I felt warmth, his warmth, a light touch on my arm. We murmured the blessing and turned round. Turning, I became dizzier, disoriented. I didn’t know which way I was facing in this utter dark—had I turned halfway or clear round? I reached out and found him there, the warmth, the touch of the cloth of his sleeve; I took hold of it and followed him. I wondered why he did not light the lantern, but dared not speak. It seemed a long way we went, far longer than the way in. I thought we were going the wrong way, deeper and deeper into the dark. I wouldn’t believe it when I first began to see a change, a dimness growing out of darkness ahead of us, not visibility yet but the promise of it. I let go his arm then. But he, lame, took my arm, and held it till we could see our way.
When we were in the room again the space around us was airy and welcoming, and everything was distinct, full of a warm light, even down here at the cave end, the shadow end.
He looked at me searchingly. Then he turned and went to the shelves that had been built where the rock of the cave mouth gave place to plastered wall. Through the plaster here and there a rough cornice of rock stuck out. The shelves were set into the wall, not built out from it. On them were books, some small, some large and coarsely bound, some standing, others lying, maybe fifty or so in all. Some shelves were empty or held only a volume or two. The Waylord looked at the shelves as one does when seeking a book but not certain which or where it is, scanning. He looked again at me.
I looked at once for the white book, the book that had bled. I saw it instantly.
He saw where I was looking. He saw that I could not take my eyes from it. He went forward and took the white book from the shelf
I stepped back when he did so, I couldn’t help it. I said, “Is it bleeding?”
He looked at me, and at the book; he let it fall open gently in his hands.
“No,” he said. He held it out to me.
I took another step back from it.
“Can you read it, Memer?”
He turned it and held it out to me again, open. I saw the small, square, white pages. The right-hand page was blank. On the left-hand page there were a few words written small.
I took a hard step forward, and a second step, my hands clenched. I read the words aloud: Broken mend broken.
The sound of my voice was terrible to me, it was not my voice at all but a deep, hollow; echoing sound swelling out all round my head. I cried out, “Put it back, put it away!” and turned and tried to walk back towards the lamp that shone in a sphere of gold far off at the other end of the room, but it was like walking in a dream, I could move my legs only slowly; heavily. He came and took my arm, and together we made our way back. It grew easier for me as we went. We reached the reading table. That was like coming home, coming into firelight out of the night, a haven.
I sat down in the chair with a great, shuddering sigh. He stood a little while stroking my shoulders gently, then went round the table and sat down facing me, as we had been before.
My teeth chattered. I wasn’t cold any longer, but my teeth chattered. It was a while before I could make my mouth obey me at all.
“Was that the answer?”
“I don’t know,” he murmured.
“Was it—was it the oracle?”
“Yes.”
I took a while longer to bite my lips, which felt stiff
as cardboard, and tried to make my breath come evenly.
“Had you read in that book before?” I asked him.
He shook his head.
“I saw no words,” he said.
“You didn’t see—on the page—?” I gestured, to show that the words had been on the left-hand page, and I saw my fingers begin to write the letters on the air. I made them stop.
He shook his head.
That made it even worse.
“Was—what I said, was it the answer to the question you asked?”
“I don’t know,” he said.
“Why didn’t it answer you?”
He said nothing for quite a while. At last he said, “Memer, if you had asked the question, what would it have been?”
“How can we be free of the Alds?” I said at once, and saying it I felt that again I was speaking with another voice, a loud deep voice not mine. I closed my mouth, I snapped my teeth shut on the thing that spoke through me, used me.
And yet that was the question I would have asked.
“The true question,” he said, with a half smile.
“The book bled,” I said. I was determined now to speak for myself not to be spoken through—to say what I would say, to take control. “Years and years ago, when I was little. I went down to the shadow end. I told you that, I told you part of it. I told you I thought one of the books made a noise. But I didn’t tell you I saw that one. That white book. And I took it from the shelf and there was blood on the pages. Wet blood. Not words, but blood. And I never went back. Not until tonight. I— If—If there are no demons, all right, there are no demons. But I am afraid of what is in that cave.”
“So am I,” he said.
WE WERE BOTH TIRED, but there was no question of sleep yet. He relighted the small lantern, I put out the lamp, he drew the words on the air, and we went out of the room, through the corridors, back to the north courtyard where we had sat earlier that evening. A great ceiling of stars stood over it. I blew out the lantern. We sat there in starlight, silent for a long time.
I asked, “What will you tell Desac?”
“My question, and that I received no answer.”
“And—what the book said?”
“That is yours to tell him or not, as you choose.”
“I don’t know what it means. I don’t know what question it was answering. I don’t understand it. Does it make sense at all?”
I felt that I’d been tricked, that I’d been made use of without being told what for, as if I were a mere thing, a tool. I had been frightened. Now I was humiliated and angry.
“It makes the sense we can make of it,” he said.
“That’s like telling fortunes with sand.” There are women in Ansul who, for a few pennies, will take a handful of damp sea sand and drop it on a plate, and from the lumps and peaks and scatters of the sand they foretell good fortune and bad, journeys, money ventures, love affairs, and so on. “It means whatever you want it to mean.”
“Maybe,” he said. After a while he went on, “Dano Galva said that to read the oracle is to bring rational thought to an impenetrable mystery… There are answers in the old books that seemed senseless to those who heard them. How should we difend ourselves from Sundraman? they asked the oracle, when Sundraman first threatened to invade Ansul. The answer was, To keep bees from apple blossoms. The councillors were irate, saying the meaning was so plain it was foolish. They ordered an army to be raised to build a wall along the Ostis and defend it from Sundraman. The southerners crossed the river, knocked down the wall, defeated our army; marched here to Ansul City; killed those who resisted them, and declared all Ansul a protectorate of Sundraman. Ever since then they’ve been excellent neighbors, interfering with us very little, but greatly enriching us with trade. It was not a recommendation but a warning: To keep bees from apple blossoms is to have trees that bear no fruit. Ansul was the blossom and Sundraman the bee. That’s clear now. It was clear to the Reader, Dano Galva; as soon as she read it she said it meant we should offer no resistance to Sundraman. For that she was called a traitor. From that time on the Gelb and Cam and Actamo clans said the Council should not consult the oracle, and pressed for the university and the library to be moved from Galvamand,”