Arla didn’t, but she’d nodded anyway. Mother’s anxious tones sent chills through her that were worse than the ones the wind brought.
Mother sat back and folded her hands like she was making a vow or a curse. She stared at the moss-chinked wickerwork that made up their house walls. She spoke in measured cadences like she did when she was reciting the Words. “When the Nameless Powers left the Realm for the place beyond the Black Wall, they knew that the people would have need of aid and protection. So they gave their Words to the Teachers and their authority to the Royals. They set the seasons and the days in motion so that the people would have time and life.
“But they knew the Aunorante Sangh were waiting with their tricks and their traps. They knew, for they were the Nameless Powers and nothing is hidden from them, that the Aunorante Sangh might send servants to disrupt the workings of the Realm, which would kill the People.
“To prepare against this, the Nameless Powers spoke new words and these words became jewels. They took each jewel and they spoke its name over it. As they spoke, the jewels split into four parts. Three parts remained stone, but the fourth became a person.
“The names that the Powers spoke for the jewels gave the stones the power to hear and understand the workings of the world, but only in the hands of the people who had been made from the jewel’s substance. The Nameless scattered the people across the world. One became a Royal, one a Noble, one a Bondless, one a Bonded, and one a Notouch.
“The years passed and the stones and their names were handed from parents to children. But the names became corrupted and garbled by the speaking of men and, gradually, the truth was lost by all, except the Notouch. For we who cannot touch power or coinage cannot be distracted by the ways of the world.
“The Nameless Powers, where they watched through the Black Wall, saw the Aunorante Sangh breeding their servants the way a farmer breeds pigs. They saw, too, that they were building their own Realm that their servants might have a fortress from which to launch attacks upon the People. The Nameless knew those servants would one day be sent into the Realm. So the Nameless Powers spoke new words. Metthew Garismit, they said, and they created their own servant and opened the Black Wall so he might walk down to the Realm.
“Garismit knew his name from the beginning and he knew that to save the Realm from the Aunorante Sangh, he would need to move it to where the Aunorante Sangh could not reach it.
“The Teachers say that Garismit went into the belly of the Realm and spoke to it with its own name. That is not all he did, Arla.
“To make the world hear him, and to hear it, he needed the stones and their keepers. He went first to the Royal and the Noble. But they had hidden their stones in their money houses and would not dig them out. He went to the Bondless, but they had gambled the stones away years ago and did not know where they were. He went to the Bonded, but the slave had given the stones for a master’s favor and did not know where they were.
“So Garismit went to the Notouch. He called her by her name—Clear Sight—and Clear Sight took her stones into her hands. Garismit opened the ground for Clear Sight and he led her down the paths to the center of the earth. The stones became eyes and ears and the Realm saw Garismit and heard him as he spoke its name and it moved at his command.”
Mother had fumbled with the thong of a leather pouch then. Arla could still remember the musty smell that rose from the leather.
“Hold out your hands, daughter.”
Feeling like she was dreaming, Arla had held out her bandaged hands. Her mother laid the stones in them and Arla gasped, partly from the pain of their smooth weight against her fresh hand marks, but mostly from their beauty.
“These are Clear Sight’s stones,” Mother said. “We are her daughters, named by the Nameless and born of their substance. We serve the Nameless by keeping them safe and close. The Aunorante Sangh still seek us. The Nameless Powers may send another servant to save us from them again. The Nameless themselves may return. When they do, they will need the stones and we must be ready with them.” Mother tucked her hand under Arla’s chin and raised her daughter’s eyes away from the beautiful spheres. “This is the beginning of the truth, daughter of my blood, Arla of the Black Wall. There is more, and I will teach it to you. We can only speak of these things when the world is protected by the Black Wall. When the sun comes again, you cannot let anyone know anything has changed for you.”
Mother’d taken the stones back, then led her daughter back to her mat. Arla spent that night shivering in the dark, but now from wonder rather than cold.