That made the man useful. Or dangerous.
Ludwig had a sudden thought. “How do you know which book to write the prophecy in? Do you fill one book and then go on to the next?”
“No, each prophecy must go in its proper book.”
“How in the world do you determine that?”
Mohler frowned at the expanse of pedestals throughout the room that held books. He seemed confused by the question. “Well, Lord Dreier, each prophecy must be recorded where it belongs.”
“How do you know where a prophecy belongs?” he asked patiently. “Did the bishop tell you?”
“No … no, that was my job.” He gestured at the scrolls. “As you can see, he did not open them beforehand. He would review them after I had entered them. He said that it was easier for him to read it all once it was in my hand. Some of the writing is sloppy, or rushed, or poorly done so they can sometimes be quite difficult to read, so he always waited until I recorded them. It is my job to figure out what they say and then write it down clearly for the bishop.”
“But what makes you decide to enter any given prophecy in a particular book?”
“The subject, of course,” the scribe said with simple sincerity. “I put them where they belong. That way, if the bishop wanted to review a particular subject, he could go directly to that book, rather than spend time searching through everything.”
He gestured to a particular volume not far away. “For example, all the prophecy in that volume is about the House of Rahl. Of course, it is often difficult to categorize prophecy because it is usually about more than one thing. So, I must use my discretion. I try to determine the thrust of the prophecy, what it pertains to, and then I put it in the proper book.”
“That’s complete lunacy,” Ludwig said half to himself.
“Lord Dreier?”
He frowned at the scribe. “That means they would not be set down according to any chronology. There is nothing—no chronology—to link all of these subjects and events.”
Ludwig knew quite well that chronology was what mattered most. What did it matter what prophecy had to say about a particular event meant to happen thousands of years ago?
Unless you wanted to know about that event.
Say, the great war and the fate of Emperor Sulachan.
Mohler shrugged. “I rarely have any way of determining chronology, Lord Dreier, so we use the subject as the category.”
Ludwig realized instinctively that all of this work was virtually for nothing. There was no real way of determining what a prophecy was really about simply by reading the words. Prophecy was almost always occulted, the true meaning hidden. The words were largely only a trigger for one properly gifted. Often the words of the prophecy were meant to disguise the true meaning.
All of this work, Mohler’s entire lifetime of work, had in reality been for nothing. The categories would be meaningless unless gifted or occulted talents were used to see into the vision of the prophecy to determine the true, hidden, subject and therefore where it actually belonged.
Ludwig supposed that the bishop didn’t really care that he was gradually wasting the scribe’s entire life on meaningless work. It gave him a place to go look at prophecy as he wished, all written out in the same hand for easy reading. Hannis Arc would have likely completely ignored Mohler’s categories.
Before he went to the books of prophecy to inspect them, to see what prophecy Hannis Arc could have gotten from other sources, something on the large desk caught his attention. He decided that he could look at the books later. They probably contained nothing more than redundant prophecy, prophecy Ludwig already knew about because he was the one who had collected prophecy on the subject if it was important enough. The rest couldn’t be as valuable as the ones Ludwig had discovered and sent to the citadel, so they could wait.
At the cluttered desk, he went to the ancient-looking scroll that had caught his attention. Unrolling it partway on the desk, he saw a complex tapestry of lines connecting constellations of elements that constituted the language of Creation. Ludwig frowned as he leaned in, studying the writing on the scroll.
“This is a Cerulean scroll,” he whispered in astonishment as he straightened. He looked over at the old man watching him. “This is a Cerulean scroll,” he said again, louder.
The old scribe showed no reaction. “If you say so, Lord Dreier. I don’t know of such things. I can’t read it. I only record the regular prophecy. Hannis Arc was the only one to work with items like this. They were his specialty.”
His specialty.
A very dangerous specialty.
“You mean to say there are more of these?”