--Prelude--
considered to be a prologue
All things, great and small, come from the Maker.
All destinies are written by the Maker. The desertion of a wife by her husband, underhanded slave dealings, the death of infants, the wisdom of the sages, the rise and the fall of empires, the dispersion of their peoples and the coming of new followers.
The chosen people of the Maker fell hundreds of years ago into death because of alienation and hatred. Some survived, escaped into the countless leaves of the Tree of Possibilities. Most perished, suffocated by gas and plague.
A few tried to rebuild the empire. Their efforts are now gone, their memories preserved only in journals and books, until others came to bring new life to the caverns. Some are still there, and the cavern breathes again.
Such is the will of the Maker, a will that was planned from beginning of beginnings. His people dispersed, their ambitions blunted. Their books tainted, their lands dirtied, but still do a remnant remember the times of pomp in the plazas and Ages of D'ni, and perhaps they wish to restore the empire again.
Boglo prehnihv rehgahn! Cries echo in a desolate age, wailings in the darkness, pleadings to the Maker.
The Maker hears.
The bell above the shop door jingled, as it did every time someone walked in. This particular shop was nothing special, just yet another rare books store in the narrow, winding streets of Old Istanbul. Stacks of musty, old books rose to the ceiling. Customers often wondered what would happen if they pulled a book out from the bottom of the stack. This invariably never happened, but it is in the nature of people to wonder such things.
A customer walked in, raising small puffs of dust with his footfalls. He raised a hand and pushed his long, dark hair out of his eyes. Meandering through the passages made by the piles of books, he took one at random from the top of a small pile and opened it to the middle.
The man was surprised. He had never before seen such writing, even though he was the head of the linguistics department at the Istanbul University, founded in 1453 after the catipulation of the city, then called Constantinople, to the Ottomans. He traced the strange script with the tip of his smallest finger, marveling at the obvious time and effort that went into each word. He turned the page and found what seemed to be many letters of that alphabet in one symbol, which flowed and undulated before his eyes before he tore them away.
He was curious, to say the least. To find a language that he did not understand was exciting. To find a language that he could not read was exciting. But to find a language that he had never seen before, never heard of before… that was astounding. The professor closed the book and look at the worn cover. It seemed to be made of some sort of leather, worn smooth with the touches of many hands. A faint golden symbol was emblazoned on the front. It looked to be a box with the English letter 'k' inside of it, but it was so old it had almost faded into the scarlet background of the leather.
The book was heavy, and he almost dropped it as he shifted it from one hand to the other. He looked around for a minute, to look for more of the same type, but when he could find none the linguist wound his way through the stacks and eventually found the old wooden desk that served as a counter. Seated at the desk was an old man, who turned to look at the professor as he approached.
"Salaam. Ah, the book of faces," croaked the ancient man, lifting a hand to gesture at the book. "Yes, I remember it… I will give it to you for 15 million lire. Yes?"
The professor dug in the pocket of his ratty, old, American pants before extracting a worn twenty million lire bill. He shoved it in the outstretched hand of the owner and took the book out of the shop quickly, not saying a word and not asking for change.
As the door closed behind him, the bell jingled. The wizened old man chuckled to himself. Yes, he remembered the book of faces well. He remembered how the picture seemed to move, how the old man stared out at him on the few occasions that the book was opened.
The bell jingled again and another customer came in. Clumsily, he knocked over the stack of books closest to the door. Sighing, the old man got up, feeling his bones creak, and hobbled over to clean up.
The third floor in the A wing of the Istanbul University was painted an institutional green. The hallways seemed to stretch on forever, covered with bulletin boards that were meant to be covered with cute little reminders and such but remained empty, despite the best efforts of the administration to post things every day.
The head of the linguists department walked into his office, which had a small, dingy window overlooking one of the many small courtyards in the university. He sat down in his creaking swivel chair and placed the book on his rickety desk. He pushed aside papers from decades ago and looked at the cover. In this better light, he could make out more of the strange script in gold letters (for that was what they were, he assumed) on the cover. They looked as if they had been perfectly drawn in with a brush. His eyes traced the letters and how they flowed from one to another. His trained eyes saw repeated letters just in the text on the front, and also letters with small dots by them, variations of letters without dots.
The professor stared at the script for a moment more, and then opened the book to the first page. On the left inside cover there was something that looked like a crest with a stylized beetle in the center, around which was more writing. His eye quickly passed over the crest, though, and it turned to the box on the right page. On the thick parchment of the page there seemed to be a perfectly clear window into a room. In the room sat a man, apparently sleeping.
The distinguished professor, who had attended a prestigious college in Europe and received awards for his leading work in translating the Bible and other great works into one of the many languages of Papua New Guinea, jerked back and fell out of his swivel chair onto the dirty maroon carpet that covered the floor, contrasting horribly with the green walls. He raised himself back onto the chair, which had lost its wooden back, and chanced a look at the window in the book again.
The man had moved.
It had been a long week, the professor knew that. Meetings with the dean over his salary, the weekly test, and attendance, which was supposedly mandatory but happed to be optional because it was too much of a strain on the professor to take roll. He had read of people having hallucinations, he had heard of them brought on by great stress coupled with the consumption of ten cups of black Turkish coffee. He had, however, never expected to experience one, and so he rubbed his eyes hard, hoping it was just a play of the light (not that there was much entering through the window blackened with soot).
He opened them again and gazed into the crystal clear picture. It could be compared to a live video feed. The professor was looking into a room, perhaps the size of his office. It had rough-hewn stone walls. A torch blazed beside a hole in the wall, which, with imagination, might pass for a window. Up against the wall, however, was the man. He was dressed in tattered robes that once might have been white. It was an old man, as ancient as the head of the board of trustees that ran the university. His face, a veritable mass of wrinkles, rested on its side on a slab of wood that looked to be serving as a bed.
The professor slowly closed the book, caressing the heavy parchment pages and cover. He turned away and fiddled with aboriginal statues from Papua New Guinea before attempting to grade tests. No, the Indo-European language family was not related to Venusian, and the stem ur definitely did not carry the connotations of sex. He tried to concentrate, to do anything but look at the book again. Maybe it was the work of the devil. Certainly not Allah… the professor abandoned his grading efforts and whirled around on his broken chair to face the book once more. He flipped the cover up, turned to a random page in the middle, and encountered more of the writing. Turned another page, and another, and another, and found only black script that flowed across the creamy page in waves of ink. He opened to the picture again and looked closely at it. He ran his finger along its edges, checking for signs of connection with the page.
There were none. It was as if the window was fused into the page. He drew his hand back sharply as the man turned in his sleep and then tentatively poked the window.
In retrospect, as he looked back from lying on a wooden board in a stone hut, it wasn't the smartest thing he could have done.
So- something new! I'll see what I can do with this- probably some take with Gehn returning to D'ni from his prison age. Reviews are always appreciated!