Paul Kemp - Twilight Falling

"As you can see," the priest said, "Sephris has been very busy since you left."

Cale nodded. He and Jak shared a pensive look.

The priest led them to the library doors. Before he opened them, he turned to face them, lips pursed.

"I fear that your perception of what is happening here, with Sephris, may be … incorrect."

Jak began to interrupt with a protest but the priest held up a hand and cut him off.

"I can see it in your face. To someone from outside the church, it may appear that we treat Sephris as an oddity, or perhaps a sort of mascot."

Here he looked at Cale with hooded eyes. Cale managed to hold his gaze, though his thoughts tracked the priest's words. It seemed to him that Oghma's church displayed Sephris the same way a Cormyrean sideshowman displayed his freaks. That the church required a "donation" to see Sephris only solidified the perception.

The priest gave a tight smile and nodded, as though he had read Cale's thoughts.

"I assure you that is not the case," the priest continued. "Without a caretaker, Sephris would not eat, drink, or bathe. Caring for him is not always pleasant, yet my brethren and I regard it as an honor."

"An honor?" Jak exclaimed. "I thought-"

"You were mistaken," the priest interrupted. "You see, Sephris is not insane. He is blessed, one chosen by the Lord of Knowledge, and is so regarded by all in Oghma's orthodox church."

Disbelief must have shown on Cale's face.

The priest nodded. "I know how it must appear to you, but it is not so. Oghma has blessed Sephris with a unique gift-an ability to think in a way that no one else can think, to know what no one else can know." Sadness, or awe, dropped the priest's voice. "It is a wondrous gift, but a gift from a god can be a difficult burden for a man to bear." The priest looked at them and gave a soft smile. "Such is the case with Sephris."

The priest seemed to be waiting for a response. Cale could think of nothing to say. He didn't know why the priest had just told them what he had. He merely nodded.

The priest looked from one to the other, his face emotionless, then he turned and opened the doors. As he did so, his words stuck in Cale's brain: Sometimes a gift from the gods is a difficult burden for a man to bear. Cale reached into his vest pocket for his holy symbol but stopped before touching it.

"Sephris," the caretaker-priest said, "the petitioners from yesterday have returned."

The priest turned and nodded to Cale and Jak, then exited the library, pulling the doors closed behind him.

To Cale, the library appeared even more disorderly than it had the day before. Papers and workslates lay strewn about everywhere, all covered in Sephris's urgent scrawl. On the desk, set upon a stack of papers, stood an intricately crafted bronze orrery. Beside it sat the half-sphere. Sephris hovered over both, staring. He looked the same. He hadn't changed his red cloak and Cale doubted that he had eaten. Despite the frantic nature of Sephris's writings, the man himself appeared calm and composed, at least at the moment. Cale supposed that even those fueled by divine knowledge could not maintain a fervor forever.

Without looking up, Sephris said, "Only two of the three on this seventeenth day of the sixth month."

"Sephris?" Jak asked hesitantly. "Are you all right?"

Sephris looked up. Dark circles colored the skin under his eyes.

"Indeed, Jak Fleet. Better than I have been in some time." He put his hand on the half-sphere and grinned. In that smile, Cale saw madness, or conviction. "I can't see it," Sephris continued. "It is a dominant variable, but so dominant that I don't know. I cannot solve it."

Cale's heart sank as the import of those words registered. Sephris didn't know what the sphere was. They had wasted a day.

"Come here," Sephris said, and waved them toward the desk.

Cale and Jak walked across the library, each careful to avoid stepping on any of Sephris's work papers.

"Never mind those," Sephris snapped. "Come here."

The half-sphere sat on the desk, inert, inscrutable even to Oghma's Chosen. Cale stared at it. He didn't know what he would do next.

Sephris smiled at them. His eyes were bloodshot and intense. His hair stuck up at odd angles. He nodded at the half-sphere.

"I cannot solve it! You have presented me with a premise for which I cannot craft a proof. For that, I thank you."

"Thank us?" Jak asked.

Sephris nodded and said, "Indeed. I have thought for some time that there was nothing that I could not solve, given time. I am pleased to be wrong."

Cale picked up the half-sphere. The gemstones within the quartz caught the light and twinkled, taunting him. He was glad for Sephris-since Sephris seemed to be glad-but he was also disappointed that they knew nothing more than they had the day before.

"We're pleased for you, old man," said Cale, "but we'd hoped for more. We need to know what this is, and if you can't-"

"I know what it is, Erevis Cale," Sephris cut in, smiling broadly. "I simply do not know its fate. Except that it is entangled, infinitely entangled, with you two."

Cale stared at him hard and asked, "How do you know my name?"

"Because I solved you, First of Five."

"What-"

Only then did Sephris's words register.

He knew what the sphere was!

Cale held up the half-sphere and managed to keep the emotion out of his voice when he said, "Tell us."

"Yes, tell us," Jak echoed.

Unlike Cale, Jak's voice betrayed the excitement he felt.

Sephris held out his hands for the half-sphere and asked, "May I?"

"Of course," Cale answered and handed it to him. Cale was surprised to see that his own hands were shaking.

"Imagine the sphere intact," Sephris said, and he pointed to the green gem-cut in half-set in the exact center of the half-sphere, "and note the emerald set in its center."

"All right," Jak said, smiling, eager. "Go on. Go on."

Cale nodded.

"Imagine that the emerald is-" Sephris tapped one of the planets represented by his orrery, the one third from the sun-"Abeir-Toril. Our world."

Cale's arms went gooseflesh.

"What?" Jak asked. "What?"

Cale cleared his throat as the implications of Sephris's statement hit him. "Then the other gems are …?"

"Stars," Sephris said. "And planets … other celestial bodies. Including some that are visible in our sky only once every few centuries."

Jak reached out a hand for the half-sphere though he did not touch it.

"How can you be sure, Sephris?" the halfling asked. "It doesn't look like anything."

The loremaster-Cale thought that Sephris had earned the title-chuckled at that.

"Jak Fleet, the motion of the heavens can be represented by a mathematical model as easily as… the volume of a sphere. I'm certain. Observe."

Sephris turned the small crank on the orrery. The bronze gears of the mechanism turned and the eight planets began to circle the sun.

"You see? Their motion is predictable, understandable, solvable." Sephris's voice turned wistful as he continued, "The movement of the heavens is applied mathematics in its purist form." He looked down at Jak, who stared wide-eyed at the orrery. "And so I am certain. I suspected that the sphere might be a representation of the heavens when first you showed it to me, but some of the unusual heavenly bodies represented by gems in the sphere caused me to doubt, but I resolved those."

"Unusual?" Cale asked, intrigued.

Sephris nodded and said, "Indeed. As I mentioned, some of the celestial bodies represented in the sphere appear in our sky to the unaided eye only rarely."

Cale thought he understood. If he imagined himself standing on the emerald, the gems in the sphere represented the celestial heavens surrounding Toril.

"So it's a map," Cale concluded.