198) The Salvation of Eden, Chapter 31: The psychic, the library, and the clue
“Strrrrong as a plow’orse…” Lenny murmured as they walked down the lane from the Inn. Their laughter rolled out across the fields, even Dev joining in. She had perked up a little since leaving the Inn and getting out into the cool night air. Kohra glanced over at her, feeling better than she had in a long time.
“That’s some LightSinger we’ve got with us,” Dev commented, shaking her head. Kohra watched her curls glisten in the sky-light. She wanted to change the subject away from Juanita and Gorb and anything to do with the Inn. She wanted to keep them Here, together, walking under the beautiful skyflows, walking down the road towards Something Special, something they could share, just the three of them.
“What do you want to do tonight?” she asked, smiling at Dev.
Lenny raised a leather pouch, jingling with coins. It looked suspiciously like Gorb’s. “We’re gonna buy us an arrow.”
“What?” Kohra was surprised. “Why an arrow?”
“Because the psychic lady told me to,” Lenny replied, matter-of-fact.
Devona snorted derisively. “You actually went to see her?”
Lenny nodded, like it should have been obvious. “She’s nice. And fantastically weird.”
“Of course she’s nice and weird!” Devona half-shouted. “That’s her whole schtick, Lenny! It’s how she makes a living! Didn’t you ever learn about this? She probably started by asking you very generic things, like, ‘Hey young lady, do you like horses?’ or ‘Have you lost an important person in your life?’ or ‘Do you feel like people sometimes just don’t understand you?’”
Kohra looked kind of sideways at Devona, feeling a little exposed. How did Dev know so much about her?
Lenny shrugged casually. “Nope. She told me to buy an arrow.”
Devona’s eyebrows raised. “That’s it? Buy an arrow?”
Lenny shrugged. “Yep. A very specific arrow.”
“So you stole money from Gorb to buy some ‘special arrow’ that the psychic lady told you to buy?” Devona’s tone made it clear that she thought this was the dumbest idea in the worlds.
Lenny shrugged. “Yep.”
“What’s so special about this arrow?” Kohra asked.
Lenny shrugged. “She says we’ll need it.”
“And you believe her!!??” Devona shouted.
Lenny shrugged. “Yep. She’s the psychic, not me.” If anything, her shrugs were getting more exaggerated.
“Lenny, it’s a scam,” Devona tried to explain. “She probably has deals with other merchants.” She rolled her eyes as if that was SO obvious. Lenny craned her neck to look up at the skyflows.
Devona continued. “It works like this – tourists, like you, come into town and go to see the so-called psychic. She then tells them, hey, go buy this very specific thing off this very specific merchant in town, because, uh, yeah, it’ll be really super-important! And the dumb schmucks who believe her hand over their hard-earned money, buy some piece of junk, and the ‘psychic lady’ and the merchant laugh at the stupidity of tourists, while they split the money!”
Lenny shrugged, and kept walking.
After an awkward silence, Kohra asked again, “So, what do you want to do tonight?”
Lenny replied immediately, in the same bright voice as the first time, “We’re gonna buy us an arrow!” She jangled Gorb’s pouch again.
Dev turned on her. “You’re actually serious?”
Lenny shrugged. “Yep.”
“How much is it anyway?” she asked.
Lenny jingled the pouch just like before. “This much.”
Devona gasped. “That’s all Gorb’s money!”
Lenny shrugged. “Yep.”
“But you can’t do that!”
Lenny shrugged. “Yes I can.”
“What are you going to tell him when he freaks out because ALL HIS MONEY is gone?” Devona shouted.
Lenny shrugged. “Nothing. I’ll say, ‘Ohhh Hells Gorb, that sucks!’ And YOU, will do exactly the same thing.”
Devona stared at her. “Sometimes I don’t get you.”
Lenny shrugged. “That’s good. It’d be pretty boring if people were totally predictable.”
Madame Mystere was waiting for them in her shop, staying open extra late like she’d promised Lenny earlier. She wore purple silk robes, heavy make-up, her long greying hair piled on top of her head and held in place with what looked like painted bones. The small, smoky room was filled with satin cushions and semi-transparent curtains, the air thick with perfume. A single candle, perched on an altar, lit the room. Devona rolled her eyes again as they stepped inside, thinking that it couldn’t possibly be more cliché.
Madame Mystere reached out with one heavily tatooed hand, and gave Lenny a slender, black, steel-reinforced cylinder, capped at both ends with copper. Lenny handed over Gorb’s pouch (which Madame Mystere didn’t even open, Kohra noticed). “You can only use this once, but it will kill any spider, even the great Goddess of Spiders herself.” Then, as though she was dispensing a piece of free advice, she added, “But I wouldn’t save it for her,” and cackled.
Kohra did think she was trying much too hard to come across as “mysterious.”
But Lenny seemed oblivious, thanking her and turning around with the hugest grin on her face, like a little kid opening birthday presents. Devona smirked while Kohra smiled politely.
As they turned to leave, the woman spoke again, in a deep husky voice, different from before. “You won’t find what you are looking for, Devona.” Devona paused momentarily, half-turning around, but then walked out the door without looking back.
Kohra lingered a moment longer, searching the woman’s face for any clue, anything at all. Madame Mystere gazed back with great sadness. “You will, my dear. But it won’t bring you what you think it will.” Then she blew out the single candle and the room plunged into sudden darkness.
