The newness of his eighth nameday toy, a green crocodile of wood, sawdust, cloth

and leather, hadn't worn off when the strangers came--and so that was what they
found him doing, playing knight where he could be alone for a while (not forever .
Not even an hour. But long enough to forget the disagreement between him and
Matheonien the miller's boy on the subject of who was more qualified to play-act a
dragoon). Too quiet even for him to hear, there came at least a dozen other
duskwights from the shadows, wearing clothes unlike normal people, hair cut
strangely, and skin the color of soot, rather than ash.
"You, boy. Get yer mother and father," one of them had said, nudging him in the
rear with a walking stick--Drividot jumped with a yelp, discarding the stick in
favor of holding the crocodile near to him and fairly running back into the
village. He was indeed going to get his parents, if not precisely for the same
reason the strangers wanted--so their laughter followed him back through the
streets.
***
The matter required more than his parents, as it turned out--half the village
seemed to need to opine on the subject of the strangers, their pilgrimage ("Do you
think the Holy City will really let them in?" No one answered him), and their
request to use some of their tunnels ("Couldn't they just take the roads? There're
lots of roads to Ishgard." For some reason, his suggestions went unheard). And even
though everyone else under five fulms tall quickly got bored with all the adults
talking and returned to Ser Matheonien and the Dragon, Act II (possibly Ser
Matheonien the Dragon, Act II; not all of the performers seemed to be working from
the same script), Drividot stuck around, milling about underfoot as the men of his
village spoke with the elezen who seemed to be the strangers' leader and his close
companions. Maybe if he was patient, someone would answer his questions...or say
why they couldn't answer his questions...or even acknowledge his questions...
Sullenly, he wandered away and sat down on a boulder with a whumpf and a whuff of a
pouting sigh. They'd been talking for bells and bells and bells (at least thirty
minutes) and no one was paying him any attention and he was no closer to
understanding what was happening than he was five minutes after the discussions
started.
"This stinks," Drividot muttered to himself, moving the crocodile's mask-like
wooden face to make it 'talk.'
"You said it," said a raspy voice behind him and below him, and he promptly fell
off the boulder in surprise, then scrambled around to see who it was.
The same man who'd first ordered him to fetch the adults was leaning against his
boulder, sitting crosslegged and re-lighting his pipe. With the old man's attention
all on the pipe bowl, and no mother there to tug on his ears and tell him it's rude
to stare, Drividot did exactly that, as he'd never seen anyone like him before. His
hair was snow white, from age, but his wrinkled skin was so dark, almost as dark as
pitch, as the rocks of the cave. He wore no shirt, his ribs could be counted, but
his chest and arms were covered still in leather adornments--collars, bands--with
painted and embroidered triangles on them. It was the strangest thing Drividot had
ever seen.
The old man finished with his pipe, and blew out a cloud of white smoke that made
Drividot cough--and the look he gave the coughing boy was the only acknowledgment
he'd given him since the wry comment. He had yellow eyes, and they looked from
Drividot, to the cluster of people talking, and back to him, showing no emotion
(for "unimpressed" doesn't count as emotion). "Need t' change our pilgrimage route,
and yer town's smack in the middle of the new way," he said at last. "Land's
changed, since last we came this way. The ground we thought we'd tunnel through,
hah--" the laugh sounds less like a laugh, more like a dry cough, "--froze solid,
harder and colder than Halone's teats."
Drividot blinked, then smiled childishly, trying to hold back giggles. If his
mother heard that language...but it's a turn of phrase he hadn't heard before.
Maybe he could ...borrow it. "You could just take the roads into the city. For
pilgrimage," he said, certain that this would help solve their problem. "There's
guards all over. They're pretty safe."
But instead of thanking him for his insight, the old man only sighed, shaking his
head. "Dumb kid," he muttered, very quietly and obviously not intended for Drividot
to hear, "can't even read the first bone of the--"
"I can so!" Drividot said--quailing back for a moment, out of concern the adults
heard him raising his voice to an elder, but then resuming when they didn't seem to
notice. "I can so read!" Very indignant, and not paying the right kind of attention
to the kind of look the old man was giving him, he continued on. "I'm the best
reader. I am! Brother Noirterel said so--"
"Are you now?" The old man's initial surprise had given way to amusement--not
laughter, just a wide, wide smile that showed off his teeth (three of which were
golden, Drividot could just now see). "The best ."
And he paused for a moment here, because that wasn't exactly true. He wasn't
exactly the best. But he was good, and he was a better reader than Matheonien--
Brother Noirterel said so himself--and in his eyes that was close enough. But he'd
already said he was the best, so there was nothing for it but to press on. Drividot
nodded vigorously.
