“That’s because you were,” Farr said. Travis noticed he did not gaze at Grace. Instead, his dark eyes were on Vani. “We all were. We were being torn apart by the pull of infinite possibilities, of infinite fates. Each of us might have lived our lives in countless other ways. I think what we felt were those different lives intersecting, overlapping. And canceling one another out, like sound waves can cancel each other out if aligned properly.”
“Is that why they were both screaming?” Grace said. “To neutralize the other?” She looked at Nim, but the girl seemed suddenly shy and hung her head, letting her hair cover her face.
Travis wasn’t certain he completely understood all this, yet Farr’s words feltright. Only when Ti’an and Nim had screamed, it hadn’t affected him as it had the others. With Ti’an’s attention focused on Nim, her spell of seduction had lost its hold on Travis. He had been able to stand, take the knife in his hands, and use it against her. But why hadn’t he been affected by her scream like the rest of them?
“Only a dead man has no fate,” Grace murmured.
Had she heard his thoughts? No, the Weirding was too weak for that now. All the same, she had understood what he was thinking. He felt Farr’s eyes on him. However, before he could say anything, Larad’s excited voice came from across the chamber.
“Look at these markings. They’re fascinating—more like pictures than writing. I feel I should almost be able to understand them.”
“Do not stray too far from Nim!” Vani called out to the Runelord.
The girl raised her head and touched Vani’s arm. “It’s all right, Mother. It’s safe here now.”
Travis shut his eyes, again feeling the hum all around him. “I think she’s right. I think what she and Ti’an did together . . . I think it pulled the threads of fate, untangling them.” He opened his eyes. “And now that Orú is dead, they won’t tangle again. What have you found, Master Larad?”
The Runelord was running his hands over the wall. “It’s a story.”
“A story of what?” Farr said, approaching.
Vani, Nim, Grace, and Travis followed. Then Travis saw the markings, and in an instant he understood.
“Everything,” he said softly. “It’s the story of everything.”
He moved past Larad, to the wall, tracing the carvings in the stone with a finger.
“They’re like the pictographs we saw in the cave beneath Tarras,” Grace said, turning around. “Only there are so many of them. It would take ages to try to translate them all.”
She was right about the first part. These were indeed like the carvings they had found beneath Tarras: stylized symbols that were not quite art, not quite writing, but something in between. Only it wouldn’t take time to translate them, because Travis understood the symbols as clearly as if they were moving before him like stick figure actors pantomiming a play. Ti’an had granted him more than he thought when she put him under her spell. Or was it something else? Was it the very air of this place that transmitted the meaning of the symbols to him, just as it transmitted the actions, even the feelings, of the others? He could sense Grace’s sharp curiosity behind him, and Farr’s more urgent craving for knowledge.
“Travis?” Grace said, and he sensed rather than saw her take a step toward him.
“I can read them, Grace.” His hands felt hot, and the carvings seemed to shimmer when he passed his fingers over them. He touched two stick figures standing side by side. Small dots fell from the arm of one of them, while the other held a curved knife. “Somehow I can read them all.”
“Maybe because he wrote them,” Larad said, and though Travis’s back was turned he knew the Runelord had pointed toward the throne.
No, that wasn’t it. Here were more symbols. The one stick figure sat on a chair. The other stood behind, still holding the knife. “It was she,” Travis said. “Ti’an. She’s the one who made these.”
He moved left, running his hands over the wall, going back to the beginning.
“Here he is—King Orú. Only he wasn’t a king then. Morindu hadn’t been built yet. It was just him and his tribe in the desert. And then . . .” A fever seemed to grip Travis. His eyes drank in the meaning of the symbols faster than seemed possible. He was racing along the wall, moving to the right now, his fingers skimming over the stones. “Then theycame. There were thirteen of them. They answered his call, and they were powerful. More powerful than any that came before. He took them . . . took them into him, and . . .” Travis stopped, then turned and gazed at the rest of the symbols that ringed the room. “Oh,” he said.
Farr’s expression was eager, hungry. “What is it? What do the symbols mean? I can’t read them.”
On shaking legs, Travis returned to the mummy chained to the throne. “He understood. King Orú. He understood the answer.”
“The answer to what?” Vani said, hands resting on Nim’s shoulders.
Travis’s mind buzzed. The heat surged in him. “Remember the story you told us, Farr? The one about the twins, the ones who were born out of nothing at the beginning—one light, the other dark? Well, they’re coming together again, struggling with each other. That’s what’s causing the rifts in the sky. Only the twins aren’t trying to kill each other.”
Farr’s gaze was fixed on him. “Then what are they trying to do?”
“They’re trying to save each other.”
The others stared at him. Travis turned around. Standing here, in the center of the chamber, he could see the story unfold in its entirety.
It began not long after the dawn of Amún. Angular symbols suggested towers and ziggurats rising up from the desert beside the waters of the River Emyr. The great city of Usyr stood among them, as well as other city-states—but not Morindu. In that time, Orú was neither god nor king, but instead was the leader of the nomadic tribe that had first discovered the presence of the bodiless spirits known as the morndari, and that had first made blood offerings to entice the spirits into doing their bidding. Over time, other tribes grew more adept at commanding the spirits; they were the ones who raised cities. In turn, the tribe that had first discovered the morndariseemed doomed to die out.
Then Orú was born. A seer proclaimed he was destined to be a great sorcerer, and so as an infant his mother fed him with her blood rather than her milk. The seer spoke truly, and even as a child he was skilled beyond the eldest sorcerers at the art of summoning the morndari. One series of symbols showed him bringing a vast herd of cattle under his command. Others suggested trees rising out of bare ground and bearing fruit while small droplets fell from his arm.
Orú was only twenty when he became the leader of his tribe, and under his rule his people prospered—so much so that the rulers of a nearby city grew jealous of their wealth in gold and cattle.
That city was Scirath.
The god-king of Scirath launched an assault on Orú’s tribe, sending a great army of warriors and sorcerers. Orú’s people were far outnumbered. Death was certain—unless Orú made a great gamble.
Travis shuddered as his eyes passed over the next series of symbols. Orú sat in his tent while his wife, Ti’an, made thirteen cuts in his body. Then he made a calling such as he had never done before, and thirteen of the morndaricame to him—spirits more powerful than any that had ever been summoned before or since. Normally a sorcerer staunched the flow of blood once the spirits came, lest they drain him to death, but Orú bid the spirits enter his veins. Greedy for his blood, they did. Then, once they were within him, Ti’an poured hot lead on his wounds, sealing them.
The symbols showed a stick figure writhing in pain. Then, in the next panel, the stick figure stood tall, lines of power radiating from it. It held out a hand, and a vast army was swallowed by the desert.