CHAPTER 32 – Lost in Translation

Fortunately, thanks to the time she had spent listening to liturgies at the shrines, Laewyn was familiar with the spirits of the woodlands. Unfortunately, as Celaena contorted in her sleep and muttered fevered words in the tongue of sylvan creatures, Laewyn had no other experience of them, and so breathed out in relief as Iolas finished explaining what was happening.

“You had me worried,” she laughed, still nervous. Her gaze turned back to where Celaena lay in the grand bed, disconcerted by the palpable fear written on the girl’s unconscious face. “So, she’s… spirit-ridden?”

Saphienne slowly let go of Laewyn’s wrist. “…She shouldn’t be.”

“Why not? Servants of the gods only go where invited.” Laewyn didn’t truly understand possession, not in the fearful way they did; her worry resurfaced as she looked between them, noticing Saphienne’s sudden paleness. “Did something happen with a spirit? Is that what happened yesterday?”

Iolas shook his head. “We’re not allowed to talk about it — really, we’re not. We might lose our apprenticeships if we tell you.”

“I can keep a secret.”

Saphienne glanced her way, voice low. “From a wizard? Are you sure about that?”

Laewyn’s breath caught. “…Maybe not,” she conceded. “But, the way you look, and how upset she was… it must have been something bad, right?”

Sighing, Iolas rubbed his temples. “We’re not allowed to–”

“Fine.” She crossed her arms, stuck between expressing her resentment toward them and hugging herself as she stared at Celaena. “Is it safe to wake her? Will that offend the spirit? She’s having a nightmare.”

Uncertain, Saphienne and Iolas turned to each other; the two played out a conversation through expression alone — Iolas asking Saphienne what she thought with raised eyebrows, Saphienne hesitating before faintly shaking her head, Iolas glancing away meaningfully before tilting his head in question, Saphienne taking a moment to read him before pursing her lips and shaking her head more vigorously.

“…Not yet,” Saphienne told him.

Laewyn misunderstood, and fretted. “So, what? We just wait for her to wake up, screaming?”

Thinking quickly, Iolas laid his hand on Laewyn’s shoulder. “We should… write down what she’s saying? So we can ask her about it, once she’s awake. Would you mind fetching my calligraphy kit? Please?”

She watched Celaena, torn. Screwing shut her eyes, she shrugged his hand away as she turned and pushed past him, heading back to the study. “Fine.”

The moment Laewyn was gone, Iolas faced Saphienne, continuing their conversation vocally. “Are you sure? I think we should tell him. Almon will know what to do — this is beyond us.”

Her chest felt tight. “What if this is part of the test?” Saphienne slipped her hand into her pocket, seeking the reassurance of her coin pouch.

“If this is part of the test,” Iolas countered, “then surely it’s testing that we’ve learned to respect our limits? She looks possessed.”

“…I’m not sure that she is.” Saphienne studied Celaena, listening intently to the sibilant words and their flowing inflections, their rising and falling tones. The tightness eased. “She might be, but this might be something else.”

“Such as?”

The way Iolas asked, with clear respect for her opinion, momentarily made her doubt herself, afraid that she was overreaching. Yet if the lessons they were receiving meant anything at all, then assuming they knew what was happening – and that there was nothing to be done about it – was contrary to what was expected from them. She could do something… she had to.

Saphienne clutched the bark-scaled pouch as she clothed herself in confidence that she didn’t feel. “This is conjecture, but the spirit taught her about Invocation… could she have taught her some of the sylvan language, too? Maybe Celaena’s just having a nightmare about the spirit, and it’s all mixed together.”

“Then, what do we do?”

“You had a good idea: we try to write down what she’s saying. Then, we can try to–”

Laewyn’s return made Saphienne shut up — which the older girl noticed, clearly unhappy to be excluded.

Still, Iolas quietly thanked Laewyn for his writing kit and paper, crouching down to ready a pen and set out ink before using the closed box as a makeshift writing surface against the wall. “Saphienne?”

