Chapter Seven - Language Lessons

"No, the 'R' has to come from the stomach."

"The stomach? How do you talk out of your stomach?"

Mh'repha breathed out, but stopped herself from uttering an exasperated sigh. "The voice does not come from there; you just have to make the sound in such a way that you feel as if it does."

He tried again. "Mmmh'depha". It made an odd rolling sound, but was not by far close to the purring that was common for the way the Nephilim pronounced this consonant.

"The sound is a bit too short. Try holding it for a while. Rrrrrr."

"Rrrruwww". He managed to hold the harsh, throaty rasp for a short while, but then slipped and turned it into a vaguely soft noise. Still, he had matched her sound more closely than in his earlier attempts, and she was satisfied.

"That's better. Now try saying this after me: Rrephna amh'shimh' yapheshis ar amh'rosh nishomh'ri sathosha." She pronounced the words slowly and clearly, emphasizing the brief pauses that where always part of the mh' sound, and rolling the R's for nearly a second each.

"Hhrevena amjim javesish aramrosh nizhomh'hri zathosha".

"What did I tell you about the PH? It's an unvoiced sound, you put just your breath in it. Ffff, not Vvvv."

"Hchrephna," he said experimentally. He still needed to prepare for the R sound by breathing out a throaty CH sound, and then gradually putting his voice into it as well. "am-jim dshapheshis"

"The beginning should sound more like 'I'. Try Iapheshis."

"Eee-apheshis".

"Close enough."

"Hrephno am-shim ee-apheshis ar amh'arhosh nish..." She stopped him with a quick gesture.

"It's amh'rosh. Not amh'arosh. You definitely want to remember that crucial difference, because amh'rosh means sun, while amh'arosh means, uh... something entirely different."

He didn't get the hint. "What does it mean?"

Nephilim did not turn red; instead, when they indicated embarrassment, their whiskers would twitch. "Oh, nothing. Actually, the literal meaning is quite harmless. But in a sentence like Rrephna amh'shimh' yapheshis ar amh'rosh nishomh'ri sathosha, which means, most closely, the night has fled the dawn, and the sun is rising swiftly, you most certainly do not want to get the amh'rosh wrong."

"Oh." He understood. "Well... hrephna amh'shimh' iapheshis ar amh'[b]rosh[/b] nishomh'ri sathosha."

"That was quite good, actually. We can go back to the grammar now, I think."

---

It was the seventh day of his wakening, and it was only the second day since Mh'repha had begun to instruct him in the language of the Nephilim. They were making good progress: his former life as a student of the arcane turned out to be very useful for learning a foreign language, because the magical formulae and their pronunciation required a similar approach: If they were pronounced with the tiniest modification, the result could well be disastrous: The catalysing crystals that were attuned to the spoken voice would react differently, and the structure of the spell could change dramatically, almost always into an unstable, unfocused structure. If the lack of focus was sufficient so that the forces involved cancelled each other out, there would be no effect at all; if the structure held just long enough to focus great energies, these could be unexpectedly released with devastating effect. This required immense precision when memorizing the words, and most magical apprentices of the Vahnatai were able to learn whole pages of writing by rote in only a single reading, or to repeat long sentences someone had uttered with exactly the same intonation. The greatest problem for Tam were the differences between his vocal organs and those of the Nephilim, which frequently made it necessary to spend time practicing to imitate a certain sound as closely as his voice would allow.

The grammar itself was hardly a problem even for a Vahnatai, because it followed a surprisingly consistent system. Novah, of course, was almost simplistic in its grammatical rules, because it was not only free of inflections, but also prepositions and declension pre- and suffices. The word 'mehd' was used to define "a rock", "rocks" and the material "rock", and did not change whether it was the subject, the instrument, or the object of an action. This kind of simplicity should have caused Tam difficulties when learning a more dynamic system, with greater varieties and more rules to watch. However, the declension system was comprehensible and had no exceptions. Tam made the interesting observation that the language was entirely gender-neutral. Even persons were defined as male or female only by context and by the name. There were only two sets of pronouns, one for living objects and one for unliving ones - although the latter was also used for plants.

