Clearly, his staff had found him.
He picked up the book that had fallen to the floor. Curiosity about the characters in the journal drove him to find the next entry.
Journal Entry: C. Tides: 543, Y.o.T. Crow: Mas—Harvest, 15th: N.H.
Arrian Glimendula lived roughly twenty thousand years ago. Scholars place her at nineteen thousand, nine hundred fifty years old, give or take a year or two. My ruined estate in Khloht, overgrown with seventy years of jungle is still new by comparison. My poisoned servants are fresh gossip, sweet golden dates rotting in the sun. In the company of such a beast of legend, I am nothing. In this, I take comfort … despite the fact that it is a lie.
With sweet shuwt tinctures I was there, inside of her as I have been inside of others. My sense of self is muddy. As is my sense of time. I look out through Arrian’s eyes, see and sense Corwin’s adolescent frustrations. When Arrian met the woman on the ship Corwin stayed in the shadows, watching. After a while, he turned and marched up the coast, skipping stones into the Loor. The woman was Ublisi. She had come to Soth carrying the Red Book.
By then, the Cisrym Ta was already nearly three thousand years old (H.X.) yet it glistened like the day the Ublisi had bound it. The Ublisi stayed at Soth for three years; then, on Arrian’s eighteenth birthday, I returned through a poisoned stupor, escaping the jungle’s sultry spell on what fools might call bent time.
Cisrym Ta? This was the name that Sena had always used for Caliph’s uncle’s book—the book that she had discovered and brought into the north—the book she had studied day and night and rarely let out of her sight.
If these accounts revolved around the Cisrym Ta, Caliph had a much better understanding of why Sena would be reading them. He turned the page and was once again confronted by the colophon of the falling man.
Excerpt: pages 49–51
The Fallen Sheleph of Jorgill Deep
Precipice Books © 1546 S.K. by Arkhyn Hiel
The upper arcades of Jorgill Deep are cleared. The floors are swept in both directions, inviting a menagerie of guests to dance atop the battlements. As the music begins, Arrian watches Corwin flirt ridiculously. He has become a sailor this last year, grown tan and arrogant. He no longer carries her colors.
Tonight, he looks fine, still damp from ocean spray and graceful from ever balancing on ship decks. Arrian banishes the annoying thought and goes to the high table where sweet-fig pies have been laid before the merrymakers. She samples the desserts and licks her fingers when she hears him stop directly behind her.
His voice and the clean smell of the ocean carry over her shoulder.
Arrian turns and smiles. “I thought you came to see her instead of me.” She gestures with her eyes across the battlement.
Corwin laughs a half-embarrassed laugh. He is only seventeen. “I doubt you know how to be jealous.”
Arrian’s eyes flicker. “You don’t know me well anymore.”
“Maybe not. But I sense your influence at this party. You’ve had the decorations hung exactly to your taste, probably fretting over them until early this morning.”
She nudges him with her elbow, enjoying his nearness. Wreaths holding candles bear indigo ribbons and the flames illuminate white flowers overhead. The pergola above the arcade is burgeoning with blooms. “I brought you a gift from the mainland,” Corwin says. “Since you’ve never been away from Soth, I thought a little something foreign might be good.”
“I love it here,” Arrian says defensively. “We have perfect seasons all year round.”
Corwin replies with slow enticing words. “On the mainland they have snow.”
“Snow?”
Corwin grins. He reaches up and shakes the pergola, generating a storm of petals. “It’s white and cold and flutters from the sky—like rain but more slowly.” Arrian watches his lips move.
“I belong here, Cor. You’re the traveler, not me. Besides, father says I should marry.”
Corwin laughs. “You!—who’ve never had a suitor or anyone you loved, what would you do with marriage?”
Arrian bites her lip softly. Her father is calling her from behind the high table. “I’ll be right back.”
Corwin watches her go. The ghost of an old ache passes ever so faintly through his face.
The party is for celebrating both Arrian’s birth and the anniversary of Jorgill Deep’s desecration. All the guests know that Arrian’s father has something special planned and servants are beginning to usher the party downstairs toward the courtyard.
In a chamber off the arcade where the music is only a murmur, Arrian meets her father. It is strange to gaze on what is no longer me. As usual, the Ublisi stands at his side. Maelstroms of stars turn in each of her unsettling eyes. Arrian has never seen her eat or sleep. She has heard that Ublisi have no need of mundane necessities.
Her father has told Arrian that tonight will be the culmination of higher things. Deeper studies. The Ublisi has worked out some holomorphic secret of unlocking, which will redeem Soth, an equation that will bring back the radiance of Ahvelle.
At Jorgill Deep, there is a knot of stone, a weird whorl of minerals: cream-colored, spiraled into blackish and brownish granite—all of which swirl up into something like a protruding navel on the ground. It is the remnant of where one of the chambers7 first landed. A backward crater that defies standard physics. It is graven with glyphs not even the Ublisi remembers how to read and it rests in an unused alcove in an overgrown section of the courtyards of Jorgill Deep.
“Arrian,” her father says. “We will be going down to the courtyard. My gift to you tonight,” his voice—my voice—softens, “will lift us to a better place.” He has green irises that I remember from the mirror, blunted with age, and he rests his hand gently on his daughter’s shoulder. She is the only creature that he still dares to love.
The Ublisi says nothing but, with her cosmic white eyes, stares all the way through Arrian’s face.
A chill goes through the birthday celebrant as the Ublisi turns slowly.
“Come.” Arrian’s father puts her hand on his arm and leads her to the courtyard where the guests have already gathered under a pavilion of midsummer blooms. Glasta8 flutter through the garden and fan the smell of nectar.
The Ublisi’s tall form seems to float across the lawn to where the stone knot has been extricated from an overgrowth of black pimplota. The Ublisi holds the bright red book in her hands. Its corners are shod in sparkling metal where proud Nekrytian serpents tense in intricate designs.
Arrian knows about this book. It is occasionally still called the Gymre Ta, the Banishing Book: because of its role in locking D’loig in a prison in the stars. Its creation supposedly took a thousand years. But these days, it is simply called the Cisrym Ta, the Red Book—not only for the color of its cover, but for its fearsome results in the ongoing Yilthid War.
The Ublisi stretches her arms beneath the moons and all the guests grow quiet.
Only the glasta still flutter.
Arrian stands near her father, his large hand clasped over hers. She can feel his anxiety. He has helped with the study and the preparation for this night, being a great mathematician. He waits now, breathing hard, for the golden lights that will soon fill the courtyard.
The Ublisi begins to speak in the Unknown Tongue. Her numbers fill the air, bloodless and clean. Her voice sounds like a chyrming creature far away on the mountain of Soth. For an instant, molten glassy shapes distort the courtyard air. A sudden plunge in temperature reveals every exhalation. Inaudible frosty notes pluck a staccato stillness in the yard.