Penric's Demon by Lois McMaster Bujold

having rested there. By the stack of cut and scored blank sheets to his left, the smaller stack of filled ones to his right, and the book propped open on a wooden stand in front of him, he was working as a copyist.
    He glanced up at Pen and frowned, not welcoming interruption. Pen tried smiling, with a silent little wave to indicate his friendliness and harmlessness and general willingness to be greeted, but the man merely grunted and returned his eyes to his page-in-progress. Taking the rebuff in good part, Pen shifted his attention to the shelves.
    One whole floor-to-ceiling case appeared to be theology, no surprise in this place. Another was devoted to chronicles, mostly of other times and realms; Pen’s own land was more noted for producing cheese than history, he feared. Some ancient, fragile scrolls resided on a set of shelves all to themselves, with corded silk tassels hanging down holding slips of wood inked with titles for each, which he dared not touch. He was thrilled to spot a collection of what appeared to be books of tales, looking well thumbed. Then a tall case of works in Darthacan, of which Pen had a grasp his Lady-school teachers had grudgingly pronounced adequate; a couple of shelves of works in unreadable Ibran; and then another entire shelf in the ancient tongue of Cedonia, with its exotic letters.
    Pen had only seen fragments of the mysterious language before, on old coins or carved on the fallen temple ruins above the road to Greenwell, lone legacy in his hinterland of an empire that had, over a millennium ago, stretched two thousand miles from the warm Cedonian peninsula to the cold Darthacan coast. Scholars described it as fleetingly glorious, like some shooting star, but three hundred years of such ascendency did not seem so fleeting to Pen. In any case, after those swift generations it had fallen apart again, split and re-split among revolts and generals just as Great Audar’s empire out of Darthaca was to do hundreds of years later, when his heirs failed.
    Pen’s hand went out to a work bound in waxed cloth, a modern copy and so not too daunting, with its title inked enigmatically on its spine in the beautiful letters. Wondering who had copied it out, he let it fall open in his hand just to see the calligraphy, as lovely as scrollwork or interlace and about as informative.
    Instead, his eye picked out a paragraph: “In the sixth year of the reign of Emperor Letus dubbed The Engineer, for so he had served in his youth in the armies of his uncle, undermining the fortifications of his enemies, before the second plague made him heir, he caused to be built the first aqueduct of the city, nine miles from the springs of the Epalia, watering the gardens of his Empress and piped to new fountains throughout the town, for the health and pleasure of its inhabitants . . .”
    Pen gasped and squeezed his eyes shut. After a few moments, he peeked again, very cautiously. Still the same elegant, alien lettering. But now they had become words , their meanings flowing into his mind as effortlessly as any Wealdean text.
    “I can read this!” he whispered aloud in astonishment.
    “Oh, good,” said Desdemona. “We’d hoped you’d be a quick study.”
    “But I can’t read this!”
    “In time,” she replied, “you will come to know most of what we know.” A pause. “That runs both ways.”
    Pen snapped his jaw shut, trying to master his sudden unsteadiness. He could only think that he would have the better part of that exchange.
    A bored voice remarked from behind him, “The librarian should be back soon, if you need help.”
    “Thank you,” Pen managed, turning and smiling. “Just, um, talking to myself, here. Bad habit. I didn’t mean to interrupt you.”
    The man shrugged, but did not return at once to his page.
    “What are you working on?” asked Pen, nodding to the papers.
    “Just a collection of tales.” He ticked at the volume with his fingernail, dismissively. “Stupid stuff. The