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4
     
    “T his is The Book of Lost Words,” Lord Erik told his grandson. “It’s one of the most precious books in the world. A long time ago, it belonged to the White Witch of Naum. This is the original work. There are no copies.”
    Rob’s eyes were big with astonishment. “Where is Naum, Grandpa?”
    Lord Erik smiled. “It’s a land far, far to the north, thousands of leagues from here.” The man put the book onto the table before him. It was an ordinary swath of papers, with no decoration whatsoever, though well kept.
    Lord Erik lowered his voice conspiratorially. “The four men who wrote the books were powerful wizards. They used blood of newborn babies to write the text and placed devastating spells on the pages to prevent anyone from copying them. Then, they killed themselves so the spells would never be extricated from them. It is said that anyone who tries to copy but one lost word will perish on the spot.”
    Rob moaned with excitement. “How did you get the book, Grandpa?”
    The grandfather gently patted the boy’s head. “That’s a story for another time.” He opened the book. “During the Age of Sorrow, the gods and goddesses were terrified and lost. Never before had they had to face such uncertainty, and they burned to know what would become of them. But the flow of time was unknown to them, even though they were divine and immortal.”
    “But aren’t gods supposed to be almighty?”
    Lord Erik shook his head, lips pressed tightly. “Not really, Rob. If they were almighty, they could spawn other gods, or even other worlds, and unmake their own existence. But they can only control the world of men, not their own. No one really knows how gods came to be or what the true extent of their power and purpose is.
    “Some say that the gods unmade their almightiness when they created men. They gave mankind belief, but they also gave humans imagination. Once men started inventing their own worlds and their own gods, the power of the true gods waned. They became the instruments of their own creation. It is no different from what people do all the time. They fashion tools to serve them, but these tools can only do as well as they were made. Think of a hammer. You cannot use the hammer to…bake bread, even if you really wanted.”
    Rob nodded, fascinated.
    “The first men were very different from us, Rob. They were like sheep, dolls in the hands of gods, created by the gods out of a desperate need for self-approval. But Damian changed all that. He gave men passion and greed and envy, and from them bloomed the darkest dreams the human mind could concoct.
    “And so, mankind changed its own creators, gave them strengths and weakness. There is Zoya, the goddess of time. But she masters the time of the humans, not her own.”
    Lord Erik put the book on the table once again. “In the Age of Sorrow, the gods faced destruction. But they could not tell what the future would bring. Some of them decided to sacrifice their immortal existence to help their cause.”
    “Grandpa, you just said the gods cannot kill themselves.”
    “They did not kill themselves. They gave away their essence to a few select men, hoping that, through their minds, future truths would unravel themselves. These men became known as prophets.
    “Again, some say these were lunatics. And many, indeed, were, for the human mind cannot cope with such terrible knowledge. There were also many false prophets, charlatans and tricksters and pretenders, who used people’s fears and doubts to fuel their own goals and ambitions.
    “The prophets would tell people about the future, which they saw in bits and glimpses as their minds fought madness. Some told clear truths; others spoke in riddles of events unknown. Most of the time, prophets did manage to foretell the future, but people mistook their clues and did things the wrong way or at the wrong time, undoing the success of the tellings.”
    Rob scratched his head. “So the prophets knew