The Book of Forbidden Wisdom

by Gillian Murray Kendall

  Because I had the image of Silky calling for me.

  I elbowed him again, hard; he released the arm he had been holding up my back; my muscles sang in relief.

  I turned. He towered over me, and that was a great advantage—­for me. I brought the heel of my hand up into the base of his nose.

  He didn’t fall, but he turned aside. Obviously I couldn’t run out into the street—­straight into the arms of Leth and my father. It would do Silky, Trey and Renn no good if I were captured again.

  But when Behemoth had dragged me into the building, I had noticed an alcove with an overturned chair in it—­and behind the chair, a door. I had been looking for doors—­for ways out. And the memory of that alcove, that chair, that door, was as sharp in my mind as cut glass. I pushed past Behemoth and started to go back the way we had come.

  But when I got to the alcove, the chair was no longer overturned.

  Kalo sat there now; a crossbow lay casually across his lap. He held an axe.

  “Hello, Angel,” he said.

  “Hello, Kalo,” I whispered.

  Kalo smiled at me.

  They had us. They had us all.

  For a long moment Kalo and I looked at each other, neither one of us moving. Then I glanced at Behemoth. He was doubled over, clutching his face; blood spewed from his nose, and I could hear a steady patter as it fell to the floor.

  Kalo didn’t say a word to the man. He just let him bleed.

  Kalo. My brother.

  I wanted to beg for the others, but I didn’t. Kalo would not change his mind if I did, and he would have enjoyed it greatly.

  “I can’t read The Book of Forbidden Wisdom,” Kalo said conversationally.

  “I’m sorry.”

  In a moment he was on his feet, and the crossbow was leveled at my chest.

  “The Keeper says you know how,” he said. “The Keeper of The Book says Mother would have taught you.”

  “Mother died young.”

  “But you seem unsurprised there’s a Keeper of The Book.”

  “It’s in bardsong.”

  It wasn’t in bardsong. Not so much as a mention of the Keeper had made it into ballad or lay, but then Kalo had never liked bardsong. There was no way he could know.

  “You will read The Book of Forbidden Wisdom for me,” he said. “I’m going to know its secrets, and then I will have the power to own all Arcadia.”

  “Is it enough to own all Arcadia, do you think? Will you ever have enough?”

  “If you don’t read, the others die,” he said. “They will die without Arbitrators, without witnesses, and in the full knowledge that you could have saved them.” He lowered his crossbow. “Is that enough incentive? Shall we go to the Keeper now? Or shall I send this somewhat useless servant“—­he gestured toward Behemoth—­“to get Leth and Silky? Then you can watch your sister die.”

  “Our sister.”

  His lips twitched. He was very dangerous now. “All right,” he said. “We can watch our sister die.”

  I didn’t hesitate. There was no point.

  “Let’s go to the Keeper,” I said.

  “And you’ll read The Book?”

  “I will read it if I can.”

  “I want you to say you’ll read it.”

  “I’ll read it.”

  Kalo smiled and lowered the crossbow. “Thank you, Angel,” he said. He leaned toward me, confidentially. “I’m rather sorry about all the fuss with the wedding. It caused more problems than I’d anticipated.”

  “You did me a favor,” I said.

  He smiled. For a moment I thought he was actually going to pat me on the shoulder or take my hand, but of course he didn’t. Kalo never touched anyone unless it was to cause pain. Nor could he bear to be touched.

  It occurred to me that Kalo had some serious problems.

  “You don’t know how much I hate you, do you, Angel?”

  “I can imagine.”

  “No,” he said, his voice so low I had to strain to hear him. “You have no idea.”

  The dwelling we were in, like the city, was built in a spiral. Kalo prodded me with the crossbow, and I walked down a curving hall and into a room that looked like a study. A man sat on the floor in the center of the room, and a guard stood over him.

  “You’re back,” the seated man said. His hands trembled.

  “She can read it,” said Kalo. “She’s a first daughter of the House of St. Clare. As you stipulated.”

