“Do you need help?”
My mind latched on to the voice of the old librarian with the ferocity of a drowning victim. I must have looked a sight as I whipped around to face her; I was swaying on my feet, my mouth hanging open and dumb, my hands outstretched and forming claws in front of me.
The old woman, who stood bracketed by one of the bookcase gaps, gazed in at me impassively.
With an effort, I closed my mouth, lowered my hands, and straightened from the bizarre half crouch into which I’d sunk. I was still shaking inside, but some semblance of dignity was returning to me.
“I… I, no,” I managed after a moment. “No. I’m… all right.”
She said nothing, just kept watching me. I wanted to tell her to go away, but my eyes were drawn back to the thing that had shocked me so.
Across the back of a bookcase, the Bright Lord of Order gazed at me. It was just artwork—an Amn-style embossing, gold leaf layered onto an outline chiseled in a white marble slab. Still, the artist had captured Itempas in astounding, life-size detail. He stood in an elegant warrior’s stance, His form broad and powerfully muscled, His hands resting on the hilt of a huge, straight sword. Eyes like lanterns pinned me from the solemn perfection of His face. I had seen renderings of Him in the priests’ books, but not like this. They made Him slimmer, thin-featured, like an Amn. They always drew Him smiling, and they never made His expression so cold.
I put my hands behind me to push myself upright—and felt more marble under my fingers. When I turned, the shock was not so great this time. I half-expected what I saw: inlaid obsidian and a riot of tiny, starlike diamonds, all of it forming a lithe, sensual figure. His hands were flung outstretched from his sides, nearly lost amid the flaring cloak of hair and power. I could not see the exulting? screaming? figure’s face, for it was tilted upward, dominated by that open, howling mouth. But I knew him anyhow.
Except… I frowned in confusion, reaching up to touch what might have been a swirl of cloth, or a rounded breast.
“Itempas forced him into a single shape,” said the old woman, her voice very soft. “When he was free, he was all things beautiful and terrible.” I had never heard a more fitting description.
But there was a third slab to my right. I saw it from the corner of my eye. Had seen it from the moment I’d slipped between the shelves. Had avoided looking at it, for reasons that had nothing to do with my rational self and everything to do with what I now, deep down in the unreasoning core of my instincts, suspected.
I made myself turn to face the third slab, while the old woman watched me.
Compared to her brothers, Enefa’s image was demure. Undramatic. In gray marble profile she sat, clad in a simple shift, her face downcast. Only on closer observation did one notice the subtleties. Her hand held a small sphere—an object immediately recognizable to anyone who had ever seen Sieh’s orrery. (And I understood, now, why he treasured his collection so much.) Her posture, taut with ready energy, more crouch than sit. Her eyes, which despite her downturned face glanced up, sidelong, at the viewer. There was something about her gaze that was… not seductive. It was too frank for that. Nor wary. But… evaluative. Yes. She looked at me and through me, measuring all that she saw.
With a shaking hand, I reached up to touch her face. More rounded than mine, prettier, but the lines were the same as what I saw in mirrors. The hair was longer, but the curl was right. The artist had set her irises with pale green jade. If the skin had been brown instead of marble… I swallowed, trembling harder still.
“We hadn’t intended to tell you yet,” said the old woman. Right behind me now, though she should’ve been too fat to fit through the gap. Would’ve been, if she had been human. “Pure chance that you decided to come to the library now. I suppose I could’ve found a way to steer you elsewhere, but…” I heard rather than saw her shrug. “You would have found out eventually.”
I sank to the floor, huddling against the Itempas wall as if He would protect me. I was cold all over, my thoughts screaming and skittering every which way. Making that first, crucial connection had broken my ability to make others.
This is how madness feels, I understood.
“Will you kill me?” I whispered to the old woman. There was no mark on her forehead. I had missed that, still used to the absence of a mark, not its presence. I should have noticed. She’d had a different shape in my dream, but I knew her now: Kurue the Wise, leader of the Enefadeh.
“Why would I do that? We’ve invested far too much in creating you.” A hand fell on my shoulder; I twitched. “But you’re no good to us insane.”