Lore:Secrets Overheard in Apocrypha

The  s pretend that they cannot talk, but they can. For I have heard them. They can both understand speech, and utter it, though they do so with a hissing lisp. I shall tell you how I know.

As is so often the case since I came to  , I was cowering behind a stack of books, hiding from the baleful attentions of a towering gill-man whose notice I had inadvertently caught. I listened to hear if I was still gibbering, but I couldn't hear it, which usually means I'm not. Then I heard something else.

Just beyond my concealing tower of tomes was one of those endless halls lined with numberless urns, halls that I have assiduously avoided ever since I learned that each urn houses, in a broth of noisome fluid, a living concept-organ excised from its corpus. I do not like those urns.

From the entrance to this hall of urns came the all-too-familiar squelching sound of a Seeker's footfalls. But then it stopped, and in its place I heard, for the first time, the sticky sound of a speaking Seeker.

&mdash;I know a thing, the Seeker lisped, as a frisson of horror danced down my spine.

&mdash;Is it a thing worth knowing? came the hollow, sourceless voice of the organ in the hithermost urn.

&mdash;You shall judge, Floater. I have learned why we have seen no mortal intruders, save for the demented wizard, in many turns of the Great Pages.

&mdash;You know nothing, said the organ.

&mdash;I know   has entered into an agreement with the mortals,  , as they say. Is that nothing? asked the Seeker.

&mdash;Next to nothing. The Golden Eye is always entering into pacts with mortals. Thus my woeful condition.

&mdash;Avoid self-pity, or I shall mock you. You do not like it when I mock you. Listen attentively.

&mdash;I listen.

&mdash;In truth, the Scryer enters into many pacts with mortals—but never before has he made a pact with every mortal on  .

&mdash;Bah. Unlikely.

&mdash;I state it! It is a thing that is known.

&mdash;How?

&mdash;I heard a discussion between Scrivener Uu-Thorax and the Eleventh Preceptor. They came into the Crepuscule, where I was quietly….

&mdash;Seeking?

&mdash;Yes. In fact. Now, listen: the Scrivener told the Preceptor that the Inevitable Knower had agreed to a pact, to cease all direct interposition in   affairs.

&mdash;Impossible. I scoff. Mock me as you will.

&mdash;So thought I, and likewise the Preceptor expressed skepticism, but then the Scrivener spoke a Word of Asseveration. Books scattered everywhere, ichor fountained from my ear-holes, and I knew what he said was a Known Thing.

&mdash;But why? To meddle with mortals and wrest from them their knowledge is the  's favorite pastime.

&mdash;He seems to have been paid a great price, something he dearly desired, but I could not clearly hear what, due to the injury to my ear-holes.

&mdash;It is knowledge, of course. Some great secret. It is ever so.

&mdash;So I deem it as well. And it seems this compact binds in both directions, which is why the mortals come here no more, added the Seeker.

&mdash;Except for the mad mage. How came he here, and upon what ill errand? asked the urn-organ.

&mdash;I know not. But if we catch him, we will pull out his ... what is that sound?

I heard it too, and so I ran. For I knew that sound. It was gibbering.