The vaults at the Palace of the Prophets had been filled with thousands of volumes of prophecy, but they had all been destroyed along with the palace to prevent it from falling into the hands of Emperor Jagang. Better to lose such works for all time than allow evil to look upon their pages.
But no one knew of this place. This place was hidden beneath a concealment spell. The dizzying possibilities spun through Ann’s mind.
“Nathan…this is wonderful.”
She turned and looked up at the man. He was watching her in a way that made her fidgety. She reached out and placed a hand on his arm.
“Nathan, this is more than we could ever have hoped.”
“This is something more than that,” he said cryptically as he started back. “There are books here that make me doubt my sanity,” he said with a sullen flourish of an arm.
“Ah,” Ann quipped as she followed along in his wake, “verification at last.”
He halted and turned a glare on her. “This is nothing to joke about.”
Ann felt goose flesh ripple up her arms. “Show me then,” she said in a serious tone. “What is it you’ve found?”
He shook his head, seeming to lose his momentary flash of ill humor. “I’m not even sure.” His usual flamboyance was nowhere in evidence as he moved in among the tables he’d dragged together. His dark mood turned guarded. “I’ve been sorting the books.”
Ann wanted to hurry him along and get to the meat of his discovery, but she knew that when he was troubled it was best to let Nathan explain things in his own way, especially when there was arcane speculation involved.
“Sorting them?”
He nodded. “These here in this pile don’t appear to be of any real use to us. Most are prophecy long since outdated, contain only irrelevant records, or are in unknown languages—things like that.”
He turned and slapped a hand to the top of another stack. Dust boiled up. “These here are all books that we had back at the palace.” He swept his hand back and forth in front of the stacks of books piled high on the table behind him. “All of them. This whole tableful.”
Her eyes wide, Ann glanced at the shelves and niches going back along the strange room. “There are a great many more books other than these you have here on the tables. This is only a fraction of them.”
“Indeed. I haven’t had a chance to even begin to look at them all yet. I finally decided that I’d better send Tom off to find you. I wanted you to see what I’ve discovered. That, and there is a lot of reading to do. I’ve been pulling out one book at a time, checking through it, and placing it in one of the piles on these tables.”
Ann wondered how many books could still be viable, could still be usable, after thousands of years underground. She had found books before that had been ruined by the effects of time and the elements, especially mildew and water. She peered around, inspecting the walls and ceiling, but she saw no evidence of water leaking through.
“At first glance, none of these books look to be damaged by water. How can this place underground be so dry? It would seem that water would seep in through the joints in the stone and make everything down here wet and moldy. I can hardly believe that the books appear to be in such good condition.”
“Appear being the operative word,” Nathan said under his breath.
She turned back to scowl at him. “What do you mean?”
He waved a hand irritably. “In a moment. In a moment. The interesting thing is, the ceiling and walls are sheathed in lead to help keep out the water. The place also has a shield of magic around it for even more protection. The entrance, too, was shielded.”
“But the Bandakar people have no magic and their land was sealed off. There was no one with magic to shield against.”
“That seal to their banished land finally failed, though,” Nathan reminded her.
“Yes, that’s right, it did.” Ann tapped a finger against her chin. “I wonder how that happened.”
Nathan shrugged. “How isn’t so important for now, although I am concerned about it.”
He flipped a hand, as if setting aside the issue. “For the moment, that it did is what’s meaningful. Whoever put these books here wanted them hidden and protected—and they went to a great deal of trouble to insure that they remained that way. The ungifted people here wouldn’t be hindered by shields, the weight of the stone monument would be an obstacle in and of itself, but they would have no reason to want to move it in the first place unless they had a good reason to believe something was under it. What would cause them to suspect such a thing? The fact that this place has remained undisturbed for thousands of years proves that they never realized that this place was down here. I believe that the shields were placed to ward any invaders who might eventually make it into Bandakar, like Jagang’s men did.”
“That makes sense, I suppose,” she murmured as she considered it. “Not really expecting that the seal to Bandakar would ever be breached, the shields were a simple act of precaution.”