"You read the Commandments, I'm sure." The old man didn't sound nearly as impressed
as he should be, but Drividot continued nodding resolutely. "The prayers and yer
alphabet, too." Nodded again. "The Acts?" And again. "Saints and Martyrs?" He
sounded sadder than any adult that had ever quizzed him on his schoolwork, but
Drividot didn't let that deter him. "Suppose you'll read the Epistles next summer."
"I already have," Drividot returned, looking triumphant. See? He told you he could
read, you silly old man, and he can read better than you thought, and now you look
the fool, not him! Victory.
And strangely enough for an adult, while the old man didn't realize exactly how
right and correct Drividot was, he wasn't telling him off, either. Instead, he
laughed (but not unkindly, though it was rather hoarse and rattley) and pulled out
a small book from a pocket--leather-bound and probably at least as old as he was,
the parchment ragged at the edges--and handed it to him. "Then read an old man a
passage. Eyes aren't what they used to be." It was a blatant lie, as those same
eyes were glittering with mischief, but Drividot pretended it wasn't anyway, taking
the book with a proud expression and opening it.
But it wasn't words on the pages. Or--no, they were words, they were too regular to
be just scratches, but they were words unlike any he had ever seen. And thus--
nothing he could read.
He hadn't come all this way just to look stupid now, though. The opposite page had
a drawing--a dragon and an elezen--so probably this was in the book of Martyrs.
Taking a deep breath, and looking frequently from the page to the expectant old
man, Drividot began to recite: "In the thousand and forty-first year of the Sixth
Astral Era, the Lady Lyorelle was martyred and received Halone's eternal reward,
she now sits in the Fury's halls and for those in life who suff--who toil--who..."
He knew this story, really he did! But the old man's laughter made it too hard to
remember. Blushing with shame, he snapped the book shut and flung it in the old
man's lap, turning to rush off.
He hadn't gotten twelve paces, though, before his arms felt suspiciously light, and
he remembered the crocodile still laid by the boulder, forgotten in the excitement
of speaking with the old man. And for a moment he seriously considered running back
home without it--but then, if he did, the toy might get dirty, and musty, or even
lost, and he would be scolded, and he didn't want any of that. Miserably, he turned
back for the boulder.
The old man had finished laughing by the time Drividot came back, letting out
breath in a sigh. "I'm sorry," he said, though since he was still smiling it
perhaps could have been more sincere. "That was a bit mean."
Drividot picked up the sawdust-stuffed crocodile, holding it to his chest. "I
didn't know those words," he muttered, still bitter, but if he was caught in a lie
to an adult...
"No," the old man said cheerfully. "You knew the words. You just didn't know which
sounds. That's all writing is--sound you can see, sound you can feel." He held the
book up as demonstration of this, thumping it against his knee.
And despite himself--despite his embarrassment and discomfort and desire to go sulk
for a while--this was interesting. This was strange. Brother Noirterel did not
speak of writing like this. Books and scrolls were wisdom and knowledge and
goodness and high, noble things. Not sound. Sound was..ordinary.
"So--writing's the important thing," he said, still trying to seem smart and exit
the situation with a bit of dignity.
"Not writing," the old man said, then repeated, "Sound you can see. Sound you can
feel." He tapped his ears then, and although Drividot understood some of what he
meant by that--Duskwights have the keenest ears in all the realm, and it was
something he knew he was supposed to take as a point of pride--but not all of it.
"But you just said--"
The old man ignored him then, digging around in his pockets for something--
something wrapped in several layers of brown paper, that he unwrapped with more
care than he had shown to the book. It was a bell, small and black and metal, and,
from how he handled it, much, much heavier than it looked. "Sound you can see," he
repeated--he rung the bell sharply by the boulder, and a crack appeared in it.
"Sound you can feel." He rung it again, more keenly, and Drividot winced at the
tone, clapping one hand to his ear.
The old man looked up above them, at the hollow cave, and tilted the bell in his
hand like it wasn't a handbell, but a great churchbell, like the ones in the
towers. "Sound that can shake great mountains down," he whispered. With a stroke of
his hand, the crack in the boulder vanished and it was whole again.
Eyes wide and mouth slightly open--his embarrassment quite forgotten--Drividot
stepped back, afraid, then forward, to ask what was happening and if it was
heretical. But then--
" Drividot! " Grandmama did not believe in letting her sixty-eight winters dampen
her lungpower. "Wash up! It's time for dinner!"
He started, and by his startlement the old man could tell just who the boy being
called for was. He laughed, shooed him away, and Drividot obeyed his elders.
By the time the washing-up, the eating, and the tidying after were over, an
agreement had been reached between the strangers and the village elders, and they
had departed, continuing on their pilgrimage. Three days later, playing by the same
boulder, he stumbled across a dusty packet: a black bell much heavier than it
looked, clapper muffled by a piece of paper that had "For Drividot" written on it,
and a passage written in words he never did figure out how to read.