These syllables, much like the random sentences spoken by people in a gathered crowd, overlapped and clashed; none were terribly loud, and none demanded instant attention. But none would; none of the syllables conformed to a language she knew. None implied intent or danger. They were a simple gathering of sounds with nothing to collect or catch her attention.
No, she thought, that wasn’t true. She understood as she listened—closing her eyes as she often did to aid concentration—that those syllables emanated from the marks themselves, as if they, rotating in place, were desperately attempting to be heard. She listened now.
As she listened, she began to search for words that seemed to be written with a similar foundation to the one on Starrante’s book—bold double horizontal lines as the central composition, with a slender, slightly curved line to the left of the whole figure that seemed to anchor the rest of it. There were very few of the squiggles, but three dots had been added beneath the second horizontal line.
She knew that the pronunciation of true words wasn’t dependent on the composition, or not precisely dependent on it. The rough alphabet that comprised true words had never appeared to be phonetic. This language wasn’t like Elantran or Barrani, where at least ninety percent of the words could be sounded out by someone just learning to match speech to the written equivalent.
But this was what she had, at the moment. She chose to touch the marks of the Chosen that most closely corresponded in general shape and composition to the rune on Starrante’s book.
As she touched them, she could hear them. She could hear how they might be pronounced—or perhaps how they might be pronounced by Kaylin. It hadn’t occurred to her until this moment that they might contain sounds that her human throat couldn’t, or didn’t, naturally make. When Sanabalis spoke these words, or when the Arkon did, they spoke with normal voices—but louder, deeper, richer in intonation. They didn’t wrap the sounds in the Dragon thunder that passed for conversation in their native tongues.
She would have to remember to ask the Arkon whether or not he could speak True Words in Dragon.
She couldn’t. But she could hear syllables now. She could hear the similarities in pronunciation as she moved from one word to the next. She had, with the help of Tara and Tiamaris, repeated words and sounds, struggling to force them into coherence. But she understood now that it wasn’t just sound; intent was required.
She had learned to look at carved words, to see their shape, and to understand when that shape had begun to shift or change in ways that were wrong. But she didn’t read them out loud; she didn’t speak them. There was nothing wrong with the shape of the word that graced Starrante’s book. There was no disfiguration.
Her eyes were closed, or she would have closed them again. The syllables that she heard were different enough that she couldn’t quite match components to sounds—and she was aware that there might be no actual match.
Speak, Hope said.
She didn’t argue with him; she wanted to, but there was nothing to be gained by it. If writing words, if holding them in the correct shape, was a matter of instinct, of recognizing the harmony in disparate shapes...was speaking like that, as well?
Yes.
“Not with normal language.” Damn.
You think of the wordsaslanguage. This is both right and wrong.
“Fine. Tell me how it’s wrong. Wrong is what I need to fix.” She raised her voice as the sound of cracking, breaking rock swamped Hope’s possible answer.
They are words. They are language. They are life. Think of true words as the blood of the Ancients. You have seen this before in glimpses of ancient Records.
“Our blood doesn’t work that way. We bleed when we’re injured, but the blood’s not alive.”
Hope didn’t reply.
“Hope?”
Silence.
“Look—you don’t actually expect me toheal an injured word, do you? Words aren’t singular. Even true words. It’s not like it’s said once and that’s done forever and ever. If I could only use each word once, I’d never be able to talk!”
Her familiar glared at her.
“Even if I wanted to heal this particular word, I can’t touch it. I’ve been trying.”
“Corporal,” the Arkon cut in. “I believe you are looking at this the wrong way.” She didn’t open her eyes, so she couldn’t see his expression, but she could pretty much hear it. “In this case, you do not need to touch the word. You need tospeakit.”
“I was trying that—”
“Yes, you were. But in all of the times you’ve possessed the marks of the Chosen, you’ve shown competence in utilizing their innate power in only one way: you heal. Speaking the words as I’ve spoken them will not, I think, resolve the issue we face.”
Kaylin was almost frustrated enough to open her eyes.
“You must speak them, Corporal, with the power you have always used to heal. The only power you trust enough to use willingly and deliberately.”
“I lit the room,” she said. Hope bit her ear. But if he wanted her to use that power, she had to touch the rune. So that wasn’t what he was saying at all. He was asking her to speak a word she didn’t know—which she’d been trying to do—while using the power of the marks of the Chosen to heal a word in a completely unnatural way.