The boy looked up and hooked Carnelian with his eyes. Carnelian withstood their brilliance with some difficulty. 'Give me your lantern,' the boy said.
Carnelian obeyed. He watched the boy walk off between the benches in a ball of light that was fringed with the glitter of beadcord. He followed him. They passed through seemingly endless numbers of chambers with the boy a black shape always in front of him haloed by the light. At last, they reached a door, its silver scarred with locks.
'Your moon-eyed door,' the boy said.
Thank you,' said Carnelian.
The boy gave a nod.
As he was turning away, Carnelian reached up and touched his shoulder. The boy looked at the hand as if it were the mouth of a snake. Carnelian withdrew it and found himself blushing.
'I was wondering…?'
The boy gazed at him.
'Would you consider teaching me to read the beads?'
The boy frowned. He stared down at his hands. They were long-fingered, clever hands. They looked so like marble that Carnelian was startled when a finger moved.
The boy was gazing at him. 'Be here at the rising of the sun and forget the sword.' He gave Carnelian the lantern, turned and disappeared into the darkness.
As Carnelian came back up into the Sun in Splendour, he felt as if he were returning from the Underworld. He looked back down the steps. The meeting with the boy seemed almost a dream. What had possessed him to arrange to go back and see him? As he made his way back to his chamber, Carnelian realized that he did not even know the boy's name.
BEADCORD
Fingers will read what eyes cannot see
With hands the deaf shall hear
Mutes shall speak with borrowed tongues
When the storm clouds draw near
Before dawn, Carnelian lost hold of the edge of a dream and woke. He rose, cleansed himself, dressed, put on his mask and went out from his chamber. The watch guardsmen looked up at him with weary eyes. He stopped them kneeling with a gesture. They began to shuffle together an escort. He told them he had no need of them. When they sneaked glances at each other, he gave assurances that he would be safe.
He encountered no-one on his way to the trapdoor. He lit the steps with his lantern. Removing his mask to see more easily, he made his way down and then along the dark nave. All the way he kept telling himself that this was madness. The moon-eyed door was closed. He widened the lantern's beam and raked the shadows with it looking for the boy. No-one was there.
As he lowered the lantern its light washed around his feet. The door's huge eye stared tearfully over his head into the hall's black heart.
'Well, that's a relief,' he lied, as the disappointment washed over him.
The silver trembled as one of the leaves slid away, slicing the eye in two. Someone came out through the gap. It was the boy. His bright face made the door's silver look like lead. For a moment they gazed at each other. Then, saying nothing, the boy turned and disappeared. Unease blew out of the gap like a draught but still Carnelian followed him.
Through the mazing library Carnelian followed, watching the boy's white feet tread the edge of his lantern's light. They stopped between a wall and a beadcord bench where a niche cut back into the stone. Lifting his light, Carnelian saw one of the curious chairs on which the boy had sat the previous day.
The boy took the lantern from Carnelian and indicated that he should sit on the chair. Carnelian sat. He fingered the spike that rose from the end of the chair's left arm. The boy put the lantern down and turned to face one of the bench's spindles. He took hold of its topmost reel, lifted it free and then threaded it down onto the empty spindle next to it. He lifted the second reel from the original stack and turned with it in his hands. It could have been a human head wrapped in a jewelled cloth. Hoisting it, the boy impaled it on the chair arm's spike.
'What are you doing?' asked Carnelian.
The boy's hands were moving over the reel's beadcord. 'Hush!' He saw Carnelian's frown. 'In a web, a single vibration can bring the spider.'
'You mean the Wise?' whispered Carnelian.
'Do not look so fearful. I would know if one of them was near.'
'I am not fearful,' protested Carnelian, glancing over the boy's shoulder to scan for any movement in the chamber.
'Haaa,' the boy muttered with satisfaction as he found the beadcord's end. He pulled at it and the reel turned smoothly, glittering.
'First, we must teach you the basics. This is the most elementary beadcord I could find.' His fingers slid along from the end until they reached a faceted ring of bronze. This bead is where the reel's text begins.'
Carnelian peered at it.
'No, close your eyes. It is your fingers that must see.'
Carnelian held it then closed his eyes.
'What do you feel?' whispered the boy.
'It is angular, regular.'
'And?'
Carnelian shrugged.
'Is it not also cold? That shape with coldness will always tell you that you are at the beginning.
This here is the title of the reel.'
Carnelian opened his eyes to see the boy running his finger from the bronze bead along the twenty or so beads to the cord's end. The reel rattled as the boy yanked a long length of it, hand over hand. He coiled it up in his left, felt along it with his right.
'Here.' He offered Carnelian another bead to feel. This bead marks the beginning of a section and can be used to move accurately and rapidly backwards and forwards along the cord.' The boy pointed down to Carnelian's feet. 'You can respool the cord with that treadle.' Carnelian could see nothing, so he felt around with his toes until he found a plate. As he pushed, it gave way and the reel beside him turned a little, sighing some beads through the boy's hands.
'Here, take it.' The boy gave the loops of beadcord to Carnelian who pushed down with his heel then with his toe, and as he did so felt the cord spitting out of his grasp as it wound onto the reel.
'It is like a spinning wheel,' Carnelian whispered, smiling.
The boy nodded, all the time watching the reel. Reaching forward, he closed his hand over Carnelian's, lifting and dropping it in a smooth rhythm. 'Move it up and down so that it winds back evenly.' He examined the reel. 'If it is done untidily, a Sapient would know that someone unauthorized had been reading it.'
The soft warmth of the boy's hand contrasted with a hardness at its edge. As the boy took his hand away, Carnelian saw the blood-ring. He had thought him too young to have one.
The bones of the beadcord,' the boy whispered, once the cord was again taut and Carnelian had hold of nothing but its end, 'are the syllable beads.' He found some examples. Carnelian tried to memorize their shapes as the boy sounded them for him. 'Any text could be coded just with these, but perhaps to speed up reading – though I suspect more for secrecy – many words are represented by a single, special bead.'
'Like glyphs,' whispered Carnelian.
