"Excuse me, are you Master Fel'Tiega?" I asked the first male reader I encountered.
"Room number eleven." The young man pointed deeper into the warren, never looking up.
A quick examination revealed a little brass plate beside the far door, engraved with the word five. As the current room was the fourth since the front door, I hurried through six more rooms, past the brass plate that said eleven, and into a brightly ht circle of book stacks. All I could see of the man who sat in the stuffy eleventh room was a tidy knot of black hair atop a large head.
"Master Fel'Tiega?" I said, peering around a shoulder-high bookshelf.
"Find it yourself. Every work has a locator spell attached."
V'Rendal's vague references to the man had conjured an image of an ancient, birdlike fellow, wizened and dusty. Fel'Tiega demolished that image. His deep voice resonated like the thunder I could no longer hear, and from what I could see of him above the desk where he was poring over a thick sheaf of papers, he was neither wizened nor ancient nor all that dusty. I judged him no more than thirty. His beard was thick and curling, and dark hair made a thick mat on his well-muscled shoulders, arms, and chest—all of these parts devoid of clothing. When I moved around the bookshelf, I was relieved to see that he at least wore breeches, stockings, and shoes.
"I've been sent here by V'Rendal the Archivist," I said, wondering if all V'Rendal's acquaintances were odd. "She sent me to fetch a rare book you recommended to her."
"V'Rendal? Oh, yes, the Mu'Tenni history. I thought she might be interested in that, what with this astounding news about D'Arnath's child. The time period is the interest of course. V'Rendal thinks it's going to tell us that some woman built the Bridge instead of D'Arnath or that everything would have turned out differently if more of the Heirs had been women. She's always going on about women, women, women, as if the world couldn't get along without them." He glanced up at me, then looked back at his papers, only to look up again immediately, his great wiry brows making a single line across his face. "Do I know you?"
"I don't think so. My name is S'Rie. I've not visited your shop before." I extended my palms and nodded to him. "I like to think both sexes have their importance." I resisted adding any remarks about his own existence bearing witness to the value of women.
"Ah, the world can get along without anyone, even you, I'll wager. As we're such a wretched lot, the place'd be better off without most of us. You're wet."
I swallowed a sarcastic reply. I had no time for this. "I'll be careful to keep the book dry, if that's your concern. I'm in somewhat of a hurry to be off, if you please."
He waved his meaty hand around the room. "Have you read all these?"
"Sadly, no. I've been—"
"Then you oughtn't be in such a hurry. You never know when Vasrin will declare your own path ended. I've set myself a goal to read every volume in the shop before the year is out."
He rose from his chair, a bear of a man, wearing a green sash about his ample waist. His thick black topknot looked as if it might brush the ceiling, and the tips of his beard were tied with green ribbons that dangled over his bare chest. Silly-looking man.
But when he turned his back to rummage among the volumes on the cluttered shelf behind his table, bile rose in my throat. His neck, hidden in the front by his beard, bore the red telltale of a slave collar. His back was deeply ridged with purple and red scars, not the common marks of a slavemaster's lashing, but wide gouges that had been meticulously carved through flesh and muscle in an exact crossing pattern.
I swallowed hard and considered how to respond to an outlandish young man who had survived such calculated brutality. "Which year?" I said at last.
He dropped a heavy leather volume on the table, glanced up at me, and grinned slyly. "One year or the other. If I live longer, I'll give some thought to what I've read and, perhaps, soothe my professional detractors such as the broad-beamed demon-Archivist who sent you here."
"Have you read Mu'Tenni's book?" I asked, deciding that such deliberate goading as this man practiced was perhaps something other than bad temper. "An Archivist should be aware of all views. Perhaps this book could open your mind to things of importance that other Historians prefer to ignore, such as the value of both genders or the worth of people in general."
"Perhaps it could." He bent down, drew a wad of thick fabric from under his table, and tossed it on top of the book. "Keep it dry. And make sure Mistress V'Rendal returns it. It's not a gift."
"And if Prince Ven'Dar asks to keep it?"
His grin fell away like a dropped hat. "I am ever at my lord prince's service."
I wrapped the book in the thick-woven fabric and bowed. "Good night then, Master Fel'Tiega."
He bowed, and before I had squeezed through his book stacks to the door marked ten, his dark head was bent over his reading once again.
Chapter 28
Qis'Dar had told me to wait at the bookshop and he would bring the carriage around as soon as the blockage was cleared. And so when I peered out the door of Fel'-Tiega's shop and saw naught but night and rain, I pulled up a chair where I could keep an eye on the street through a small round window. No point in fidgeting. I unwrapped the book.
The elaborate lettering of the title, Ancients , was worked in gold inlay that was almost entirely worn away. I traced the patterned leather with my fingers, marveling at the finely detailed tooling and at a work so old that proclaimed its subject matter far older yet. In Leire our oldest artifacts were fortresses and weapons, nothing of such exquisite fragility.
The Dar'Nethi Archivists had done their job well. The edges of the fine vellum pages were quite smooth, the pages themselves only slightly yellowed with a few brown stains here and there. Though the book's text was unornamented and unillustrated, the sweeping script was bold, elegant, and quite readable.
Leiran scribes had crammed the pages of our oldest books with tiny characters to conserve precious paper, but the Dar'Nethi copyist had bowed to no such restriction. Or perhaps the subject matter had justified the expenditure. The brief opening text indicated that rather than a historical narrative, this work was a compendium of short biographies of important personages in Dar'Nethi history, each cross-referenced to pages on other subjects who were related by blood or particular events.
The entries had been organized by the twelve kingdoms of Gondai, though the author allowed that these designations would likely lose their meaning, as only the kingdom of Avonar had survived the Catastrophe. A fierce and sad determination infused the author's declaration that future generations of Dar'Nethi must not forget those who had made their world and its people marvelous.
I thumbed through the pages quickly, unwilling to expend the concentration necessary to parse more of the archaic language until I came to the entry headed D'Arnath yn D'Samos, Avonar Regirй, Gondai Audde Regirй —D'Arnath, son of D'Samos, King of Avonar, High King of Gondai. Even then I did not read the pages devoted to the most famous son of Avonar, but turned immediately to the end of the passage, where the cross-references were noted.
Excitement quickened my breath as my finger touched the list of names. Just below Maroth yna L'Tonil, Avonar Resinй , D'Arnath's wife, was J'Ettanne yn D'Savatile , D'Arnath's cousin and Karon's ancestor, who had led the Dar'Nethi Exiles into the mundane world. And then came D'Leon yn D'Arnath, Girй D'Amath, Avonar Regyn . D'Arnath's eldest son, the first to bear the title Heir of D'Arnath and Prince of Avonar rather than King, was followed by his younger brother D'Alleyn yn D'Arnath, Girй D'Arnath, Avonar Regyn . And then, glaring from the page as if waiting for me all these years, was the name I was looking for: D'Sanya yna Zhulli . Odd.