‘What is it?’ asked Miranda.
‘A very useful thing,’ said Nakor. ‘You would be astonished at the information this object has.’ He twisted one end, and the device opened with a click; a half-inch section of the cylinder detached from the side, allowing Nakor to pull out a long piece of what appeared to be a pale, translucent white parchment or paper. ‘If you pull long enough, you can fill up this room.’ He pulled and pulled, and the device continued to emit the long paper. ‘This stuff is amazing. You can’t cut it or tear it or write on it. Dirt doesn’t stick.’ The paper was covered in fine writing. ‘But whatever you want to know about, I bet it’s in here.’
‘Amazing,’ said Pug. He looked at the writing and said, ‘What language is that?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Nakor, ‘but over the years, I’ve gained the ability to read some of it.’ He turned the knurled end and the page slid back into the cylinder, and again it was without apparent line or flaw, a single piece of unbroken metal. ‘I just wish I could figure out how to make it work the way it was supposed to.’
‘You would have to study years, most of the surviving lost lore of the God of Knowledge. It’s the Codex,’ said Dominic in a reverent tone.
‘And that’s . . . ?’ asked Miranda.
‘The Codex of Wodar-Hospur. It was assumed to be lost.’
‘Well, I found it,’ said Nakor. ‘The problem is, when I open it, it tells me about things, but never the same thing twice. Some of the material is impossible to understand. Some of it is pretty boring. I think there is a way to get it to give you information that you want, but I haven’t figured it out yet.’ He grinned. ‘But you would be astonished at what you learn if you just sleep with this under your head.’
Dominic said, ‘It is also known as the Thief of Dreams. Those who sleep too close to it are robbed of their dreams and, after enough time, driven mad.’
‘Well, you wouldn’t be the first person to call me a little crazy,’ said Nakor. ‘Besides, I stopped sleeping with it in my room over a hundred years ago. It took me a while, but I deduced it was keeping me from dreaming.’ He shook his head. ‘Strange things happen when you don’t dream at night. I was beginning to hallucinate, and, frankly, I was getting a little irritable.’
‘What is it?’ asked Miranda. ‘These names mean nothing to me.’
‘It is the most holy artifact from the temple of the God of Knowledge,’ said Dominic. ‘It is a text with all the knowledge of the temple of the Lost God of Knowledge contained upon it. Wodar-Hospur was a Lesser God, but one deemed critical to understanding all the issues we are discussing now,’ said Dominic. ‘What this vagabond has been carrying around for who knows how many years is an item that would have provided an amazing amount of insight and knowledge to our order if we had possessed it.’
Nakor said, ‘Perhaps, but then again, you might have sat around for a couple of centuries staring at the thing without ever really understanding what it does.’ Nakor looked around the room. ‘Knowledge is power. You all have power. I have knowledge. Together we have the means of defeating the Nameless One.’
As Nakor said that phrase, it was as if the room darkened a little and turned slightly colder. ‘The Nameless One?’ asked Miranda, and suddenly she touched her temple. ‘There’s something I know, but . . . don’t know.’
Nakor nodded. ‘I won’t name him.’ He looked pointedly at Dominic. ‘There are advantages to being a little mad and to having tremendous knowledge.’ He looked around the room and said, ‘Here is the rest of the story.
‘The Nameless One is nameless, because even to imagine his name is to call his attention to you. If you do, you’re lost, for no mortal creature has the power to resist his call’ - Nakor grinned - ‘except me.’
Dominic said, ‘How is this possible?’
‘As I said, it helps to be a little mad. And there are tricks that can let you think of one thing without knowing you’re really thinking of it, so when the Nameless One hears his name and comes looking for you, you’re not there for him to find. Even a Greater God can’t find where you’re not.’
Miranda said, ‘I am totally confused.’
‘You are not alone,’ said Pug.
Calis smiled. ‘I think I’m following.’
Nakor grinned at him. ‘That’s because you’re young.’ He looked at the others. ‘When the Chaos Wars raged, one of the Controller Gods, this Nameless One, whose nature is what you would call evil, attempted to upset the balance of things.