Without looking up, Sephris said, 'Only two of the three on this seventeenth day of the sixth month.'
'Sephris?' Jak asked hesitantly. 'Are you all right?'
Sephris looked up. Dark circles colored the skin under his eyes.
'Indeed, Jak Fleet. Better than I have been in some time.' He put his hand on the half-sphere and grinned. In that smile, Cale saw madness, or conviction. 'I can't see it,' Sephris continued. 'It is a dominant variable, but so dominant that I don't know. I cannot solve it.'
Cale's heart sank as the import of those words registered. Sephris didn't know what the sphere was. They had wasted a day.
'Come here,' Sephris said, and waved them toward the desk.
Cale and Jak walked across the library, each careful to avoid stepping on any of Sephris's work papers.
'Never mind those,' Sephris snapped. 'Come here.'
The half-sphere sat on the desk, inert, inscrutable even to Oghma's Chosen. Cale stared at it. He didn't know what he would do next.
Sephris smiled at them. His eyes were bloodshot and intense. His hair stuck up at odd angles. He nodded at the half-sphere.
'I cannot solve it! You have presented me with a premise for which I cannot craft a proof. For that, I thank you.'
'Thank us?' Jak asked.
Sephris nodded and said, 'Indeed. I have thought for some time that there was nothing that I could not solve, given time. I am pleased to be wrong.'
Cale picked up the half-sphere. The gemstones within the quartz caught the light and twinkled, taunting him. He was glad for Sephris-since Sephris seemed to be glad-but he was also disappointed that they knew nothing more than they had the day before.
'We're pleased for you, old man,' said Cale, 'but we'd hoped for more. We need to know what this is, and if you can't-'
'I know what it is, Erevis Cale,' Sephris cut in, smiling broadly. 'I simply do not know its fate. Except that it is entangled, infinitely entangled, with you two.'
Cale stared at him hard and asked, 'How do you know my name?'
'Because I solved you, First of Five.'
'What-'
Only then did Sephris's words register.
He knew what the sphere was!
Cale held up the half-sphere and managed to keep the emotion out of his voice when he said, 'Tell us.'
'Yes, tell us,' Jak echoed.
Unlike Cale, Jak's voice betrayed the excitement he felt.
Sephris held out his hands for the half-sphere and asked, 'May I?'
'Of course,' Cale answered and handed it to him. Cale was surprised to see that his own hands were shaking.
'Imagine the sphere intact,' Sephris said, and he pointed to the green gem-cut in half-set in the exact center of the half-sphere, 'and note the emerald set in its center.'
'All right,' Jak said, smiling, eager. 'Go on. Go on.'
Cale nodded.
'Imagine that the emerald is-' Sephris tapped one of the planets represented by his orrery, the one third from the sun-'Abeir-Toril. Our world.'
Cale's arms went gooseflesh.
'What?' Jak asked. 'What?'
Cale cleared his throat as the implications of Sephris's statement hit him. 'Then the other gems are …?'
'Stars,' Sephris said. 'And planets … other celestial bodies. Including some that are visible in our sky only once every few centuries.'
Jak reached out a hand for the half-sphere though he did not touch it.
'How can you be sure, Sephris?' the halfling asked. 'It doesn't look like anything.'
The loremaster-Cale thought that Sephris had earned the title-chuckled at that.
'Jak Fleet, the motion of the heavens can be represented by a mathematical model as easily as… the volume of a sphere. I'm certain. Observe.'
Sephris turned the small crank on the orrery. The bronze gears of the mechanism turned and the eight planets began to circle the sun.
'You see? Their motion is predictable, understandable, solvable.' Sephris's voice turned wistful as he continued, 'The movement of the heavens is applied mathematics in its purist form.' He looked down at Jak, who stared wide-eyed at the orrery. 'And so I am certain. I suspected that the sphere might be a representation of the heavens when first you showed it to me, but some of the unusual heavenly bodies represented by gems in the sphere caused me to doubt, but I resolved those.'
'Unusual?' Cale asked, intrigued.
Sephris nodded and said, 'Indeed. As I mentioned, some of the celestial bodies represented in the sphere appear in our sky to the unaided eye only rarely.'
Cale thought he understood. If he imagined himself standing on the emerald, the gems in the sphere represented the celestial heavens surrounding Toril.
'So it's a map,' Cale concluded.
'Trickster's toes,' Jak oathed, and snapped his fingers. 'A map. Of course. But a map to where?'
Cale's mind raced. Why would Vraggen and Azriim risk so much for a map of the stars? They could simply look up at the night sky with a spyglass and obtain the same information. The sphere would tell them little more than Sephris's orrery.
'It is a map, at least of sorts,' Sephris acknowledged, but gave a secretive smile. 'The most elaborate, complete representation of the heavens that I have ever seen. It must have taken months to craft.' He indicated his orrery and added, 'This is paltry in comparison. But the sphere is more than a mere map.'
In a rush, it all came together in Cale's mind. Sephris had described the motion of the heavens as predictable, but he had also said that some of the celestial bodies represented in the sphere appeared only rarely. In that instant Cale knew what the sphere was: It was a picture of the sky at a particular point in time.
'It's a timepiece,' he breathed.
Sephris looked at Cale with raised eyebrows, obviously surprised that he had made the connection.
'Indeed,' said the loremaster. 'It could be nothing else.'
Jak frowned and asked, 'A timepiece? Like a Neverwinter clock? How?' Before Cale could explain, realization dawned on the halfling's face. 'Because then-movement is predictable, because some of the gems-some of the celestial bodies, I mean-appear only rarely.' He looked at Cale, smiling. 'So it's not a map to a where …'
'It's a map to a when,' Cale finished, and could not keep the excitement from his voice. He looked to Sephris. 'When?' he asked, but knew the answer the moment the words came out of his mouth.
Sephris shook his head, frowned, and said, 'I cannot tell with only half of the sphere.'
Cale should have realized that, of course.
Sephris sank into his desk chair with an audible sigh. Exhaustion showed on his face. Cale realized that the loremaster had hardly mentioned numbers at all since they'd entered the library. Fatigue must have quelled his mania.
'Can you determine anything, Sephris?' Jak asked. 'Does it show a time in the past?'
Sephris shook his head and answered, 'The future, I believe, Jak Fleet. The future.'
The halfling looked at Cale with raised eyebrows. Now they knew that Vraggen wanted the sphere to tell him when something would occur. . but what? Cale looked at Sephris.
'If we had the other half of the sphere,' he asked, 'you could tell us the time?'
'Easily.'
Cale nodded. That was something.
'Cale …' Jak began.
'Let's discuss it outside,' said Cale.
