“Where are we going, anyway?” I asked Wilem as he led us through the dark shelves of the Archives.
“He's down in the lower levels,” Wilem said as he turned to descend a long flight of stone steps. Countless years of shuffling feet had slowly eroded the grey stone of the steps until they were noticably worn at the middle, making them look bowed like heavy-laden shelves. As we started down, the shadows from our hand lamps made the steps look smooth and dark and edgeless, like an abandoned riverbed worn from the rock.
I recognised an open doorway that led away from the main stairwell, and I tugged on Wilem's sleeve. “Detour,” I whispered.
Wilem hesitated, then shrugged, knowing what I meant without asking. Simmon must have guessed too, as he made no move to question why we were stepping off the stairs at this particular place.
We were well underground now, about thirty feet beneath the Archives at my best guess. The stone hallway looked just the same as any other piece of the Archives: high ceilings and smooth, grey stone walls. If a person got turned around, he might even forget that he was underground, as lack of windows meant nothing in the windowless building.
As we approached we saw a pair of Scrivs slipping away, the light from their brighter, whiter sympathy lamps disappearing quickly around some bend of passage hidden in the shelving. I didn’t doubt that they were here for the same reason we were.
The three of us finally came to a stretch of wall that stood strangely empty. Shelves crowded every available piece of space above or below ground in the library, setting this place apart from all others in the building.
Here was the four-plate door. This is what we had come to see.
It was made of a great square piece of grey stone. It wasn't that large, everything said, perhaps seven feet on a side, but it gave an impression of vast solidity and weight. Its frame was a single seamless piece of stone that snugged so closely to the door that a sheet of fine paper could almost be slid through the crack between them. Almost.
It had no hinges. No handle. No window or sliding panel. Its only features were four bright copper plates set flush with the face of the door, which was flush with the frame, which was flush with the wall surrounding it. You could run your hand from one side of the door to the next and barely feel it.
In spite of these notable lacks, the stone was undoubtedly a door. It simply was. It felt like a door. Each of the copper plates had a hole in its center. Though they were not shaped in the conventional way, they were undoubtedly keyholes. It sat still as a mountain, quiet and indifferent as the sea on a windless day. This was not a door for opening. It was a door for staying closed.
In the center of the door, between the hard copper plates, a word was carved into the stone:Valaritas.
I set my fingertips against the middle of the door, running them across the word I didn’t understand. A word I hadn't been able to find in any grammar or dictum in the Archives.
As I've already told you, I discovered the door on my first trip into the Archives. Later, when I had asked Simmon and Wilem what was behind it, they had laughed. Actually, Simmon had laughed. Wil simply gave a smile that was nearly a laugh and asked me the same question in return, offering to give me a full gold mark if I could show him the answer.
I soon found out that most students would give more than that. I knew I would. Everyone had a guess as to what was behind the door, and there were at least a hundred stories about it. It was generally agreed that the masters could open the door. Some believed that those who became full arcanists were taken inside after they had earned their gilthe. Perhaps as a reward, perhaps as a final rite of initiation. Only one thing was certain, none of the students knew what lay behind it, and all of them wanted to.
Of all the University’s secrets, I suspect this one was wondered over most. But while most students' interest in the four-plate door faded in light of the thousand more accessible secrets the University provided, I never tired of it. When I finally managed to sneak into the Archives, this was the first place that I had come.
And every time afterward. No matter how hurried or tired or busy or busy I was, I was drawn back to the door again and again. Each time some part of me was sure that this would be the time I might find the door ajar. Or with a key still left in one of its locks. Or perhaps the great piece of grey stone would simply swing open to the pressure of my hand.
It is fair to say that I have a gentle madness where secrets are concerned. If something is kept from me, I cannot help but pursue and uncover it. But this particular secret drew at me more than any other. The University is the heart of all civilization. The Archives is the heart of the University. What then, lay here, in the heart of the Archives? What was Valaritas?
Setting my palm against the deep grooves of the letters, I gave a hesitant push. I had forgotten that Simmon and Wilem were behind me. My only thought was that this was it. This would be the time it opened. It would.
It didn’t. I rapidly remembered myself and dropped my hand to my side. Either my friends hadn't noticed, or they were too polite to mention it.
We had discussed the frequently over the last several months, grousing about the unfairness of it all. Sometimes we would take our best guesses about what was behind it, about who had access, about the reasons the Masters kept so hush about it.
