Beyond the Page

The attendant at the Civic Festhall found them a bench and went to ask whether Orentha Vale would see them. Rishi held The Art of Being Struck open on his knees. The corners of Selanka’s Adventurer’s Edition had worn soft in Maeril’s pack. He had not turned a page since they sat down.

The woman who came for them walked with a solid, economical stride, one knee making a smaller movement than the other. Short white hair framed a severe face. Pale spell-scars crossed the skin above her reinforced collar.

“I am Orentha Vale.”

Rishi rose. “Rishishura. This is Maeril Greenward.”

Vale acknowledged both names without recognition and took them into a room with a sturdy table. Once seated, she asked to see their book. At Selanka’s note beside Fireball, her mouth curved.

“She calls it paranoia that I put my notes behind a screen. I should like it recorded that the notes survived in better condition than I did.”

“I studied the original at Candlekeep,” Rishi said. “Under Third Reader Selanka.”

“Then you were supervised sensibly. What did your body learn?”

He considered before answering.

“The moment before impact changes how I receive it. Breath. Balance. What I expect.” His hands rested on his knees. “And there is a point when I stop noticing. I can still endure. I may look controlled. But I am no longer learning what is happening.”

“What happens after that point?”

“I can mistake surviving for choosing.”

Vale set the book down. “What has brought you to me now?”

“Light and darkness open through me. I want a ward in my skin, so I can hold them with less damage to the body carrying them. Maeril will make it. We need someone to inscribe it.”

“And what do you need from me?”

“To see what it does while they work.”

Vale turned to Maeril. “What will occupy your attention?”

“The grammar. It has to remain a ward when the surface beneath it breathes, bends, and decides to become inconveniently celestial.”

“What might she find difficult to see?” Vale asked Rishi.

He turned toward Maeril. “She knows how much I can bear.”

Maeril had been ready to name the small changes she watched in his breathing. For a moment she could say none of them.

“And sometimes I see him returning before I look closely enough at what the return cost.”

Rishi reached across the gap between their chairs. She put her hand in his, briefly, then released it.

“You will need to tell me what you feel,” Vale said to him. “Telling me you can take more would leave rather a lot unanswered.”

He nodded. “I intend to remain awake. The ward must answer me. I want to be present while it learns.”

“His old scars are not an invitation to interpret his life,” Maeril said.

“I will not ask him to explain them.”

Vale named a dabus called Fell, whose work she knew by reputation. She would attend if he accepted an observer. They agreed that Rishi could halt the inscription or end her attendance at any time; either maker could say the work could not safely continue. Any written account would require a separate request afterward.

They arranged how a message could reach her through the Festhall. She could not direct them to Fell’s parlor, but Pell would know the route. Maeril reached for the book.

“Would you mind signing it?” Rishi asked.

“Rish. You can’t be serious.”

He shrugged and slid the book back across the table.

“Of course,” Vale said. “A signature is among the safer things I can offer a reader.”

She signed beneath the title, let the ink dry, and passed the book to Maeril.

Pell sold them the directions. At the broad steps beyond the market, Maeril stopped to check the next turn and looked up.

A street climbed past the roofs, rose farther than any hill could account for, and continued until its buildings stood sideways in the haze. Across the open space above, other rooftops faced down toward her.

“That is obscene.”

Rishi set his feet farther apart. “The city?”

“The containment.”

He kept looking upward. Maeril’s own knees had locked. She let them soften, then almost laughed at the directions in her hand. The city could curve over its own head and still require the second street after the steps.

The view narrowed between walls. She counted the last turns and found Fell’s quiet entrance set back from the traffic.

Inside, designs followed the turns of shoulders, ribs, wrists, and knees. Some lines looked unfinished until Maeril imagined the body beneath them moving. Then they joined.

Fell turned from his worktable. Signs formed beside the dabus’s head: an open hand, a line, a door whose shape changed as she watched.

What do you bring?

Rishi explained the intended ward. At the mention of permanent inscription, the line curved around an arm without closing across its joint.

“We have asked Orentha Vale to observe,” Maeril added. “If you accept a witness.”

Fell nodded. An eye and a hand holding a needle appeared on opposite sides of a figure. Then the signs faded, and he held out an empty palm.

Maeril looked at the ink vessels. “Of course.”

What remained of their coin would have to support the days ahead. Her hand went to the pack.

“Maeril.”

“Do not look at me like that.”

She unwrapped the mirror and laid it on the clean table. Silverwork caught the light.

“You borrowed it,” Rishi said.

“And I am using it for an important magical purpose.”

“You meant to return it.”

It had brought Chime into sight. It had shown her Naeris before she understood what she was seeing. It would be difficult and expensive to replace.

“I will owe the Blackstaff a mirror.” She met his gaze. “I know.”

Rishi let the matter rest. Fell examined the engraving, his finger stopping where another maker had resolved a difficult junction. He nodded, folded the cloth around the mirror, and placed it aside.

His palm turned toward Rishi again. This time it asked for something else.

Rishi set down his staff.

“I once wanted a map of the things I had chosen,” he said. “Vows. What had changed me. That is no longer enough.”

Fell waited.

“When I open to light and darkness here, they are close. Too close sometimes. Heat before I mean to give heat. Pressure before I have made room for it.”

Maeril drew nearer.

“I want to use what I am. To hold it without being broken by the holding.”

A figure appeared above Fell’s hand, outlined by several doors.

“You want the body protected as a threshold.”

“With you writing it.”

She looked at him before turning back to the figure. Its doors opened in different directions. None disappeared when it moved.

“Not a map,” Rishi said. “A becoming.”

Maeril followed the shape of a shoulder in the air. An ordinary inscription would change length when the arm rose; a fixed circle across the ribs could turn the force inward when he breathed.

“I need several days. Temporary lines first. I need to see what you do to them before anyone makes them permanent.”

Fell showed a line rewritten on a breathing body, the needle waiting beside it. Maeril let out a breath.

“Good. For a moment I thought this city expected me to pull living abjuration out of a hat.”

Rishi glanced at her horns.

“Do not.”

His mouth moved slightly.

They would send for Vale when the preparation held. Outside, Maeril adjusted her pack, feeling the absence where the mirror had pressed against her back.

“A room,” she said. “Light enough to work by. A table that does not wobble. And sufficient food to keep you from turning an ambitious ward into an exercise in fasting.”

Rishi took her free hand as they stepped into the street.

“Yes.”