Mh'repha proved as good a teacher as a healer; apparently the latter position required just as much patience as the former did.

Another week passed before Tam was able to express himself in the language beyond a few short sentences. That he was able to learn by reading the books as well considerably accelerated the process, especially since it turned out that the green book he had tried to read earlier was a flawless translation of the Travels of Zadal-Ihrno of which he also had the Novah copy. By looking up the text in his own language, he was able to understand most of the words that were unclear to him.

The presence of a Nephilim translation of the journal was somewhat significant, but predictable considering the likely circumstances under which Zadal had compiled the tome. Even though at least some of the Nephilim were passably familiar with Novah, undoubtedly he had been requested to compile a more widely accessible translation of his writings. Tam concluded that it was none too unlikely the book had gained at least some measure of fame among them; in fact, since contact with the Vahnatai had been next to non-existent, Zadal's summary of his own culture was probably the main source of their knowledge of his race.

Which possibly explained yet another point. Zadal was critical, of course, as anyone with his range of experience would be, and wrote about the Vahnatai race with no discernable positive bias. If anything, he even judged his people's faults - the exceedingly egocentric stance, for instance, and their arrogant dismissal of the sentience of other creatures such as the dragons - more harshly than he did so when he outlined the other races he had encountered during his travels. Whether this was from an overzealous attempt at strict neutrality, or he was in fact convinced of their inferiority - Tam was unsure about his own opinion, although many of the more cutting remarks struck home, and he found himself agreeing with most of what Zadal had to say about the educational system - the resulting picture was painted in a discernibly negative light. If the Nephilim had had clashes with the Vahnatai in the remote past - not as unlikely as it seemed - then the added effect of this account might explain why the arhmshar had defined him as an enemy of the Nephilim.

Tam could not imagine how enmity could persist between two races who had had no known contact for several centuries at least, even more so if one of the races apparently had no knowledge at all about the existence of the other. However, it quickly occurred to him what would be the likely result of a chance meeting between them.

The Vahnatai were accustomed to simple, wild creatures with something approaching sentience, but not reaching their own level. A tribe of troglodytes was easily cowed by a show of the arcane power of the Vahnatai: A few gigantic spheres of fire above their heads, or several bolts of lightning out of a blue sky, and they were convinced they were dealing with Gods, and left the Vahnatai alone - or served them as they wished. The Vahnatai had had no contact yet with a race that was even remotely capable of magic - even to such a limited extent as the Nephilim - who would be able to identify the quite mundane nature of their power. Whatever the Vahnatai would seek to accomplish by impressing or intimidating the Nephilim would be nearly impossible, and more likely result in an outbreak of hostilities. As the Vahnatai would encounter a foe they could not scare off with their magic, and the Nephilim would be face to face with a beast that could not be hunted with the longbow, the swift acceleration of violence seemed inevitable. It was entirely possible that the first encounters would be of a peaceful nature, but that peace would be so incredibly fragile and unstable that it would shatter at a drop of a hat. Tam shuddered to think about the consequences had Zadal-Ihrno returned to his people with the book he had written. His worst criticisms of the Vahnatai might have proven themselves right. Quite possibly, Zadal had either never returned or left his book along with all his memories here before rejoining his people, claiming to have been lost in the wilderness, to have lost all those notes he did make, and to have met no sentient races at all.

---

His curiosity about Zadal's fate grew with each passing hour, and with each additional chapter of his book that he read. He had already made up his mind to ask Mh'repha if she knew, or if there was anyone else who did, when she next returned to check on him in the morning. It had been yet another night filled with long hours of reading when he could not sleep, but the sun had risen an hour ago - it was winter, and thus already late morning and close to midnight.

Ordinarily, Mh'repha would have come some time ago, but she was delayed for a reason that Tam could not imagine. In the past days, she had often arrived earlier than usual, as if eager to continue instructing him in her language. She had never been late before.

After waiting for another half hour, Tam eventually grew impatient. He resolved to get up and find out what was the matter.

