The library,
created by and bequeathed to the city by an earlier mercantile
prince who was much impressed by learning, strikes me as a symbol
of knowledge rearing up to shed its light into the surrounding
darkness of ignorance. Some of the city’s worst slums wash
right up against the wall enclosing its ground. The beggars are bad
around its outer gates. Why is a puzzlement. I have never seen
anyone toss them a coin.
There is a gateman but he is not a guard. He lacks even a bamboo
cane. But a cane is unnecessary. The sanctity of the place of
knowledge is observed by everyone. Everyone but me, you might
say.
“Good morning, Adoo,” I said as the gateman swung
the wrought iron open for me. Though I was a glorified sweeper and
fetch-it man, I had status. I appeared to enjoy the favor of some
of the bhadrhalok.
Status and caste grew more important as Taglios became more
crowded and resources grew less plentiful. Caste has become much
more rigidly defined and observed in just the last ten years.
People are desperate to cling to the little that they have already.
Likewise, the trade guilds have grown increasingly powerful.
Several have raised small, private armed forces that they use to
make sure immigrants and other outsiders do not trample on their
preserves, or that they sometimes hire out to temples or others in
need of justice. Some of our brothers have done some work in that
vein. It generates revenue and creates contacts and allows us
glimpses inside otherwise closed societies.
Outside, the library resembles the more ornate Gunni temples.
Its pillars and walls are covered with reliefs recalling stories
both mythical and historical. It is not a huge place, being just
thirty yards on its long side and sixty feet the other way. Its
main floor is elevated ten feet above the surrounding gardens and
monuments, which themselves cap a small knoll. The building proper
is tall enough that inside there is a full-size hanging gallery all
the way around at the level where a second floor should be, then an
attic of sorts above that, plus a well-drained basement below the
main floor. I find that interior much too open for comfort. Unless
I am way down low or way up high, everyone can watch what I am
doing.
The main floor is an expanse of marble, brought from somewhere
far away. Upon it, in neat rows, stand the desks and tables where
the scholars work, either studying or copying decaying manuscripts.
The climate is not conducive to the longevity of books. There is a
certain sadness to the library, a developing air of neglect.
Scholars grow fewer each year. The Protector does not care about
the library because it cannot brag that it contains old books full
of deadly spells. There is not one grimoire in the place. Though
there is a lot of very interesting stuff—if she bothered to look.
But that sort of curiosity is not part of her character.
There are more glass windows in the library than anywhere else I
have ever seen. The copyists need a lot of light. Most of them,
these days, are old and their sight is failing. Master Santaraksita
often goes on about the library having no future. No one wants to
visit it anymore. He believes that has something to do with the
hysterical fear of the past that began to build soon after the rise
of the Shadowmasters, when he was still a young man. Back when
fear of the Black Company gained circulation, before the Company
ever appeared.
I stepped into the library and surveyed it. I loved the place.
In another time I would gladly have become one of Master
Santaraksita’s acolytes. If I could have survived the close
scrutiny endured by would-be students.
I was not Gunni. I was not high caste. The former I could fake
well enough to get by. I had been surrounded by Gunni all my life.
But I did not know caste from within. Only the priestly caste and
some selected commercial-caste folks were permitted to be literate.
Though familiar with the vulgate and the High Mode both, I could
never pretend to have grown up in a priestly household fallen on
hard times. I had not grown up in much of any kind of
household.
I had the place entirely to myself. And there was no obvious
cleaning that needed doing right away.
It ever amazed me that no one actually lived in the library.
That it was more holy or more frightening than a temple. The
kangali—the parentless and homeless and fearless boys of the
street, who run in troops of six to eight—see temples as just
another potential resource. But they would not trouble the
library.
To the unlettered, the knowledge contained in books was almost
as terrible as the knowledge bound up in the flesh of a creature as
wicked as Soulcatcher.
I had one of the best jobs in Taglios. I was the main caretaker
at the biggest depository and replicatory of books within the
Taglian empire. It had taken three and a half years of scheming and
several carefully targeted murders to put me into a position I
enjoyed way too much. Always before me was the temptation to forget
the Company. The temptation might have gotten me had I had the
social qualifications to be anything but a janitor who sneaked
peeks into books when nobody was looking.
In quick order I conjured the tools of my purported trade, then
hurried to one of the more remote copying desks. It was out of the
way, yet offered a good line of vision and good acoustics so I
would not be surprised doing something both forbidden and
impossible.
I had gotten caught twice already, luckily both times with
Tantric books illuminated with illustrations. They thought I was
sneaking peeks at dirty pictures. Master Santaraksita himself
suggested I go study temple walls if that sort of thing appealed to
me. But I could not help feeling that he began to harbor a deep
suspicion after the second incident.
They never threatened me with dismissal or even punishment, but
they made it clear I was out of line, that the gods punish those
who exceed caste and station. They were, of course, unaware of my
origins or associations, or of my disinclination to accept the
Gunni religion with all its idolatry and tolerance for
wickedness.