Carefully, Saphienne crept across to Celaena’s bed, picking her way through the apprentice’s robes discarded on the floor, consciously averting her gaze from a set of bunched underclothes as she lightly sat on the mattress’ edge. She closed her eyes, listening intently, focusing her meditative attention on the words…

A few minutes later, she rose and returned to where Iolas was waiting, seeing that he had been transcribing what he could hear from across the room. As she read over his shoulder she saw that he had also made an attempt at marking tone, using rising and falling lines to indicate how the words were said, but his rendition of the syllables looked wrong.

“Let me,” she said, and took the pen from him, wetting it again before she made annotations, trying to match what she had heard against his record. There were a few repeated words, or perhaps the same words used in different forms, which were just enough to spot and amend what he had misheard. She didn’t take long to finish her corrections.

“…You sure?” He glanced over her phonetic notation. “It looks right, but…”

She was sure of herself — or at least, her writing. “I’m confident that’s the best I can do,” she confirmed. Her eyes scanned the page, then roamed back to the bed. “I think we heard enough…”

Just then, Celaena fell silent.

“Celaena…?” Laewyn had been sitting on the floor with her back against the wall, and she leapt up in the ominous calm.

Yet Celaena was breathing slowly and deeply, her expression made serene by the depths of untroubled sleep.

 

* * *

 

The sudden change was eerie, and the three of them waited for five minutes before they accepted she was resting peacefully — her mouth hanging open, ears slowly rising and falling with each breath.

They retreated to the adjacent sitting room and closed over the door; Laewyn peered through at her as she spoke. “Is she going to be alright, now?”

Saphienne was still puzzling over the sylvan words, completely unable to make sense of them, and she answered without thinking. “I hope so. It’s too early to say.”

“Can you at least tell me if it was a spirit?”

Iolas shrugged. “Here, now? It’s hard to tell.”

Frustrated, Laewyn scowled back at them. “I thought you were meant to be studying wizardry? Can’t you–” She stopped herself. “…Sorry. Look, I’m happy she’s getting some rest, but shouldn’t we go and ask someone for help? Maybe send for a priest? Or Gaelyn?”

“A priest or a healer wouldn’t be the worst idea,” Iolas answered, though he glanced at Saphienne. “Maybe we should get some help?”

Saphienne folded the paper and slipped it into her pocket. “I think you’re right, Iolas. We’re not going to learn any more on our own…” She put on a smile, her eyes glinting with forced humour. “…And I know just who to ask.”

Puzzled at first, realisation slowly dawned on Iolas, and he couldn’t help but laugh.

 

* * *

 

Laewyn stayed to watch over Celaena while Saphienne and Iolas went outside, stopping halfway down the terraced gardens as the front doors closed behind them.

“Better hope Laewyn can open that for us,” Iolas said.

Saphienne gazed up the grand tree that held Celaena’s room. “Well, the windows open normally, and it looks climbable.”

Iolas paled. “…You’re joking.”

She blinked. “Why would that be a joke? Everyone can climb a tree.”

“Yes, but three stories…”

Iolas’ anxious mood was understandable, but wasn’t helpful. Saphienne tried to distract him, canting her head to the side and trying on a superior grin. “Are you afraid of heights, Iolas?”

He wilted. His embarrassment was faint but undisguised as he started toward the gate. “…What’s the old joke? I’m not afraid of heights, but I have a healthy respect for the ground?”

“Poor you, then,” Saphienne said as she caught up, gesturing around them to the expansive gardens, “since there’s plenty of grounds here… Don’t groan like that, your jokes are just as bad.”

“Should we really be joking, now?”

Saphienne committed to her bravado. “Oh, come on.” She kept smiling as she slipped out into the grove. “Aren’t you having even a little bit of fun? We’re solving our first mystery as apprentice wizards.”

Iolas looked askance at her. “…Celaena wasn’t having fun.”

“She’s sleeping well now.” His disapproval slowed her step slightly, and she pulled ahead of it as she sped up and gestured ahead. “Which is a mystery in itself, isn’t it? Anyway — the sooner we get this translated, the sooner we can decide what to do.”