It turned out that this intention was easier conceived than carried out. He ran into problems right from the beginning - namely, at the getting up part. It turned out that despite his disbelief when Mh'repha had told him so, it actually was possible to forget how to walk, and besides his legs had been weakened by the long period of inactivity. It took him a few tries to even rise, but after a few ungainly attempts at standing that inevitably ended with him flopping around on the floor in a way that would have been embarrassing if there had been anyone to watch - which there fortunately wasn't - he achieved a kind of stability that he could keep for more than a few seconds if he held on to the wall. Wrapping a cloak tightly around himself - not his own, which must have been in tatters by the time they found him - he carefully took a few halting steps through the room. He turned his head and looked out through the window again; the height of the room stunned him anew, and he had to struggle to remain standing as he turned and approached the closed door.

For an infinitesimal moment, he felt apprehension: What if it was locked? Mh'repha had assured him that the iron bars on the window were a safety measure due to the immense height, but following the picture that the Nephilim seemed to have of his race, he would not have been surprised if they had installed other safety measures to protect themselves - from him. He tried the door. It opened.

He slipped out quickly and cautiously, and closed the door behind him as soundlessly as possible - his uncertainty led him to try to avoid being seen or heard as best as possible. Outside his small chamber for the first time, he took in the sight: He was standing in a long, narrow hallway whose ends he could not make out both due to the bad light - the windows were only on one side of the cliff face, naturally, and the torches were placed unevenly - and because the tunnel was bent, probably to accommodate the natural bends of the mountain whose side it was carved into.

Looking from one side to the other, it was impossible to see a difference. In both directions, the tunnel curved without a visible end, and there were many doors in almost regular intervals along one side of the tunnel. The other side was almost bare - although Tam could see several archway-like openings in the distance, whose function he could not guess at once. He turned back to the door he had just come through and found that it was labelled with a numerical symbol. With minimal effort, he was able to read it as "twelve".

What were the implications? If the rooms were numbered sequentially, then at least one of the directions he could go in was sure to quickly lead to the end of whatever this complex was - namely, once he had passed room number one. What came after that, a stairway, another identical set of rooms, or some place where he could find out where he was and needed to go, was less important; at least he would not wander endlessly through a long hallway with ever increasing numbers. Technically, the tunnel was limited in length by the width of the cliff face it was built into, but Tam was in no state to walk even a few hundred paces, which he might well have to in order to get to the other end of the tunnel, in the direction of the increasing numbers. He decided to check the lower end first, and if he did not find out where to get help, he would return to his room to read some more: Suddenly, in the face of this disorienting, almost vertiginous tunnel, his plan of searching for Mh'repha looked much more daunting than it had when he had stood up earlier.

Haltingly, he went up to one of the adjacent doors - turning right from where he entered the hallway - and found it was labelled "fourteen". He hesitated at that. 14? Why did they leave one out - did the hallway he was in only lead to the even rooms, and the odd-numbered ones were somewhere else? But no: moving along one door further, the next one was labelled 15, and the next one 16. He returned to his own room and confirmed that it was only room number 13 that had been left out for some reason that he could not fathom. More confusion!

Fortunately, it appeared that in the other direction the numbers progressed quite normally. He came past room 3, whose door was ajar - Tam was careful to walk past it without making a sound, for he did not cherish the thought of meeting a complete stranger without Mh'repha's presence and only his own language capacities to rely on, especially when it was likely the Nephilim did not easily trust him. He came to the end of the hallway without an incident, and instead of an ordinary wooden door, there was a curtain set into an opening that led through it. Tam was just about to pull aside the curtain when he noticed voices speaking on the other side of it, just a few paces away. There were two voices, and they appeared to be arguing from the irritated way they sounded. One of them, Tam recognized as the voice of Mh'repha.

They were speaking in their own language, and very quickly, but Tam was able to understand what they were saying with some effort.

---

"I absolutely cannot allow this. It is ridiculous that we are even having this discussion; you know perfectly well what my standpoint on it is."

"You are overreaching your authority."

