The Blood Knight - J. Gregory Keyes [151]
Stephen flipped ahead and discovered to his delight that the next page was older, written in a strange but comprehensible version of Old Vitellian script. The language, however, was not Vitellian but rather a Vhilatautan dialect. Translating it might be possible, given time, but reading it wasn’t, so Stephen scanned through it.
He found the name “Kauron” many times, but it was only after two bells that he spotted what he was really searching for: the word “Velnoiraganas” juxtaposed with a verb that seemed to mean “he went.” Stephen backed up and concentrated on that section. After a moment he went rummaging about the room until he found a scrap of paper, an inkwell, and a quill. He copied most of the page word for word, then scratched out the best translation he could manage.
He departed, and not (would? could?) said why (where?) he was going. But his guide later said they went along the stream (river, valley?) Enakaln (uphill?) to hadivaisel (a town?) and thence the Witchhorn. He had talk with the (old? belly?) hadivara(?)
I went (followed?) to the base (lower part) of the horn called bezawle (where the sun never falls?) and there he bade me leave. I never saw him again.
Never, someone whispered in his right ear. He felt the aspiration, and his muscles stiffened and spasmed from the sheer terror of finding someone so close without his knowing it. He batted at the sound, swinging his right arm and stumbling away at the same time.
But there was no one there.
His mind refused to accept that, and he sent his gaze searching through the shadows. But no one could move that quickly, have his mouth against his ear in one moment and be gone the next.
But he’d felt it, a double puff of breath, because “never” had been “nhyrmh,” in Vadhiian dialect, as clear as could be, and it hadn’t been his voice.
“Who’s there?” Stephen whispered, turning constantly, unwilling to put his back to anything.
No answer came. The only sound not made by his body was the faint lisp of the candle, the only motion the play of light and shadow from that small flame. He tried to relax, but some part of him felt seized in the moment, like a fish striking bait and finding itself on a hook.
Helplessly he studied the random shifting from dim to black to lumined and gradually saw what he feared the most: that the play of light and darkness wasn’t random. That from the moment he had lit that candle he had been surrounded by something studying him more intently than he had been studying the book. Horrified, he watched glyphs and letters trace themselves on the walls and fade, always hinting at sense, never quite forming it.
“What are you?” He thought speaking aloud would help, but it didn’t. It only made things worse, as if he’d been attacked by a brute, pulled a knife, and found it made of a green leaf.
The woorm reared up. The utin crouched in the corner. The greffyn stalked out of the edge of his sight. He felt as if he were in a house painted in gay colors, yet when he leaned against the wall, it crumbled, revealing the rotten wood full of termites and weevils.
Only it wasn’t a room but the walls of the world, the bright illusion of reality shattering to reveal the horror that lay behind.
Nearly weeping, he dragged his eyes from the shadow and back to the candle.
The flame had formed a little face with black round eyes and a mouth.
With a stifled shriek he snuffed the light, and darkness poured in to comfort him. He moved to the window and crouched there on the cold stone, chest heaving, trying to collect his wits, trying to believe it hadn’t happened. He drew his legs and arms up and hugged himself, feeling his heartbeat gradually slow, afraid to move lest he somehow bring it all back.
He heard another voice, but this one wasn’t in his ear. It was a perfectly normal voice, up the corridor.
The book. He reached up and found it with his fingers. He could feel the old vellum section. This might be his last chance to