Earthborn (Homecoming) Page 14

  “Let me lay out a problem for you, Mon,” said Bego.

  “Back to work,” said Mon.

  “My work this time, not yours.”

  Mon didn’t know whether he was being patronized or respected. So he listened.

  “When the Zenifi came back several months ago—you remember?”

  “I remember,” said Mon. “They were settled in their new land only Ilihiak refused to be their king. He had them choose a governor. The people themselves. And then they showed their ingratitude by choosing Khideo instead of Ilihiak.”

  “So you have been paying attention.”

  “Was that all?” asked Mon.

  “Not at all. You see, when the voice of the people went against Ilihiak, he came here.”

  “To ask for help? Did he really think Father would impose him as judge on the Zenifi? Ilihiak was the one who decided to let the people vote—let him live with what they voted for!”

  “Exactly right, Mon,” said Bego, “but of course Ilihiak would be the first to agree with you. He didn’t come here in order to get power. He came because he was finally free of it.”

  “So he’s an ordinary citizen,” said Mon. “What was his business with the king?”

  “He doesn’t need to have business, you know,” said Bego. “Your father took a liking to him. They became friends.”

  Mon felt a stab of jealousy. This stranger who had never even known Father’s name till Monush found him six months ago was Father’s friend, while Mon languished as a mere second son, lucky to see his father once a week on any basis more personal than the king’s council.

  “But he did have business,” said Bego. “It seems that after Ilihiak’s father was murdered—”

  “A nation of regicides—and now they’ve elected a would-have-been regicide as their governor.”

  “Yes, yes,” said Bego impatiently. “Now it’s time to listen. After Nuab was murdered and Ilihidis became king—”

  “Dis Ilihi? Not the heir?”

  “The people chose the only one of Nuab’s sons who hadn’t run away when the Elemaki invaded. The only one with any courage.”

  Mon nodded. He hadn’t heard about that. A second son inheriting on the basis of his merit.

  “Don’t have any fantasies about that” said Bego. “Your older brother is no coward. And it ill becomes you to wish for him to be deprived of his inheritance.”

  Mon leapt to his feet in fury. “How dare you accuse me of thinking any such thing!”

  “What second son doesn’t think it?”

  “As well I might assume that you’re jealous of bGo’s great responsibilities, while you’re only a librarian and a tutor for children!”

  It was Bego’s turn to be furious. “How dare you, a mere human, speak of my otherself as if you could compare your feeble brotherhood with the bonds between otherselves!”

  They stood there, eye to eye. For the first time, Mon realized, eye to eye with Bego meant that Mon was looking down. His adult height was beginning to come. How had he not noticed till now? A tiny smile came to his lips.

  “So, you smile,” said Bego. “Why, because you succeeded in provoking me?”

  Rather than confess the childish and selfish thought that had prompted his smile, Mon invented another reason, one which became true enough as soon as he thought of it. “Can a student not smile when he provokes his teacher into acting like a child?”

  “And I was going to talk to you about genuine matters of state.”

  “Yes, you were,” said Mon. “Only you chose to start by accusing me of wishing for my brother to lose his inheritance.”

  “For that I apologize.”

  “I wish you would apologize for calling me a ‘mere human,’” said Mon.

  “For that I also apologize,” said Bego stiffly. “Just because you are a mere human doesn’t mean that you can’t have meaningful affection and loyalty between siblings. It isn’t your fault that you cannot begin to comprehend the bonds of shared selfhood between otherselves among the sky people.”

  “Ah, Bego, now I understand what Husu meant, when he said that you were the only man he knew who could insult someone worse with your apologies than with your slanders.”

  “Husu said that?” asked Bego mildly. “And here I thought he hadn’t understood me.”

  “Tell me the business of state,” said Mon. “Tell me what business brought Ilihiak to Father.”

  Bego grinned. “I thought you wouldn’t be able to resist the story.”

