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"Like what?"
"You tell me," he said. "I would bet that you could practically quote The Glendhill Book of Deviation Theory"
A
"Well, I can quote it. The copy we had back in the vaults, anyway. I went through this book, testing it against my memory." For some reason, A
"And what did you discover?" she asked.
"That I can quote this original exactly. No more, no less."
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"The copy we had back at the palace didn't have any blank places."
A
"I know that there were more pages in our copy."
'I'm not following you, then."
This time it was Nathan who threw up his hands. "A
"Nathan, that's just not-I mean, I don't see how.» A
"Here," he said as he snatched a book from behind him. "Collected Origins. You must remember this."
A
Collected Origins was an exceedingly rare prophecy in that it was written entirely in story form. A
She smiled as she lifted open the cover of the small book.
The pages were blank.
All of them.
"Tell me," Nathan said in that quietly commanding, deep Rahl voice, "what is Collected Origins about?"
A
"Tell me, then," Nathan went on in that quietly powerful voice of his that seemed as if it could crack stone, "a single line of this beloved volume. Tell me who it is about. Tell me how it started, how it ended, or anything in the middle."
Her mind was stark naked blank.
As she stared up into Nathan's cutting gaze, he leaned a little closer. "Tell me one single thing you remember from this book."
"Nathan," she finally managed to whisper, her own eyes wide, "you often used to keep this book in your rooms. You know it better than I do. What do you remember about Collected Origins?"
"Not — one — thing."
CHAPTER 12
A
"Now, that is a very good question."
An idea suddenly hit her. She gasped in a breath. "A spell. It has to be that these books were spelled."
Nathan made a face. "What?"
"Many books are spelled to protect the information. I've not encountered it with a book of prophecy but it's common enough in books of instruction on magic. This place was designed with the intent of concealment. Perhaps that's what is happening with the information protected here."
Such a spell would be activated when anyone but the right person with the required power opened it. Spells of that nature were sometimes even keyed to specific individuals. The usual method of protection if the wrong person saw the book was to erase from their memory everything they'd seen in it. They would see it and at the same time forget it. The effect in one's mind was to blank out the text.
Nathan didn't answer, but his scowl softened as he considered her idea. She could tell by his expression that he doubted her theory was the answer hut he apparently didn't want to argue the point just then, probably because he had something more important that he wanted to go on to.
Sure enough, he tapped a finger on top of a small stack of books standing all by themselves. "These books," he said with a weighty undertone, "are predominantly about Richard. I've never seen most of them before. I find that alarming, that such books would be hidden away in a place like this. Most have extensive stretches of blank pages."
For that many books of prophecy, especially about Richard, not to have been in the Palace of the Prophets was indeed alarming. For five centuries she had scoured the world for copies of any book she could find that contained anything at all about Richard.
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Nathan picked up the volume on the top and flipped the book open. "Well, for one thing, this symbol, here, troubles me greatly. It's an exceedingly rare form of prophecy, undertaken while the prophet was under siege by a storm of revelation. Such graphic prophecies are drawn in the heat of a powerful vision, when writing would take too long and interrupt the rush of what is rampaging through his mind."
A
She bent close and studied the intricate drawing that took for itself most of a page. There were no straight lines in it at all, only curved swirls and arcs that eddied all around in a circular design that somehow seemed almost alive. Here and there the pen had dug violently into the surface of the vellum, ploughing up parallel rows of fibers where the two halves of the pen's point had spread under the pressure. A
Nothing in the ink drawing represented any identifiable subject-it appeared to be completely nonobjective-and yet it was for some reason so gravely disturbing that it made her hackles lift. It seemed as if the drawing was almost recognizable but its meaning was just outside of her conscious awareness.