The library was quiet. Avin and I sat alone in the center of the large reading room beneath its marble dome. The aisles of tall shelves around us were cold and deserted. The shadow of Tanayon Cathedral had moved over the building, and the lone librarian had yet to start a fire.
My eyes lost focus again and drifted to the tall windows and the gardens beyond. It was snowing again, and the priests who hurried along the avenues carried parasols to keep it off their black robes. It was the second time it had snowed since General Leger Mertone had led our company into the Kaaryon. It was going to be a cold spring.
I read one more sentence on the sicknesses of the liver but could not manage another. The long ride south and the quiet time in the reading room had not cleared my head as I’d hoped. My failure after the Battle of Urnedi hung upon me as it had each of the hundred days since.
“This was a mistake,” I whispered. “We will not learn any new words here.”
Avin said to me, “Patience, Geart. We didn’t come all the way to the capital for just a few words.”
“Leger is not getting what he needs from our visit to this library, either. The Conservancy is not watching this place.”
He nodded reluctantly, and we started to gather up the volumes we had collected. When Avin had been a law priest, he’d defended a man who’d fallen into a trap laid by conservancy priests in that very room. We had already wasted three of our five days trying to draw attention to ourselves. We would have to try something else.
“We should have stayed in Enhedu,” I said. “I should be sitting with the Mother Yew, and you should be teaching the Chaukai how to make the healing magic. A few were just starting to catch on.”
“Hush,” Avin replied. “Here he comes again.”
The librarian was a perfect servant of the church—formal, elegant, humble, and happy. He wore the typical cream-colored tunica of a prelature functionary and a white wool robe against the cold. Both garments were spotless, and they made our simple gray robes seem very drab. His manners made it clear that he was from Bessradi and we were not—in case his clean chin, trim hair, and manicured fingernails failed to do so. Each of his visits had been exhausting.
But he came this time without so much as a bow, dropped himself into a chair, and said, “You won’t find what you are looking for here—not in the books anyway. They can’t be written down.”
He meant the magic words—the nouns and verbs that aimed the magic of the Earth and the Shadow.
“How many do you know?” I asked abruptly. This was not what I was supposed to say. Avin did not look happy.
The librarian shrugged and said, “I know enough that the hunger does not keep me awake and angry. You?”
“Fewer than that,” I replied. Hunger was the right word. Come the spring I was to sing the nouns I’d learned to a tree as old as the earth itself. I had not learned a single word the entire season.
Avin said to him, “I am sorry. I think there is some confusion here. We came to study the teachings of the prophet Khrim—as we mentioned when we arrived.”
“By reading the diaries of healers? Come now, tell me what you are really here to find.”
Avin’s reply was sharp. “You are the worst kind of fool. The Conservancy would burn us all alive for discussing this. What do you take us for?”
Avin shot me a glance that I understood quite well, and I focused upon our enemies. There were 126 Hessier in Bessradi, each as plain to me as a spot of rust upon a sword. None of the Hessier had moved any closer. I signaled that all was well.
The librarian’s demeanor did not change. He traced the wood grains upon the table with his finger and asked, “Have you ever tried to write them down?”
“Writing them is forbidden,” Avin replied.
“It’s a stupid law,” the librarian said as though he had no fear of the Conservancy—which could only mean that he worked for them. We had a plan for what to do once we found such a man, but I did not care just then. My hunger spoke for me.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“They are not really words,” he replied. “The vocalization from one singer to the next is different. If we tried to write down a song, we’d each write it differently.” He took the brush, ink stone, and vellum that Avin had been using. “Here, let me show you.”
He scribbled a few words upon a page and flipped it over. Then he said to us, “Try to write down the healing song. Go ahead.”
Avin did so and passed the brush to me. It took me a moment to make the attempt. The healing song was the first that Avin had taught me: heal the flesh of man. I sounded out the words one by one. “Horrend swenda seh ahsan.”
They turned over theirs. What I read made no sense. “Puth etch id sastillie? Egat sop us senvat engal?”
“What a bunch of gibberish,” Avin said. “What trick is this?”
The librarian shrugged. “Like I said, they are not really words.”
Avin sat back in his chair. “Go on.”
“It is the will of Bayen. When we make the magic, we are channeling His will and allowing Him to express it through us. We sing the thoughts of Bayen. What comes out of our mouths is nonsense. ‘The language of dreams,’ is how Khrim Zovi described it. The songs cannot be written down or read. They must be heard.”
I very nearly corrected him. Bayen was a fiction of the Church that took credit for the magic of the Spirit of the Earth and the Spirit of the Shadow. But the rest of what he said rang very true.
“What talent allows us to hear it?” Avin asked.
“It is not a talent. It is a measure of righteousness. If you are righteous, Bayen’s will may be done through you. It is exactly as the Bayen’s Creed promises. ‘We believe our God, the giver and taker of all life, speaks through the prophets.’” He let this sink in for a moment before saying, “We three are not like other priests who struggle to hold onto a single song. We can hear and speak the will of Bayen above. We are prophets, my friends, learning the divine language of our Lord.”
“Share one,” I said. “Tell me a word that you know.”
“Not here, not now. We would be overheard. But if I might suggest it, there are others like ourselves that gather from time to time. You should join us—exchange words.”
I said to him, “Give me a word right now, or you will never see us again.”
“Hold on,” Avin said. “We don’t want one word. We want them all. Meet us in the plaza behind the healers’ dormitories three nights hence during evening prayer.”
“At tithe time? Good idea. Good location, too.”
“Is it agreed?”
“It is. My name is—”
“I am not interested in your name,” Avin said. “You will not ask us any questions, and we will not ask you any either. You bring your group, and we will bring ours. We trade the ‘thoughts of Bayen’ as you call them, one for one, and then we part ways. Take it or leave it.”
The librarian bowed and started gathering up the books as though we were not there. We collected our things, hurried out into the snow, and made for the barge we’d hired.
“I needed a word,” I said to Avin. It was nearly a growl.
“Do not be angry with me because your plan has worked. Come, Leger and Sahin await our return.