  So this was the Keeper.

  He was a man of tics and twitches. He dressed like an Arcadian freeman, but he wore his long grey hair braided, like a Shibbeth traditionalist. The hair was shiny and clean, and his clothes were spotless. His wrinkled skin had a reddish glow to it, as if he’d scrubbed it with a stiff brush.

  He was a contradiction: a man fastidious amidst ruin, an Arcadian by blood and garb, who wore his hair like a ‘Liden.

  “Welcome, Lady Angel,” he said, as if he weren’t sitting on the floor at the feet of a guard.

  “We don’t need niceties,” said Kalo.

  “I thought your son might be Keeper by now,” I said, ignoring Kalo. It wasn’t as if he would kill me—­as long as I didn’t rouse his temper. For the time being, I actually held some power.

  “My family left long ago,” said the Keeper. He paused. “You’ve come a long way to read The Book of Forbidden Wisdom.”

  “Yes,” I said. “Very far.” I had come so far that I wasn’t sure I would have recognized the girl who had set out on the journey.

  “I remember when your mother came,” he said, as if we were sitting over tea. As if Kalo did not have his crossbow trained on first one and then the other of us. “It was after your birth—­she had changed her mind about the keeping of The Book. I’m not likely to forget the fuss. Purple and blue tents sprouting up like mushrooms outside the Spiral City. Maids and chaperones and armed men. I went to the edge of the city and saw.”

  Kalo waved the crossbow at the Keeper, but it had no discernible effect on him.

  “I don’t understand. Did she take The Book back to Southern Arcadia with her?” I was confused.

  “No,” he said. “I had thought she wanted the power for you, but the Lady St. Clare—­I suppose she was the Lady Montrose then—­never read beyond the first pages,” said the Keeper. “She simply looked at it and then left. The Book stayed here.”

  “Why don’t you tell me what’s in it?” Kalo asked the Keeper. “You’ve lived with The Book of Forbidden Wisdom for years.”

  The Keeper looked surprised. “Oh, I can’t read it,” he said. “I’m the Keeper. Only she can read it.”

  “Why is that?”

  The Keeper seemed confused. “Because she’s the Lady Angel St. Clare Montrose.” As if that were answer enough. “Are you ready, Lady Angel?”

  “She’s ready,” said Kalo.

  “Lady Angel?” said the Keeper.

  “I’m ready.”

  There was a stillness in the room. There was a stillness inside of me. I found that now that I was near The Book, I didn’t care about it at all. Even my terror for the others was, oddly, draining away. I was sure that if I could have dragged my heart out of my bosom, it would have been grey, the color of dead boiled meat.

  I couldn’t bear to feel.

  I just wanted it to be over.

  “I’ll take you to The Book now, Lady Angel,” said the Keeper. “It’s your right.”

  We followed him down a hall and into a room like a small study. Books were everywhere, but I knew The Book of Forbidden Wisdom as soon as I entered the room. Backed in silver, bound in dark leather with the St. Clare crest stamped on it, The Book rested, closed, on a reading podium.

  The air was full of possibility. Despite what was claimed in bardsong, I knew there was no such thing as magi
c, but I also knew there were vortices in time. How else could one See? I felt that if I were to raise my hand and touch The Book, all the various pasts that clamored together would become a single linear story. The past would be revealed, and, as I committed it to my eidetic memory, it would become fixed. There would be no world in which Caro survived the ‘Lidan invasion of The Village of Broken Women. No parallel story in which Trey was miraculously healed—­or never contracted the disease of the flesh at all. If I read, I might be condemning us to time without possibility—­slow and plodding lives plotted out for us.

  I didn’t know what would happen.

  Time flowed around us in eddies and currents, and it all emanated from The Book.

  “Maybe it shouldn’t be read,” I said. “Perhaps the wisdom is forbidden.”

  “Don’t be absurd,” said Kalo. “It’s just a mass of land titles. Enough to make me unimaginably rich.”

