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became a perfectly smooth rectangle about nine inches wide by twelve inches
high. Oh, this is neat work, Molly, she said, admiring the perfect
seamlessness. She folded the reader, and it creased along invisible lines, as
smoothly as if it had hinges then unfolded flawlessly again.
If it works, then I ll get excited, Molly muttered. I haven t had either
the time or the inclination to experiment with anything but healing, so this
may be a complete fiasco.
Lauren, standing, looked through the unfolded plastic at the cover of the book
she d chosen. It remained unchanged. If it doesn t work, we ll go to that
safe room tomorrow and try again.
Molly had dragged her huge choice of book over to the sitting room s
overstuffed sofa, lit a lamp, and settled in with the book open on her lap.
She put the reader down on a page, waited a moment, and looked up at Lauren
and grinned.
& and then they rode northward from the Battle of Badwater Sea the heroes, the
gallant veyâr away from the war and the dead, both buried and burned, and
toward the city of hope, Naarth, and the river rich with fish and the fields
yielding to the plow and heavy with grasses for the beasts&
Molly said, Naarth is south of here, in the Imal of Dalieam. An ambassador
from there is in permanent residence here; it s one of the last of the veyâr
strongholds, and they trade a lot of their river and plains goods for
Ballaharan forest goods. Molly closed the book and placed the reader on the
cover. Travels of the Veyâr from the Lost Homeland. I should have checked the
cover first, but I didn t realize the decorations were actually words. I
thought they were just patterned embroidery. At least I know the reader
works. She reached down and hid the book under the couch and went to get
another one. What do you have?
Lauren sat in her rocking chair with the book in her lap, closed, and laid the
reader on the cover. Until the reader actually touched the cover, nothing
happened, but the instant it did, the bright embroidered silk patterns
resolved themselves into words. Life of the Vodi Elspeth, she said.
There are supposed to be some good ones in the pile, Molly said, heading
over to the books spread across the floor. I m interested in the biographies,
but only after I ve had a chance to read the things that I think will really
be useful. She knelt and put her reader on one of the covers. Back of the
book, I guess, she said, and flipped it over. No. This one doesn t have a
title. I suppose that makes it one of the diaries or journals. She tried
another book. The Recounting of Imallin Galorayne. I have no idea why this
one was supposed to be useful, and it s pretty thick. Later, maybe. She
picked up a thin volume covered in purple silk heavily embroidered with pretty
flowers. I m betting diary, Molly said, and checked the cover. I ll be
damned. This is Those Whose Names Are Unspoken. I really want to read this
one, but not now. I m looking for a big, thick one. I wish I d been paying
more attention to what the cover looked like& Oh. Here it is. Imallin
Merional s Conversations with the Dark Gods.
Sounds cheerful, Lauren said. Light, happy reading for the dead hours of
the night.
Molly laughed just a little and looked away. Should be loads of fun, I
think. She shrugged, and watching her, Lauren got the feeling that Molly was
hiding something. Maybe something big.
Lauren put down Life of the Vodi Elspeth and got the one with the interesting
title Those Whose Names Are Unspoken.
She started at the beginning, which was a list of those the author considered
dark gods. Most of the rrôn, many of the keth, some of the anguawyr, all
surviving triiga& the list went on for two pages, but nowhere did it just
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flatly list a species or race and say, Here. These are dark gods. It always
offered some qualifier. Was that, Lauren wondered, some form of veyâr
political correctness, where they could not permit themselves to say, Here.
These are all bad people, from bad cultures on an evil world ? Or did their
careful qualifiers map out the borders of some unsuspected reality?
But maybe it wasn t all that unsuspected. In the human Christian mythos, God
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