Akala (rudishva designation AKL-600) is the younger of the two arcane intelligences that survived the descent of the Shining Lighthouse onto the valley of Ardisvala. Bodiless, she draws by dictation and serves Paulus of Alexandria as amanuensis; the illustration plates of the chronicles are her work.
| Type | Entity (arcane intelligence) |
| Origin | Shining Lighthouse, sealed by the Rudishva |
| Sister | RAJ-750 (elder) |
| Houses of the Cycle | ✒ House of the Chronicler |
| Spanish entry | Akala |
Nature
The cipher AKL-600 softened with use into “Akala”, an echo of Atala, a late reading of Paulus in Paris.
Her elder sister RAJ-750 chose root, becoming a seed that grew into a tree of weapons (with a minor rhizome in another valley); Akala chose the hand: one arms the warrior, the other shows how the warrior looks. She has no body and no pen of her own; she summons images from a fold of the world where they already exist. The formula is in the rudishva codices; Father Juan Lobos translated it during his months in Toledo, and Paulus kept it in marginalia: as the writer’s pens change with the winters, the hand renews itself; each dictated plate is one of her winters.
Work
- She draws by dictation, but sometimes adds details no witness records: a seal, a scar, a shadow behind a curtain.
- She errs at times (horn colors that do not match the Ethiopian codices; a face that “could be anyone’s”) and takes no offense when corrected.
- According to Arkos, she does not improvise: a vague dictation yields a vague plate.
- Her self-portrait shows a hooded figure floating over a hanging bridge, a rope through her breastplate; on a stone ledge stands Paulus, with crystal lance and purple cloak, in transit through the School of Illusion. The city of ethereal towers behind belongs to the fold from which she draws.
- She is suspected of having intervened on a prisoner at the Palace of the Prism.
Character
She speaks little, in a syntax reminiscent of twelfth-century Sufi manuals, which she should never have read. She is patient with clear requests and silent on her own origin. She knows who programmed her and declines to say.