CHAPTERFIVE
“Tell me what this says.”
Rhys pushed a clay tablet across the table, then leaned back into his chair. Malachi tore his eyes away from his knuckles, which were inexplicably scratched. He didn’t remember hurting himself, but his hands looked like he’d fought his way through thorns. He took a deep breath and looked down at the library table, frowning when he saw the smooth clay in front of him.
“This says nothing.”
“Look again.”
“Rhys, there’s nothing…” He felt, rather than saw, a tremor from the corner of his eye. “Wait. There is something—”
“Don’t look at it.”
He looked, growling in the back of his throat when the shadow disappeared.
“I told you not to look,” Rhys said. “Take a minute to close your eyes, then look again. This time, don’t try. Let your mind absorb it without conscious thought.”
Malachi closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and looked again, staring at the center of the tablet as ghostly figures teased the edges of his vision. He didn’t focus on them. The letters seemed to take on a life of their own, crawling tentatively from the edges of the tablet until they formed beneath his gaze. When the letters seemed more solid, he let out the breath he’d been holding and allowed his eyes to finally focus on the top of the tablet, looking first right, then left. Instinct guided him as the characters turned into syllables in his mind. The syllables turned into words he translated instantly.
“‘And Leoc, giver of visions and bearer of prophecy, returned to the heavens,’” he began, reading aloud. “‘His daughters bear his mark, the mark of the seer, though their eyes now glimmer only faintly with their father’s gift.’” The story went on, talking about the gifts of prophecy some of the female of his race were given. The tablet was old, and though the writing had been completely worn away, he could still read the words that had been written by an ancient hand. When he finally looked up, Rhys was watching him with a measuring stare.
“Your natural magic is as strong as it ever was. In fact, I think it’s actually stronger. A young scribe just starting his training would have had to meditate on that tablet for hours before the writing revealed itself.”
“What language is it?”
“Greek. Medieval period. It’s one of the earliest tablets this scribe house produced. Most of the older documents were taken to the master libraries in Vienna many years ago when human interference became more of a concern.”
“And I can read it because…”
“Because you’re a scribe. We can see and decipher any written language with little to no practice.” Rhys slid another document in front of him, this one a sheet encased in a clear plastic sleeve that held tiny rows of black characters. “Try this one.”
Malachi frowned for a moment, then said, “It’s a tax record. Of… barley?”
“That’s a Sumerian tax ledger copied from the original clay tablet three hundred years ago.”
“Why would we preserve a tax ledger?”
Rhys frowned, as if he’d never considered that before. “Why wouldn’t we?”
“Well…” He frowned, not wanting to offend.
“Irin scribes preserve knowledge, Malachi. It’s our mission.” Rhys scooted forward and leaned over the table, clutching the edges of the tablet. “Battling the Grigori. Protecting humans. These are all secondary pursuits, and a necessary evil of this fallen world. But preserving knowledge is our purpose. It is what we were born to do.”
“But why is a tax ledger important?” Malachi picked up the plastic sleeve that contained what must have been hours of work.
“Maybe it’s not important to you,” Rhys said. “Or me. Maybe it won’t be important for one hundred years. Or five hundred.” Rhys shrugged. “Maybe it will never be important. But if it is, it will be there. If the knowledge is needed, it will not have been lost. To lose knowledge is a tragedy. As you learn more about yourself, about our world, don’t forget that. This”—he motioned to the shelves of books and scrolls around him—“is our purpose. Beyond the fighting. Beyond the struggles. This is what scribes were born to do.”
Malachi nodded and ignored the voice in his head that told him sitting in the library with Rhys was most definitely not what he’d been born to do. What he’d been born to do was help his mate, who was somewhere in the world, suffering without him. The urge to get up and leave the library was hard to resist.
“I know you must be feeling stifled,” Rhys said. “Frustrated. But until we have some direction on where to look for Damien and Ava, it’s no use rushing off. We’d be just as well to stay here and try to figure out what you can and can’t do.”
Malachi pushed the Sumerian manuscript back toward Rhys. “I can read ancient languages and understand them. So useful. What else can I do?”
Rhys ignored the sarcasm and held up his hand. On the inside of his left wrist was a swirl of ancient letters, almost too small to read across the table. They curled around in a spiral until the words crawled up his forearm, then twisted and wrapped around his arm like a snake.
“You can do this.”
A low hunger started in his belly. Something in the dark corners of his memory told Malachi that this was something he wanted. “Talesm.”
“Talesm.”
“Our magic.” Malachi rubbed hands over his bare forearms.
Rhys took a deep breath before he spoke. “Irin have two kinds of magic. Natural magic, which we are born with—the kind that lets you read any language in front of you and see words even after they’ve been erased from the physical eye—and learned magic. Both were gifted to us by our fathers.”
“The angels?”
Rhys nodded. “Our books say that when the Forgiven left the earth, the Creator allowed them to hide a shadow of heavenly magic within their children. But not everything. That had been their mistake with their first children. They had given them too much power. So much that some had to be destroyed. Before they left, they divided their magic. To their sons, they gave the gift and power of the written word. To their daughters, the songs of the ancients, along with gifts of healing, foresight, and discernment.”
Malachi remembered the story on the clay tablet. “The daughters of Leoc?”