'Very much like glyphs. I have chosen this reel because it is composed mostly of syllabic beads. You must learn these before you progress on to the more esoteric ones.'
'Were you taught the beadcord by the Wise?'
The boy smiled enigmatically. 'You think that likely?'
Carnelian shrugged.
'Well, I taught myself.'
They allow this?'
The boy looked up at him with raptor eyes. They cannot forbid what they do not know. It is one of the arts the Wise keep jealously to themselves.' He rotated his hand to take in the surrounding gloom. 'I have counted more than six twenties of these chambers. Each has an average of twenty benches. Each bench can hold two dozen reels on its spindles. There is enough beadcord here to weave a garment that would clothe Osrakum's crater.'
Carnelian touched the reel. 'Each of these is a book?'
The boy wavered his hand. Three or four together can form a book. In contrast, a single reel can contain a dozen reports.'
Carnelian tried to imagine it all. 'A vast accumulation,' he sighed.
The exquisite distillation of millennia of dreaming and analysis.'
'And you can read all of it?'
The boy shook his head. 'If only I could. Much is hidden from me. This blind reading is a deep art. Some of the beadcord is as smooth as a snake.' He displayed his finger ends. These ten are like the eyes of fish in a muddy pool. The eight of the Wise see further than eagles. I have read a reel claiming that only the blind can see past the bright, false and shifting mirages of our mortal world into the immortal and immutable truth of the divine. It is said that the Wise do not only see what has been but what is yet to be. As in the glyph that represents them, they look over their left shoulder into prophecy.'
'Are they born blind?'
'No. At first they are like you and me, though of imperfect blood. They rise up from the flesh tithe that the Wise themselves impose upon the impure, marumaga children of the Great. After gelding, the candidates begin their studies in the Labyrinth. Those with winged minds soar up into the rarefied regions of the Wisdom. At every height there are those who can climb no further. Failing, they fall. They become the quaestors, the higher ammonites, the eunuchs of the forbidden house.'
'Blinding seems a poor reward for such a struggle. I had thought it punishment.'
'You are not completely wrong. The mutilations were imposed long ago when one of the Wise betrayed his trust. The imperial Commonwealth has her foundation in their silence.'
They are mute?'
They have only a single sense. Touch.'
'Surely they can taste and smell.'
The boy shrugged. 'It is rumoured that they retain a faint capacity to taste bitterness. That aside, they are in our world only by their skin. When they have achieved the highest wisdom that is allowed to those with eyes and ears, they are locked away. Each eye is sliced out like a stone from a peach. The red spirals of their hearing are cored from their heads and the fleshy shells shorn off. Caustic inhalations burn away their smelling and afterwards the useless meat of their nose is discarded. Their tongues are drawn out and harvested like the saffrons of a crocus. Once his mutilations are complete, a Sapient is left only feet and hands as the primary organs of his perception. Remote from seductive sensation, they can be entrusted with the deeper secrets. In the caverns of their cool uncluttered minds they are made capable of measuring the currents of our vast world minutely.'
They have their homunculi,' whispered Carnelian, seeking some salve for his pity, his revulsion.
The boy nodded. 'For each Sapient, his own, unique homunculus is a bridge into the outer world that if once removed leaves him as isolated as a rock in the midst of the sea.'
Carnelian looked off, understanding. 'No treasure chamber could be made more secure.'
The boy gazed at him, then snapped his eyes away to look at the beads. 'I thought you wanted to learn touch reading.'
Carnelian flinched at the harshness in the boy's voice. He took the beads and, slowly, they continued to work through the bead shapes. Concentrate as hard as he could, he still had to go back many times. His fingers became as raw as his mind, but the boy was relentless and Carnelian swallowed his complaints.
At last, the boy moved to the lantern and closed its shutter. For a while Carnelian could still see him standing there, but with each blink, his ghost image dimmed until Carnelian was in perfect darkness.
'Why…?' he whispered.
'Here in the library, darkness is the beginning of true seeing.'
Carnelian fumbled on through his lesson, coaxing words from the beads till he began to hear them speaking in his mind as if the beads were calling up through his hollow fingers.
The lesson is at an end,' said the darkness.
Carnelian was in a dream. As his fingers lost hold of the beads their voices went silent in his mind. 'But I have learnt so little,' he whispered.
'You can learn more, tomorrow. Wind the cord.'
When he pushed the treadle it gave an alarming rattle. Carnelian stopped.
'Why have you stopped?' whispered the dark.
The noise…'
'Our voices and not the treadle are alien here.'
Carnelian worked the treadle until he felt the end of the beadcord in his hand. Something brushed his finger and the cord was gone. He heard the reel being replaced on its spindle and then the other two being slipped down over it.
Carnelian felt another's skin link its warmth to his.
Take my hand’ whispered the boy.
Carnelian closed his fingers over the hand as carefully as if it were a throat. The lantern…?'
'I have it,' whispered the boy, firming the grip.
Carnelian was pulled off the chair. He became a ship being towed through a starless night. At first his steps were tentative, anticipating collision, but after a while they grew confident in the boy's impossible ability to see in blackness. Their footfalls dulled as they passed each archway and swelled again towards the centre of each new chamber.
The boy loosed his grip. Carnelian felt adrift, frightened. The lantern flared to life. He hid his eyes until he could bear it. With his free hand, the boy opened the silver door. Carnelian followed him out into the round hall. The boy held out the lantern and Carnelian took it.
The same time tomorrow?' Carnelian said quickly, as the boy turned away.
The boy looked back, nodded.
'I am Suth Carnelian,' Carnelian said before the boy could turn away again.
The boy gazed into the distance. Carnelian could see his reluctance to give up his name. 'I am of the House of the Masks,' the boy said at last.
They looked at each other, Carnelian willing him to say his birth name. The boy lowered his eyes. What shame was there in coming from the God Emperor's own House? Unless…? It came to Carnelian then. He realized whence the resemblance that had been nagging him came. He looked at the boy's face and imagined another identical beside it, sybling-joined. The likeness to the Lords Hanus was unmistakable.
'You have a twin?' Carnelian asked, letting the boy know that he knew what he was and did not mind.
The boy looked up. He raised an eyebrow. 'I do.'
Carnelian pushed warmth out into a smile. Although the boy was an unjoined sybling, his blood-ring proved that he was Chosen. His behaviour suggested that he was ashamed of his low blood-rank. In spite of being fathered by the Cods, his concubine mother must have badly tainted his blood.
'Can you not guess what my name is, then?' the boy said, both his eyebrows rising.
Carnelian shook his head, frowned. 'Should I?'
A slow smile spread over the boy's face. 'I am Osidian.'
'I am honoured to know you, Osidian.' Carnelian was glad that he was free of the blood pride that might
