Hearts of the Books
The Hearts of the Books are the crystals set into the spines of the Sacred Books. A Heart is what makes a Book a Book: it holds the volume in the air, pours the Book's element out across Eslura, and is the one point at which a living hand can touch a Book's power.[1] The Heart Demise carried out of Zybersia is named one of the four elemental pillars of the land.[2]
Description
Each Heart sits rooted in its Book's spine, and each takes its colour from its element. The Heart of the Book of Land is an emerald crystal; green light courses out of it through the pages, green lightning rolls across the Book's surface, and the whole thing hangs pages-down over the platform in the Hollow of Gewa.[1] The Heart of the Book of Fire is described instead as an orb, and the hole its removal left in that Book's spine is the size of a basketball and goes all the way through, wide enough to put an arm into.[3]
Nothing is recorded of what the Hearts of the Book of Water and the Book of Air look like. Neither Chamber has been entered in front of a witness who could say.
What a Heart does
A Heart powers its Book, and a Book without one cannot even float. The Book of Fire lies flat on the floor of its Sacred Chamber, while the three intact Books hang in the air above their platforms.[3]
The energy does not stay in the Chamber. At Blighburrow the light out of the Book of Land shoots up through the darkness into the trunk of Gewa, travels down the tree's roots, and spreads across the whole of Eslura from there.[1]
Because the four Books share one load, a missing Heart is felt everywhere. Alistair Archibald told Beatrice Tidal that the Books of Land, Water and Air had been forced to produce far more power since the Book of Fire stopped carrying its share, and that he feared it was still not enough. As he spoke, the Book of Land's glow went out like a blown fuse and left the Chamber dark before it caught again. If the Books run out, he said, the shields over the Chambers will fall weak and life on Eslura will cease.[1]
Touching a Heart
The Heart is where a Book answers a person, and what happens next depends on who is touching it.
For the Sacred Head it is a way back to full strength. After a Shadow Reaper clawed the mark on Bea's wrist and left part of itself inside her, Alistair Archibald drew the Book of Land down out of the air with the green light of his claws and had her lay her fingertips on the crystal. A beam of green light ran into her hand and wrist, turned her veins green, climbed through her chest into her head, and carried her into a vision of her mother and of the white-haired man from her dreams. Her symbol, which had darkened to brown, came back to a rusty orange and began to recharge on its own.[1][4]
For a Book without a Ruler it is a choosing. Reagan Hideaway put her arm through the hole in the Book of Fire's spine out of curiosity. The pages closed on her arm and would not let go, white lightning ran up into her chest, her sight turned entirely red, and she left the Chamber the Sacred Ruler of the Book of Fire.[3]
The Heart of the Book of Fire
Demise tore the Heart out of the Book of Fire on Obellius Kalaar's orders and walked it into Morgaedion burning beneath his robes, a token carried for the man he called the rightful king of Eslura.[2][3] Obellius has held it since. Nordwelg put it to Alistair that with Obellius in possession of one Heart, a meeting of Rulers mattered less than guarding his own Book's Heart against the same theft.[4]
Through the first book the Rulers speak of the Book itself as having been taken from its Chamber, and Millennium Loftwind hoped it had merely been misplaced and could be returned to its rightful Chamber.[5][6] They were mistaken. When Reagan Hideaway reached the Chamber under Elmryn's Castle, the Book of Fire lay exactly where it had always lain. Only the Heart was gone, and the hole in the spine was still unmended.[3]
Whether a Heart can be put back into its Book is never established.