  “It’s a book,” said the Keeper. “A book is meant to be read. And you were born to read it.”

  I sensed his words were true, but I also sensed that to read would be to reshape the past as I knew it. To read would give birth to the possibility of a new and different and perhaps frightening future.

  Land deeds?

  I didn’t think so. Not land deeds. I thought it might contain something that could overturn our world and drench it thickly in blood.

  But I couldn’t See anything. I didn’t hear my mother. It was my decision alone, and the only thing I knew was that it didn’t feel like a decision at all.

  I stepped forward, reached up my hand and touched The Book.

  And with that, everything changed.

  I didn’t remove my hand. I stroked the exquisite binding. Some long ago St. Clare had lovingly put The Book of Forbidden Wisdom together, and she had wielded the power to See. Perhaps she had Seen me, now, standing here, my head bowed. I could See once again, too. I lifted my head and glanced at Kalo, and the thin veneer of his humanity was gone. I saw a grotesque malignity that wanted Silky and me dead—­he would thrill to see us die.

  I partially lifted the great cover. My mother, I knew, had foregone The Book, had, unlike every St. Clare matriarch before her, refused to keep it current. That job might fall to me if I picked up the thread my mother had let fall. If I saw virtue in this wisdom that somehow she had not.

  The room was electric with danger.

  “Go ahead,” said Kalo. “Read.”

  “Not until I know the others are alive,” I said.

  “I can make you read,” said Kalo.

  I searched for fear inside me. I didn’t find any. I didn’t find anything.

  “No,” I said. “You can’t.”

  Kalo made a sound of exasperation and waved his crossbow at the guard, as if he were using it as a pointer.

  “Tell the Lord Leth I want the Lady Silky Montrose, the Lord Trey and that bard. Here. Now.”

  That bard. But nothing stirred inside me.

  I waited.

  And then they were there: two more guards, Leth, my father, Silky, Trey and Renn.

  Renn was leaning on Trey as if he could barely stand, and there were dark bruises on his face. But Trey—­when he saw me, his whole being seemed to light up, and once again I knew his feelings for me. But I felt only numbness.

  Kalo poked me with his crossbow. “Read,” he said.

  I looked at Silky.

  She looked tiny next to the man guarding her. Her gold hair was snarled; there was dirt on her face and the tracks of many tears. She gasped when she saw me.

  “Angel,” she said. “I thought you were dead. Because I called for you, and you didn’t come. You’ve always come.”

  “She was busy,” said Kalo.

  “She always comes,” said my little sister.

  “Silky,” I said, “I’m here now.” And I felt a flutter inside, as if my heart had forgotten how to beat and was just now beginning to remember. And for a moment I knew how much I loved them all—­Silky, Trey, Renn. For a moment I felt whole.

  Chapter Twenty-­nine

  The Quiet Country

  Kalo gave me no time to nurse that flutter of emotion.

  “Doesn’t it surprise you,” said Kalo, “that, except for your own clumsiness in getting captured in Shibbeth, you’ve roamed almost completely free? You must think us very stupid.”

  “We certainly do,” said Silky. “We’ve known you were following us for ages.”

  Leth spoke up. “What you know doesn’t matter,” he said. “We’ve followed you all the way to The Book of Forbidden Wisdom. And now Kalo will let me pronounce sentence on you. Because I can’t live in peace, Angel, even with my new wife, Lady Rose, until you, and your lovers, and your foolish sister, are dead.”

  “Shut up, Leth,” said Kalo.

  The Keeper spoke.

  “Only you can read The Book, Lady Angel,” he said. “It’s not forbidden to you. You have the St. Clare training.”

  “But I don’t,” I said.

  I removed my hand from The Book, and the eddies of time around me stilled. I didn’t climb onto the reading stand, because if I read The Book, it would be inside me, and Kalo knew that, and, eventually, Kalo would make me tell.

  My father was starting to look uneasy.