“Maybe Valaritas is the name of a place,” Simmon said softly.
We nodded, guesses were never questioned or ridiculed. Later, perhaps, they might be discussed. But not now, not here. It would be like laughing in a church.
"Come on," Simmon said at last. "If you're going to meet Puppet we should go now. He was fine when I stopped down before, but you know how quick that can change."
"Actually, I don't know," I said.
"I do," Wilem said. "We should go."
We faded back from the door, heading back to the stairwell, our red lamps throwing long shadows into the dark.
* * *
“The most important thing is to be polite,” Simmon said in a hushed tone as we made our way through the tall shelves of the Archives. Our sympathy lamps shot bands of light through the shelves and made the shadows dance nervously. “Unfailingly polite, but don’t patronize him. He's a bit—odd, but he’s not an idiot. Just treat him like you would treat anyone else.”
“Except polite,” I said sarcastically, tiring of this litany of advice.
“Exactly,” Simmon said seriously.
“Are you sure he’s going to be there?” I asked, mostly to stop Simmon’s henpecking.
“He’s always there. I don’t think he leaves his chambers very much.”
“He lives here?"
Neither of them said anything, merely watched their feet as their shoes scuffed one step after another. That seemed to be answer enough.
Wilem led the way down a short flight of stairs, then through a long stretch of shelf-lined hallway. Finally we came to an unremarkable door tucked in a corner behind a set of shelving. If I hadn’t known better I would have thought that it was nothing more than one of the countless reading holes scattered throughout the stacks.
“Just don’t do anything to upset him,” Simmon said nervously.
I assumed my best martyred expression as Wilem knocked on the door. The handle began to turn somewhere between the second and third knock. It was opened a crack, then thrown wide. Puppet was framed in the doorway, taller than any of us. The sleeves of his black robe billowed strikingly in the breeze the opening door made.
He stared at us haughtily for a moment, then looked puzzled and brought a hand to touch the side of his head. “Wait, I’ve forgotten my hood,” he said, and kicked the door closed.
Odd as his brief appearance had been, I’d noticed something more disturbing. “Great Tehlu,” I hissed to Simmon. “He’s got candles in there. Does Lorren know?”
Simmon opened his mouth to answer when the door was thrown open again. Puppet filled the doorway, his dark robe striking against the warm candlelight behind him. He was hooded now, with his arms upraised. The long sleeves of his robes caught the inrush of air and billowed impressively. The same rush of air caught his hood and blew it partway off his head.
“Damn.” He said in a distracted voice. Sliding backward, the hood settled half on, half off his head, partially covering one eye. He kicked the door shut again.
Wilem and Simmon remained straight-faced. I assumed the same expression and refrained from any comment.
There was a long moment where all was quiet. Finally a voice came from the other side of the door. “Would you mind knocking again? It doesn’t seem quite right otherwise.”
Obediently, Wilem stepped back up to the door and knocked. Once, twice, then the door swung open and we were confronted with a looming figure in a dark robe. His cowled hood shadowed his face, and the long sleeves of his robe stirred in the wind.
“Who calls on Taborlin the Great?” Puppet intoned, his voice resonant, but muffled from the deep hood. “You! Simmon!” There was a pause, and his voice lost its dramatic resonance. “I’ve seen you already today, haven’t I?”
Simmon nodded. In spite of his calm demeanor, I could sense the laughter tumbling around in him, trying to find a way out.
“How long ago?”
“About an hour.”
“Hmmm.” The hood nodded. “Was I better this time?” He reached up to push the hood back and I noticed that the robe was too big for him, the sleeves hanging down to nearly his fingertips. When his face was out from the shadow of the hood I saw that he was grinning like a child playing dress-up in his parent’s clothes.
“You weren’t doing Taborlin before.” Simmon admitted.
“Oh.” Puppet seemed a little put out. “How was I this time? The last time, I mean. Was it a good Taborlin?”
“Pretty good,” Simmon said.
Puppet looked at Wilem.
“I liked the robe,” Wilem said. “But I always imagined Taborlin with a gentle voice.”
“Oh.” He finally looked at me. “Hello.”
“Hello,” I said in my politest tone.
“I don’t know you.” A pause. “Who are you?”
“I am Kvothe.”
