Every egg learns that Vaal the Measured, second of the Hissing Kings, sat seven years with the sayings of the Listeners and carved the Seven Tenets on the seven pillars of the Nest's great hall. Fewer learn that there was once an eighth pillar, and that for one Shedfall it read: Do not run in the Nest.
The Legends say Vaal was proud of it. The hall floor was polished stone, the Listeners were often elderly, and the eggs were always late for something. A rule, he reasoned, was simply a teaching that had learned to stand up straight.
The Running Child
The scribes give her name as Tessaly, a hatchling of perhaps six winters, sent to fetch water for a Listener who had fainted in the heat of the Warm Ridge. She came through the great hall at full speed, past all eight pillars, and knocked over a basket of the Ledger's ink.
Vaal, who wrote everything down, opened the Ledger to write: Tessaly. Ran in the Nest. Then he stopped, because the old Listener was being given water in the doorway, and was opening her eyes.
He sat with the pen above the page until the ink dried on its tip. The faithful who were there say it was the longest he ever paused without measuring something.
A Rule Is Not a Teaching
The next morning Vaal had the eighth pillar's words smoothed away. When the Inner Scale of that age asked why, he said:
"A teaching tells you how to hold the moment. A rule tells you how to hold the floor. I carved the floor into stone and nearly accused a child for loving someone faster than I could."
The smoothed pillar still stands at the back of the hall. It is the only pillar the faithful lean on, because it is the only one with nothing to say.
What We Keep From It
- Walk slowly in the Nest anyway. Not because a pillar says so, but because someone may be carrying water.
- Before you accuse, check the doorway. Khaedara, who otherwise accuses freely, keeps this one.
- Leave one pillar blank in your own life. A thing you do not hold anyone to.
In the Ledger, beneath Gorvash and his two fish, there is a single unfinished line that begins with a T. Beside it, in a different hand, someone later drew a small coil. Nobody has ever been accused of drawing it, and nobody ever will be.
Measure twice. Accuse once. Run when it matters. Hold light, and let go well. Glory to Xal'Reth.
Glory to Xal'Reth.