The Blood Knight - J. Gregory Keyes [75]
He shook his head and tried to focus on the moment.
“It would have been written in Old Virgenyan,” he murmured. “Or perhaps elder Cavari. Her journal?”
The fratrex smiled.
Stephen rubbed his chin. “Then they actually had it,” he mused in wonder, “her journal, as recently as the Sacaratum? Incredible. And yet they made no copies—oh. There’s something in the journal, something the Hierovasi didn’t like. Is that what you’re going to tell me?”
“Indeed,” Fratrex Pell confirmed. “Actually, there were several copies. All were destroyed. The original, however, was not.”
“What? It still exists?”
“Indeed it does. One of our order fled with it and secreted it in a safe place. Unfortunately, the record of exactly where it was hidden was lost. That’s a shame, because I believe the only thing that can save us—save the world—is what is contained in that journal.”
“Wait. What? How does that follow?”
“Dreodh explained the doctrine of the wothen to you?”
“You mean their belief that the world itself has become ill?”
“Yes.”
“He did.”
“Did it make any sense to you?”
Stephen nodded reluctantly. “Somewhat. The forest, at least, seems to be dying. The monsters that now stalk the earth seem almost incarnations of sickness and death.”
“Exactly. And you will not be surprised, I think, when I tell you that this has happened before, that such beasts have existed before.”
“Legend suggests it. But…”
The fratrex raised a quieting hand. “There are no copies of Virgenya Dare’s journal, but there are a very few, very sacred scrifti that reference it. I will show you those, of course, but let me summarize them now. This sickness comes to the world periodically. If it is not stopped, it will destroy all life. Virgenya Dare found a way to halt it once, but how she did so we do not know. If the secret exists anywhere, it will be in her journal.”
“According to your own doctrine, however, lacking the journal, this story is just so much noise.”
“Lacking the journal, yes,” the fratrex said. “But we haven’t been completely complacent. We have unearthed two clues as to its whereabouts; one is a very old reference to a mountain named Vhelnoryganuz, which we believe to be somewhere in the Bairghs. The other is this.”
From his lap the fratrex produced a slender cedar box and pushed it toward Stephen. He reached for it gingerly and lifted off the top. Inside was a worn roll of lead foil.
“We can’t read it,” the fratrex said. “We’re hoping you can.”
“Why?”
“Because we need you to find the journal of Virgenya Dare,” the fratrex said. “I repeat: Without it, I fear we are all of us doomed.”
LEOFF WOKE to a faint rasping at his door.
He did not move but instead opened his eyes a slit, trying to think his way through the mind-mist that had followed him back from sleep.
His jailors never took so long at the door. They put their keys in, the keys turned, the door opened. And he had come to recognize the sound of a key in the lock. No, this was higher in pitch, a smaller piece of metal.
Before he could decide exactly what that meant, the scratching stopped, the door swung open, and in the low-guttering light of his oil lamp, he saw a shadow pass through it.
Leoff couldn’t think of any reason to continue with the pretense that he was asleep. Instead, he swung his legs down from the bed and placed his feet on the floor.
“Have you come to kill me?” he asked the shadow softly.
It really was a shadow, or at least something his eye had difficulty penetrating. It resisted even being categorized as a particular shape. More than anything, it felt like the blind spot in the corner of his eye—except that this spot stood directly in front of him.
As he continued to stare, the umbra softened somehow, gaining definition, and figured into a human form clad in loose black breeches and a jerkin. Gloved hands reached up and brought down the hood.
Reality, Leoff had discovered, was the sum of a series