The Codex Lacrimae, Part 1: The Mariner's Daughter and Doomed Knight

Chapter 12: The Screaming Pillars of Raj' al-Jared

That's impossible," Ríg said coldly, his anger breaking the silence that descended among those gathered in the chamber. He walked across the room and stood before the grand master and Ibn-Khaldun.

"May I see it again, Father Arcadian?" Ríg helped the elderly man heft the tome off his lap.

"I demand to see it, too." Perdieu exclaimed, advancing forward a step with a serious enough intent that Damian rose from his chair and interceded. "This is my squire; by law and custom, whatever comes to him must first be approved by me."

"Bernard, enough," Arcadian said wearily. "If the book is Ríg's, then it's his."

"As far as I know, it's not mine, Master Arcadian," Ríg said as he looked again at the interior cover of the Codex Lacrimae. I don't understand. My family's background is mercantile-Sicilian. We're at the opposite end of the world from the Himalayas."

He carried the book to the open window and held it up in the light to scan the interior cover and first pages more closely. He frowned. A mysterious sound arose from the tome, like an undercurrent of Gregorian chant heard from a distance, and colors started to flare in his mind.

"Ríg?"

"Oui, Master, je vais bien. I'm fine."

"Good. About that inscription," Ibn-Khaldun said, "it's not just the name, Ríg. Look more closely at the ink."

The youth stared for a moment at the frontispiece, and then fixed a hard gaze at his elder friend.

"It's calligraphied and a brownish-red ... blood?"

"I believe so, yes."

Ríg touched the inscription and an arcane whispering began, this time, though, the strange sounds were accompanied by an onslaught of images that made the teenager almost stagger backwards.

The life of a friend.

At the whisper in his mind, Ríg recoiled and almost dropped the tome. Then flashes and images filled his sight.

A shimmer of yellow, and he was in a forest, with sun streaming late-afternoon light upon a fast-flowing river-Ríg knelt to retrieve a leathern packet as a stunningly beautiful brown-haired woman ran to him. She moved with desperate speed and shouted for him to do something, panic widening her ovaline, sea-green eyes as she hurtled down a slope to prevent his touching the packet.

A sparkle of white, and he suddenly stood shivering beside the same girl in a vast, marbled hall the color of bleached bone. The passage stretched for hundreds of cubits, lined with windows as high as oak trees, and so cold that the floor and walls were rimed with frost, causing the couple's breath to float in grey vapors. A cloaked skeleton approached with outstretched, bony fingers and Ríg felt the girl's tanned hand slip into his own.

A flash of orange, and now he sat cross-legged before a fire in a campsite glade. The athletic beauty sat next to him, crouched beneath the same kind of fur cloak that seemed to weigh heavily on him. Across the blazing flames two men spoke to him with unmistakable menace. Ríg glanced at the girl and she said something reassuring, a coy smile on her full lips.

Beware the Norns who play dice with the fates of men; their comeliness is beguiling, but born of witchcraft and perilous.

The words themselves sounded feminine, whispered in a melodious language on the periphery of Ríg's knowledge, yet he still understood them. His perceptions returned to normal and he found himself back in Arcadian's chambers.

"What was that, Khajen? Did you say something about Norns? Or, witchcraft?"

"I said nothing, but I don't doubt that you've heard some words," Ibn-Khaldun said.