“Sometimes, also, when they went into the darkness they would see words shining, though no question had been asked.
“Allthese words of the oracle were written down. The books they were written in were called the Galvan Books. Over the years the Galvas, who built their house at the oracle cave, became the sole keepers of the books, interpreters of the words, the voice of the oracle—the Readers.
“That led to jealousy and rivalry, in the end. It might have been better if we’ed shared our power. But I think we weren’t able to. The gift gives itself.
“The Galvan Books themselves weren’t only records of the oracles. Sometimes the writing in them altered though no hand had touched it, or a Reader would open a book and find in it words no one had written there. More and more often the oracle spoke on the pages of the books, not on the darkness of the cave.
“But often the words themselves were dark. Interpretation was needed. And there were the answers to questions that had not been asked… So the great Reader Dano Galva said, ‘We do not seek true answers. The strayed sheep we seek is the true question. The answer follows it as the tail follows the sheep,”
He had been watching his thoughts in the air behind me; now he looked back at me, and was silent.
“Have you—have you read the oracle?” I asked at last. I felt as if I hadn’t spoken for a month; my throat was dry and my voice thready.
He answered slowly. “I began to read the Galvan Books when I was twenty, with my mother as my guide. The most ancient of them first. The words in those are fixed, they no longer change. But the oldest are the most obscure, because they didn’t write the question with the answer, and so you have to guess the sheep from the tail… Then there are many books from later centuries, both questions and answers. Often both are obscure, but they repay study. And then, after they moved the library out of Galvamand, there were fewer questions. And the answers may change, or vanish, or appear with no question asked. Those are the books you cannot read twice, any more than you could drink the same water twice from the Oracle Spring.”
“Have you asked it a question?”
“Once.” He gave a brief laugh and rubbed his upper lip with the knuckles of his left hand. “I thought it was a good question, direct and plain, such as the oracle seems to respond to. It was when Ansul was first besieged. I asked: Will the Alds take the city? I got no answer. Or if I did, I was looking in the wrong book.”
“How did you—How do you ask?”
“You’ll see, Memer. I told Desac, tonight, I’d ask the oracle about the rebellion he plans. He knows of it only as an old story, but he knows that if it spoke it might help his cause.”
He studied me a moment. “I want you with me. Can you do that? Is it too soon?”
“I don’t know;” I said.
I was stiff with fear, cold, mindless fear. The hair on my neck and arms had been standing up ever since he began to speak of the books, the oracle books. I didn’t want to see them. I didn’t want to go where they were. I knew where they were, which books they were. At the thought of touching them my breath stuck in my throat. I almost said, “No, I can’t.” But the words stuck too.
What I finally said took me by surprise. I said, “Are there demons?”
When he did not answer, I went on, the words bursting out of me hoarse and unclear, “You say I’m a Galva, but I’m not—not only—I’m both—neither. How can I inherit this? I never even knew about it. How can I do something like this? How can I take this power, when I’m afraid—afraid of demons—the Alds’ demons—because I’m an Ald too!”
He made a little sound to halt me and soothe me. I fell silent.
He asked, “Who are your gods, Memer?”
He asked it the way he might ask me, when he was teaching me, “What does Eront say in his History of the lands beyond the Trond?” And I gathered my mind together and answered him as I would answer then, trying to say truly what I knew.
“My gods are Lero. Ennu who makes the way easy. Deori who dreams the world. The One Who Looks Both Ways. The keepers of the hearth fire and the guardians of the doorway. Iene the gardener. Luck, who cannot hear. Caran, Lord of the Springs and Waters. Sampa the Destroyer and Sampa the Shaper, who are one. Teru at the cradle, and Anada who dances on the grave. The gods of the forest and the hills. The Sea Horses. The soul of my mother Decalo, and your mother Eleyo, and the souls and shadows of all who lived in this house, the former dwellers, the forerunners, who give us our dreams. The room-spirits, my roomspirit. The street-gods and the crossway-gods, the gods of the market and the council place, tlhe gods of the city, and of stones, and the sea, and Sul.”
Saying their names I knew they were not demons, that there were no demons in Ansul.
“May they bless me and be blessed,” I whispered, and he whispered the words with me.
I stood up then and walked towards the doorway and back to the table, only because I had to move. The books, the books I knew, my dear companions, stood solid on the shelves. “What do we have to do?” I asked.
He stood up. He picked up the small lantern he had brought. “First the darkness,” he said. I followed him.
We went all the way down the long room, past the shelves where the books I feared were. The lantern gave small light, and I could not see them clearly. Beyond those last shelves the ceiling grew lower, and the light seemed less. I heard the sound of running water clearly now.
The floor had become uneven. Pavement gave way to dirt and rocks. His lame gait grew slower and more cautious.
I saw in the lantern’s flickering light a small stream of water that ran from the darkness and dropped down into a deep basin, vanishing underground. We passed the basin and followed beside the water, upstream, on a rocky path. Shadows dodged away from the lantern, quick, huge, and shapeless, running black across raw rock walls. We walked deep into a high tunnel, a long cave. The walls drew closer as we kept walking farther.
The light glittered in the water of a welling spring and trembled reflected on the rock roof above. The Waylord stopped. He raised the lantern, and shadows leapt wildly. He blew it out, and we stood in darkness.
“Bless us and be blessed, spirits of the sacred place,” his voice said, low and steady. “We are Sulter Galva of your people and Memer Galva of your people. We come in trust, honoring the sacred, following truth as we are shown it. We come in ignorance, honoring knowledge, asking to know. We come into darkness for light and into silence for words and into fear for blessing. Spirits of this place who made my people welcome, I ask an answer to my question. Will a rebellion, now, against the Alds who hold our city, fail or prevail?”
His voice made no echo off the rock walls. Silence snuffed it out utterly. There was no sound but the trickle of the spring, and my breathing, and his. It was absolutely dark. My eyes fooled me again and again, making faint lights flash, and colors blur and vanish in the black in front of me, that sometimes seemed to be right up against my eyes like a blindfold, and then deep and far as a starless sky, so that I feared to fall as if standing on a cliff’s edge. Once I thought I saw a glimmer taking form, the shape of a letter, but it went out suddenly, utterly, as a spark goes out. We stood a long time, long enough that I began to feel the rock pressing through my thin shoe soles and the ache in my back from not moving. I was dizzy because there was nothing in the world, no thing at all, only blackness and the sound of water and the pressure of the rock under my feet. No air moved. It was cold. It was still.