferences of the man in charge. The system required students to memorize the stone busts of dead scholars, thereby reinforcing the school motto, “Truth, Light, Chastity and [especially] Hard Work.” The busts marked ogive-shaped burrows into labyrinthine stacks where freshmen soon learned to associate topic and location with the scholar representing a given area of study. Those who didn’t, doomed themselves to hours of wandering.

Caliph knew almost all two hundred sixty-three stone heads’ names and birth dates as if they had been kin.

Freshmen who became hopelessly lost had two choices: browse endlessly or pay the
expedition fee
senior students demanded in exchange for
a path to wisdom.

Senior students typically charged one bek for two books. Caliph had quickly become one of the profiteers.

Four more years and he would graduate. Halfway to the embossed vellum that would list the three foci of his degree: economics, diplomacy and holomorphy. He turned down an aisle marked with the bust of Timmon Barbas, born Century of Wind, Year of the Wolverine. Timmon Barbas had been one of the most brilliant military strategists to see siege engines roar.

Caliph gently ran his finger across the leather spines as he walked. Anticipation swelled his stomach and a faint smile marked his still boyish lips.

Roric Feldman would come to the library after lunch today, looking for Timmon Barbas’ book,
The Fall of Bendain.
Though only forty-seven pages in length, Caliph knew every word of it from beginning to end. He knew every stitch in the binding, every scuff in the cover, every worn and dog-eared page.

He had written it himself.

Not a bad bit of forgery. Every page had been individually aged and penned in the old tactician’s handwriting. The cover and binding Caliph felt particularly proud of, embossed and tooled and edged with metal just like the real thing. Even the rust was authentic.

The Fall of Bendain
had not yet been reprinted. Though the new press from Pandragor, dripping with grease and possibilities, would eventually churn out copies, other textbooks had taken priority:
lisg
l’s Physics Compendium
for instance, and
Blood: A Holomorph’s Guide,
which for any student of the discipline was an absolute must.

In another year or two or five, Caliph’s careful forgery might not have been feasible. Today, however, the window of opportunity swung wide open.

Morgan Gullows, Caliph’s tutor in the Unknown Tongue, had almost caught him aging treated paper over a gas flue. With first draft in hand, Caliph’s plan had nearly been discovered. Thankfully, Gullows was a recluse and rarely looked at anyone directly. He had muttered something unintelligible and shambled off, leaving Caliph to watch his paper catch fire.

The whole test had gone up in a mushroom of smoke and shriveled ash.

From then on, Caliph had exercised every precaution he could think of, stowing his drafts and materials behind the massive radiator in Nasril
Hall. He wheedled his way into a job organizing the whirring ticking office of Silas Culden where he graded midterms.

Silas loathed every minute taken up by class-related chores. Twice a week he dumped a slippery pile of paperwork into Caliph’s lap and headed back to his research—the only thing that would secure his tenure; therefore the only thing that mattered.

He paid Caliph, of course, and thanked him for assigning an illicit but reasonable ratio of passing grades by way of a weekly pair of tickets to the Minstrel’s Stage.

Alone in Silas’ office, Caliph had pawed methodically through the wooden cabinets until he found the senior exam Roric would be taking, the one that meant the difference between an eight-year degree and a shameful return to his father’s house in the Duchy of Stonehold.

With test in hand, Caliph had begun plotting his revenge, justice for what had happened three and a half years ago on a chilly cloudless night.

He could still remember the articulation of Roric’s lips and the perverse smile that framed his abrupt violation of social grace:

“You a virgin?” Roric’s eyes gleam through the dormitory shadows.

Caliph’s pretense, studying the dead language propped against his thighs, doesn’t seem to convince Roric.

“We’ve got some sugar doughnuts coming up from the village tonight, Caph. Haven’t we, Brody?”

Brody is stout but muscular and grows hair on his face faster than a Pplarian Yak. He nods silently and flips a gold gryph across his knuckles.

Caliph smirks. “I’ll believe that when I see—”

“You’re such a fuck, Caph. You probably say the motto in your sleep. Dean’s list . . . oh shit! My grades slipped a tenth of a point. Eaton’s assworm. That has a ring to it.”

“Fuck off.”

“Maybe you’d like old Luney’s flock better than our thoroughbreds.” Roric picks up a pillow from the stiff dormitory bed and humps it with both hands.

Caliph simpers, “Where are they going to be then?”

“Why would I tell you? You wouldn’t know where to stick it in anyway.”

Caliph’s gaze falls out the window where rain-distorted shapes are making the dash between buildings.

“Suppose they was on Ilnfarne-lascue?”

“How would they get out there?”

“Just suppose they was? Would you chip in? It cost us a bit more than
three weeks’ tutoring to get them up here, right Brody? We could use another man to bring the cost down for all of us.”

Brody’s lower lip projects like a ledge as he watches his coin dance.

“How many are there?”

“Three—but plenty to go around, eh?”

“I might chip in,” Caliph says slowly, “just to talk.” He feels embarrassed thinking about the possibilities.

Roric and Brody snicker. “Sure, just talk, Caph—whatever you say.”

That night, Caliph and Roric swim the cold dark water of the college lake. The tiny island barely conceals the ruined steeple of a shrine the student body refers to as Ilnfarne-lascue, a Hinter phrase meaning
the place of the act.

Rumors of expulsion and unsubstantiated trysts wrap the island in a localized fog of notoriety, but this is the first time Caliph believes such a scenario might actually unfold. Picking their way over the graffiti-covered rocks of the shore, the two of them crouch at the edge of the trees and listen.

“Vanon and the others must already be here,” says Roric. Voices and firelight vacillate through the limbs. “I’ll meet you at the shrine. Better make sure no one followed us.”

Caliph shakes with excitement. The cold, cloying lake smell, wet and fungal; the cry of a night bird; they crystallize suddenly and unexpectedly, associated from that moment on with young lust.

As he makes his way, he catches sight of the shrine and a notion that he has been overcharged passes through him. He counts not five freshmen but seven. They are wet and shivering around a fire, whispering emphatically.

Caliph stops.
Where is Brody?
He waits in the darkness, suspicions growing.

Roric has not come back from the shore.
Where are the women?

Caliph turns and looks out across the lake. On the lawns, the green flicker of a chemiostatic lantern bobs. Several figures are putting a boat in. Not the women. They would have oared from the village.

Caliph scrambles back to the water. He eases himself in, fearful of splashing, and begins pulling slowly and quietly for shore. When he is within range of the lantern, he slips beneath the water’s skin and kicks out, submarining until his lungs burn.