I dug out the book that purported to be a history of
Taglios’ earliest days. I would not have been aware of it had
I not noticed it being copied from a manuscript so old that much of
it had appeared to be in a style of calligraphy resembling that of
the old Annals I was having so much trouble deciphering. Old
Baladitya, the copyist, had had no difficulty rendering the text in
modern Taglian. I have salvaged the moldy, crumbling original. I
had it hidden. I had a notion that by comparing versions I could
get a handle on the dialect of those old Annals.
If not, Girish could be offered a chance to translate for the
Black Company, an opportunity he ought to pounce on considering the
alternative available at that point.
I already knew that the books I wanted to translate were copies
of even earlier versions, at least two of which had been
transcribed originally in another language entirely—presumably
that spoken by our first brothers when they came down off the plain
of glittering stone.
I started at the beginning.
It was an interesting story.
Taglios began as a collection of mud huts beside the river. Some
of the villagers fished and dodged crocodiles, while others raised
a variety of crops. The city grew for no obvious reason beyond its
being the last viable landing before the river lost itself in the
pestilential delta swamps, in those days not yet inhabited by the
Nyueng Bao. Trade from upriver continued overland to “all the
great kingdoms of the south.” Not a one of those was
mentioned by name. Taglios began as a tributary of Baladiltyla, a
city great in oral histories and no longer in existence. It is
sometimes associated with some really ancient ruins outside the
village of Videha, which itself is associated with the intellectual
achievements of a “Kuras empire” and is the center of
ruins of another sort entirely. Baladiltyla was the birthplace of
Rhaydreynak, the warrior king who nearly exterminated the Deceivers
in antiquity and who harried the handful of survivors into burying
their sacred texts, the Books of the Dead, in that same cavern
where Murgen now lay entombed with all the old men in their cobwebs
of ice.
Not all this was information from the book I was reading. As I
went, I made connections with things I had read or heard elsewhere.
This was very exciting stuff. For me.
Here was an answer for Goblin. The princes of Taglios could not
be kings because they honored as their sovereigns the kings of
Nhanda, who raised them up. Of course Nhanda was no more and Goblin
would want to know why, in that case, the Taglian princes could not
just crown themselves. There were plenty of precedents. From the
looks of the history of the centuries before the coming of the
Black Company, that had been the favorite pastime of anybody who
could get three or four men to follow him around.
I overcame a powerful urge to rush ahead and look for the era
when the Free Companies of Khatovar exploded upon the world. What
had happened before that would help explain what had happened when
they did.
The library,
created by and bequeathed to the city by an earlier mercantile
prince who was much impressed by learning, strikes me as a symbol
of knowledge rearing up to shed its light into the surrounding
darkness of ignorance. Some of the city’s worst slums wash
right up against the wall enclosing its ground. The beggars are bad
around its outer gates. Why is a puzzlement. I have never seen
anyone toss them a coin.
There is a gateman but he is not a guard. He lacks even a bamboo
cane. But a cane is unnecessary. The sanctity of the place of
knowledge is observed by everyone. Everyone but me, you might
say.
“Good morning, Adoo,” I said as the gateman swung
the wrought iron open for me. Though I was a glorified sweeper and
fetch-it man, I had status. I appeared to enjoy the favor of some
of the bhadrhalok.
Status and caste grew more important as Taglios became more
crowded and resources grew less plentiful. Caste has become much
more rigidly defined and observed in just the last ten years.
People are desperate to cling to the little that they have already.
Likewise, the trade guilds have grown increasingly powerful.
Several have raised small, private armed forces that they use to
make sure immigrants and other outsiders do not trample on their
preserves, or that they sometimes hire out to temples or others in
need of justice. Some of our brothers have done some work in that
vein. It generates revenue and creates contacts and allows us
glimpses inside otherwise closed societies.
Outside, the library resembles the more ornate Gunni temples.
Its pillars and walls are covered with reliefs recalling stories
both mythical and historical. It is not a huge place, being just
thirty yards on its long side and sixty feet the other way. Its
main floor is elevated ten feet above the surrounding gardens and
monuments, which themselves cap a small knoll. The building proper
is tall enough that inside there is a full-size hanging gallery all
the way around at the level where a second floor should be, then an
attic of sorts above that, plus a well-drained basement below the
main floor. I find that interior much too open for comfort. Unless
I am way down low or way up high, everyone can watch what I am
doing.
The main floor is an expanse of marble, brought from somewhere
far away. Upon it, in neat rows, stand the desks and tables where
the scholars work, either studying or copying decaying manuscripts.
The climate is not conducive to the longevity of books. There is a
certain sadness to the library, a developing air of neglect.
Scholars grow fewer each year. The Protector does not care about
the library because it cannot brag that it contains old books full
of deadly spells. There is not one grimoire in the place. Though
there is a lot of very interesting stuff—if she bothered to look.
But that sort of curiosity is not part of her character.
There are more glass windows in the library than anywhere else I
have ever seen. The copyists need a lot of light. Most of them,
these days, are old and their sight is failing. Master Santaraksita
often goes on about the library having no future. No one wants to
visit it anymore. He believes that has something to do with the
hysterical fear of the past that began to build soon after the rise
of the Shadowmasters, when he was still a young man. Back when
fear of the Black Company gained circulation, before the Company
ever appeared.
I stepped into the library and surveyed it. I loved the place.
In another time I would gladly have become one of Master
Santaraksita’s acolytes. If I could have survived the close
scrutiny endured by would-be students.
I was not Gunni. I was not high caste. The former I could fake
well enough to get by. I had been surrounded by Gunni all my life.
But I did not know caste from within. Only the priestly caste and
some selected commercial-caste folks were permitted to be literate.
Though familiar with the vulgate and the High Mode both, I could
never pretend to have grown up in a priestly household fallen on
hard times. I had not grown up in much of any kind of
household.
I had the place entirely to myself. And there was no obvious
cleaning that needed doing right away.
It ever amazed me that no one actually lived in the library.
That it was more holy or more frightening than a temple. The
kangali—the parentless and homeless and fearless boys of the
street, who run in troops of six to eight—see temples as just
another potential resource. But they would not trouble the
library.
To the unlettered, the knowledge contained in books was almost
as terrible as the knowledge bound up in the flesh of a creature as
wicked as Soulcatcher.
I had one of the best jobs in Taglios. I was the main caretaker
at the biggest depository and replicatory of books within the
Taglian empire. It had taken three and a half years of scheming and
several carefully targeted murders to put me into a position I
enjoyed way too much. Always before me was the temptation to forget
the Company. The temptation might have gotten me had I had the
social qualifications to be anything but a janitor who sneaked
peeks into books when nobody was looking.
In quick order I conjured the tools of my purported trade, then
hurried to one of the more remote copying desks. It was out of the
way, yet offered a good line of vision and good acoustics so I
would not be surprised doing something both forbidden and
impossible.
I had gotten caught twice already, luckily both times with
Tantric books illuminated with illustrations. They thought I was
sneaking peeks at dirty pictures. Master Santaraksita himself
suggested I go study temple walls if that sort of thing appealed to
me. But I could not help feeling that he began to harbor a deep
suspicion after the second incident.
They never threatened me with dismissal or even punishment, but
they made it clear I was out of line, that the gods punish those
who exceed caste and station. They were, of course, unaware of my
origins or associations, or of my disinclination to accept the
Gunni religion with all its idolatry and tolerance for
wickedness.
I dug out the book that purported to be a history of
Taglios’ earliest days. I would not have been aware of it had
I not noticed it being copied from a manuscript so old that much of
it had appeared to be in a style of calligraphy resembling that of
the old Annals I was having so much trouble deciphering. Old
Baladitya, the copyist, had had no difficulty rendering the text in
modern Taglian. I have salvaged the moldy, crumbling original. I
had it hidden. I had a notion that by comparing versions I could
get a handle on the dialect of those old Annals.
If not, Girish could be offered a chance to translate for the
Black Company, an opportunity he ought to pounce on considering the
alternative available at that point.
I already knew that the books I wanted to translate were copies
of even earlier versions, at least two of which had been
transcribed originally in another language entirely—presumably
that spoken by our first brothers when they came down off the plain
of glittering stone.
I started at the beginning.
It was an interesting story.
Taglios began as a collection of mud huts beside the river. Some
of the villagers fished and dodged crocodiles, while others raised
a variety of crops. The city grew for no obvious reason beyond its
being the last viable landing before the river lost itself in the
pestilential delta swamps, in those days not yet inhabited by the
Nyueng Bao. Trade from upriver continued overland to “all the
great kingdoms of the south.” Not a one of those was
mentioned by name. Taglios began as a tributary of Baladiltyla, a
city great in oral histories and no longer in existence. It is
sometimes associated with some really ancient ruins outside the
village of Videha, which itself is associated with the intellectual
achievements of a “Kuras empire” and is the center of
ruins of another sort entirely. Baladiltyla was the birthplace of
Rhaydreynak, the warrior king who nearly exterminated the Deceivers
in antiquity and who harried the handful of survivors into burying
their sacred texts, the Books of the Dead, in that same cavern
where Murgen now lay entombed with all the old men in their cobwebs
of ice.
Not all this was information from the book I was reading. As I
went, I made connections with things I had read or heard elsewhere.
This was very exciting stuff. For me.
Here was an answer for Goblin. The princes of Taglios could not
be kings because they honored as their sovereigns the kings of
Nhanda, who raised them up. Of course Nhanda was no more and Goblin
would want to know why, in that case, the Taglian princes could not
just crown themselves. There were plenty of precedents. From the
looks of the history of the centuries before the coming of the
Black Company, that had been the favorite pastime of anybody who
could get three or four men to follow him around.
I overcame a powerful urge to rush ahead and look for the era
when the Free Companies of Khatovar exploded upon the world. What
had happened before that would help explain what had happened when
they did.