Palimpsest

Of the seven, only one carried the script that could change a living body. The histories of the bearer's life are sparse and most of them are contested, but among the works attributed to them the one for which they are now remembered is the smallest in scope and the most often cited.

The bearer could set the script into the bone of another without cutting and without contact, requiring only nearness and a stretch of hours, and the body of the receiver would either take the work or reject it. Rejection was the outcome in most cases. The few accounts that describe what rejection looked like were written by those who had to dispose of what remained, and the writing in them is brief, and the writers are not known to have continued in the service of the work afterwards.

— from a fragment recovered at the site of an old library, attribution lost

Chapter 36 Whistles in the Dark

For several minutes after they heard the whistle, none of them moved. Kaelin couldn't feel the cold of the cave anymore; the tension had warmed her from the inside. They were all listening to the dark as if waiting for another sound to follow. But no second sound came. Then Veylith reached for the dead lamp beside her and got to her feet. "We need to move," she said in that calm but cold tone Kaelin now knew — the one that meant she knew something was wrong.

They all got up and started gathering their things; Ravah and Veylith relit the two small oil lamps. Tivver threw dirt over what was left of the fire, now only embers, and shouldered his pack without saying anything. Kaelin and Vaelra got Elis back onto the horse. Elis was better, but it was clear from her face that getting up on the horse still hurt her. Darian gathered up the last of whatever was lying around and loaded it onto the horses. Within a few minutes they were ready to go.

Ravah took her usual place at the front and moved from the wide chamber into the narrowing tunnel. Veylith watched the others fall into line behind her. Kaelin was last; she gave Veylith a brief look and started walking after Vaelra. At last Veylith fell in behind with her lamp.

They walked one after the other through the steadily narrowing cave without straying far from one another, and no one spoke. Even Tivver hadn't opened his mouth since they had set out. They were all listening to the dark with their full attention, as if waiting to hear something. The sound of the horses' hooves seemed much louder now, and each louder sound put them on edge. Without meaning to, they walked closer and closer together.

"The walls," Ravah finally whispered from the front. "There are symbols and hollows in the walls." At this they all began to look at the walls more closely. Kaelin thought a few of them resembled something or other, but almost all of it was nothing more than meaningless symbols.

"Keep walking," Veylith said from the back, trying to keep them in line. She had noticed the marks too, but hadn't mentioned them because there was no point.

A short while later Ravah, at the front, stopped suddenly and raised her hand. "There's another path that turns off to the left here," she whispered back. "But it must be heading north."

"That's right," Veylith answered from behind. "We have no way to know where any of these caves come out — we have to keep going east, straight on."

At that Ravah kept walking straight. Each one of them, as they came past the mouth of the side passage, slowed involuntarily and looked into the dark, almost as if hoping to see something. Veylith glanced without slowing, then kept moving; as she went she drew one of the burnt sticks from the camp across the wall at the entrance, marking the direction back to the cave mouth in case they had to come back through any of these turns.

After at least an hour of walking and passing one passage that branched left and one that branched right, the cave finally began to widen again. And, oddly, they could feel the air growing a little warmer. A little further on, the cave opened into another large room. This time there were no bright plants lighting the way ahead — and what they did find was far more disturbing.

First they saw what looked like tables hewn from stone — three stone platforms, half a leg high off the ground, lined up next to one another. Each was a little longer than the height of a person, and there were iron rings set into the ends of each, fixed at the corners. All of them were corroded, and the rust they had bled over the years had stained the stone. As they moved further in, the light from the two lamps began to reach the walls. Every surface that came into the light had inscriptions cut deep into the stone, running from floor level up past the height of a man and on toward the ceiling. Kaelin didn't know what any of it was, but she had begun to feel an unease without any clear cause. Since she had stepped into the chamber she had been breathing as though a weight had settled on her back.

None of them could understand any of the inscriptions, but Ravah at last found a drawing and turned her lamp toward it. A figure with its arms spread to either side, with small marks etched into different points on its body. The space around it was covered in the same inscriptions. Whether the figure was a person or not couldn't be told, but no one was wondering about it. As the chamber was lit more thoroughly, the unease they felt grew, and the air seemed to grow heavier with it. As Ravah moved further in, Tivver — half-afraid, half-curious — came up beside her and very nearly went ahead of her. Behind the stone platforms, when he turned and looked more carefully, he saw small recesses carved into the wall. Running his hand over what looked almost like shelves carved out of stone, he found carefully shaped stones and metal objects so corroded they were falling apart. Tools? he wondered to himself, surprised. Then his foot came down on something that snapped audibly enough for everyone to hear. Ravah turned to him at the sound and aimed her lamp at the ground, and Tivver, looking down, finally saw what he had stepped on.

