The wind whipped through the verdant courtyard and swept Thalia’s hair into her face. Tucked under one arm was a battered book with loose pages sticking out of it, a dozen color-coded bookmarks, and what looked like a napkin with scribbled notes hanging out of one end. A leather belt with a brass fastener attached to the spine, barely binding the whole thing together. The sole safeguard against the wind snatching away the book’s contents.
Thalia hoisted the book further up under her arm with a shrug of her shoulders. Then she checked to ensure that her other burden, a stack of yellowed parchment scrolls, had remained intact.
Satisfied, she returned her gaze to the cobbled pathway that led to her destination: the towering astrology wing of the library of Cordas. The building loomed over the little courtyard like the mythological shadow of some ancient titan. Above her, the domed stained-glass ceiling glimmered in the light of the distant sun overhead. The patterns were only half visible from the outside. Yet, even from here, the structure was the bejeweled crown of the titan. In the distance rose the domes of further wings of the library, spreading out nearly five square miles like a council of giants stooping to listen to whispered secrets. In the center of the sprawl, a spire stretched out above the ground to touch the heavens above. Its shadow cast over the heads of the kneeling giants at its feet.
Thalia’s cobblestone path cut through the flowers, neatly trimming the wild greenness of the courtyard with geometric precision. Shaped in the same way as the stained glass above, the artistry of it juxtaposed mathematical order onto what would’ve otherwise been a chaotic collection of scattered flowers.
Smiling, Thalia looked up as she arrived at the elegant oaken doors of the library. Symmetrical gold leaf designs of mathematical shapes adorned the doors, and as Thalia stared at the gates, her brain began to recall the formulas behind each figure and its properties. With each shape came random facts and trinkets of knowledge. Taking a deep breath, Thalia banished the stray thoughts from her head. Then, clutching her book and the scrolls tight to her side, she turned, snagged the door handle with her other hand, and tugged the door closed behind her.
The entrance to the library was brightly lit, with a wash of colors as the stained glass roof overhead bathed the entire interior in a thousand hues. The small plaza beyond the doors into the library murmured with the hushed conversations of numerous scholars coming and going through the library’s tremendous doorway.
The massive library of Cordas, named after its founder, Maximalis Cordas, was the oldest building on the continent of Maslend, officially dedicated to the pursuit and study of the sciences and situated at a point where the borders of the kingdoms of Pax Italla, Spuerto, and Dektlend all intersected. Those three kingdoms had cooperated and funded the library’s construction, a sprawling complex of various wings, each dedicated to different genres of art and fields of science. The tallest part of the structure was the Tower of Observation, which stood nine hundred cubits tall and was the tallest structure in the world.
It was also, thought Thalia, the most densely populated building for miles in any direction, supporting the research of up to eight thousand scholars at any given time. All, of course, were housed in dormitories on the library campus.
Rows of soaring bookshelves made from dark-stained oak wood made a maze of the Library beyond the plaza. At the end of each row of shelves was a stool for reaching the top shelves. Tucked around every corner in the bookshelves were hundreds of private reading nooks and work tables.
The whole place smelled of dry parchment, cured leather book covers, and the distinct scent of lacquered wood bookshelves. The stained glass ceiling above danced with images of astrology: Green, yellow, blue, red, and purple stars; orbits and trajectories of comets and constellations; and the telescopes scientists had first used to map the sky.
The interlocking exactness of each glowing mosaic of chromatic glass pleased Thalia spiritually. Her inner mathematician peered up at the spiraling pictures like an awestruck child. The library did this to her every time. When she first set foot in the library on her first day as a student, she had wondered when this fantastic building and its contents would become a mundane and regular part of her life, and that day still hadn’t come.
For a heartbeat, Thalia paused in the entryway into the library. She closed her eyes for the moment, letting her other senses spread across the library. Thalia grinned, feeling the sheer size of the library in front of her impress itself on her. Opening her eyes, she continued forward.
Thalia bobbed and weaved, sliding between the various librarians and scholars, her soft leather shoes padding across the polished white marble floor. Then, smiling and nodding at familiar faces, Thalia made with all the haste the crowded entryway of the library would allow towards the towering shelves, all the while carrying her stack of neatly rolled scrolls.
