“I assume,” Vaelin said, “she had never coughed before?”
“Illness is beneath her. As is hunger or cold. She drank and ate but only in deference to the lesser souls who inhabit this temple. I was but a novice of sixteen summers when I came here to serve her. In all the years since, I never heard her cough nor sniff nor groan, even as I groan ever more with each passing day.”
Did you ever hear her lie? Vaelin left the question unsaid, suspecting Mother Wehn might well faint at the implication. A truly sick soul never coughs only once. The Jade Princess is not above subterfuge, it seems. She wanted Sherin to come here. But why?
“The world beyond this temple is troubled,” he said. “Enemies menace your borders. Did the princess know of this?”
Mother Wehn nodded. “Every week a messenger comes from the Prefecture capital bearing a scroll listing all major events in the kingdoms, and beyond. It has been this way for a very long time. The bowels of the temple are full of scrolls dating back centuries.”
“A valuable archive for any historian,” Vaelin mused, pondering just how much Brother Harlick would pay for access to such knowledge.
“Only she is ever permitted to read the scrolls,” Mother Wehn said. “Countless scholars have sent letters begging to be allowed just an hour in the archive, but they are always refused.”
She must have the clearest picture of history of any living soul, Vaelin surmised. Even more so than Erlin. And yet she guards her knowledge jealously. Something she doesn’t want the merely mortal to know, perhaps?
“Did she seem alarmed by the recent news?” Sho Tsai asked. “If she feared for the security of the kingdom, perhaps she felt compelled to flee.” From his increasingly furrowed brow, Vaelin deduced he was as confused by what had occurred here as Mother Wehn.
They don’t see her as human, Vaelin realised. To them she is a fixture of this temple, like a statue. The notion summoned memories of a huge weathered stone head he once found amidst the ruins of the Fallen City in the Lonak Dominion beyond the Realm’s north-eastern border. Ages past it had been carved to commemorate a great man who would in time become a monster. But all statues turn to dust in the end.
“She does not fear any more than she hungers,” Mother Wehn replied with a faintly offended sniff. “She read the most recent scrolls with the same assiduous care but no particular sign of concern.”
“There must be something,” Sho Tsai insisted. “She was not taken from this temple. She clearly chose to leave. There must be more to this than a single cough.”
Mother Wehn began to shake her head but then stopped, the crease of her brow deepening. “There was one thing,” she said. “But it happened months ago. Her song . . . She perfected her song.”
Vaelin watched Sho Tsai’s gaze shift back to the harp, his confusion briefly transforming into outright fear before he reimposed his usual rigid mask. “Her song,” he repeated, voice soft. “The Song of the Ages.”
“Quite.”
Vaelin recalled the first tale Erlin had told of the Jade Princess some years ago during the advance through the mountains of northern Volaria. Uncounted years spent in practice of voice and harp. Her song is not perfected, she hasn’t finished, perhaps she never will.
“Song of the Ages?” he asked.
“She knew many others,” Mother Wehn replied. “And would play them for our amusement when the mood took her. But the Song of the Ages she would play every day, often several times a day. No matter how many times I heard it, I never grew tired of the tune or the words. It was almost as if she were singing a different song with each rendition.”
“The words. What do they say?”
“The song was crafted so long ago the language is indecipherable to the modern ear.”
“And she never provided a translation?”
“Such is not her way, and it is not our place to ask.”
“But she told you she perfected it?”
“Not in so many words. But it was clear enough. I was in this chamber the last time she played it. This time the tone, the mood of it was very different. More sombre somehow. I must confess I shed tears at the beauty of it, and the sadness. There was something about the sound, the notes, they seemed to . . .” Mother Wehn trailed off, shaking her head. “I am a foolish old woman.”