  Mon waited. When Bego didn’t go on, Mon roared with frustration and ran once around the desk, for all the world like a digger child circling a tree before climbing it. He knew he looked silly, but he couldn’t stand the malicious little games that Bego played.

  “Oh, sit down,” said Bego. “What Ilihiak came for was to give your father twenty-four leaves of gold.”

  “Oh,” said Mon, disappointed. “Just money.”

  “Not money at all,” said Bego. “There was writing on them. Twenty-four leaves of ancient writing.”

  “Ancient? You mean, before the Zenifi?”

  “Perhaps,” said Bego with a faint smile. “Perhaps before the Nafari.”

  “So there might have been a group of diggers or angels who knew how to work metal? Who knew how to write?”

  Bego gave that rippling of his wings that among the angels meant the same as a shrug. “I don’t know,” said Bego. “I can’t read the language.”

  “But you speak skyspeech and dirtwords and—”

  “Earthspeech,” Bego corrected him. “Your father doesn’t like us to use such disparaging terms toward the earth people.”

  Mon rolled his eyes. “It’s an ugly language that barely qualifies as talk.”

  “Your father rules over a kingdom that includes diggers as citizens.”

  “Not many. Most of them are slaves. It’s in their nature. Even among the Elemaki, humans usually rule over them.”

  “Usually but not always,” said Bego. “And it’s good to remember, when disparaging the diggers, to remember that those supposed ‘natural slaves’ managed to drive our ancestors out of the land of Nafai.”

  Mon almost jumped into another argument about whether great-grandfather Motiab led his people to Darakemba voluntarily or because they were in danger of being destroyed back in their ancient homeland. But then he realized that this was exactly what Bego wanted him to do. So he sat patiently and waited.

  Bego nodded. “So, you refused to take up the distraction. Very good.”

  Mon rolled his eyes. “You’re the teacher, you’re the master, you know everything, I am your puppet,” he intoned.

  Bego had heard this litany of sarcasm before. “And don’t you forget it,” he said—as he usually did. “Now, these records were found by a party Ilihiak had sent out to look for Darakemba. Only they followed the Issibek instead of the Tsidorek, and then had the bad luck to follow some difficult high valleys until they came out of the gornaya altogether, far to the north of here, in the desert.”

  “Opustoshen,” said Mon, by reflex.

  “Another point for knowing geography,” said Bego. “What they found, though, was a place we’ve never found—mostly because it’s considerably west of Bodika, and our spies just don’t fly that far. Why should they? There’s no water there—no enemy can come against us from that quarter.”

  “So they found the book of gold in the desert?”

  “Not a book. Unbound leaves. But it wasn’t just a desert. It was the scene of a terrible battle. Vast numbers of skeletons, with armor and weapons cluttered around them where they fell. Thousands and thousands and thousands of soldiers fought there and died.”

  Bego paused, waiting for something.

  And then Mon made the connection. “Coriantumr,” he murmured.

  Bego nodded his approval. “The legendary man who came to Darakemba as the first human the sky people here had ever seen. We always assumed that he was the survivor of some battle between an obscure g
roup of Nafari or Elemaki somewhere, when humans were first spreading through the gornaya. It was a difficult time, and we lost track of many groups. When the original sky people of Darakemba told us he was the last survivor of a huge war between great nations, we assumed it was just exaggeration. The only thing that stuck in my craw, anyway, was the inscription.”

  Mon had seen it, the large round stone that still stood in the central market of the city. No one had any idea what the inscription meant; they always assumed that it was a sort of primitive imitation of writing that the Darakembi angels came up with, after they heard that humans could write things down and before they learned how to do it themselves.

  “So tell me!” Mon demanded. “Is the language on Ilihiak’s leaves the same?”

  “The Darakembi said that Coriantumr scratched in the dirt to show them what to chisel into the stone. It was slow work, and he was dead before they finished, but they sculpted it first in clay so that they wouldn’t forget while they did the slow work of cutting it in stone.” Bego dropped from his teaching perch and pulled several waxed barks from a box. “I made a reasonable copy here. How does it look to you?”