"You are far outside your jurisdiction. Inside the resting-halls, my voice carries light." Tam remembered that this was an expression used among the Vahnatai to indicate almost absolute authority. "You cannot expect to barge in and make such demands, especially overruling my judgement."

"The circumstances are different."

"They are exactly the same as any other time. There is one who requires healing, and for that purpose he stays in these halls and I decide when he is ready to go out. Not you, nor anyone else."

"Mh'repha, I must insist on a meeting now, and with no delay."

"I tell you as before, Phamh'rir, I cannot allow it. He is in no condition to meet with anyone, and it would violate both procedure and my conscience to judge otherwise in this issue."

"You have lost touch with reality! You cannot expect to take in one of the Shining Ones and expect the situation to be no different than with any other patient. There are forces at work that are beyond your understanding."

"My offer stands. I will continue to observe his recuperation, and notify you immediately once I hold he is sufficiently recovered to face up to your questioning. Mh'asharra willing, that will be in a week's time."

"We do not have a week. You cannot tell me he has not yet recovered from his starvation - you said he had regained consciousness more than a week ago! What are you still waiting for?"

"There is a difference between being conscious and being recovered, as you well know, Phamh'rir."

"I have heard you are teaching him our language."

"That is true. He has made a stunning progress."

"If he is able to learn languages, then how can you claim he is unable to be questioned? He is obviously in a sound state of mind."

"Yes, but not of sound body. Do you realize he has not yet even managed to stand for more than three seconds, let alone walk? You would have to cart him in to the meeting room if you wished to speak with him, and I can guarantee you that the stress will have a serious detrimental effect on his recovery time. Then you will wait even longer for your precious report."

"I am fine with that, Mh'repha, as long as I get my answers right now, and no later."

"You are despicable."

"I am fine with that as well, Mh'repha. Now let me past. Room twelve, you said?"

"Room twelve it is, and if you take another step I shall arrange to have you forcibly thrown out of this building."

"Then I shall arrange to have your forcible evictors forcibly evicted themselves. Stand aside." There was a minor disturbance, steps on stone, for a while Tam even thought he heard swords drawn. The situation sounded tense, dangerous, and utterly pointless. Tam decided to put a stop to it before it deteriorated further and led to a mess.

A voice sounded suddenly through the curtain. "Stay. Your wish is granted."

The two Nephilim, each surrounded by three of what had to be guards - Tam noticed that they were a lot taller and more muscular than the others, appearing almost to be a breed of their own - looked up in astonishment. Their surprised faces - still reflecting the earlier anger that had been etched upon them only seconds ago - were looking upon a curtain being hesitantly drawn aside, upon a figure in a dark green cloak. The figure was tall, but only little taller than them - and shorter than their guards. His head was a large, almost spherical bulb with huge green eyes, and his skin was glistening in a shiny grey. He would have seemed only little less frail if it had not been for the natural thinness of the Vahnatai - for he had not gained weight in the recent weeks spent recovering. As he stood in the gateway, the curtain now fully drawn open, he awkwardly clutched the doorframe for support. A paleness that only accentuated his seemingly unnatural grey colour spread over his face. And yet, he was undoubtedly awake and conscious.

"Greetings, Phamh'rir. You wish to speak with me. How can I help you?" Tam continued to speak in the flowing, purring speech of the cat race as he had before coming in.

"Tam!" Mh'repha sounded half in panic, and half in awe at his apparent ability to leave his room and walk unsupported. "You were not supposed to leave your bed for another week at least!" In her surprise, she appeared to have missed his change of the language, and automatically began to address him in Novah. At an imperceptible signal from her, the three muscular bouncers around her sheathed their weapons and withdrew into the corners, seeming almost to vanish from sight. In response to this, the guards that had accompanied Pham'rir also put away their blades, and withdrew in silence.

"I could not bear waiting any longer, so I came down. Besides, I wondered why you had not shown up yet. What has kept you?" Tam was quite insistent about the language, as if wishing to prove a point to Phamh'rir, whoever he was and whatever his position.

