This book, though, was holy. He opened it to one of the pages marked with a reed. Inside were scribbles.
Frenetic, bombastic, majestic scribbles that had been painstakingly copied from the walls of his former bedroom. Sketches laid atop one another, lists of numbers that seemed to make no sense, lines upon lines upon lines of script written in a cramped hand.
Madness. And genius.
Here and there, Taravangian could find hints that this writing was his own. The way he wiggled a line, the way he wrote along the edge of a wall, much like how he would write along the side of a page when he was running out of room. He didn’t remember any of this. It was the product of twenty hours of lucid insanity, the most brilliant he had ever been.
“Does it strike you as odd, Adro,” Taravangian asked the scholar, “that genius and idiocy are so similar?”
“Similar?” Adrotagia asked. “Vargo, I do not see them as similar at all.” He and Adrotagia had grown up together, and she still used Taravangian’s boyhood nickname. He liked that. It reminded him of days before all of this.
“On both my most stupid days and my most incredible,” Taravangian said, “I am unable to interact with those around me in a meaningful way. It is like… like I become a gear that cannot fit those turning beside it. Too small or too large, it does not matter. The clock will not work.”
“I had not considered that,” Adrotagia said.
When Taravangian was at his stupidest, he was not allowed from his room. Those were the days he spent drooling in a corner. When he was merely dull-minded, he was allowed out under supervision. He spent those nights crying for what he had done, knowing that the atrocities he committed were important, but not understanding why.
When he was dull, he could not change policy. Interestingly, he had decided that when he was too brilliant, he was also not allowed to change policy. He’d made this decision after a day of genius where he’d thought to fix all of Kharbranth’s problems with a series of very rational edicts—such as requiring people to take an intelligence test of his own devising before being allowed to breed.
So brilliant on one hand. So stupid on another. Is that your joke here, Nightwatcher? he wondered. Is that the lesson I’m to learn? Do you even care about lessons, or is what you do to us merely for your own amusement?
He turned his attention back to the book, the Diagram. That grand plan he had devised on his singular day of unparalleled brilliance. Then, too, he’d spent the day staring at a wall. He’d written on it. Babbling the whole time, making connections no man had ever before made, he had scribbled all over his walls, floor, even parts of the ceiling he could reach. Most of it had been written in an alien script—a language he himself had devised, for the scripts he had known had been unable to convey ideas precisely enough. Fortunately, he’d thought to carve a key on the top of his bedside table, otherwise they wouldn’t have been able to make sense of his masterpiece.
They could barely make sense of it anyway. He flipped through several pages, copied exactly from his room. Adrotagia and her scholars had made notations here and there, offering theories on what various drawings and lists might mean. They wrote those in the women’s script, which Taravangian had learned years ago.
Adrotagia’s notes on one page indicated that a picture there appeared to be a sketch of the mosaic on the floor of the Veden palace. He paused on that page. It might have relevance to this day’s activities. Unfortunately, he wasn’t smart enough today to make much sense of the book or its secrets. He had to trust that his smarter self was correct in his interpretations of his even smarter self’s genius.
He shut the book and put down his spoon. “Let us be on with it.” He stood up and left the cabin, Mrall on one side of him and Adrotagia on the other. He emerged into sunlight and to the sight of a smoldering coastal city, complete with enormous terraced formations—like plates, or sections of shalebark, the remnants of city covering them and practically spilling over the sides. Once, this sight had been wondrous. Now, it was black, the buildings—even the palace—destroyed.
Vedenar, one of the great cities of the world, was now little more than a heap of rubble and ash.
Taravangian idled by the rail. When his ship had sailed into the harbor the night before, the city had been dotted with the red glow of burning buildings. Those had seemed alive. More alive than this. The wind was blowing in off the ocean, pushing at him from behind. It swept the smoke inland, away from the ship, so that Taravangian could barely smell it. An entire city burned just beyond his fingertips, and yet the stench vanished into the wind.
The Weeping would come soon. Perhaps it would wash away some of this destruction.
“Come, Vargo,” Adrotagia said. “They are waiting.”
He nodded, joining her in climbing into the rowboat for tendering to shore. There had once been grand docks for this city. No more. One faction had destroyed them in an attempt to keep out the others.
“It’s amazing,” Mrall said, settling down into the tender beside him.
“I thought you said you weren’t going to be pleased any longer,” Taravangian said, stomach turning as he saw one of the heaps at the edge of the city. Bodies.
“I am not pleased,” Mrall said, “but in awe. Do you realize that the Eighty’s War between Emul and Tukar has lasted six years, and hasn’t produced nearly this level of desolation? Jah Keved ate itself in a matter of months!”
“Soulcasters,” Adrotagia whispered.
It was more than that. Even in his painfully normal state, Taravangian could see it was so. Yes, with Soulcasters to provide food and water, armies could march at speed—no carts or supply lines to slow them—and commence a slaughter in almost no time at all. But Emul and Tukar had their share of Soulcasters as well.
Sailors started rowing them toward shore.
“There was more,” Mrall said. “Each highprince sought to seize the capital. That made them converge. It was almost like the wars of some Northern savages, with a time and place appointed for the shaking of spears and chanting of threats. Only here, it depopulated a kingdom.”
“Let us hope, Mrall, that you make an overstatement,” Taravangian said. “We will need this kingdom’s people.” He turned away, stifling a moment of emotion as he saw bodies upon the rocks of the shore, men who had died by being shoved over the side of a nearby cliff into the ocean. That ridge normally sheltered the dock from highstorms. In war, it had been used to kill, one army pressing the other back off the drop.
Adrotagia saw his tears, and though she said nothing, she pursed her lips in disapproval. She did not like how emotional he became when he was low of intellect. And yet, he knew for a fact that the old woman still burned a glyphward each morning as a prayer for her deceased husband. A strangely devout action for blasphemers such as they.
“What is the day’s news from home?” Taravangian asked to draw attention from the tears he wiped away.
“Dova reports that the number of Death Rattles we’re finding has dropped even further. She didn’t find a single one yesterday, and only two the day before.”
“Moelach moves, then,” Taravangian said. “It is certain now. The creature must have been drawn by something westward.” What now? Did Taravangian suspend the murders? His heart yearned to—but if they could discover even one more glimmer about the future, one fact that could save hundreds of thousands, would it not be worth the lives of the few now?