Bailey Baz's Arc

Chapter 6 of 44

Bailey reached the tower at dusk. Vines gripped its stones. Inside, the binding rite ran along a curved wall, cut deep in old marks. He pressed his hand to the carvings the way he had learned. But the tower's marks were older, tangled, wrong to his touch. He read three words and stopped. Guess wrong, he knew, and the rite would name him the prisoner instead of Malachar. The totem hung heavy at his chest. He could not risk it. He needed a key to the old tongue. He remembered a place half-drowned in the swamp. Stone halls swallowed by black water, from an age before his own. He waded there through cold reeds. Broken columns leaned over the doorway. Water covered the lower shelves. But higher shelves still held rows of ruined books. Bailey climbed. His muddy feet slipped on wet stone. He pulled book after book from the shelf. Most crumbled to pulp in his hands. Then he found one bound in dark leather, its pages dry. Strange marks filled every page, the same shapes cut into the tower wall. A guide to the lost tongue. As he opened it, the ferret's warning returned. Malachar heard through creatures. Bailey listened. Water dripped. Nothing spoke. He sat on the ledge and worked. He matched the book's marks to the words he had read in the tower. Slowly the meaning came. The rite was a chain of names and commands. One line set who would be bound. One line set who would speak. He copied them onto his palm with mud, tracing each shape until he was sure. When he closed the book, the totem grew warm. Malachar's voice slid through the empty hall, thin and patient. "You learn my old tongue, warden," the voice said. It came from a beetle on the wall, its jaws clicking out the words. "Read on. Bring your work close, and I will help you say it right." Bailey did not answer. He knew the trick. Near the deep water, the totem would break, and he would become the emperor's hands. He crushed the beetle under his heel. The voice stopped. He carried the book back to the tower through the dark. Inside, he set it open beside the carved wall. Now he could read the whole rite. Line by line, he checked the marks against the book. The words that would bind Malachar were clear. The words that would trap the speaker were clear too. He would never confuse them again. Bailey traced the true binding line with his finger. He did not speak it. Not here, so far from the deep water where Malachar waited. To bind the emperor, he must carry these words to the deep water himself, and carry the totem with them. The one thing Malachar wanted most. He rolled the book under his arm. The rite was solved. Now came the harder walk.