"Fuck!" he yelped, throwing himself backwards and slamming into one of the stone platforms. Ravah, who didn't seem especially troubled, came closer and crouched, and looked carefully at the bones piled one on top of another. They looked like human or elven bones, and they had been heaped together.

"Are there things etched into them?" Darian said, suddenly, crouching down beside Ravah. He picked one of the bones up and looked at it. "I'd heard that in ancient times Script magic was carved directly onto bone to make it stronger. I wonder — "

"Didn't Zimuvath outlaw that almost two thousand years ago?" Vaelra cut in, standing by the far wall holding the horse Elis was on.

"It's not just outlawed — it's a punishable crime," Ravah said, as if she knew rather more about this subject than she should.

"The Zuvari faith has had plenty of heretical branches, but I don't remember a group that did this," Darian said, still looking at the bones. "I don't think these were made after the ban."

"So you're telling me these have been here for over a thousand years?" Kaelin finally said, no longer able to hold it in. Instead of going closer to them, though, she stood beside Vaelra.

"What's a thousand-year-old torture chamber doing at the foot of these mountains?" Tivver put in, looking as though he'd recovered from his fright, and ran his hand over one of the stone platforms.

"I don't think this is a torture chamber," Veylith said, still examining the walls.

"What is it, then?" Tivver asked, curious now.

"I don't know. But the inscriptions on the walls, the tools, the script on the bones — this is something else."

"I need to look more closely," Vaelra said, and handed the reins of the horse Elis was on to Kaelin, and walked to the wall. Of all of them, she was the one who could read several different languages and who had the best ear for written things. Knowing and learning had always thrilled her. It wasn't a job or a skill for her — it was almost a ritual. She began to run her hands over the inscriptions cut into the wall. She didn't know what was written there, but ideas and images formed in her mind even so. "Darkness," she said, eyes closed, "a great darkness, and echoing sounds." The others were used to her doing this, but Kaelin and Elis were watching her side by side with much the same astonished expression. "This place is like — "

She didn't get to finish. A clicking sound came from the dark of the wall to one side. Then a strangely formed white creature came out of the shadow at speed and lunged for Kaelin and Elis. The moment Veylith saw it she snapped a small knife from her belt and threw it at the creature. The knife landed in its side, throwing it off balance entirely. It fell on top of Kaelin and the two of them tumbled to the ground. Kaelin involuntarily gripped the creature's arm for a moment. As they rolled, Veylith reached them quickly and threw the creature off Kaelin before it could recover. Ravah was there in an instant, the blade at the tip of her baton pressed against the creature's throat.

"No! Stop!" Kaelin shouted from the ground. Elis, who had jumped off the horse and crouched at her side to help her up, and Vaelra, right behind her, both looked at her with stunned faces.

"What? Why?" Veylith snapped, turning to her angrily, nearly shouting.

"Don't hurt it," Kaelin said, picking herself up at once and going to them. She stepped between Veylith and Ravah and crouched beside the creature. With one hand she pushed Ravah's baton aside; with the other she touched the creature's chest and whispered, "Easy." The creature, writhing in pain, stopped struggling and went still all at once. But it was still in pain because of the knife in its side.

"Can you heal it?" she said, turning to Darian.

"Are you sure about this?" Darian asked, hesitating for a moment. He didn't move.

"Please."

"All right," Darian said, and came round the other side of the creature and crouched down.

"Are you sure this is a good idea, Kae?" Tivver asked, in an uneasy voice, from where he was standing further off. Darian hadn't started healing it yet.

"Trust me," Kaelin said, looking first at Tivver, then up at the others, who were watching her with surprise. At that, they all gave in to her, each with much the same expression. Ravah lowered the baton, but Veylith didn't let go of the grip on the gun at her belt. Kaelin finally turned to Darian and gave him a nod. Darian set his hand on the creature's chest and started healing it.

In the light coming from Darian's hand they could see the creature now much better. It had a thin, small body, perhaps a little taller than Darian. Its body was small, but its arms and legs were long and thin, and every limb of it was a bony, gaunt thing — its fingers, also long and thin. It looked starved, but that was the least disturbing thing about it. Its skin was a colourless pale white, the same all over its body.

"Its eyes," Elis said suddenly, trying to look at it more closely now; her face was a mixture of fear and disgust. The eyes she was pointing at, as all of them now noticed, were white. There seemed to be the layer of an iris and a pupil, but you could only just make them out. It was as if the eye had been covered in a white film, and these features could only be made out as shapes underneath.

"It can't see," Veylith said at last, slowly letting go of the gun. "There's no light inside the caves; I don't suppose the eye does it much good."

"How does it move around in the dark if it can't see?" Tivver asked. The sight bothered him too, though not as much as it bothered Elis.

"By listening."

"By listening? It might hear a target speaking in the dark and attack — but in these caves where there's nothing, how does it find its way? Does it listen to the walls?"

