Foundryside (The Founders Trilogy #1) - Robert Jackson Bennett Page 0,89

scrived device do anything beyond its own boundaries. I can’t make a rig that heats up iron then turn that iron into clay or snow or whatever, in other words.>

His voice took on a dreamy cadence.

Sancia’s skin crawled.

She didn’t know what to say to that.

he asked.

he said quietly.

There was a pause. And then…she felt it.

Or, rather, she heard it: it was a quiet, rhythmic tap-tap, tap, tap—a soft series of beats and pulses, echoing through her mind. She listened to it, reached out, grasped it, and then…

The beats unfolded, expanded, and enveloped her, filling her thoughts.

And then the memory took her.

Sand. Darkness. Quiet, anxious mutterings from somewhere nearby. She was lying on a stone surface, staring up into the darkness.

Midnight, she thought to herself. When the world grinds to a stop, and then restarts. She knew that—but she didn’t know how she knew it.

Then a flame, bright and hot, molten metal glowing in the shadows. She felt pain, fierce and terrible, piercing her, running her through, and she heard herself cry out—but it wasn’t her, she was someone else, she knew that—and then, suddenly, she felt herself fill this form, this function, this design.

She felt her mind flooding into the shaft, the teeth, the notches, the tip. She became the key, became this thing, this apparatus. Yet she now understood that she was to be much, much more than a key.

A compendium, a compilation. A device filled with so, so much knowledge of scrivings, of sigils, of the language and makeup of the world. A tool, bright and terrible. Just like a blade is meant to part wood or flesh, she was meant to part…

Sancia gasped and the memory released her. It was too much, too much. She was back in the bedroom, yet she was so stunned she nearly collapsed.

Clef asked.

She tried to catch her breath.

More silence. Then: He laughed sadly.

A pause.

She sat there for a moment, stunned.