Chapter 8: A Language of Knives
The first dictionary of Mataon’s second life was carved with a stone knife and contained no words.
The High Goblin scraped away the divided camp he had drawn, split a strip of dead bark off the shelter wall, and cut one straight line into it.
Krrk.
He touched his chest.
Person, Mataon guessed.
A second piece got two parallel cuts. The fugitive pointed west, along the small footprints.
Route.
The third became a rough rectangle, like the enclosure in the erased drawing.
Camp.
Mataon laid the pieces beside the three stones from their council.
"We have upgraded from government to paperwork."
"You have pieces of bark," Almina said.
"All archives begin during somebody else’s argument."
Zahr considered it.
"That is unfortunately true."
The High Goblin watched Mataon talk to the air. Then carved a jagged mark and pressed two fingers beside his bandaged thigh.
Pain.
That one required no scholarship.
They needed more than nouns. A picture of a camp did not say whether they should enter it, avoid it, burn it, or file a complaint with an institution that probably considered collars efficient administration.
Mataon pointed at the western trail, swept his hand forward for move, then touched the camp symbol.
The fugitive shook his head.
He laid the knife across the route mark.
"Blocked?"
The High Goblin repeated the motion. Then pointed at Mataon.
The blade stopped a handspan from the gold thread on his coat.
Mataon’s fingers closed on the spear shaft.
The High Goblin’s shoulders went tight. His knife came up.
Barni shouldered Mataon hard in the shin.
Whuff.
"Your objection is noted."
Barni showed both front teeth.
Mataon let go of the spear.
And then he saw it properly. The knife had never been aimed at his throat. It had been aimed at the coat.
He tapped his own chest. Then the blade. Then made the danger signal against the stone.
Tik. Tik.
The High Goblin shook his head harder. He touched the embroidered clasp, pointed east toward the smoke, and dropped the chain fragment onto the camp symbol.
Not Mataon.
The people his clothes looked like.
"Fair," Mataon said.
"I do look like I arrived to approve the budget."
"You arrived dressed for a diplomatic assembly," Zahr said.
"Same danger. Better chairs."
"Change the coat," Almina said, before Zahr could continue.
He could not replace it. He could make it quieter. He rubbed ash across the brightest gold lines and tied a torn strip of dark cloth over the clasp.
The result looked less like an official and more like a diplomat who had lost a procedural fight with a fireplace.
Barni sniffed the covered emblem.
"Be constructive."
Barni sneezed on it.
The High Goblin’s mouth moved. Not a smile. Close enough to prove he owned the necessary muscles.
Before they left, Mataon cut a straight fallen branch to the fugitive’s shoulder height and wrapped the grip in dry bark. The High Goblin tested it twice, struck the ground once, and kept it.
Tok.
The western trail went into denser forest, where roots rose like walls and the silver bark cut the light into narrow strips.
The small footprints showed only in patches of soft ground. Barni led. Mataon followed a few steps back. The High Goblin came last on the staff, refusing help he had not been offered.
Their new vocabulary travelled in Mataon’s pocket.
It failed the moment they tried to discuss more than one thing at a time.
The High Goblin stopped at a fallen trunk and carved two person marks. He put one inside the camp rectangle and one beside it, then laid the chain across both.
Mataon pointed at the fugitive, then the first mark. Then west, at the small prints, then the second.
The High Goblin nodded.
Both prisoners. Different sections. One chain.
Mataon set two similar stones beside the marks. Same people? Same work? Same species? The question held too many possibilities, and he tried each of them with position and gesture.
The fugitive watched, understood enough to become annoyed, and swept both stones away.
He carved a hammer shape beside one enclosure and three hooked lines beside the other. Then pointed at Mataon and waited.
Mataon nearly assigned meanings. Mine. Logging. Labour category. Species.
Almost.
Instead he touched his temple, shook his head, and turned both symbols face down.
Unknown.
The High Goblin gave one slow nod.
It was the first thing Mataon had successfully communicated by refusing to invent an answer.
At the first fork the tracks vanished under a mat of hard leaves.
A fern had been folded around a low branch, hiding two shallow cuts in the bark.
Mataon crouched. A covered mark. Somebody hiding something.
He pointed under the roots to their left.
Barni sniffed the folded fern and backed away at once. His tail dropped. He scratched toward the right-hand path.
Scrt.
The High Goblin tapped danger twice, drew the route sign in the soil, and crossed out the left branch with the point of his knife.
Mataon looked again, properly this time.
The fern was not hiding a shelter. Its crushed stem had spread a bitter scent across the wrong path.
A false trail. Or a warning, for anyone who knew the smell.
He took out the bark piece he had labelled concealment and turned it face down.
"First correction entered into the record."
"You do not have a record," Almina said.
"I have bark and professional humility."
"You have half of one of those."
They took the right path.
The High Goblin lasted longer than Mataon expected, and less long than he wanted.
After twenty minutes the staff began landing before every second step.
Tok. Drag. Tok. Drag.
When Mataon pointed at a root hollow and closed his fist for stop, the fugitive refused.
He pulled out two bark pieces, set the route mark on one side and concealment on the other, and laid his knife between them.
Then he pointed at Mataon again.
The same gesture as before.
Mataon felt his shoulders tighten. He made himself wait.
The knife was not a threat. It was dividing two options.
Choice.
He pointed at the two pieces and opened both hands toward the High Goblin.
The fugitive watched him for several seconds. Then tapped the western route.
And Mataon understood, standing in the wet forest with a stolen coat and one shoe, that the test had never been whether he could guess right.
It had been whether he would reach for a weapon before admitting he might be wrong.
He touched his temple, shook his head, and pointed at the knife-between-paths sign. Then repeated the open-handed gesture.
I misunderstood. Show me again.
The High Goblin carved the sign a second time. Slower.
They added it to the others.
Person. Route. Camp. Concealment. Pain. Enemy. Chain. Choice.
Approximate meanings, not words. Eight ways to be less wrong than they had been that morning.
Mataon asked the archive a question narrow enough not to punish him for curiosity. Whether the meaning of an unfamiliar carved symbol could be read from its shape alone.
[All-Knowing Worlds — Query Result]
No.
Shape can reveal: tool type, cutting direction, relative age, repetition, and physical alteration.
Meaning may depend on: culture, species, profession, territory, contract, ritual, personal convention, and intended observer.
Warning: Similar symbols may carry opposing meanings.
"A divine archive has formally recommended context."
"It has formally recommended that you stop guessing," Almina said.
Near midday the small footprints came back, beside a shallow run of dark water.
They were less even now. One print sank deeper at the heel. Another slid sideways across wet clay.
Whoever it was, they were tiring.
Mataon’s humor left without being asked to.
They followed the water until Barni stopped so suddenly that Mataon nearly walked over him.
Ahead stood an Ashvale tree wider than a house.
Seven short cuts surrounded one long vertical incision in the silver bark. Dark resin had been pressed into every line. Under the mark, a bundle of dried reeds hung from a black cord.
The small footprints went directly toward it.
Barni’s folded ears flattened. A sound gathered in his chest, lower and quieter than a growl.
The High Goblin saw the carving and froze.
He closed his fist. Stop.
Then struck stone twice with the knife.
Tik. Tik.
Danger.
Mataon pointed at the small trail, then past the tree.
The fugitive stepped backward. He would not go near it.
Barni did not look confused. He looked like something recognizing a door it had hoped never to see again.
Mataon studied the resin-filled cuts, and understood exactly how little he knew.
The High Goblin knew what happened to people who crossed the mark.
Barni knew who had made it.
Mataon knew only that the smaller footprints went past the tree, and had not come back.