Each of them contained valuable information. Information Thalia hoped she could link to the formation of the five known celestial bodies inhabiting the recently discovered ‘Solar System.’ Furthermore, Thalia wanted to use the scrolls and their precious secrets to determine the origin of these heavenly bodies within the solar system.
The solar system was recently proven correct by Xavier Ortwell, a thirteenth-level physicist working in the same library as Thalia. The thought brought a smile to Thalia’s face. In the same place she worked, people she knew were changing the world one step at a time, every day. She stood in a building, sitting at the pinnacle of civilization and progress. Though she was still only a third-level physicist, she was surrounded by the most advanced kingdoms on the continent of Maslend and rubbing elbows with the world’s greatest minds.
Xavier Ortwell had overturned the original preconception of the universe. Known as Geocentrism, this theory believed the mortal world, known as Erras, sat at the center of creation, with the sun and the moon revolving around it. However, Xavier’s new universe model, Heliocentrism, placed the sun at the center of the universe with Erras and four other celestial ‘planets,’ as he called them, orbiting the sun.
Furthermore, according to Xavier, each planet possessed several ‘moons’ which orbited around them as the planets orbited the sun. Thalia sought to utilize Xavier’s and previous physicists’ research to determine the origin of these planets and moons and how they had formed.
Thalia grinned, conjuring fantasies of far-off days when her work would lead her to predict the formation of new celestial bodies. Sighing, she brushed those away. Those days, if they ever came, would be a long way off. First, she had to understand the so-called ‘planets’ and ‘moons.’ So far, they have been named after ancient pantheons of wandering sky gods and goddesses. Thalia knew that the word ‘planet’ originated from an old word for ‘wanderer.’ She had also heard the word ‘moon’ came from the name of a lunar goddess who fled from giant beasts across the night skies of ancient myths.
The sudden image of a giant glowing goddess running across the heavens made Thalia smile. The ancient peoples certainly did not lack imagination, that was for sure.
Ahead of her, Thalia recognized the face of an old friend. One of her former teachers, Mortan. He was an older man, stooped only slightly by age, with the top of his head bald, and wispy puffs of silver hair sticking out at crazy angles like tendrils of water vapor. He was clean-shaven and well-kept. He leaned heavily on a worn hickory cane. In his other hand, he carried a bundle wrapped in fabric. Knowing Mortan, it was probably something for one of his classes. Despite being an astrologer by trade, Mortan was a performer at heart.
Stepping backward from his path, Thalia smiled at Mortan, “How have you been?”
Mortan looked up from his path. Seeing Thalia, he gave her a toothy grin, “I’ve been very well indeed,” he said. Then, raising the bundle under his arm, he grinned wider, “I’ve got plans to scare the essays right out of a new up-and-coming batch of students,” he said gleefully. “They’ll love it. I’ve just got to get there before they all fall asleep.”
Thalia laughed, remembering her classes under Mortan’s tutelage, “Have fun, and good luck. You’ll have to tell me how it goes.”
Mortan’s eyes gleamed joyously, “I’m sure I will.” Looking at her stack of scrolls, he nodded approvingly, “I wish you good luck as well. It looks like you’ll have a thing or two to tell me about.”
“That’s the dream,” said Thalia. Mortan chortled good-naturedly and moved past her with a slow but thoroughly determined pace.
Stepping back onto her path, Thalia glanced over her shoulder at Mortan, checking if he needed help getting to the library door. Then, distracted, she crashed right into something much larger than her.
Stumbling backward, Thalia felt her scrolls begin to spill from her arms and her book slip to the floor. Spinning around awkwardly in mid-air and practically diving headfirst, Thalia flailed her arms to scoop up her scrolls before they could hit the ground. Alas, to no avail.
Sprawled out on the floor, Thalia looked up at what she had careered into, assuming it must have been a bookshelf. The man, because, of course, it couldn’t have been a bookshelf, was solidly built and towered over her.
Thalia scrambled to pick up and re-roll her scrolls, quickly tucking her notebook under her arm and babbling half-constructed apologies to the man she’d crashed into.
Thalia detected a strange sound at the edge of her scattered periphery as she did this. Pausing for a moment to focus on it, she realized it was laughter. The man was laughing. It was a thoroughly happy and carefree sound. Mixed with something exotic and far away that seemed out of place in the library.