“You seem so certain of it,” he said, looking at me intently. Another pause. “They call me Puppet.”
“Who is ‘they?’”
“Who are they?” He corrected, raising a finger.
I smiled. “Who are they then?”
“Who were they then?”
“Who are they now?” I clarified, my smile growing wider.
He mirrored my smile in a distracted way and made a vague gesture with one hand. “You know, them. People.” He continued to look at me in the same way I might examine an interesting stone, or a type of leaf I’d never seen before.
Another pause as he continued to methodically look me over. “What do you call yourself?” I asked to fill the silence.
He seemed a little surprised, and his eyes focused back onto me in a more ordinary way. “That would be telling, I suspect,” he said with a touch of reproach. He glanced at the silent Wilem and Simmon. “You should come in now.” He turned and walked inside.
The room wasn’t particularly large. But it did seem out of place, nestled deep in the heart of the Archives. There was a deep padded chair, a large wooden table, and a pair of doorways leading into other rooms. There were books, of course, stacked on shelves and bookcases. A pair of drawn curtains against one wall surprised me. My mind fought off the impression that there was a window behind them. The room was lit with candles, long tapers and thick dripping pillars of wax. Each of them filled me with a vague dread at the thought of open flame in a building filled with thousands and thousands of precious books.
And there were puppets. They hung from shelves and pegs on walls. They lay crumpled in corners and under chairs, some were in the process of being built or repaired, scattered among tools across the tabletop. One wall was covered in shelving that was full of what seemed to be small puppets at first, but soon revealed themselves to be figurines, each cleverly carved and painted in the shape of a person.
On his way to his table, Puppet shrugged out of the black robe and let it fall carelessly to the floor. He was dressed plainly underneath, wrinkled white shirt, wrinkled dark pants, and stocking feet. Without the robe or hood I realized he was older than I'd thought. His face was smooth and unlined, but his hair was white and thin on top.
He cleared a chair for me by carefully removing a small string puppet from the seat and finding it a place on a nearby shelf. He then took a seat at the table, leaving Wilem and Simmon standing behind him. To their credit, they didn’t seem terribly disconcerted.
Digging a little in the clutter on the table he brought out an irregularly shaped piece of wood and a small knife. He took another long, searching look at my face, and began to methodically carve curls of wood onto the tabletop.
Oddly enough, I had no desire to ask anyone what exactly was going on. When you ask as many questions as I do, you get a feeling for when they are appropriate and when they are not.
Besides, I knew what the answers would be. He was one of the talented, not-quite-sane people that had found a niche for themselves at the University. The University had more than its fair share of eccentric characters. Not because it attracted them, but because it made them.
Let me explain. The rigors of Arcanum training tend to do unnatural things to student’s minds. The most notable of these unnatural things is desirable: the ability to do what most people call magic and we call sympathy, sygaldry, alchemy and the like. Believing that wax dolls are real people and playing ‘seek the stone’ are not normal things for a mind to do.
Some minds, such as mine, take to it easily. Other minds have more difficulty, and when those are pushed too hard, or in the wrong ways, they break. I was all too aware of the fact that a mile north of the University there was a place called Haven. A pretty name, for an asylum. It was full of those who pushed themselves too hard in their studies and broke under the strain.
Students rarely spoke of Haven. When they did, it was with a nervous bravado. They referred to it as the Rookery, or the Crockery. It was place for broken pots that could not take the heat of the flame.
But between these two extremes lay a great many students. Most minds don’t break when put under the Arcanum’s stresses, they simply crack a little. Sometimes these cracks show themselves in small ways: facial ticks, stuttering. Some students became forgetful, others remembered things that hadn’t happened at all. Some students heard voices, others grew sensitive to light.
I guessed Puppet was a student who had cracked years and years ago. Not enough to send him to the Crockery, but enough that couldn't function anywhere else.
“Does he always look like this?” Puppet asked Wilem and Simmon. A small drift of pale wood shavings had gathered around his hands.
“Mostly,” Wilem said.
“Like what?” Simmon asked.
“Like he’s just thought through his next three moves in a game of tirani and figured out how he’s going to beat you.” Puppet took another long look at my face and shaved another thin strip of wood away from the block. “It’s rather irritating, really.”
They both craned to get a better look at me. Wilem barked a laugh. “That’s his thinking face, Puppet. He wears it a lot, but not all the time.”
