"Not a book. Unbound leaves. But it wasn't just a desert. It was the scene of a terrible battle. Vast numbers of skeletons, with armor and weapons cluttered around them where they fell. Thousands and thousands and thousands of soldiers fought there and died."

Bego paused, waiting for something.

And then Mon made the connection. "Coriantumr," he murmured.

Bego nodded his approval. "The legendary man who came to Darakemba as the first human the sky people here had ever seen. We always assumed that he was the survivor of some battle between an obscure group of Nafari or Elemaki somewhere, when humans were first spreading through the gornaya. It was a difficult time, and we lost track of many groups. When the original sky people of Darakemba told us he was the last survivor of a huge war between great nations, we assumed it was just exaggeration. The only thing that stuck in my craw, anyway, was the inscription."

Mon had seen it, the large round stone that still stood in the central market of the city. No one had any idea what the inscription meant; they always assumed that it was a sort of primitive imitation of writing that the Darakembi angels came up with, after they heard that humans could write things down and before they learned how to do it themselves."

"So tell me!" Mon demanded. "Is the language on Ilihiak's leaves the same?"

"The Darakembi said that Coriantumr scratched in the dirt to show them what to chisel into the stone. It was slow work, and he was dead before they finished, but they sculpted it first in clay so that they wouldn't forget while they did the slow work of cutting it in stone." Bego dropped from his teaching perch and pulled several waxed barks from a box. "I made a reasonable copy here. How does it look to you?"

Mon looked at the round inscription, wheels within wheels, all with strange twisted pictures on them. "It looks like the Coriantumr stone," he said.

"No, Mon. This is the Coriantumr stone." Bego handed him another bark, and this time the image scratched into the wax was identical to the stone as he remembered it.

"So what's the other?"

"A circular inscription on one of the gold leaves."

Mon hooted in appreciation-and noticed, to his chagrin, that he could no longer hoot as high as an angel. It sounded silly to hoot in a man's low voice.

"So the answer to your question is, Yes, Mon, the languages seem to be the same. The problem is that there is no known analogue to this writing system. It clearly does not lend itself to decoding in any pattern we can think of."

"But all human languages are based on the language of the Nafari, and all the skyspeeches and dirt-earthspeeches-they're all based on common sources and-"

"And I tell you again, it has no relationship to any known speech." Mon thought for a moment. "So-has Father used the Index?"

"The Index," said Bego, "tells your father that it is for us to work on the gold leaves for a while."

Mon frowned. "But the reason the king has the Index is so he can read all writings and understand all speech."

"And apparently the Keeper of Earth doesn't want to translate this for us."

"If the Keeper doesn't want us to read it, Bego, then why did the Keeper let the spies of Ilihiak find the place where the records were kept?"

"Let them find it? The Keeper led them to it with dreams."

"Then why not have the Index tell Father what the inscriptions say? This is stupid," said Mon.

"Oh, very good, by all means let a boy your age judge the Keeper and find him-stupid? Excellent. I can see that humility is the virtue you have been working on the most."

Mon refused to wither under Bego's onslaught of sarcasm. "So Father has assigned you to work on it?"

Bego nodded. "Somebody has to-because that's what the Index said we should do. Your father isn't a scholar of languages-he's always had the Index to rely on. So the puzzle is mine."

"And you think I might be able to help?"

"How should I know? It only occurs to me because there are several references in the oldest records-the oldest Nafari records-to the effect that the Index is a machine, and it's always linked to the Over-soul, not the Keeper of Earth." Mon didn't understand his point. "What if the Keeper of Earth and the Oversoul are not the same person?"

That was a possibility that Mon had often heard, but he had never been able to figure out why it would matter. "So what?"

"In the oldest inscriptions, it seems to me that the Oversoul is also a machine."

That was heresy. But Mon said nothing, for he knew that Bego was no traitor. Therefore there must be some meaning to his words that did not undercut the fact that the Keeper of Earth chose Nafai to be the first king of the Nafari, and his children after him until at last the line came to Father.

"Whether the Keeper of Earth made the Oversoul or it somehow grew of itself, I don't know and can't guess," said Bego. "I'm a librarian, not a priest, so I don't pretend to know the answer to everything-just where other people's answers are written down. But what if the reason the Index can't translate these inscriptions is because neither it nor the Oversoul have the faintest idea how to read its language?"

The thought was so disturbing that Mon had to get up and walk around again, circling the desk. "Bego, how can there be something the Keeper of Earth doesn't know? All that is known, he knows."

"I didn't say the Keeper. I said the Oversoul."

Ah. So that was the reason why Bego thought the distinction between them mattered. But for Mon it wasn't to be solved that easily. He had long believed that whether you said the Oversoul did something or the Keeper of the Earth did it, it was the same. So it seemed too convenient to say that when you run across some inscription that the Index can't read, it must mean that the Oversoul, who can't read it, must be different from the Keeper, who of course still knows everything. What about the possibility that the Keeper and the Oversoul are the same-and neither one knows how to read the inscription? It was an astonishing idea, that the Keeper might not know everything- but the possibility had to be faced, didn't it? "Why couldn't the Keeper have sent Ilihiak's spies to Opustoshen in order to bring the records to you to figure it out for him?"

Bego shook his head, laughing. "Do you want to get the priests in your ears like gnats? Keep thoughts like that to yourself, Mon. It's daring enough for me to be speculating that perhaps the Oversoul can't read these inscriptions. Besides, it doesn't matter, really. I've been assigned to figure them out. I have some guesses but I have no way of knowing if I'm right."

Suddenly Mon understood how Bego wanted him to help. "You think I might be able to tell whether you're right or not?"

"It's something we've seen before from you, Mon. Sometimes you know what can't be known. It was Edhadeya who had the dream of the Zenifi but you were the one who knew that it was a true dream. Perhaps you can also tell me whether my translation is a true one."

"But my gift comes from the Keeper, and if the Keeper doesn't know... ."

"Then you won't be able to help me," said Bego. "And maybe your gift only works on-well, on other things. But it's worth a try. So let me show you what I've done so far."

Mon grew more and more afraid as Bego spread out the other waxed barks, drawing more and more from the box. He listened as best he could to Bego's explanations of how he went about copying the inscriptions and studying them, but what kept running through his mind was the idea that somehow he was supposed to come up with some kind of knowledge about a language that not even the Oversoul could read.

"Pay attention," said Bego. "It can't possibly work if you're just going to stand there being nervous."