Yet, the sound was cheerful and filled with compassion, despite having just been careened into by a stranger moments before. Caught off guard by the laughter, Thalia looked up from her spot on the floor. The man was holding one of Thalia’s scrolls out to her. Gratefully, Thalia took the offered scroll from the stranger.
His hand was muscular and rough with calluses. They held the scroll gently enough, and Thalia deposited it next to her others. She checked the end of the scroll and read its title as she did so, A Theory on the Formation of Meteors, by Stahl Kamptur. The scroll had initially been penned nearly seventy-five years ago during the great scientific revolution. When scientists finally threw off the shackles of religious prejudice and became a publicly accepted field driven by the need to discover and understand the world as it truly was.
Shaking her head, Thalia banished the random thoughts from her brain and focused on the grinning man. Who was now crouched a few feet away from her? He had turned back to collecting up the rest of her fallen scrolls. He was a man of about forty years. Thalia blinked. The man didn’t appear to be one of the scholars. He smelled of dust and some kind of spice or exotic plant Thalia couldn’t name. The man was relatively unimposing. He was tall but not so overly towering as she had first thought. He was well-muscled, but not in an extreme way.
He dressed in a simple cream-colored sleeveless tunic underneath a rich red cloak draped over his left shoulder leaving his right shoulder bare. If he were to stand, the cloak would fall to about his mid-calf. The bottom of the cape was also trimmed in a dark brown, which Thalia imagined was to hide any dirt the cloak might acquire.
Beyond his clothes and build, the man’s face was lined with laughter. He had crow’s feet next to both of his eyes, which were a light reddish-brown. His skin was dark and clean-shaven, and his hair was short, shaved close to his scalp. Despite Thalia estimating the man to be in his forties, his hair was deep black.
In the end, however, what caught her attention were two details about the man’s appearance. The first were the three well-worn bronze knives at his waist. The second were spiraling tattoos that encircled his forearms and crawled up to disappear behind his shoulders. They doubtlessly continued down his back and probably entwined his torso as well.
The tattoos featured interlocking geometric shapes, including triangles, rectangles, hexagons, and circles. All of these shapes and more wove themselves in and out of each other, forming a strange chain mail pattern across the skin of the man’s forearms. Instead of being inked, the tattoos consisted of raised skin created by ritual scarring of the flesh, known as scarification.
The three knives were all of different lengths. The first one was about eight inches long and single-edged. It was the shortest knife with a blade that grew wider the further it moved from the handle. It was shaped like a pointed cleaver, with a predominantly straight-cutting edge weighted for chopping. Thalia’s mind identified the first dagger as an ‘ax knife.’ Archaeologists used a term to describe a cutting tool used by many cultures. It was a practical tool to accomplish the same tasks as a knife and a small hatchet.
The second two knives were of similar length, with the second one being about ten inches or so long and the final dagger being nearly a foot long. The ten-inch blade was thin and needle-pointed, with a small cross-guard and a short handle that would rest in the center of the wielder’s palm. The twelve-inch blade was also straight but only had a single edge. It ended in a hook-shaped like a question mark instead of a point. The bladed part of the weapon flows down the edge of the inside of the hook. Thalia’s eyes went wide as she recognized the second two daggers: they were called Inam daggers.
Named for the people who wielded them, the daggers were traditionally wielded in concert by warriors from the Inami-ni tribes. The Inami-ni tribes were known to tattoo their arms in a ritualistic manner. They did this for many reasons; however, the best-known example was to signify how good of a warrior the tattooed person was. Gauging from his weapons, this man was no stranger to violence.
Thalia tilted her head slightly. She knew only a little about the Inami-ni. But Thalia wouldn’t have known anything like most people. Save the fact that she had needed to write a research paper on them for one of her history professors.
Wracking her brain for any information she could recall about the Inami-ni, she paused in picking up the scrolls scattered at her feet, staring at the man. She knew the Inami-ni people lived to the east in a massive desert known as the Araktara, named for a savage tribal people separate from the Inami-ni, known as the Araknatak. The desert was one of the harshest environments on the entire continent of Maslend. Getting less than six inches of rain every year, the desert’s only inhabitants, other than ferocious beasts, were a small, loosely related collection of tribal groups. The Inami-ni were one such group.