  Mon looked at the round inscription, wheels within wheels, all with strange twisted pictures on them. “It looks like the Coriantumr stone,” he said.

  “No, Mon. This is the Coriantumr stone.” Bego handed him another bark, and this time the image scratched into the wax was identical to the stone as he remembered it.

  “So what’s the other?”

  “A circular inscription on one of the gold leaves.”

  Mon hooted in appreciation—and noticed, to his chagrin, that he could no longer hoot as high as an angel. It sounded silly to hoot in a man’s low voice.

  “So the answer to your question is, Yes, Mon, the languages seem to be the same. The problem is that there is no known analogue to this writing system. It clearly does not lend itself to decoding in any pattern we can think of.”

  “But all human languages are based on the language of the Nafari, and all the skyspeeches and dirt—earthspeeches—they’re all based on common sources and—”

  “And I tell you again, it has no relationship to any known speech.”

  Mon thought for a moment. “So—has Father used the Index?”

  “The Index,” said Bego, “tells your father that it is for us to work on the gold leaves for a while.”

  Mon frowned. “But the reason the king has the Index is so he can read all writings and understand all speech.”

  “And apparently the Keeper of Earth doesn’t want to translate this for us.”

  “If the Keeper doesn’t want us to read it, Bego, then why did the Keeper let the spies of Ilihiak find the place where the records were kept?”

  “Let them find it? The Keeper led them to it with dreams.”

  “Then why not have the Index tell Father what the inscriptions say? This is stupid,” said Mon.

  “Oh, very good, by all means let a boy your age judge the Keeper and find him—stupid? Excellent. I can see that humility is the virtue you have been working on the most.”

  Mon refused to wither under Bego’s onslaught of sarcasm. “So Father has assigned you to work on it?”

  Bego nodded. “Somebody has to—because that’s what the Index said we should do. Your father isn’t a scholar of languages—he’s always had the Index to rely on. So the puzzle is mine.”

  “And you think I might be able to help?”

  “How should I know? It only occurs to me because there are several references in the oldest records—the oldest Nafari records—to the effect that the Index is a machine, and it’s always linked to the Oversoul, not the Keeper of Earth.”

  Mon didn’t understand his point.

  “What if the Keeper of Earth and the Oversoul are not the same person?”

  That was a possibility that Mon had often heard, but he had never been able to figure out why it would matter. “So what?”

  “In the oldest inscriptions, it seems to me that the Oversoul is also a machine.”

  That was heresy. But Mon said nothing, for he knew that Bego was no traitor. Therefore there must be some meaning to his words that did not undercut the fact that the Keeper of Earth chose Nafai to be the first king of the Nafari, and his children after him until at last the line came to Father.

  “Whether the Keeper of Earth made the Oversoul or it somehow grew of itself, I don’t know and can’t guess,” said Bego. “I’m a librarian, not a priest, so I don’t pretend to know the answer to everything—just where other people’s answers are written down. But what if the reason the Index can’t translate these inscriptions is because neither it nor the Oversoul have the faintest idea how to read its language?”

  The thought was so disturbing that Mon had to get up and walk around again, circling the desk. “Bego, how can there be something the Keeper of Earth doesn’t know? All that is known, he knows.”

  “I didn’t say the Keeper. I said the Oversoul.”

  Ah. So that was the reason why Bego thought the distinction between them mattered. But for Mon it wasn’t to be solved that easily. He had long believed that whether you said the Oversoul did something or the Keeper of the Earth did it, it was the same. So it seemed too convenient to say that when you run across some inscription that the Index can’t read, it must mean that the Oversoul, who can’t read it, must be different from the Keeper, who of course still knows everything. What about the possibility that the Keeper and the Oversoul are the same—and neither one knows how to read the inscription? It was an astonishing idea, that the Keeper might not know everything—but the possibility had to be faced, didn’t it? “Why couldn’t the Keeper have sent Ilihiak’s spies to Opustoshen in order to bring the records to you to figure it out for him?”

