THE LIBRARY

On the Keeping of the Wright's Shard — a reliquary account, thrice-copied

The contested history of the god-shard walled in the barrow, set down by an Asheni barrow-keeper, copied by a Temple curate who could not leave it alone, and annotated by a later hand that had actually held the thing. Three tellings that agree on almost nothing except that it should never have come out of Caer Vallen.

[In the barrow-keeper's hand, the oldest ink:] We did not find it. It was carried to us, wrapped in a dead man's coat, by a man who would not give his name and could not stop looking behind him. He said it came out of the seat under the Rampart in the year the ground broke, that it had been part of something larger and greater, and that he had watched two better men than him die of wanting it before he thought to be afraid. He asked us to bury it. We are the people who bury things. We buried it. Understand what it is, so that you do not make the mistake the settlers make and call it a sword. It is a piece of the Wright. When the making-god broke, he did not break as a pot breaks, into pieces that lie where they fall. He broke as an oath breaks — everywhere at once, and in every man who had sworn by him — and the pieces that were still solid enough to hold went to ground across the whole Vale, and this is the largest of them we know of. To hold it is to hold a corner of the god who made the joining of the world. That is not a blessing. A corner of the maker, in the hand of a thing he did not finish making, remembers that it could unmake instead. We walled it and set the old words over it: it stays until the named one comes to bear it. I will tell you what the words are for, since the settlers think they are a prophecy. They are a lock. There is no named one. There was never meant to be a named one. We said 'until' because a people cannot be told to guard a door forever — they lose heart — but they can be told to guard it until, and 'until' can be made to never arrive if the barrow is kept dark and the keepers are kept quiet. Keep it dark. Keep the keepers quiet. [In the curate's hand, a cleaner script, added generations later:] The Temple holds that the above is a heathen's misunderstanding dressed as humility, and that the shard is a holy relic of the Wright to be enshrined and honored, not hidden in a hill by folk who worship their grandmothers. I copied this account to prove the barrow-keepers had no right to it. I have read it four times now. I no longer know what I meant to prove. I will set down only what is documented and let the honest reader judge. It has been drawn from the barrow twice. The first time, by an officer of the old march who wished to carry it to the capital as tribute; he cut his own hand testing its edge and the hand would not close again for a year, and he gave it back. The second time is not written down, which is how you know it was worse. Both times it came home to the dark. Draw your own lesson. Mine, which I did not want, is that the barrow-keepers are right and the Temple is wrong, and I will not be the one to say so aloud, because a curate who says the relic should stay buried is a curate with no relic to tend. [In a third hand, quick and pressed hard into the page, the last:] I held it. Both of you are dancing around the plain thing so I will write the plain thing. It is cold and it stays cold and after a while the cold is the least of it. What it does is this: near it, oaths come loose. Not grandly. A man who swore to you in the morning finds, by the barrow's dark, that he cannot quite remember why, and is embarrassed, and leaves. A wall that has stood four hundred years decides, while you sleep against it, that it is under no obligation to. The shard is a piece of the god of binding, and it has stopped believing in binding, because the thing it was part of came apart, and it carries that unbelief out into everything you bring it near. The Asheni old man was right and the curate was right and neither of them held it, so let me be the one who did and say the rest: it does not want a named one. It does not want anything. That is what makes it godlike. Wall it up. I gave it back too. We all give it back. The Vale is the story of men giving it back, and the one time someone doesn't will be the last chapter.

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