The man turned to face her, having finished picking up the rest of the scrolls Thalia had dropped. Then, grinning, he looked at the scrolls Thalia was already carrying. “Might we find a place to set these down?” the Inami-ni asked. Thalia nodded and pointed in the direction where she had been going. He nodded curtly and headed off into the depths of the library.
Standing with her book and scrolls balanced precariously under one arm, Thalia looked after the Inami-ni. To her dismay, she saw that the Inami-ni was already a dozen paces ahead of her. He paced across the marble tiles of the library like an intense summer wind. His confidence and cheerful demeanor cleared an easy path through the rest of the scholars who still thronged the entryway. He smiled and tipped his head at everyone who stepped aside for him. Thalia watched nervously as the nearby scholars began to notice the man’s strange appearance.
Racing to catch up, Thalia tried to dredge up anything more about the Inami-ni she could remember. She knew that the people west of the Araktara believed the Inami-ni and their related groups were primitive and barbaric. The sheer brazen love of violence ingrained into these tribes was distasteful to many citizens in the kingdoms west of the great desert. Furthermore, the desert tribes possessed elaborate beliefs regarding magic, curses, and spellcraft. This only cemented the Western view of these people as savages.
This scornful view of war and disdain for magic fostered a kind of contempt for the tribal Inami-ni. They were a people filled with visions of victory on the battlefield and a near-undying faith in their chaotic, unpredictable gods. These gods seemed to live with and inside the people. Instilling the Inami-ni with the power of their myths and legends.
Thalia knew it was deeper than that. Those differences, in the grand scheme of history, were minor. Truthfully, it was the gaping disparity in sheer technological advancement. While the people of western Maslend were constructing megalithic structures that scraped the sky, such as the Library of Cordas, they were also forging tools and weapons made from steel. As well as circumnavigating the oceans of the world. The Inami-ni and their related groups forged their tools from iron and bronze. They lived in tents and small seasonal villages, many of whom had never even seen the ocean.
This technological superiority led most Westerners to believe the desert tribesmen were simple fools. Leading to colonial expeditions, during which Western leaders took advantage of their superior technology to subjugate the desert peoples of the Araktara. This colonization further colored the stereotypes and general perceptions of the Inami-ni.
Thalia’s mind raced, attempting to compute all these thoughts together, trying to figure out why an Inami-ni warrior would come here, the Library of Cordas, of all places. Turning a corner around a bookcase, the Inami-ni began to make his way through the assorted shelves of the library. He cast his head back and forth, searching for and eventually finding an unoccupied table. Thalia grew increasingly unsettled at how vastly different he was from everyone she had seen.
Even his movements, which were fluid and efficient, almost predatory, were somehow alien. The table he had found was crafted from oak, featuring four legs and a flat, polished top. The many-colored patches of light cast by the stained glass ceiling overhead reflected crisply from the table’s surface. The table sat in a corner where two bookshelves met to form a sheltered alcove. It was unoccupied and peaceful. With a delicate grace, he set the scrolls down on the table, stacking them so they wouldn’t roll off. Then, turning to Thalia, he dusted off his hands. Bowing his head, he said, “Sorry for laughing at you. It is not every day I get ambushed by a scroll-wielding stranger.”
Carefully, Thalia set her armload of scrolls down. Then, before she could stop herself, she blurted, “You’re an Inami-ni!”.
The man smirked and quirked an eyebrow at her. He seemed slightly taken aback by her words.
He looked down at himself and said in a tone that carried a tinge of humor, “Well, now that you say it, I do seem to be an Inami-ni. How very odd!”. He looked back at her, “and why, young lady, does this frighten you so? You look like you have just seen an omano-ri!”
“A what?” asked Thalia, caught off guard by the unfamiliar word.
The man waved his hand, “It means… uh… like dead spirit? … I think?”
“A ghost?” offered Thalia.
“Yes, like you have seen a ghost!” he said, beaming, “thank you. But why do I frighten you? Am I dressed indecently?” he looked down to check himself as though he was unsure of his clothing.
“You’re a -” Thalia cut herself off before she could repeat her statement, suddenly ashamed of her outburst.
But he appeared to know what she had been about to say.
“Savage barbarian?” he supplied, laughing a little around the eyes as he did so.