“What’s tirani?” Simmon asked.
“A thinker,” Puppet mused. “What are you thinking now?”
“I’m thinking that you must be a very careful watcher of people, Puppet,” I said politely.
Puppet snorted without looking up. “What use is care in watching? What good is watching for that matter? People are forever watching things, carefully looking around. To no use. They should be seeing. I see things that I look at. I am a see-er.”
He looked at the piece of wood in his hand, then to my face. Apparently satisfied, he folded his hands over the top of his carving, but not before I glimpsed my own profile, cunningly wrought in wood. “Do you know what you are, what you are not, and what you will be?” He asked matter-of-factly.
It sounded like a riddle. I thought about it briefly before giving up. “No.”
“A see-er,” he said with certainty. “You are a see-er because that is what E’lir means. But you are not really a see-er, not yet. Now you are a look-er. I guess you will be a true E’lir at some point. If you learn to relax.” He held out the carved wooden face. “What do you see here?”
It was no longer an irregular piece of wood. Now the gnarled piece of birch held the angles of my face. My features, locked in serious contemplation, stared out of the wood grain. I leaned forward to get a closer look. “Well...”
Puppet laughed and threw up his hands. “Too late!” he exclaimed, looking childlike for a moment. “You looked too hard and didn’t see enough. Too much looking can get in the way of seeing, you see?” Puppet set the carved face on the tabletop so that it seemed to be staring at one of the recumbent puppets. “See little wooden Kvothe? See him looking? He is so intent. So dedicated. He’ll look for a hundred years, but will he ever see what is in front of him?” Puppet settled back in his seat, and looked around in a contented way.
“E’lir means see-er?” Simmon asked. “Do the other titles mean things too?”
“Since you are a student, with full access to the Archives and all its varied secrets, I imagine that you can find that out for yourself,” Puppet said. His attention focused on a string-puppet on the table in front of him. He lifted it off the table and lowered it carefully to the floor so as not to tangle its strings. It was a perfect miniature of a Tehlin priest.
“Would you have any advice as to where we could start looking for that?” I asked, playing a hunch.
“Renfalque’s Dictum.” Under Puppet’s direction, the Tehlin-puppet raised himself from the floor and moved each of his limbs, almost as if he were stretching them after a long sleep.
“Renfalque? I’m not familiar with that one.”
Puppet responded in a distracted voice. “It’s on the second floor in the southeast corner. Second row, second rack, third shelf, right hand side, red leather binding.” The miniature Tehlin priest walked slowly about the floor around Puppet’s feet. Clutched tightly in one hand was a tiny replica of the Book of Path, perfectly fashioned, right down to the tiny spoked wheel painted on its cover. The three of us watched Puppet pull the strings of the little priest, making it walk back and forth before finally coming to sit on one of Puppet’s stocking-clad feet.
After a minute or two of this, Wilem cleared his throat respectfully. “Puppet?”
“Yes?” Puppet replied without looking up from the Tehlin at his feet. “You have a question. Or rather, Kvothe has a question and you’re thinking of asking it for him. He is sitting slightly forward in his seat. There is a slight furrow between his brows, and a pursing of the lips that gives it away. Let him ask me, it might do him good.”
I froze in place, catching myself doing each of the things he had mentioned. I sat stiffly for a while, trying to remember how exactly to sit naturally in a chair. Puppet continued to work the strings of his little Tehlin. It made a careful, fearful search of the area around his feet, brandishing the book in front of him before he peered around table legs and into Puppet’s abandoned shoes. Its movements were uncanny, and it distracted me to the point where I forgot I was uncomfortable, and felt myself relax.
“I was wondering about the Amyr, actually.” My eyes remained on the scene unfolding at Puppet’s feet. Another marionette had joined the show, a young girl in a peasant dress. She approached the Tehlin and held out a hand as if trying to give him something. No, she was asking him a question. The Tehlin turned his back on her. She laid a timid hand on his arm. He took a haughty step away. “I was wondering who disbanded them. Emperor Nalto or the church.”
“Still looking for something,” he admonished me, but more gently then before. “You need to go chase the wind for a while, you are too serious. It will lead you into trouble.” The Tehlin suddenly turned on the girl. Trembling with rage it menaced her with the book. She took a startled step backward and stumbled to her knees. “The church disbanded them of course. Only an edict from the Pontifex in Atur had the ability to affect them.” The Tehlin struck the girl with the book. Once, twice, driving her to the ground, where she lay terribly still. “Nalto couldn’t have told them to cross to the other side of the street, let alone disband.”