“Or prophecy,” Nathan added.
Ann look up. “There is that.” It would take a wizard of Nathan’s ability to breach such shields. Even Ann didn’t have the ability necessary for some shields. She knew, too, that there were shields placed in ancient times that could only be passed with the aid of Subtractive Magic.
“It’s also possible that these books were simply placed here as a way of safekeeping such valuable works—in case anything happened to others of their kind.”
“You really think they would go to this much trouble to do such a thing?” she asked.
“Well, all the books at the Palace of the Prophets were lost, now, weren’t they? Books of prophecy are always at risk. Some have been destroyed, some have fallen into enemy hands, and some have simply disappeared. Places like this provide a backup for those other works—especially if prophecy foretells the need of such a contingency.”
“I guess you could be right. I have heard about rare finds of prophecy that had been secreted away to preserve them, or to keep innocent eyes from viewing them.” She shook her head as her gaze scanned the room. “Still, I’ve never heard of any find to approach the likes of this one.”
Nathan handed her a book. Its ancient red leather cover was faded nearly to brown. Even so, there was something familiar-looking about it, about the faded gilded ribs on the spine. She lifted the cover and the first blank page.
“My, my, my,” Ann softly mused as she saw the title. “The Glendhill Book of Deviation Theory. How very wonderful to hold this in my hands again.” She closed the cover and clasped the book to her breast. “It’s like an old friend come back from the dead.”
The book had been one of her favorite volumes on forked prophecy. Because it was a pivotal volume that held valuable information about Richard, she had studied it and referred to it so often over the centuries as she waited for him to be born that she practically knew it by memory. She had been heartbroken that it had to be destroyed along with all the rest of the books in the vaults at the Palace of the Prophets. There was still a great deal of information in it about the possibilities of what was yet to come.
Nathan plucked another volume from a stack and waggled it before her as he arched an eyebrow. “Precession and Binary Inversions.”
“No!” She snatched it from his hands. “It can’t be.”
None of the accounts could ever say for sure that the elusive volume had in fact ever really existed. Ann herself had hunted for it, at Nathan’s request, whenever she traveled. She’d also had trusted Sisters look for it whenever they went on a journey. There had been leads, but none of the clues ever resulted in anything but dead ends.
She looked up at the tall prophet. “Is this real? Many accounts deny that it ever really existed.”
“Missing, according to some. A mere myth, according to others. I read a little of it and by the branches of prophecy it fills in, it can only be genuine—or a brilliant fake. I’d have to study it further to tell which, but from what I’ve se
en, so far, I tend to believe it’s genuine. Besides, what purpose would there be in hiding a fake? Fakes are generally created in order to exchange them for gold.”
That was true enough. “And here it was all the time. Buried beneath the bones.”
“Along with what I suspect may be a great many other volumes that are just as valuable.”
Ann clicked her tongue as she again gazed about at all the books, her sense of awe growing by the moment. “Nathan, you’ve uncovered a treasure. A treasure of incalculable value.”
“Perhaps,” he said. When she shot him a puzzled frown, he lifted a hefty tome off the top of another stack. “You won’t even believe what this is. Here. Open it and read the title yourself.”
Ann reluctantly set down Precession and Binary Inversions in order to take the heavy book from Nathan. She set it on the table, too, and bent close. With great care, she lifted open the cover. She blinked, then straightened.
“Selleron’s Seventh Task!” She gapped at the prophet. “But I thought there was only one copy and it was destroyed.”
One side of Nathan’s mouth cocked with a quirky smile. He held up another book “Twelve Words Left for Reason. I found Destiny’s Twin as well.” He waggled a finger at a pile. “It’s in there somewhere.”
Ann’s jaw worked for a moment until the words finally came. “I thought we had lost those prophecies for all time.” The odd smile still on his lips, he only watched her. She reached out and gripped his arm. “Could we be so fortunate that there really were copies made?”
Nathan nodded, confirming her guess. The smile ghosted away.
“Ann,” he said as he handed her Twelve Words Left for Reason, “take a look through here and tell me what you think.”