“I was going to say Inami-ni, “Thalia mumbled, puzzled by the man’s reaction.
He grinned, “Inami-ni works. But I wonder why it is, Miss, uh.”
“Thalia,” she said quickly.
He smiled. “Inako,” he said, bowing as he introduced himself before he continued, “Now, why is it you seem so startled at that, Miss Thalia?”
“Because … ” she fumbled, unsure how to say what was on her mind. Her curiosity clashed with her common sense and the manners her elders had instilled in her.
Inako continued smiling. It was encouraging, strangely. The crow’s feet around his eyes deepened with curiosity as he waited for Thalia to respond.
Thalia swallowed to clear her dry throat, ” … because this is the library of Cordas?” She wasn’t sure what to say. He seemed so out of place that it was hard to describe. “I mean, it’s so far from your homeland. I was wondering what brought you here.”
Thalia watched Inako as he leaned against a bookcase and looked up at the stained-glass ceiling overhead. “Am I not allowed here? Is this place warded against Inami-ni?”
“No! Of course not. Anybody can come here. This library is a place of learning. Not secrecy. Besides, there’s no such thing as magical wards,” said Thalia.
“Then why are you so surprised to see me here?” asked Inako. Thalia had the feeling she amused him. But when she looked over at him, she saw genuine curiosity in his eyes.
“It’s just that the library seems to be the opposite of what your people, or what I know of your people, believe,” said Thalia. “It seems like you’d have no interest in this place.”
Inako paused for a moment, weighing Thalia’s answer in his head. “You wouldn’t be wrong in some regards. Some of my people would have little interest in a place such as this. But, at least from the little I have seen, there are people like that in these kingdoms. People who have no want to learn. What do you mean by this place is the opposite of my beliefs?”
“Your people find glory in war and killing other people. You worship gods. Have magicians and believe in supernatural things,” Thalia said. “The Library of Cordas stands against all of that. Science is the answer, and in comparison, war is an unenlightened answer. Beyond that, magic and supernatural gods don’t exist.”
According to one of Thalia’s history classes, it was during the Five Centuries War that the western kingdoms began their trek away from religion. Their loss of faith in the miraculous, coupled with massive technological advancements, had led the kingdoms of the West to adopt more concrete methods of explaining the universe.
Inako thought for a moment, shaking his head, he said, “We do not find glory in killing of any kind. No man worth his mother’s love finds glory in that. We find glory in surviving and overcoming the strongest challenges. We find glory in surviving a journey across the desert to bring water to your tribesmen. Just as much glory as we find in surviving a battle to the death against another tribe’s warriors.”
“But why must your survival come at the cost of another man’s life?” asked Thalia.
Inako shrugged, “The people we kill are not from our tribe. They do not matter to us. Their survival has no glory and does us no good. If events were to come to pass where the survival of me and mine would come into conflict with their need to survive, then I would kill them and take glory from my continued survival.” His answer was cool and calm, as if his explanation was the most logical thing in the world.
Thalia opened her mouth to reply, but Inako continued. “As for your second question: the Inami-ni are not out of place here because we worship gods, but because we worship the wrong gods.”
The library seemed to go silent as his words sank in. Thalia blinked stupidly, trying to comprehend what Inako had said. “We don’t worship gods,” she said finally.
Inako waved his hand, “You live in a new time with new names for old things,” he said. Then, looking back up at the stained glass ceiling, his brow furrowed in deeper concentration as if he found inspiration in the endless designs of the ceiling above them. Then, using his shoulders to push off the bookshelf he was leaning against, Inako raised his arms to encompass the library. He gestured at the stained glass pictures of stars, orbits, and mathematical patterns and said softly, “What is this place but a temple?”
Speaking even softer than before, as if not to disturb the library around them, Inako continued. “A temple for learning, asking questions, and discovering their answers. Instead of worshiping gods with divine power, you pray to books and their calculations. You ask a question of your gods and watch for omens in your learnings and experiments. What is this place but a new temple to new gods in a new day?”
Thalia felt her eyebrows furrow as she shook her head. “Those aren’t the same things at all. Gods don’t exist. They’re illogical. We don’t pray to gods. There are no higher powers anywhere in this library. Only men and women.”
Inako shook his head. “All religions claim that all other religions don’t exist. Science is no different.”