“Thank you.” Kohra quietly shut the door behind her.
Now that they had bought the arrow and accomplished Lenny’s goal for the night, they wandered aimlessly through the town. “Let’s go to the Temple!” Devona suggested suddenly, pointing towards the impressive pyramid that anchored one end of the town. “It’s still open; I don’t think it ever closes.”
“Yes!” Kohra was enthusiastic. She loved things that were so ancient their timelessness felt palpable, like a texture you could touch with your fingers, or a scent you could smell as you breathed in the sheer magnitude of time’s indifference. “Let’s check it out!”
They ambled up the marble steps into Athena’s side of the pyramid, Kohra and Devona both being attracted to the topic of Wisdom. Kohra marveled at every step, drinking in everything from the subtle details carved into the statues, to the profundity of the poems written onto huge banners that hung across the top of the ceiling, to the spectacular murals painted onto every part of the walls, to the simple fact that the stones they were walking on were rounded and grooved, a testament to the passage of uncountable feet that had trod a collective memory into the stones themselves.
The deeper they penetrated into the temple, the more awestruck she became, transfixed by the beauty and nuance and sheer scale of it all. Suddenly, a melody danced through the air, coming from everywhere all at once.
Devona pointed up and Kohra, looking more carefully, realized that the ceiling was constructed of pipes, like the entire temple was a gigantic pipe organ. Dev whispered, “The wind outside makes the song. Their equivalent of LightSingers, they call them Hearers, interpret the song, believing it to be the actual voices of the Goddesses, dispensing wisdom to all who can Hear.”
“Oh wow, I love that,” Kohra breathed.
They walked around, keeping to the outside of the central worship area, along with quite a few other people, as though this was exactly what this area was for. Kohra noticed, with considerable embarrassment, that most people were walking slowly and meditatively, not gawking around pointing at stuff like tourists.
She was about to point this out when Lenny, gawking around, caught her attention, pointing to a hand-lettered wooden sign, suspended from the ceiling by thin silver chains: “Library” — with an arrow pointing down a corridor.
Kohra couldn’t believe their luck, forgetting her embarrassment of a moment before. A library! Here in Annuvin! She wondered what kind of books people like the Hammerites would keep in a library. She barely dared to hope that there’d be something in Old Elvish. But, as always, every time she entered a library, she sent up a prayer, not to the Gods, but to the Flux, to the raw Source of Magic itself, that it may please, PLEASE, finally reveal its secrets to her.
This was one of Kohra’s very-most-deepest-wishes-of-all-her-life – to be a Master of Shaping, a true Mage, like the ones in the stories who could wield the Old Magic. She believed, secretly in her heart, that it was her destiny, although she was far too embarrassed to admit that to anybody, anybody except Dev. It was their “special secret.” Kohra felt that it bonded them somehow, surely for life. She imagined the two of them studying and learning and practicing together, until they became Mages, and could stand side by side against any foe. Together, she was sure, they could do anything. Even…be happy.
As it turned out, the library was impressive, far more extensive than what any of them had expected. Most obviously displayed were volumes, upon volumes, upon volumes, of history and geneology; it seemed that the Hammerites were extremely proud of their history, and religiously traced their bloodlines back through many centuries, maybe even as far back as the Lost Age.
Kohra cracked a few of them open, but it was impossible to make sense of anything in a few minutes. She wandered her way through the huge collection on agriculture and animal husbandry and, surprisingly, a whole section on how to build aqueducts and water purification systems. It was highly technical, and there were a lot of diagrams. Kohra didn’t understand any of it, although she did like looking at the diagrams.
There was also a small section called Philosophy. But nothing in Old Elvish, at least nothing that she could find. She leafed through some of the Philosophy volumes. It was mostly a collection of fragments of pages, many of them hand-written. One page caught her eye, probably because it looked like a poem, drawn inside a heart, like the kind of heart a little kid would draw. The poem was written in some kind of purple waxy substance.
“The Heart Sutra – Form is Emptiness, Emptiness is Form.”
She had no idea what that meant, but she liked the sound of it. She repeated quietly to herself, “Form is emptiness. Emptiness is form.”
She looked around to see what the others were doing, catching sight of Lenny, who was at the front desk, talking to a tall woman with a grey braid that hung low down her back. It looked like Lenny was signing out a book! Kohra ambled over, trying to look casual, but neither Lenny nor the librarian paid attention to her, deep as they were in conversation.
Before Kohra could make out what they were saying, Devona whispered, “Psssst, Kohra!” and excitedly waved her over.
She took one more look at Lenny, who was putting a large, green tome with brown strapping on the cover, into a sack and shaking hands with the librarian. Then she turned to Devona, who was surrounded by books, having taken about 20 volumes off the shelves and scattered them, open, all over the table.
“I found it!” she exclaimed, pointing at a page.
“Huh?” Then Kohra gasped. It was the symbol from the Hooded Man’s horse – a twisted-crescent, with an eye inside! She read the caption aloud — “History of the Zhaalmohhrians!”
“SHHHHHH!! It’s a LIBRARY!!” Lenny hissed, loud enough they could hear it from the other side of the room. Nobody else was in the library other than themselves and the librarian, who was at that moment laughing, not at all quietly, at Lenny.
Kohra turned back to the page, reading the passage Devona had discovered.