Chainfire: Chainfire Trilogy Part 1

She was still not following what was obviously of critical importance In him. "Yes, we did. I remember it quite well."

"The copy we had didn't have those blank pages."

She frowned and then turned back to the book. She leafed through the pages again until she found the empty spot.

"Well," she said as she studied the place where the prophecy ended and then where an entirely new branch of prophecy resumed after the empty pages, "maybe whoever made this copy, for some reason, decided not to include some of it. Perhaps they had sound reason to believe that the particular branch had been a dead end and, rather than include dead wood in the tree of prophecy, they simply left it out. Such pruning is not uncommon. Then, because they didn't want to make it appear they were trying to deceive anyone, they went ahead and left the appropriate space blank to denote the deletion."

She looked up. The prophet's azure eyes were fixed on her. Ann felt sweat trickle down between her shoulder blades.

"Take a look at The Glendhill Book of Deviation Theory," he said in a quiet voice without taking his penetrating gaze from her.

Ann broke contact with that gaze and pulled the copy of The Glendhill Book of Deviation Theory close. She flipped through the pages as she had done with the previous book, if a little faster.

There were blank pages, only more of them.

She shrugged. "Not a very accurate copy, I'd say."

Nathan impatiently reached in with a long arm and turned the stack of pages back to the front.

There, on a page at the beginning, all alone, was the author's mark.

"Dear Creator," Ann whispered when she saw the little symbol. It still glimmered with the magic the author had invested in his mark. She fell goose bumps tingle up from her toes. "This is isn't a copy. It's the original. ^

"That's right. If you recall, the one we had in the vaults was a copy."

"Yes, I remember that ours was a copy."

She had assumed this one as well had been one of a number of copies. Many of the books of prophecy were copies, but that didn't diminish their value. They were checked and marked by respected scholars who then left their own mark to vouch for the copy's accuracy. A book of prophecy was valued for the precision and veracity of its content, not because it was the original. It was the prophecy itself that was valuable, not the hand that had set it down.

Still, to see the original of a book she loved as much as she love this particular volume was a memorable experience. This was the actual book, written in the hand of the prophet who had given these precious prophecies.

"Nathan — what can I say. This is a personal delight for me. You know how much this book means to me."

Nathan look a patient breath. "And the blank pages?"

Ann shrugged with one shoulder. "I don't know. I'm not really prepared to venture a guess. What are you getting at?"

"Look at the place where the blanks fit into the text."

Ann turned her attention back to the book. She read a little of the text before one of the blank areas, then read some of what followed. It was a prophecy about Richard. She randomly picked another blank place, reading before the blank area and after. It was another section about Richard.

"It would seem," she said as she studied a third place, "that the blanks appear in places where it talks about Richard."

Nathan was getting more edgy looking by the moment. "That's only because most of The Glendhill Book of Deviation Theory is about Richard. That pattern of blank pages associated with him doesn't hold true when you start looking at the other books."

Ann lifted her arms and let them fall to her sides. "Then I give up. I don't see what you see."

"It's what we're not seeing. It's the blank places that are the problem."

"What makes you say that?"

"Because," he said with a little more force in his voice, "there is something quite odd about those blank sections."

Ann pushed a stray wisp of gray hair back into the bun she always wore at the back of her head. She was becoming frazzled.

"Like what?"

"You tell me," he said. "I would bet that you could practically quote The Glendhill Book of Deviation Theory"

Ann shrugged. "Perhaps."

"Well, I can quote it. The copy we had back in the vaults, anyway. I went through this book, testing it against my memory." For some reason, Ann's stomach was churning with anxiety. She began lo dread that the copy they had back in the vaults at the palace might have had fraudulent prophecy filling in what the original author had left blank. That was almost too overwhelming a deception to contemplate.

"And what did you discover?" she asked.

"That I can quote this original exactly. No more, no less."

Ann sighed in relief. "Nathan, that's wonderful. That means that our copy wasn't filled with fabricated prophecy. Why would you be troubled because you can't remember blank places? They are blank, there is nothing there. There is nothing to remember."

"The copy we had back at the palace didn't have any blank places."