The passage now plaguing Timha was in one of many sections of the work that appeared to have nothing whatsoever to do with thaumaturgy. It was, however, referenced twice in the notes that the black artist Hy Pezho had left in the margins of his plans. Valmin had gone over the passage twice and found nothing of interest, and now Timha was reviewing it only because he could think of nothing else to do.
The panic among the senior staff had been growing daily in the months since the Bel Zheret's visit. They'd elected not to tell the rest of the group about the approaching deadline. What good would it do? Everyone understood the urgency of the project.
Timha reached the end of the page and realized that he had no idea what he'd just read. He went back to the top of the page and tried to find where he'd left off, but recognized nothing. He had to flip back three pages to find the passage at which he'd stopped paying attention.
'We are bound by division,' the paragraph began. 'Categories mean nothing at depth. All Gift is flow. Eternal, unchanging. We refuse eternity, refuse what we unsee, and so must make what we can see and judge. It is our nature, but it is also our failing.'
What the hell did any of that mean? It was all loopy doublespeak as far as Timha could tell. More to the point, it had nothing to do with reitic mechanics whatsoever. What Timha needed was a derivation of Folding that would solve the energy containment equations. He needed a solution to Vend-Am's inequality with a resulting force greater than the square of its input vectors. The Commentaries contained not a single spell, no concatenations of triggered bindings, nothing that might ever be remotely considered to be practical thaumatics.
They were all going to die. There was nothing for it. It had become clear to Timha that Hy Pezho's talents had not only been greater than anyone had imagined, but they were greater than any of them could comprehend. And as a result, everyone here was going to die. Bel Zheret didn't make idle threats. They were Mab's personal secret police, loyal as hounds. The ultimatum had come from Mab herself.
There was no possible way that the Project would be finished in the time remaining to them. Even if Timha had discovered the innermost secrets of the universe in Beozho's Commentaries, there wasn't enough time to translate that into a working weapon.
Master Valmin, who'd been sleeping in his chair, sat up with a start. 'How goes it, journeyer?' he asked, already knowing the answer.
'The Commentaries are still as opaque and meaningless as ever,' said Timha, without looking up.
Valmin leaned back in his chair. 'I discovered at university that, in a pinch, I could get high marks in my history classes by writing term papers about that book.'
Timha looked at him. 'Really?'
'Oh yes,' said Valmin with a rueful smile. 'None of the professors wanted to admit that they didn't understand the thing, so they never argued with anything that I said.'
Timha laughed, weakly. Valmin was looking off into the distance.
After a few minutes' silence, Valmin rose from his chair and stretched slowly. He strode to Timha's side and patted the younger man on the shoulder.
'All will be well, journeyer. All will be well.'
But all would not be well. And they both knew it.
Timha waited a short while, pretending to examine a book by an Annwni lunatic named Prae Benesile. Benesile's tortured writing made the Commentaries seem downright lucid by comparison. None of the thaumaturges here in the Secret City had ever even heard of Benesile, but his books were referenced more than once in the marginalia of Hy Pezho's plans for the Einswrath. But if Beozho's work was tangential at best, Prae Benesile's were beyond unconnected. This particular text, for instance, was entitled Thaumatical History of the Chthonic Religion.
Pointless. Folly.
'I'm going to go study in my room for a while,' he said.
Valmin didn't even look up, just grunted and waved. Timha carefully gathered a very specific set of documents, along with a few innocent books and scrolls, and left the room, breathing hard.
Timha took the books and papers back to his room and dumped them on the table. He would look at them in the morning.
But his desperation would not let him rest. He picked up a book-it just so happened to be the Prae Benesile book again-and opened it at random. The first line completed a sentence from the previous page: 'bound like the Chthonic gods at Prythme.' Timha sat and stared at that line, which meant nothing to him, until he heard a knock on the door.
It was Master Valmin. 'Journeyer, I'm afraid I've just received some terrible news. It's your mother. She's passed away.'
Timha broke down crying. But not for his mother. Not much, anyway.
