“Those are the official library copies. They were all donated by our central press at the same time that they were published. I remember receiving them, and I remember glancing through them… they were all the same. There wasn’t a hollowed out part with a treasure map or anything. And they were what I wrote.”
Sarah should know if they were what she wrote, but there was a questioning note in her voice that made me raise my eyebrows, and she kept looking over at the books like they might bite her. Something fishy was going on.
“So what you’re saying,” came Anyan’s rumbling voice, “is that someone risked all that security, and wasted all that power, to smuggle out a book that anyone can just come in here and read on their own.”
“Now you see why I contacted Cyntaf,” Sarah said. “I don’t lose one of my charges lightly, and everyone knows that. For someone to risk the wrath of my Repository to steal something so common, something about the Red and the White…”
“It has to be uncommon,” I said, glancing at where Hiral still lay, his burlap garments still smoking. I moved forward to the table, picking up one of the remaining modern textbooks.
“Looks like we’ve got ourselves some reading material,” I said, settling myself into the chair next to me. Anyan picked up another copy, as did Blondie and Sarah.
Without another word, we all started reading.
CHAPTER SIX
There’s nothing here we don’t already know,” Anyan said, tossing his book on the table. “It’s the same story we’ve always heard.”
I glanced up at the barghest, then back at the book. Unlike Anyan, I was fascinated by what I was reading. I still knew so little about the supernatural world. To find all of this information laid out in this easily accessible narrative was awesome.
“I know you’re probably enjoying the history,” Blondie said to me, softly, “But I’d skip to about chapter thirty-five. That’s where all the newish stuff is.”
“Hmm?” I asked, distractedly.
“We should all be concentrating on what happens after chapter thirty-five,” Blondie said, this time louder, to address the whole table. “That’s the most recent part. They must have stolen the new book for a reason, instead of taking one of the older ones. Let’s assume the information they want is in a new section, written after the last hard bound one, over there, and work backward if we don’t find anything.”
I dutifully flipped forward, hoping I could take the whole book with me when we left, and even Anyan picked up his own copy and went to the relevant section.
We all read in silence, for about another twenty minutes.
“Still all the same,” Anyan said. “The bad guys are still the bad guys, and we still beat them using a combination of Alfar cunning and Alfar power. Same old story.”
The frown that had appeared on my face as I started reading grew deeper as Anyan articulated what was bothering me about the text. “But that’s not the story, is it? I thought Blondie told us the story. With the slurrying, and her as the champion. She’s not Alfar.”
Blondie chuckled. “Yes, well, history is written by the winners, and the Alfar, for all intents and purposes, are always the winners. They couldn’t have some wayward Original winning, now could they?”
“So they lie?” I asked.
“Yup,” Blondie replied.
“What do they say?”
“Oh, I’m still in it. And I wield the labrys, and it makes me the champion. Only I’m not an Original, in their version. They never say exactly what I am, but they imply I was just a weak Alfar. It makes for a rocking story—average person turned hero, armed with a magical weapon that can defeat the greatest evil. They just lie about where the power of the labrys comes from.”
“Ohhhhh,” I groaned, as a bunch of wobbly things that had been bothering me fell into place. “That’s why Anyan knows about the Red and the White, but he didn’t know Blondie destroyed them. The story you know is the lie?” I asked the barghest. He nodded.
“But they call you Cyntaf, here,” I said to Blondie. “Do they know you’re an Original?”
“Some, like Gog and Magog, have figured it out. Those whom I know really well. But most don’t think about it. They think all Cyntaf means is that I’ve been around a long time, and that’s enough for them.”
“What do they say about where you got the ax?”
Blondie snorted. “There’s no mention of the creature, at all. Instead, I’m imbued with the power of Alfar monarchs past, who all got together in a ghostly cabal and granted me their undying favor.”
“Wow. So you’re still the champion, but in the official version you’re the Alfar champion?”
“Yes. The Alfar are powerful and they think ahead. Or at least they try to. This trick bit them in the butt, in the end. After all, it eventually came out that I was really affiliated with the rebels, and here I was the champion. Made the Alfar look bad. None of that’s in the official version, obviously, but it used to be a big deal.”
“So they lie, like they did with your story, in every single book?” I asked.
“Basically, yes,” Blondie said.
I looked over at the cart, and then walked to where Sarah had packed the other books. She’d left them bundled by time period.
Picking up one of the ancient bound ones I said, “So, when will this one end?”
Blondie peered over at me. “That’s the one that ends with my story. But there’s nothing past the actual fight in that version.”
“What about this time?” I asked, pointing to the books that looked significantly older than the previous batch.
“That one will tell you the Alfar queen at the time did it, but it was really a group of mixed factions, including me. We’d cobbled together quite a few relics of other Elemental children to win the day,” Blondie said.
“So all these books will tell me that the Alfar did it, alone?” I asked.
“Yes,” Sarah said.
I picked up the first volume of the second bound batch, and started reading the very last chapters. Sure enough, the story was about a brave Alfar queen who led her people in battle and saved the day. Any mention of other factions was slight, with the Alfar dominating the action.
So I picked up the next volume, and it was the same deal. Same story, written in the exactly same language. An exact copy, to be precise.
It wasn’t until I picked up the fourth of the five volumes that I noticed something different. I was reading the same line I’d already read three other times, “… and the Queene did spake her ire, calling forthe fire,” when the type set shifted. It was only the slightest change in spacing, but I’d majored in English, so I’d seen all sorts of font-shenanigans pulled by my fellow classmates. Still, I nearly didn’t see these, as they were in a volume that pre-dated the sorts of professional printing presses that kept everything nice and uniform. Yet there was definitely a distinctive spacing change to a sudden patch of language that was also very new.
For this line read, “… and the Queene did spake her ire the creatures united called forth the power in their relics calling forthe fire.”
I blinked, unsure what I was seeing, then felt my spine tingle as I looked a few lines down to see another bit of odd spacing, and the once familiar phrase, “… the fire it did blaze like the sun, and it smote the wily minions,” changed to, “the fire it did blaze like the sun and the relics, united, created a force so powerful and it smote the wily minions.”
“Crafty motherfuckers,” I breathed. I kept skimming, only reading the bits with the odd spacing, and there it was, all in front of me—the real story of what happened that day, not the fake, Alfar version of history.
“It’s so Alfar,” I said, holding up the book and speaking loud enough that the others could hear. “It’s just like what they did with the creature.”
The others were looking expectantly at me and I walked towards them with my prize.
“They covered up the truth, and they hid something in plain sight in such a way that they could find it again, if they needed it. They know they need to manipulate the truth, but they also know they might need that very truth, some day. So they hide it right there were everyone can see it, just like they did with the creature.”
“What’d you find, Jane?” Anyan asked, impatiently.
“It’s all right here,” I said. Then I changed my mind and trotted over to grab the first book of the batch that I’d looked at. “Look at this paragraph,” I said, pointing out the one line about the Queene I’d latched onto in the beginning. “Now look at it here,” I said, pointing at the slightly different one in the fourth version. “Keep reading, but only read what’s kind of weirdly spaced compared to everything else. You’ll see.”
While the others read, out of curiosity I went to the remaining books of that series. They were like the first three I’d read. Only that fourth version had been different.