Some slight motion drew Puppet’s eye. “Oh dear me,” he said, cocking his head toward Wilem. “See what I see. The head bows slightly. The jaw clenches in irritation, but the eyes aren’t fixed on anything, aiming the irritation inward. If I were the sort of person who judged, I’d guess that Wilem had just lost a bet. Don’t you know that Tehlu and church both frown on gambling?” At Puppet’s feet, the priest brandished the book upward at Wilem.
The Tehlin then brought its hands together and turned away from the crumpled woman. It took a stately step or two away and bowed its head to pray.
I managed to pull my attention away from the tableau and look up at our host, “Puppet?” I asked, “You spend a lot of time in the Archives, don’t you?”
I saw Simmon give Wilem an anxious look. But Puppet didn’t seem to find anything odd about the question. The Tehlin at his feet stood and started to dance and caper about. “Yes.”
“Do you think it odd that there is so little information about the Amyr in the stacks?”
“Oh certainly,” he said without looking up from the marionette at his feet. “There should be scads of books, barrows full.”
“About how many?” I asked on impulse, leaning slightly forward in my chair.
“There should be....” he closed his eyes briefly, then opened them. “Roughly six hundred twenty volumes devoted to their explication.”
“How many are there?”
“Fifty or so that give them a mention, but books where they are the main subject of discourse?” He closed his eyes again. At his feet, the Tehlin lost its animation for a moment. “Eight.”
I was quiet for a moment while I wondered what strange calculus had gone on behind his closed eyes to give him such specific numbers that he mentioned with such nonchalant belief. Somehow, I found myself trusting his estimates.
I was struck by a sudden idea. “Puppet,” I asked, “Do you know what is behind the locked door on the floor above this one? The large stone door?”
The Tehlin stopped dancing and Puppet looked up. He gave me a long, stern look. His eyes were serious and absolutely, perfectly sane. “I don’t think the four plate door should be of any concern to a student of your standing. Do you?”
I felt myself flush. “No sir.” I looked away from his eyes.
The tension of the moment was broken by the muted sound of the belling tower striking the hour. Simmon cursed softly, “I’m late. I’m sorry Puppet, I’ve got to go.”
“Don’t worry yourself over hasty good-byes.” Puppet told him as he stood and went to hang the Tehlin on the wall. “It’s time I got back to my reading, regardless.” He moved to the padded chair, sat, and opened a book. “Bring this one back some time,” he gestured in my direction without looking up from his book. “I have some more work to do on him.”
Wilem, Simmon, and I filed out the door, murmuring our good-byes. Puppet was already reading and did not make any response. Wilem closed the door, separating the three of us from the cozy candlelit quiet of Puppet’s rooms. Wordlessly we moved down the hall a ways from the door before we spoke.
“So that’s Puppet,” I said blandly. “Interesting fellow. Bit of a character.”
“You could say that,” Wilem said dryly.
“I’ve got to go,” Simmon said anxiously. “I’m already late for observation. We're still on for...” He looked around nervously. "... for tonight?" I nodded and he hurried off in the quick walk that was the closest thing to running that was allowed in the Archives.
Meanwhile, Wilem dug an iron drab from his purse. He held it out to me, his expression vaguely sour.
“Giving up so easy?” I teased, vaguely surprised. “You don’t have anything for proof but that guy’s word, and unless you hadn’t noticed, he’s one short step away from a long stay in the Crockery.” We reached the stairwell and started to climb.
Wilem’s frown deepened. “I know some people who would say the same thing about you,” he said with more than a hint of reproach. “Puppet’s word is good enough for me.”
Slightly embarrassed, I took the coin. “I’m still curious. I’m going to look a little more into the Amyr. If I find out he was wrong I’ll own up to it.”
Wilem shook his head. “Puppet isn’t wrong about the Archives. I’d bet a silver talent against your drab that what you find backs him up.”
“Oh.” I pocketed the coin. “I don’t think I’ll take that bet.”
He flashed a brief, white grin at me. “Too bad.”
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jumbles, on 06 May 2012 - 07:12 PM, said:
