I sat down and put my head in my hands. I heard the shifting of Miros’s chair as he sat, the susurration of the newspapers. I raised my head and looked at him. “And you agree with this, Miros.”
His face was stubborn, though his voice shook as he said: “I am Avalei’s man.”
I stood up again. I walked around the table. My body would not be still. Firelight glimmered on the empurpled walls. I spun to face the priest. “But the libraries, Auram—you need them too! Leiya Tevorova’s book, The Handbook of Mercies—you saved it from the Priest of the Stone! If the libraries burn—”
“Yes,” he said. “Much that we love will be lost. But the memories of Avalei’s people, as you know, are long. And the choice that faces Olondria now is a simple one: Cold parchment or living flesh? And I have made my choice.”
I shook my head. “That is no choice. No choice one should have to make.”
“I agree. But it was forced upon us the moment the Telkan sided with the Priest of the Stone. The moment Olondria chose the book over the voice. Now we must balance the scales.”
“The price is too high.”
He smiled. “Come. Let me tell you a story.”
I shook my head again. My lips trembled. “No more of your stories.”
His smile grew softer, more encouraging. He patted the chair beside him. “Come, one more. A story about a price. You will not know it, for it is very seldom told. The tale of Naimar, that beautiful youth…”
The story bloomed inside him, inhabiting his body, a kind of radiance. I saw that nothing would stop him from telling it. All through my journey his stories had fallen like snow. He was as full of them as a library with unmarked shelves. He was a talking book.
“Naimar was raised in a palace in a wood,” he began in his throaty voice, “the only child of his father’s only love. His mother had died in birthing him; the palace was dedicated to her, and it was called the Palace of Little Drops. Those drops were the tears she shed on the newborn brow of her only child, when she held him in the instant before her death. The boy was raised among mournful paintings and images of her: the statues in the garden all bore her likeness. Sculptors had fashioned her sitting, weaving, walking, leading her favorite stallion, caressing the hoods of her beloved hawks. The child was strikingly like her, with his wide eyes and parted lips, his black hair and the anemones in his cheeks! And because of this he came to brood over her, and over death—for he was soon the same age as the lady in the garden.”
Slowly I walked around the edge of the table, returned to my chair between Auram and Miros. The priest turned to keep his eyes on me as he spoke. “Then the world lost its savor for him,” he went on with a sigh, “and he found no delight in it, neither in hunting, wine, music nor concubines… His father despaired of pleasing him, and Naimar wandered in the woods, wild and woolly haired, and of savage aspect. One day he went to bathe in a stream, and as he was bathing there a Lady appeared to him, clad in saffron-colored robes and beautiful as a rose. ‘O youth,’ said she, ‘stand up from the water, that I might see thee plain, for I am already half in love with thee.’ ‘Nay,’ said the boy, ‘what wilt thou give me?’ ‘What is thy desire?’ said she. And he said: ‘To escape death, to become immortal!’
“Then the Lady smiled and said, ‘That is easily granted.’ And he stood, and the water fell from him in streams. And the Lady admired him greatly, and a blush spread over her cheek; but Naimar said: ‘Now grant that which thou promised.’ ‘Willingly,’ said the Lady. And she plucked a handful of lilies which were growing by the stream, and took the bulbs, and washed them in the water, and she bade the boy to eat them. And taking them in both hands, he did so.
“‘Will I become immortal?’ he asked. ‘Surely thou wilt,’ she said. And as she spoke, the boy cried out, and fell; and the Lady, who was Avalei, looked down at the beautiful corpse that lay on the bank and smiled. ‘Thou art immortal,’ she said.”
In the aftermath of this virulent tale I looked at the priest, aghast. And his red lips parted in his most childlike smile. I sat up straighter, pushed my chair back and turned from the priest to Miros as I spoke, so that both of them could see my face.
“I will tell you the truth,” I said, “and if you think me a wiser man than you, and you listen to me, so be it, and if you do not, so be it. Your prince will be a tyrant. He will not hesitate to burn libraries or palaces or radhui. He will set Olondria aflame.”
Auram inclined his head slightly, a gesture of acceptance. “You may be right. But he will save a future, a way of life. For those who cannot read, he will save the world.”
I knew it was true. A certain world would be saved, but it would no longer contain the Olondria I knew.
No more battles, I thought, no more arguments. I held out my hand to the priest, and he placed his own inside it, white driftwood barnacled with rings. So frail, so cold, with a bandage on the wrist.
His dark eyes questioned me. “Forgiveness?” he said.
“No,” I answered. “Farewell.”
A night of desert stars and silence, poignant as a breath. I sat on the bed and watched the open window. No angel tore the air. The sky was motionless, complete above the sleeping mountains, seamless as a glass. I did not close my eyes, because when I did I saw Miros screaming in battle, blood-streaked mares, Olondria on a pyre. I saw war come, and I saw myself far away, in a courtyard of yellow stone, with no one to bring me messages from the dead.
The heavens turned. A dark blue glow came to dwell on the windowsill. Slowly the shapes in the room emerged from the dark as if rising from the sea. There was the mantelpiece, there the door. There was the wrought-iron table and the stack of books that held the anadnedet. And there was my satchel, rescued by the priest, with all my books inside: Olondrian Lyrics, the Romance of the Valley. The record book where I had scribbled my agony in Bain. And the packets of Tialon’s letters, heavy as two stones.
He had brought them for me. When his Tavrouni allies had killed the soldiers in Klah-ne-Wiy, he had had the presence of mind to collect my things, this precious satchel and the angel’s body, and he had hired a servant and suffered his broken wrist to be tied in place by a local doctor. A group of soldiers met him when he came out of the little mud clinic. Auram smiled at them, his disdain as gray and icy as the sky. They took him to Ur-Amakir, the nearest city, where he was to be tried for treason and the murder of the soldiers. He would be very glad to oblige, he said. News of the Night Market had reached the city; crowds gathered chanting outside the jail where he was held. Realizing that his oration in court might spark riots, the Duke of Ur-Amakir accepted his claim of innocent self-defense and released him.
And he came to Sarenha-Haladli with the body, as he had promised. He was, after all, a man of honor.
I stood. My bones ached with a sorrow older than myself. I went to the table and put my hand on a book to feel something solid. It was Lantern Tales, in which Jissavet’s words murmured like doves. I remembered her telling me: I know what the vallon is. It’s jut. Now she had helped start a war in a far country to liberate those who could not read, the hotun of Olondria. I wondered, for an unguarded moment, what she would have said. But I knew that this was not her war. Nor was it mine.