  Kalo came up to me and thrust his face into mine. He couldn’t control himself. He had never been able to control his rage; it spread like burning oil across the surface of a millpond. It touched everything, and yet, in some ways, it was ineffectual. He didn’t get his way with his temper; he destroyed things.

  If he had started with Silky, everything would have turned out differently. I would have defended her; he would have killed me; the journey would have been over.

  But something else happened.

  He attacked the Keeper.

  He beat him and kicked him until he lay senseless on the floor, and I knew we were all very close to death. I had lived with Kalo’s temper since the day I was born, and I knew he was now beyond the place where he could help himself. I remembered when, at the age of ten, he had beaten his dog to death for disobedience. And then he had wept and howled when it wouldn’t come back to him from the unknown place.

  I was numb now as I watched him. He would kill us each in turn, and then he would have a tantrum when he realized The Book could no longer be read. I had never felt so utterly helpless, so completely lost.

  My father caught my eye for a moment. We both recognized this side of Kalo. To kill him now would be like putting down a mad dog. And had there been a way for us to do it, we would have. Brother or no brother. Son or no son.

  The Keeper groaned.

  Kalo raised the axe he had been carrying all this time in his left hand and brought it down, severing the Keeper’s head from his body. The head rolled to one side, and while the dead man’s features were largely hidden by hair, I could see that his lips were still moving. Silky had been nearby, and a fine spray of blood covered her face and pale dress like a macabre bridal veil.

  Her lips were pale. She was in shock.

  “You need to read,” Kalo said to me. “You need to read now.”

  I doubted, though, that I would be able to read much before his rage engulfed him and he struck me down.

  “We can take him,” Trey whispered to me, but I shook my head at him.

  Instead, I looked at my brother. “Kalo,” I said. He stared at me as if he’d never seen me before. “You’re going to lose, Kalo. I’m smarter than you are. I always have been.” Horror crossed my father’s face. I wanted to look at Silky before it happened, but there wasn’t time. For a moment, Trey’s face was in my mind. I wished there had been a time when I had let him kiss me.

  Kalo raised the butt of the axe; he raised it high above my head. I automatically lifted my arm to defend myself.

  And he brought the woo
den end of the axe down on me.

  “Angel,” I heard Silky call. “Angel.” But the words turned to the sound that starlings make as, startled, they scatter from a tree.

  I had only time to take a breath before dark waters closed over my head. At first I struggled, but then the waters took me.

  And while I realized that I needed air, or, rather, that I was going to need air soon, there was no sense of hurry in whatever world I was in.

  The water cooled and refreshed me. A school of fish swam into my vision; they were small and iridescent blue. Surely this wasn’t a dream. I wouldn’t dream fish I had never seen before. I wouldn’t, in fact, have dreamt fish.

  I kicked my legs, and, a second later, I broke the surface of the water and gave a gasp. The air was sweet, like a meadow fully ripe, right before the mowing. And, at the same time, I smelled moonflowers—­the sweet and poisonous flowers that opened into deep white blossoms on the nights of the full moon.

  Light and dark.

  I thought I had been deep underwater, but now I could stand—­the water came up to my waist.

  And on the shore was my mother. She looked as if she were collecting shells. She stood and gazed out at me, shading her eyes against the bright sun reflecting off the water. Our eyes met, and she smiled. That’s when I knew I was still alive in the other world, a world with evil, probably dying on the floor. I hoped it wouldn’t upset Silky too much. Here, I didn’t seem to mind.

  Now, seeing my mother, I was overcome by a feeling of warmth.

  This was not my mother as I remembered her when she carried Silky in her womb, when her thick auburn hair streamed down past her waist. Nor was it my mother as I remembered her four years after Silky’s birth, with her crinkled smile and a scattering of grey in her hair, supremely happy to be carrying another child, although she was somewhat old to face giving birth. And now the awful, final image I had of her melted away: after her child had been stillborn, and my mother had died, I had glimpsed her chalk-­white, still form lying on the bloody sheets of the birthing room.