“How good to see you again, Perian. You’re still doing well?”
He nodded. “Yes, thank you. We’ve been to see the Queen, so I’m better than I was yesterday, anyway, when I was a bundle of nerves. Uh, we’re hoping for your help.”
“What can I do?” she asked seriously.
Perian introduced her to Trill and Yannoma, the only two she hadn’t met before, apparently. The doctor’s eyes lingered for a long moment on Yannoma before returning to Perian, who laid out everything related to the need to heal the Prince and what they’d tried so far.
She looked thoughtful. Her eyes went again to Yannoma. “You’ve agreed to help them?”
Yannoma gave something that was half nod, half shrug. “Perhaps they are just naive enough to be able to convince others to do something absurd.”
The doctor huffed an amused breath. “Yes, perhaps.” Her eyes strayed to Cormal. “They’ve certainly changed some stubborn minds.”
Cormal’s voice was self-deprecating. “I sometimes need a lot of time to process, but I can get there eventually.”
The doctor hesitated for a moment. “I might have something that will help. Or it might not help at all. I’m not sure.”
They exchanged glances. What didthatmean?
“We’ll take any help we can get,” Perian assured her.
The doctor’s gaze had gone back to Yannoma. “You’re the one who’ll need to look at it. Will you promise to give it back to me afterwards?”
Yannoma was clearly puzzled, but she said, “Certainly.”
“Wait here a moment.”
The doctor disappeared back into the room she had come from. Everyone still looked puzzled, and this didn’t change when the doctor emerged with a book.
It looked old but lovingly cared for, bound in dark leather that had gone soft and worn at the corners. It wasn’t terribly thick.
The doctor hesitated for a moment but then handed it to Yannoma. “I hope it can help.”
Cormal sounded incensed when he said, “You’ve had a book this whole time and you never gave it to us? Even if you thought I was untrustworthy, surely you could have given it to Molun or Arvus or one of the others. Kinan’s life is at stake!”
He took a step forward, and the Prince edged in between Cormal and the doctor. Cormal looked at him, looked down at his own clenched fists, and let out a sharp sigh. He shook out his hands and stepped back.
“Sorry,” he muttered.
The doctor shot him a look. “It would not have done you any good. Look.”
Yannoma opened the book and revealed close, handwritten script… in a language Trill didn’t know. From the confused murmur of the others, this wasn’t the Old Tongue.
And then Yannoma sucked in a breath. “This is Carnalic.”
They all stared blankly at her and then their eyes flew to the doctor.
She nodded. “From a great-great-numerous times removed grandmother.” She hesitated for a moment. “Who was a Life Mage.”
“Oh,” Trill breathed, at the same time that Perian lurched forward and wrapped his arms around the doctor.
She looked very startled, but then her expression softened, and she hugged him back.
Gently, she said, “She didn’t survive the Great Cataclysm, nor her children, but her grandchildren did, and they managed to hide the book. It’s been passed down from parent to child in my family this whole time, along with the secret of what a Life Mage is. But I thought they might genuinely be gone, everyone in hiding and the blood growing thinner and thinner as it did in my family. Only then Perian arrived. I suspected quite early what he was, but I was equally certain he didn’t know and so wouldn’t be able to read the book. To my knowledge, I’ve never interacted with someone who could read it.”
“It’s been a long time,” Yannoma said, still staring down at the book. “We do not have a lot of written history, or at least, I have never seen any. But I did learn. Long ago. I will have to sit with it and see what I can decipher.”
Trill couldn’t imagine trying to translate a language he hadn’t used in centuries.