“I suppose.” Iolas grimaced. “This is a little fun. And I feel bad about that.”

“Laewyn will wake her if she has more nightmares,” Saphienne reassured herself, leading the way deeper into the village. “There’s nothing to worry about. We’re being cautious, aren’t we? We’re not rushing headfirst into anything.”

“Well, if we don’t learn anything at the library, then I think the responsible thing to do is to take her back to our master.” Iolas rolled his shoulders, uneasy. “We probably ought to be doing that right now.”

“After we’ve got this translated, if you insist,” Saphienne agreed, unsure whether she was lying. “But let’s see what we can learn on our own, first.”

 

* * *

 

Most elves browsed the library’s collection in the afternoon, and so it was busy when Saphienne and Iolas arrived. There was no sign of Faylar on the upper floor – not by the reading tables or over at any of the windows – and at Iolas’ insistence they split up, better to search among the shelves without disturbing the peace.

A few moments later, Saphienne caught sight of Faylar’s short hair out of the corner of her eye, and she doubled back to approach him where he stood reading in one of the rows. “Faylar — there you are.”

He jumped, and turned to face her with a tremendous blush on his face, slamming shut the book in his hands and hiding it behind his back. “S-Saphienne! You’re here very early!”

Frowning, curious about the book he had been reading, Saphienne stepped back and looked at the row they were in–

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“Oh.” She felt the heat shoot up from her stomach as she matched his scarlet. “You’re…” She inhaled sharply as she blinked. “I didn’t…”

“I was just doing some research into–”

“I’ll be over at the window!” she called out, too loudly, as she spun on her heel.

As she hurried away from the section dedicated to adult literature, someone in the next row gave her a loud and insistent shush.

By the time she was seated on a windowsill and staring out into the woodland, Iolas had abandoned searching his half of the collection and spotted her; she could feel him studying her flushed profile as he joined her. “Saphienne? I take it you found him?”

She matched his lowered voice. “He’ll be with us soon.”

“…Everything fine? With Faylar, I mean.”

Mortified, she nodded.

Iolas let the matter lie. “…Well, good.” He leant beside her, folding his arms as he stared up through the skylights to the branches beyond. “You know, this place is larger than it looks on the outside. I never really realised.”

“It’s the shelves.” She exhaled. “They make it feel bigger than it really is.”

Faylar approached, bookless, stopping as he saw Iolas. With a nervous smile, he came close enough to greet them both. “Iolas? I’m surprised to see you here.” His eyes darted over their apprentice’s robes, concealing what Saphienne knew was deep longing.

“Happy to come along,” Iolas answered, giving him a small bow. “Saphienne was wondering if you could help us with some translation.”

That knocked Faylar out of his awkwardness, and he grinned. “Really?”

She managed to meet his gaze, and drew the folded sheet of paper from her pocket and held it out to him. “We tried to write what we heard, but neither of us speak the tongue of sylvan creatures…”

More at ease now, he took the paper from her with a flourish, his voice teasing. “Well, this won’t take long — especially if you don’t know how to write the intonations.”

Iolas politely chuckled, hiding his worry. “You won’t be able to make sense of it?”

“Probably not,” Faylar admitted, unfolding their transcription. “The sylvan tongue is a very complicated… language… to interpret…”

His brow furrowed as he studied the page.

“…You know,” he admitted, “this is actually workable. For the elongated ‘e’ sounds, did you write them in the standard way? Or is this meant to be an elongated ‘a-y’ sound?”

Saphienne sat forward, smoothing down her robes. “Written in the standard way, as in ‘aegis.’”

He glanced up at her with a smile. “What’s that word mean, again?”

“Just translate it, or you’ll need one.”

Faylar laughed, and when he returned his gaze to their writing his lips moved, voicelessly sounding out the words as he stepped to the windowsill and sat beside her, one leg hanging loose while he drew the other up. He hummed a few lines, experimentally. “I think I can translate some of this. If I sing a note…” He quietly sang, high and sharp, and pointed to a specific word. “…Can you tell me if it matches here?”