It was two days until they found me, pale and terrified and perfectly quiet, huddled in the pitch-blackness of the cramped old cabinet. I had been afraid to cry out when I heard the searchers, for our old nurse had always told us that there were demons in the dark who would devour crying children to feed their sorceries. I had decided it would be better to starve than to risk such an awful fate. Years passed before I could sleep without a lamp left burning, and the fear of confinement had never left me.
The first time Karon took me into the vaults, eager to share the wonders of his treasury, I convinced myself that my childish megrims would surely be banished now I was a married woman. But as luck would have it, halfway down the ancient stairway our lamp ran out of oil, and it took no extraordinary talent for Karon to discover my terror. I almost tore the sleeve off his coat. In an instant, without regard for the risk, he conjured a light for me—a soft white glow emanating from his hand that faded only when he led me into the daylight and wrapped his arms about me to calm my shaking.
“Ah, love, you need never fear the demons again,” he said, after I’d told him the tale. “Is it not true that you have married one of them, who, now he is in your power, can well hold his fellows at bay?” It became a joke between us about the demons, and indeed I discovered that as long as Karon was with me, I could survive a venture to the vaults. Only rarely did I go, however, and I always checked the lamp oil carefully.
It was while delving into the crates of booty hauled from Valleor after its conquest that Karon came across a legacy from his ancestors. One summer afternoon, I came to Karon’s workroom as I did several times a week to help sort and number the artifacts. I had suggested a cataloging scheme, so we could have a record not only of what was stored in the vaults, but also where each item was located and what other items might be related to it.
On this particular day I was recording a description of a crate of mouse-chewed books, a set of erotic stories written and illustrated by a Kerotean noble for his bride. I was hoping the woman had possessed a strong stomach and an exotic sense of humor. Karon appeared in the workroom doorway, and I waved a greeting, but he didn’t seem to notice me. He was dusty and disheveled, not an unusual state when he’d been working in the vaults, but the expression on his face was his “storytelling” look, as if, despite his body being in the room, he traveled in some faraway place. Where ordinarily he would see fourteen things needing his attention, he seemed at a loss.
I left my list with a workman and threaded my way through the workroom clutter. “Karon, what is it? Have bodies come popping out of your rusty armor?”
His eyes caught mine for a moment. “Yes… well… in a way.”
A young man, whose nose, mouth, and chin came to such a sharp prominence as to be vaguely reminiscent of a rat, called out from across the room. “Lord Commissioner, should I discard this helm? It’s quite ordinary—Leiran, and not even a very nice one. I think it must have belonged to the fellow who collected this lot.” Racine had been the secretary for the previous Commissioner of Antiquities, but had been required to do little more than carry notes to the man’s mistress. Karon was pleased with Racine’s keen interest in the new procedures and how quickly the eager assistant’s eye had become discriminating.
“Whatever you think, Racine.” Brought out of his distraction a bit by the exchange, Karon spoke quietly to me. “Can you come? I’d like to show you. I don’t know what to do with it.”
“Of course.”
Karon told Racine to carry on and led me to the steep, winding stair. “We have to go down. Will you be all right?”
“I’ll manage,” I said, touching his hand and remembering his magical fight. “My demon is with me.”
He took me deep into the far corner of the vault to a pile of rolled carpets. Setting the lamp on a nearby crate, he dragged a cracked leather trunk from underneath the pile. The trunk was full of old clothes. From deep beneath the jumble of faded silks and satins he pulled out a flat, wooden box. The wood was polished dark and smooth by years of handling, the plain brass hinges and latch tarnished. Karon raised the lid and reverently removed the contents, one by one.
First, a silver knife, the finger-length blade and curved, ornately worked handle black with tarnish. Next a threadbare strip of cloth, a scarf or sash perhaps, more like a spiderweb that threatened to dissolve at a touch. Then a round, button-like piece, also made of silver, blackened by time. Karon laid each thing in my lap, and I could not mistake the wonder in his eyes.
“They’re not very old by the standards of many things in the collection,” he said, “but they’re quite rare.”
“What are they?”
“Tools. The tools of a J’Ettanni Healer. One can use things that were originally designed for other purposes, as I do when I work, but there was a time… well, the custom was to have your own tools always ready: a knife of silver, cast with your own proper enchantments to keep it keen-edged—there is no way to make that part of it easy or pleasant, but a sharp knife is always better than dull—and a strip of white linen for the binding—it’s dangerous to lose contact in the middle of the rite, as I’ve told you. You can get dizzy. And in this”—he showed me how the button was actually a tiny cup with a hinged lid—“you would keep indiat, a paste made from herbs, quite rare and expensive, but it would ease the pain of the incision for the one you were to heal. The rite can be very hard, especially for children.”
As always, I had a hundred questions but I wasn’t sure he would even hear me.
“It’s incredible enough to find these things, but they’re not all.” From the wooden box he pulled a small book, hardly bigger than his hand. Its leather cover was half rotted away, the stitching gone, leaving it little but a stack of pages of precarious thinness. Faded ink filled the pages, words of a language I didn’t recognize written in a bold hand.
“The Healer’s journal,” said Karon. “See the symbol of the knife on the front. And here”—with utmost care, he opened to the front of the little book—“a list of names and places, and what I think must be a description of the circumstances for each healing he did. It’s written in the old language of the J’Ettanne, which went out of use long before bound books. I know so little of the language, it’s hard to read it. But look at this entry.” His face was that of a child on Long Night. “Garlao, the miller. Mycenar — that must be the village—hand caught in —something. J’dente means healed. It’s so important for a Healer to remember. There are times when it’s not right to change the outcome, times when death is not an enemy to be thwarted, times when sickness must be left to burn itself out, and so you must constantly look back at the judgments you’ve made to see if your course is straight. This man did it this way.” Karon’s whole posture begged me to understand what it meant to him to find these things. He believed he was the last living soul of his own kind.
“It’s a connection both to all those who came before you and to one particular man who was a Healer like yourself.”
“And even more than that. You see, he’s marked the book into days. Some are skipped; some are just noted by a symbol.” He turned the delicate pages carefully. “This one he’s marked Av’Kenat. I think the text must be a description of it… by one who was there.”
Av’Kenat was the “Walking Night,” the late autumn celebration when the ancient J’Ettanne would come together to celebrate the passing of summer, the harvest, and their belief that life was a formless essence, given shape by the crossing of our paths as each of us walked the Way laid down for us. It was a time for storytelling and family reunions, for betrothals and weddings, reunions and feasting, and magical games and displays of all kinds.