"The whistle," Ravah put in suddenly, with a flash of understanding, before Veylith could answer.

"By whistling? How?" Tivver asked again, looking at her blankly.

"By listening to the echo, moron," Vaelra said this time. You could see the comprehension dawning across Tivver's face.

While Darian went on healing the creature with one hand, he was slowly pulling the knife out of its side with the other. The creature Kaelin had calmed wasn't moving much, and you could see its pain easing.

"Why?" Veylith said, looking at Kaelin. She hadn't given more detail than that, but she didn't need to.

"Fear," Kaelin said, looking at the creature. Then she turned to Veylith. "When it touched me — I've never felt fear like that anywhere."

Darian had finally got the knife out and stopped the bleeding. The creature's blood didn't look any different from theirs, but it was much darker. Having done what he could, he pulled his hand back and sat away. When his light faded the chamber returned to its earlier dimness. But a few seconds later a similar light began to light the chamber again. This time it was Kaelin's hand, which she had laid on the creature's forehead; she was using her own gift.

"What are you doing?" Darian snapped at her from the other side of the creature. The others thought his reaction was reasonable, but the seriousness of him shouting at Kaelin like that took them aback.

"I need to learn," Kaelin answered, her eyes closed; the light from her hand began to grow brighter. For a few seconds expressions of all kinds passed over her face as if she were seeing or feeling something. "It's afraid of us," she said, beginning to speak again, eyes still closed and hand glowing on the creature's forehead. "But what it's truly afraid of isn't that we'll hurt it — it's that we're here."

"That we're here?" Tivver asked, surprised, still standing well back.

"It's wary of us, but not as afraid of us as it is of this chamber," Kaelin went on. "Our being here makes it uneasy. And the others — "

"The others?" Ravah jumped in, reflexively looking around.

"I can feel them," Kaelin answered. "There are many more of them outside this room. But every one of them, except this one, is afraid to enter the room." Then, suddenly, she made an odd whistling sound. While the rest of them were trying to figure out what she was doing, whistles began to come from the direction they had come.

"They followed us all the way here, and we never noticed," Veylith said, almost to herself. "But why did it choose to act when we came in here? Why did it wait?"

"Because they're afraid," Kaelin answered. "For us."

"For us?" Vaelra said, startled.

"There's something they fear to the death in this room, but — "

"But what?" Veylith pressed.

"But I can't feel what they fear, because — " She paused, as if piecing something together in her head, "because they don't know themselves what they fear."

"How is that even possible?" Darian, looking visibly tired, leaned in closer to the creature with renewed curiosity.

"Because that's what they were taught. They grew up afraid of this chamber. But among the ones I can feel there are some much older, and even they don't know why. They share the fear of the older generation all the same."

"If this chamber really is thousands of years old, the knowledge could have been lost across the generations that passed through here," Vaelra said. She had turned back to the walls while still holding the reins of Elis's horse. "But the fear lived on," she added, running a hand along the wall.

"Wonderful," Tivver cut in from beside the platforms, "frightening creatures who live in the dark and a chamber that's frightened them for thousands of years. This road just keeps getting more fun." The tension in his voice carried to all of them.

Kaelin remembered someone else who had lived in fear without knowing what they feared. The first night came back to her — Koreth, the seal... But there was no seal to break here, because no one really knew what was here. She also questioned why she had to do this — but in some way she couldn't quite explain, she felt indebted to these creatures. If only there was someone old enough to remember what had happened, she thought to herself. And in that moment she finally saw what was right in front of her. They might not be alive, but there were things here as old as the fear itself. Things that carried scripts on them.

"And now?" Veylith said, turning back to Kaelin in a level voice. A half-conscious creature, perhaps hundreds more behind them, and a room full of strange inscriptions. They had to keep moving, but she was also trying to understand what Kaelin wanted to do. Because, in the situation they were in, Kaelin was the only one who at least looked as if she knew what she was doing.

At that, the light coming from Kaelin's hand weakened and went out. She lifted her hand from the creature's forehead and slid it to its cheek. She stroked the cheek almost as if she were comforting a person, then set it gently on the ground. Without saying anything to anyone she held a hand up from where she was sitting toward Veylith, who was standing. Veylith helped her up, and Kaelin turned and started walking toward Tivver. They all watched her, curious to see what she would do.

She came up to Tivver but went on past him, walking further. With his lamp Tivver fell in behind her on reflex and lit her path. When she reached the corner, she stopped and crouched and reached carefully for one of the bones and picked it up. "If this really is Script magic, maybe I can see it," she said, looking at the carved symbols, which were clearer in the lamplight.

"See what?" Veylith asked from the other side of the chamber.

Kaelin raised her head, and looked at her with eyes that were shining in the light. "The truth."