Pursing her lips in thought, Thalia spoke again, trying to reason with this man, “Science isn’t a religion either.”
“Then what is it?” asked Inako.
“Science is a philosophy,” she said, taking a deep breath. She began to recite the definition of science that was given by Maximalis Cordas when he founded the Library. “It is an intellectual construct of the enlightened mind based on logical and repeatable observations. It is applied systematically to the world around us so that through its constructs, we may find understanding from the natural processes around us.”
As she spoke, she realized the speech was stiff and overly flowery, just as it had been when Maximalis had spoken it. Thalia opened her mouth to explain her words, but Inako waved her away gently.
“That’s a good way to put it. I like it, actually,” he said, his eyebrows knit together, and his face turned away from hers for a moment. Then, staring down at the marble floor of the library, he seemed to chew on her words for a moment.
Inako continued, “My religion says rain is caused by the sweat of Otor pushing the sun across the sky every day. Yours says rain is caused by evaporating water cooling the sky and coming back down as rain. These two things, when boiled down, are essentially the same idea. They serve as explanations of what rain is. The difference between them is the terms the two religions use to explain the idea of rain.”
Inako shrugged, “The terms enlightened minds happen to understand are simply different than what Inam-ni minds understand. Science is merely the religion of the enlightened. It is no different than the religion of the Inami-ni.”
Thalia could feel her mind grappling with what Inako was saying even as she watched him say it. He made perfect sense, and what he said presented a solid argument in support of his point of view. Yet for some reason, Thalia’s instincts rejected it.
Thalia supposed that that feeling could have to do with the history of science’s conflict with the various religions that once dominated the Western kingdoms. It felt wrong to call science one of them, even though that history fit well with Inako’s narrative of science merely being another competing religion.
Science and scientists were branded as heretical and blasphemous by nearly every civilized religion during the Five Centuries War. Cast down and scored by the Church of Asphodel, the Templars of the White Hound, the Faith of the Chernoi, and many more, science had been called godless, arrogant, and unfettered.
Thinking on it for another moment, Thalia said, “Science is a tool; it does not believe in a higher power. It has no part of it that is inaccessible to mankind or their efforts. Its purpose is to condense the world around into terms we can understand.”
“The point of science is to explain the workings of the world to enlightened minds,” said Inako, “A simple statement, but what do you think religion does for other kinds of minds?” Inako asked.
Thalia nodded, “I agree religion attempts to do the same thing, but in worship. Religion demands obedience and sacrifice. Science does not demand sacrifice and worship as the gods do. Science instead serves man as a tool. Religion is the opposite of that, placing man beneath it. Treating him as a thing to be ordered around.”
Inako seemed pleased with her response, “Ah, but it does. Science believes that the ultimate power is unlocked when one understands perfectly what is around them. Because with understanding comes power. Why would you understand the world if not? Science does demand sacrifice, just as the gods do if one wants their questions answered. You must sacrifice time, energy, money, and sometimes even one’s own life in your experiments.”
He paused for a moment, watching Thalia before he continued, “Science doesn’t serve anyone either. Just as religion rules over men, so does science. Because if you do not please science, if you do not make adequate prayers, or experiments as you would call them, science gives what you have sought to someone else. By its very nature, science pits every scientist against every other scientist for fear that if they do not please science, someone else will. So science doles out its rewards to the most faithful worshiper, just as religion does.”
“Science is always changing, though,” said Thalia, “Religion is unchanging and stagnant. It believes only in itself and nothing more. Therefore, religion cannot accept new ideas or change to confront new situations.”
Inako narrowed his eyes in disagreement, “Religion changes all the time. Maybe not as fast as science does, but gods die, new monsters are born, and omens lead the way into the future.”
Thalia said, “Science isn’t based on faith or zealous belief, but understanding. To use science, one must first be able to understand. Not just listen every holy day to the stories of the faithful or blindly follow whatever omens appear.”
But Inako said, “Understanding is a fickle thing.” Pointing to the tattoos on his arm, he asked, “These each mean something; the different shapes stand for different kinds of glory. Like a language, almost. They require effort to learn and to understand. It is part of a warrior’s education. Does the need for understanding make these symbols a science?”