  Bego shook his head, laughing. “Do you want to get the priests in your ears like gnats? Keep thoughts like that to yourself, Mon. It’s daring enough for me to be speculating that perhaps the Oversoul can’t read these inscriptions. Besides, it doesn’t matter, really. I’ve been assigned to figure them out. I have some guesses but I have no way of knowing if I’m right.”

  Suddenly Mon understood how Bego wanted him to help. “You think I might be able to tell whether you’re right or not?”

  “It’s something we’ve seen before from you, Mon. Sometimes you know what can’t be known. It was Edhadeya who had the dream of the Zenifi, but you were the one who knew that it was a true dream. Perhaps you can also tell me whether my translation is a true one.”

  “But my gift comes from the Keeper, and if the Keeper doesn’t know . . .”

  “Then you won’t be able to help me,” said Bego. “And maybe your gift only works on—well, on other things. But it’s worth a try. So let me show you what I’ve done so far.”

  Mon grew more and more afraid as Bego spread out the other waxed barks, drawing more and more from the box. He listened as best he could to Bego’s explanations of how he went about copying the inscriptions and studying them, but what kept running through his mind was the idea that somehow he was supposed to come up with some kind of knowledge about a language that not even the Oversoul could read.

  “Pay attention,” said Bego. “It can’t possibly work if you’re just going to stand there being nervous.”

  Only then did Mon realize that he had been fidgeting. “Sorry.”

  “I started with elements that were on the Coriantumr stone as well as on the gold leaves. See this? It gets repeated more than any other element. And this one comes in second. But the second one, it has this mark in front of it.” He pointed to a feather-shaped drawing. “And that mark shows up in a lot of other places. Like this, and this. My guess is that this mark is like the honorific “ak’ or ‘ka,’ and means king.”

  Bego looked hopefully at Mon, who could only shrug in reply. “Could be. Makes sense.”

  Bego sighed.

  “Well, don’t give up that easily,” said Mon, disgusted. “What, you expect to be ri
ght on everything?”

  “It was the thing I was most sure of,” said Bego.

  “Oh, and didn’t you teach me long ago that just because you’re really, really sure doesn’t mean that you’re right?”

  Bego laughed. “Well, for all I know, it could just be a nymic.”

  “A what?”

  “A mark that signifies that what follows it is a name.”

  “That sounds better,” said Mon. “That makes sense.”

  Bego said nothing. Mon looked up from the waxed barks and their eyes met. “Well?” asked Bego. “How much sense does it make?”

  Mon realized what Bego was asking, and examined his own feelings, tried to imagine if the mark wasn’t a nymic. “It . . . it makes a lot of sense. It’s right. It’s true, Bego.”

  “True the way Edhadeya’s dream was true?”

  Mon smiled. “They came back with the wrong Zenifi, remember?”

  “Don’t try to wriggle out of the question, Mon. You know that Ilihiak and Khideo both confirmed that Edhadeya’s dream was of the former priest of Nuab named Akmaro.”

  “Bego, I can only tell you that if you try to tell me that the words linked to that feather mark aren’t names, I’d have to swear you were wrong.”

  “That’s good enough for me,” said Bego. “So they aren’t names of kings, but they are names. That’s good. That’s the most important thing. See, Mon? The Keeper does want us to read this language! Now, this is the most common of the names on the stone, and it’s also very common here at the end of the record on the plates.”

  “How do you know it’s the end?”

  “Because I think the name is Coriantumr, and he’s the last king—or at least the last man—from this group of humans who destroyed themselves in Opustoshen. So the place where his name is mentioned would have to be at the end, don’t you think?”

  “So who wrote the gold leaves?”

  “I don’t know! Mon, I’m barely decoding anything yet. I just want to know from you: Is this Coriantumr’s name here?”

  “Yes,” said Mon. “Definitely.”