Chapter One, continued
Fosco
sat down to translate a few more pages before retiring. It had been a good evening, but he was glad to have the
chamber to himself again. The tower
was his retreat, his place of refuge and rejuvenation; sometimes he just needed
to be alone.
He worked steadily
for almost an hour. He wanted to
finish this before Elias left again, if indeed the old man had to leave.
Elias was really the only person Fosco could turn to for guidance in
these translations. Iys was not
what one would call an educated place, being occupied by farmers, mostly.
The quill in
Fosco's hand moved quickly, scratching out letters in the common language of Par
Telion. In his left hand he held
the blue sapphire, almost too big for his thumb and forefinger to grasp, and so
deep a blue it might have been made of the sea itself.
Fosco held the stone up to the candlelight.
Such a beautiful blue, he thought. It
seemed to sparkle more brilliantly within the soft silver ring of Milly's hair.
He pressed
the gem to the parchment on the dark table before him, the last page of
Hinirim's The Battle of Par Molten. Taking off his spectacles, he squinted at the stone, trying
to translate the runes on the page beneath it.
He exerted his will on the sapphire and it began to glow, casting a soft
cerulean light upon the chamber. A
faint scent of heather perfumed the air. Under
the soft blue glow of the sapphire the runes on the page became intelligible,
and Fosco wrote out their meaning in the common language on his own parchment.
Fosco
could speak and read several Eludoi languages, and most times he could work out
the translations without the stone's assistance.
He had long since mastered all the great writers of the Second Thread:
Ridimin, Alamon – even the prolific Fillian.
But ancient texts like this one of Hinirim's could be troublesome and
time consuming--until, that is, he had discovered the secret of the stone.
It had been
two months now, and still Fosco did not feel quite comfortable using it.
It seemed like, well, like cheating somehow. And
why hadn't he told Elias about it? Something
held him back, and that bothered him.
He paused and
looked out at the dark sky. Al-Astir the Guide was twinkling low on the western horizon,
bright even in the light of the full moon.
The star was Fosco's inspiration, one of the reasons he had chosen this
tower for his library. He called
this chamber the Seeing Room because its two large windows formed the eyes of
the Tower. In ancient times the
tower had been known as the Eye of West, and the Eludoi lookouts would stand
here and watch for the return of their ships.
Fosco had among his manuscripts the account of Inimir, the last Eludoi
watchman. The final passage from
that account came to him now:
I go, and
with my departure the Eludoi story comes to an end.
So it goes with all whom time traps in its web.
My people built cities, wrote lore, and grew in numbers.
To what end? Time takes all
at the last, except for those who can escape its clutches.
Will we escape it where we go? Perhaps.
At
times like these Fosco imagined that he was an Eludoi himself, ageless and wise,
a keeper of the ancient lore. But
the Eye of the West no longer kept watch for anything.
The last Eludoi ship had departed hundreds of years ago, never to return.
The watchtowers stood abandoned, even by Men and Underlanders.
The west tower now housed Fosco Brandystout's library, the largest
collection of Eludoi lore in all of Wyndham Eld, perhaps in all the Known Lands.
Ancient texts and manuscripts overran tired shelves in old guard rooms and
common halls. Pen and parchment had
taken the place of sword and shield. The
tower that had watched the last of the great Eludoi hosts disappear over the sea
had become an archive of Eludoi knowledge. The Eye of the West now looked
inward.
Outside the ancient fortress, two dark figures watched Mossdown Manor from
atop a small knoll to the south. The
moon had slipped out from under the clouds and in its glow the south tower
scowled at the world like a ghost, pale and forbidding.
Like the People it represented, it was the smallest of the three towers,
yet was the most ominous and gloomy, especially in the moonlight.
Neither the man nor the hound liked the look of it.
The hound growled,
sniffing the chill wind as it drifted from the manor to their concealed
location.
"Easy
Hunter," said the one-eyed man. The man stood tall and lean on the hill, and a glint of steel
could be seen under his black cloak. He
blew into his cupped hands then reached down and scratched the hound's ears.
"I feel them too." He
looked east to where the silver-tipped treetops marked the edge of the forest.
"They're out there in the darkness, drawn to the stone."
The hound's
silver-black coat shone in the moonlight. It
looked up at its master with yearning eyes.
"Patience," the warrior murmured. He stroked his thin beard and adjusted the glossy black patch
that covered his left eye. A line
of silver traced the scar from under the patch to the edge of his cheek.
Looking to the sky
he noted somberly that a storm was gathering in the west.
Suddenly a winged shape passed overhead.
The man dropped softly to his knees, placing a hand on the hound's
shoulder.
"There he is.
We've come at the right time. He's
making for the West Tower. Come,
Hunter. It's time."