Thalia nodded slowly, “It’s close, but those symbols don’t explain anything but you and what you’ve done. Take my current research. I am trying to understand the workings of objects that exist beyond the sky. Where the stars are way out in the black. I am putting together a series of repeatable experiments that might determine the nature of these objects.” She unbuckled her book and pulled out the napkin with its hastily drawn diagram of an experiment she planned to test. “Religion only concerns itself with the way humans want to see the world. Religion is never wrong; it is divine. Science can be, and often is, wrong. It doesn’t care what humans want to be true or not.”
Inako studied the napkin for a moment. Thalia watched his eyes trace its lines and her scribbled notes. She wondered how much of it he understood; his interest in it implied that he probably comprehended more than she would have initially guessed. His left hand traced one of the scars on the back of his other arm. Thalia wondered briefly if that scar was his first.
“It sounds to me more like the scientists use their science wrong. Other scientists who came before you conducted weaker experiments and got incorrect answers. Like if I were to displease my gods with a poor sacrifice. Science wasn’t wrong; it just had bad followers. The scientists who found the correct answers would go on to be heroes. People who myths are told about. Loyal servants of their gods,” he pointed at her notes, ‘Like this Ortwell fellow.”
Thalia stopped, mentally pushing back against the ideas Inako kept thrusting on top of her. Frustrated, Thalia turned away from Inako to stare at her scrolls. She stared at them, trying not to see the religion in them. Trying not to remember the way she and all her fellow scholars coveted these texts like holy scriptures.
“I disagree with you,” said Thalia, “I admit there are similarities between religion and science. However, I think those similarities are because humans tend to repeat themselves. Humans who use religion and those who use science are the same, so we approach them in the same way, just like I would use a bronze knife the same way I would use an iron one. Even though they are different tools with different properties.”
Inako made a sound of agreement, “In the end, they are both knives, and they both do what we need them to do. Maybe that’s all that matters.”
Thalia leaned over to her scrolls, laying them all out in what felt like a proper order. She stared at them for a moment, “So many of the words in these scrolls felt like they were wrong. People spent their whole lives trying to undo, disprove, and even destroy some of these works. Yet just a few months ago, Xavier Ortwell proved the whole thing right.”
Inako laughed, “And maybe someday someone will prove him wrong, and maybe not. The shape of our diverse understandings and disparate faiths will change over time, as they always have. Truths that once stood will eventually crumble and be forgotten.”
Thalia shook her head, “I don’t think all of them will. Even in this ‘enlightened’ and ‘civilized’ age, people still use technology, ideas, even words from ages long since passed.” She grinned, looking up at the ceiling above her. Marveling at its whirling colors and sprawling, impossibly detailed pictures for a moment. “After all,” Thalia said, “I doubt ceilings will ever go out of fashion.”
Inako laughed again. This time it was a deep, hearty sound. “I have to agree with you on that. Roofs and ceilings are quite fashionable.” He turned to leave their sheltered alcove, “Sorry I distracted you, I am fond of talk, and such conversation intrigues me.”
Thalia watched him walk to the end of the bookshelf that formed the left side of their alcove. Then, as Inako looked both ways into the library aisle beyond, watching for oncoming people, she called out to him, “What did you mean to find here in the library?”
He turned to look back at her, “I was told by my tribe’s shaman, Ari-maro, to come here on a quest. He told me to stand underneath the ‘great sun-painted dome where the edges of three kingdoms lie.’ That an important truth would be revealed to me when I did. The truth I shared with you is what I think I was meant to discover on my journey. I will take this truth back to my homeland.”
Thalia nodded. Strangely, after everything they had discussed, his last declaration seemed the most fantastical.
Inako waved goodbye before he stepped beyond her line of sight and disappeared from her life, never for her to see again. He left her with nothing more than this ‘truth’ he had found under the sun-painted stained glass ceiling above her head.
Sighing, she pushed her scrolls aside and opened her notebook to a new page. She disagreed with the idea. That her science was a religion and that she was a priestess who wrote down its doctrine. But all theories should be recorded. Maybe someday, Inako’s theory will help someone prove their work true. Hopefully, Stahl Kampter’s theories would help her.
“I’ll have to ask Mortan about what he thinks of all this,” she muttered to herself, and she wrote down the words the Inami-ni had said to her.