"He has." Mh'repha simply pointed at Phamh'rir, who had apparently given her some trouble already. "He has some questions, and insists on having them answered right away, as his kind often likes to think they have a right to." She turned back to Phamh'rir and nodded.

"It appears that my point has been lost, for he can walk unaided. If he consents to it, I will allow you to question him. Yet, I must remind you of his continued weak health, and that you do tend to make your questioning sessions far, far too long. Please confine yourself to short queries, and do not strain him.

"Tam, if he bothers you and won't go away if you tell him, just tell me. I'll have his liver for dinner if he doesn't follow my conditions."

"Do not worry, Mh'repha. I think I can stand it, as long as you can find me something to sit in, and under the condition that you stay with me during the questions."

Phamh'rir looked quite sceptic for the better part of a minute, but had to give way under Mh'repha's smouldering glare. Weakly, he protested. "Mh'repha, this is sensitive information, and highly classified. We cannot afford the risk of acquiring a leak in our intelligence and communications"

Tam was ready for that. "In that case, I don't have anything to tell you."

"You---"

"No, I do not mean I will not tell you, I mean I have nothing you wish to know. All that I do know and remember, I have told Mh'repha already. If what you are seeking to know is too confidential for her to listen to it, then what I can tell you is obviously of no use to you." Tam spoke without stumbling, mainly because he was careful to speak slowly and carefully - you could not rush a language you had learnt less than a week ago. "Besides, I am not yet familiar with your language, and in spite of being able to walk, am too tired to answer a lot of questions. I am confident that Mh'repha will allow me to end the questioning once I cannot stand it longer, and I will need her help when I lack the right words."

Phamh'rir seemed not to have expected that, but recognized a hopeless issue when he saw one. "On the condition that you will not repeat what you hear inside the meeting, neither my questions nor his answers, you are welcome to come." He turned around as if to leave. "Now if you would follow me..." he took a few steps towards what was evidently a staircase to one of the lower levels. When he reached it, he turned around.

Tam was still standing near the curtain and leaning against the wall for support. Mh'repha had not moved either.

"Follow you?" Mh'repha asked. "Follow you where? There is a vacant room, the first door to the right through there - ", she pointed at the curtain, "which is perfectly suited to talk with nobody listening in. I am sure you can see that Tam is not ready to walk any longer distance, and I will not let him leave these halls before then." Tam suspected this was as much out of concern for his health as it was due to a thing he had overheard earlier - Inside the resting-halls, my voice carries light. Once Mh'repha let him be taken out of the halls, she would lose what power she had now, and would be hard-pressed to continue to protect him.

Phamh'rir's eyes were glinting dangerously, their golden irises drawn to dangerous slits like those of a tiger. His black fur was bristling, and his guards appeared to move slightly in the shadows as if sharing his anger.

"As you wish."

"And your guards will remain outside, as will mine. I trust you want to keep the meeting as confidential as possible." Mh'repha sounded faintly ironic, although Tam could not imagine why. He must not know something about the guards, who were standing as still as the shadows of statues.

Pham'rir nodded, defeated. He and Mh'repha followed as Tam - closest to the door - led the way into the room labelled One. As Tam looked around for a seat, but apart from two wooden chairs found only the bed, which he promptly sat on, he wondered what exactly it was that Pham'rir wished to know from him, and who he was and was what his position within the Claw. If he were an ordinary man, Mh'repha would never have allowed him this near, and if he were one of the arhmshar who Mh'repha had told him of, he would surely be older. He appeared to have a lot of rank to pull and a strong lack of personal concern, hinting at a military commander - but Tam could not imagine what the army of the Claw wished to know from him, and why. It would remain to be seen, he realized even as Mh'repha drew up the two chairs next to the bed, careful to arrange their positions in such a way as to have Phamh'rir face both of them, rather than Tam.

Phamh'rir pretended not to care about the arrangement that, by its appearance, seemed to put him in a cross examination as the examinee rather than the questioner. Instead, he sat down, determined to get his answers as quickly as possible and leave this unfavourably situation again. There will be other days, he thought grimly.

 4424 words.