Ann shrugged. “Perhaps.”
“Well, I can quote it. The copy we had back in the vaults, anyway. I went through this book, testing it against my memory.”
For some reason, Ann’s stomach was churning with anxiety. She began to dread that the copy they had back in the vaults at the palace might have had fraudulent prophecy filling in what the original author had left blank. That was almost too overwhelming a deception to contemplate.
“And what did you discover?” she asked.
“That I can quote this original exactly. No more, no less.”
Ann sighed in relief. “Nathan, that’s wonderful. That means that our copy wasn’t filled with fabricated prophecy. Why would you be troubled because you can’t remember blank places? They are blank, there is nothing there. There is nothing to remember.”
“The copy we had back at the palace didn’t have any blank places.”
Ann blinked as she thought back. “No, it didn’t. I remember it well.” She offered the prophet a warm smile. “But don’t you see? If you can quote this one, no more or no less, and you learned it from our copy, then that means that whoever made the copy simply pulled the text together rather than include the meaningless blank places left by the original prophet. The prophet probably left blank places as a provision in case he had any further visions about the prophecies and he needed to add to what he had already written. Apparently, he never had that need, so the blanks remain.”
“I know that there were more pages in our copy.”
“I’m not following you, then.”
This time it was Nathan who threw up his hands. “Ann, don’t you see? Here, look at the book.” He turned it toward her. “Look at this next-to-last branch of prophecy. It’s one page and then six blank pages. Do you remember any branch of prophecy in our copy of The Glendhill Book of Deviation Theory that was only one page? No. None were this short. They were too complex. You know that there is more to the prophecy, I know there is more to the prophecy, but my mind is as blank as these pages. What was there is not only missing from the book, but it’s missing from my mind as well. Unless you can quote me the rest of the prophecy that you know should be there, then it’s missing from your mind as well.”
“Nathan, that’s just not—I mean, I don’t see how…” Ann sputtered in confusion.
“Here,” he said as he snatched a book from behind him. “Collected Origins. You must remember this.”
Ann reverently lifted the book from his hands. “Oh, Nathan, of course I remember it. How could one forget such a short but beautiful book.”
Collected Origins was an exceedingly rare prophecy in that it was written entirely in story form. Ann loved the story. She had a soft spot for romance, although she never admitted it to anyone. Since this tale of romance was actually a prophecy, that made it an official requirement that she be familiar with it.
She smiled as she lifted open the cover of the small book.
The pages were blank.
All of them.
“Tell me,” Nathan said in that quietly commanding, deep Rahl voice, “what is Collected Origins about?”
Ann opened her mouth, but no words would come forth.
“Tell me, then,” Nathan went on in that quietly powerful voice of his that seemed as if it could crack stone, “a single line of this beloved volume. Tell me who it is about. Tell me how it started, how it ended, or anything in the middle.”
Her mind was stark naked blank.
As she stared up into Nathan’s cutting gaze, he leaned a little closer. “Tell me one single thing you remember from this book.”
“Nathan,” she finally managed to whisper, her own eyes wide, “you often used to keep this book in your rooms. You know it better than I do. What do you remember about Collected Origins?”
“Not…one…thing.”
Chapter 12
Ann swallowed. “Nathan, how can we both not remember a book we love as much as we do this one? And why is it that the specific parts we both don’t remember correspond to the blank spots?”
“Now, that is a very good question.”
An idea suddenly hit her. She gasped in a breath. “A spell. It has to be that these books were spelled.”
Nathan made a face. “What?”
“Many books are spelled to protect the information. I’ve not encountered it with a book of prophecy but it’s common enough in books of instruction on magic. This place was designed with the intent of concealment. Perhaps that’s what is happening with the information protected here.”
Such a spell would be activated when anyone but the right person with the required power opened it. Spells of that nature were sometimes even keyed to specific individuals. The usual method of protection if the wrong person saw the book was to erase from their memory everything they’d seen in it. They would see it and at the same time forget it. The effect in one’s mind was to blank out the text.
Nathan didn’t answer, but his scowl softened as he considered her idea. She could tell by his expression that he doubted her theory was the answer but he apparently didn’t want to argue the point just then, probably because he had something more important that he wanted to go on to.
Sure enough, he tapped a finger on top of a small stack of books standing all by themselves. “These books,” he said with a weighty undertone, “are predominantly about Richard. I’ve never seen most of them before. I find that alarming, that such books would be hidden away in a place like this. Most have extensive stretches of blank pages.”
For that many books of prophecy, especially about Richard, not to have been at the Palace of the Prophets was indeed alarming. For five centuries she had scoured the world for copies of any book she could find that contained anything at all about Richard.
Ann scratched an eyebrow as she considered the implications. “Were you able to learn anything?”
Nathan picked up the volume on the top and flipped the book open. “Well, for one thing, this symbol, here, troubles me greatly. It’s an exceedingly rare form of prophecy, undertaken while the prophet was under siege by a storm of revelation. Such graphic prophecies are drawn in the heat of a powerful vision, when writing would take too long and interrupt the rush of what is rampaging through his mind.”
Ann was only vaguely aware of such representational prophecy. She recalled a few from the vaults at the palace. Nathan had never before mentioned to her what they had been, and no one else had known. Yet another of Nathan’s little thousand year old secrets.
She bent close and studied the intricate drawing that took for itself most of a page. There were no straight lines in it at all, only curved swirls and arcs that eddied all around in a circular design that somehow seemed almost alive. Here and there the pen had dug violently into the surface of the vellum, ploughing up parallel rows of fibers where the two halves of the pen’s point had spread under the pressure. Ann lifted the book closer to a candle and carefully examined a curious place that was particularly rough. She saw in the ancient dried bed of an inky pool a fine, pointed sliver of metal: one side of the pen’s point had broken off where it had been stabbed into the page. It was still embedded there. Right after, the cleaner marks of a fresh pen began anew, although they were no less forceful.
Nothing in the ink drawing represented any identifiable subject—it appeared to be completely nonobjective—and yet it was for some reason so gravely disturbing that it made her hackles lift. It seemed as if the drawing was almost recognizable but its meaning was just outside of her conscious awareness.
“What is it?” She laid the book on the table, open to the drawing. “What does it mean?”
Nathan stroked a finger along his strong jaw. “It’s rather hard to explain. There are no precise words to describe what comes as a picture in my mind when I view it.”
“Do you think,” Ann asked with exaggerated patience as she clasped her hands, “that you could make an effort to describe to me as best you can the picture in your mind?”
Nathan viewed her askance. “The only words I can think of that fit are ‘the beast comes.’”
“The beast?”
“Yes. I don’t know what the impression means. The prophecy is partially cloaked, either deliberately or perhaps because it’s meant to represent something I’ve never encountered before, or maybe even because it’s linked to the blank pages and without their associated text the drawing won’t fully come to life for me.”
“What is it that this beast is coming to do?”
Nathan flipped the cover closed so that she could see the title: A Pebble in the Pond.
Cold sweat broke out across her brow.
“The symbol is a graphic warning,” he said.
Prophecy often referred to Richard as the “pebble in the pond.” The text of such a volume would probably be of incalculable value. If only it weren’t missing.