Chapter 14 | Part 2

“There is another line I need to show you.”

Xandor laid three copied fragments beside the Beacon, taking care to keep his sore finger clear of the metal.

Eldric remained standing.

“From those same pages?” Eldric asked.

“From a translation I made years ago. I think I read it wrongly.”

Balin sighed. “Comforting.”

“No.”

Xandor pointed to a line he had copied years ago.

“I rendered this as the call passes the closed road. I thought it described distance.”

Dulint frowned. “And now?”

“Another copy uses the same phrase beside a Barrier glyph.”

Maris went still.

“Have you seen it happen?” Eldric asked.

“No. Three sources mention it, but two are damaged. I can show you what survives.”

Eldric stepped closer to the table.

Balin looked at the fragments. “What are they saying?”

Xandor tapped the line.

“Sense may not stop at the Barrier.”

“Across worlds?” Dulint asked.

“The texts say the call does.”

“Difference?”

“I cannot tell whether they mean a voice, a summons, or the light we can see here.”

Dulint looked at the cube. “Who would hear it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Other pieces?”

“Possibly. Read the next line before you decide.”

Dulint drew the page closer.

Xandor turned the third fragment around.

A second line sat beneath the first.

“What calls is heard. What hears may answer.”

No one spoke for a moment.

Maris stared at the words.

“The black water.”

Xandor did not answer.

“The boat. Whoever was drowning.”

“Maris—”

“You think that was an answer.”

“I think it might have been.”

Her chair scraped back.

“No. You don’t get to use me to make the pieces fit.”

Xandor stopped.

She was breathing too fast.

He drew a line through the note linking her vision to the passage.

“You’re right.”

Maris watched him do it.

“The noise grew worse as you came closer. You told us that. I have nothing that connects the drowning to these words.”

“Then don’t write it as though you do.”

Xandor set the charcoal down.

Her breathing slowed by a fraction.

Eldric went to the window.

“If something on the other side can hear it, can moving shut it up?”

“It followed Dulint all the way here.”

“Can we stop the broadcast?”

“I don’t know how.”

“Can we destroy it?”

Dulint’s hand closed around the edge of the table.

Xandor looked at the cube.

“I don’t know what destroying one part of an incomplete system would do.”

Eldric looked at Dulint’s hand on the table, then back at the cube.

Balin rubbed his face. “So someone might hear it from the other side. Someone we can’t even see coming.”

Xandor looked at the second line again.

“Or what.”

The Beacon pulsed once.

Maris set her cup down before it slipped from her hands.

End of Chapter 14.2 —> 14.3: Naming Without Explaining: The Fragments