To further complicate matters, an obscure sect of Truffidians who inhabit the ruined fortress of Zamilon near the eastern approaches to the Kalif’s empire claim to possess the last true page of Tonsure’s journal. According to legend, Trillian’s men once stayed at the fortress on their way to the Kalif, bearing the journal that, the careful reader will remember, was hocked by the Cappandom. A monk crept into the room where the journal was kept and stole the last page, apparently as revenge for the left femur of their leader having been spirited away by agents of Cappan Manzikert II 300 years before.
The front of the page consists of more early Truffidian religious ritual, but the back of the page reads as follows:
We have traveled through a series of rooms. The first rooms were tiny—I had to crawl into them, and even then barely squeezed through, banging my head on the ceiling. These rooms had the delicate yet ornate qualities of an illuminated manuscript, or one of the miniature paintings so beloved by the Kalif. Golden lichen covered the walls in intricate patterns, crossed through with a royal red fungus that formed star shapes. Strangely, in these rooms I felt as if I had unlimited space in which to move and breathe. Each room we entered was larger and more elaborate than its predecessor—although never did I have the sense that anyone had ever lived in the rooms, despite the presence of chairs, tables, and bookshelves—so that I found myself bedazzled by the light, the flourishes, the engraved ceilings. And yet, oddly enough, as the curious rooms expanded, my sense of claustrophobia expanded too, so that it took over all my thoughts … This continued for days and days, until I had become numb to the glamour and dulled to the claustrophobia. When hungry, we broke off pieces of the walls and ate of them. When thirsty, we squeezed the chair arms and greedily drank the drops of mossy elixir that came from them. Eventually, we would push open the now immense doors leading to the next room and see only distantly the far wall … Then, just when I thought this journey might never end—and yet surely could not continue—I was brought through one final door (as large as many of the rooms we had passed through). Beyond this door, it was night, lit vaguely by the stars, and we had come out upon a hill of massive columns, through which I could see, below us, a vast city that looked uncannily like Cinsorium, surrounded by a forest. A sweet, sweet breeze blew through the trees and lifted the grass along the hill. Above, the immense sky—and I thought, I thought, that I had been brought aboveground, for the entire world seemed to spread out before me. But no, I realized with sinking heart, for far above me I could see, when I squinted, that, luminous blue against the blackness, the lines of strange constellations had been set out there, using some instrument more precise than known of aboveground. And yet the stars themselves moved in phosphorescent patterns of blue, green, red, yellow, and purple, and after a moment I discovered that these “stars” were actually huge moths gliding across the upper darkness … My captors intend to leave me here; I am given to understand that I have reached the end of my journey—they are done with me, and I am free. I have but a few more minutes to write in this journal before they take it from me. What now to do? I shall not follow the light of the moths, for it is a false light and wanders where it will. But, in the lands that spread out before me, a light beckons in the distance. It is a clear light, an even light, and because light still, to me, means the surface, I have decided to walk toward it in hopes, after all this time, of regaining the world I have lost. I may well simply find another door when I find the source of the light, but perhaps not. In any event, God speed say I.
Surely, surely, such visions indicate Tonsure’s advanced delirium or, more probably, monkish forgery, but one is almost convinced by the holy reverence in which the inhabitants of Zamilon hold their page, for it means more to them than any other of their possessions, and even now, after many a reading, it moves more than one monk to tears.130
To attempt to put the controversy to rest131—after all, Tonsure has become a saint to the Truffidians by virtue of his faith in the face of adversity—a delegation from the Morrow-based Institute of Religiosity,132 led by the distinguished head instructor Cadimon Signal,133 journeyed 20 years ago to the lands of the Kalif, under guarantee of safe passage, to examine the journal in its place of honor in Lepo.
The conditions under which the delegation could view the journal—conditions set after their arrival—could not have been more rigid: they could examine the book for an hour, but, due to the book’s fragile condition, they themselves could not touch it; they must allow an attendant to do so for them. Further, the attendant would flip through all of the pages once, and then the delegation would be able to study up to 10 individual pages, but no more than 10—and they must name the page numbers in question on the basis of the first flip through.134 The delegation had no alternative but to accept the ridiculous conditions,135 and resolved to make the most of their time. After half an hour, they found it appeared parts of the book had been replaced with different paper, and that the penmanship appeared, in places, somewhat different from Tonsure’s own (as compared against the biography). Alas, at the half-hour mark, news reached the Kalif by carrier pigeon that the then mayor of Ambergris had tendered a major personal insult to the Kalif, and he immediately expelled the delegation from the reading room and sent them via fast horses to his borders, where they were unceremoniously dumped with their belongings. Their notes had been taken from them, and they could not remember any useful particulars about the page they had seen. No further examination has been allowed as of the date of this writing.
Thus, although we have copies of the journal, we may never know why pages were replaced in this invaluable primary source of history. We are left with the difficult task of either repudiating the entire document or, as I believe, embracing it all. If you do believe in Samuel Tonsure’s journal, in its validity, then your pleasure will be enhanced as you pass the equestrian statue of Manzikert I136 in the Banker’s Courtyard and as you survey the ruined aqueducts on Albumuth Boulevard that are, besides the mushroom dwellers themselves, the only remaining sign of Cinsorium, the city before Ambergris.137
1
The hall contained the following items, some of which were later cataloged on faded yellow sheets constrained by blue lines and anointed with a hint of mildew:
24 moving boxes, stacked three high. Atop one box stood
1 stuffed black swan with banded blood-red legs, its marble eyes plucked, the empty sockets a shock of outrushing cotton (or was it fungus?), the bird merely a scout for the
5,325 specimens from far-off lands placed on shelves that ran along the four walls and into the adjoining corridors—lit with what he could only describe as a black light: it illuminated but did not lift the gloom. Iridescent thrush corpses, the exhausted remains of tattered jellyfish floating in amber bottles, tiny mammals with bright eyes that hinted at the memory of catastrophe, their bodies frozen in brittle poses. The stink of chemicals, a whiff of blood, and
1 Manzikert-brand phonograph, in perfect condition, wedged beside the jagged black teeth of 11 broken records and
8 framed daguerreotypes of the family that had lived in the mansion. On vacation in the Southern Isles. Posed in front of a hedge. Blissful on the front porch. His favorite picture showed a boy of seven or eight sticking his tongue out, face animated by some wild delight. The frame was cracked, a smudge of blood in the lower left corner. Phonograph, records, and daguerreotypes stood atop