Circle of Reign (77 page)

After grabbing one of the torches, he made his way across the cavern, passing the pool of water with stalactites and stalagmites that resembled a yellow open-mouthed drooling skull with large decayed fangs, and came to the far end of one side that met with another rough wall forming an obtuse sort of corner. Alcoves looking similar to all the others pocked the rock wall in front of him. The moisture was not helpful to the scrolls in this area, or any scroll down in this underground cave. But these inlets were much closer to the water than the others. Ryall wasn’t sure if the scrolls here were older or just more fragile due to the moisture. Gently, he reached in one inlet through some cobwebs and retrieved the single scroll therein. He unrolled it and brought his torch closer to bear its light upon the ancient document. Ryall started reading softly to himself.

“Warriors of Light and Purveyors of Night—A Children’s Tale. What in the Burning Heavens?” After not getting more insight from his swearing, he called out, “Hey Holden, what the Ancients is a ‘purveyor’?” His voice echoed throughout the spacious underground, interrupting the constant mellow sound of drops from the stalactites hitting the water’s surface.

Without looking up from the scroll he was hunched over across the room, Holden responded, “Well, genius, that’s like someone that promotes or directs something usually. How is it used?”

“Uh, I think it says, Holden the Purveyor of Jackassery,” Ryall jabbed. No return came from Holden.

Mumbling more to himself, Ryall wondered, “What kind of kid’s story uses words like that? Must’ve messed with their heads a bit.” He continued to read: “There is Light and Dark. One shines in the day, the other takes the night. Every day, the sun chases the
moons as a master after his wayward dogs until he is too weary to continue. While the sun sleeps, the moons play, each taking its turn in the realm of night. Only then, when the sun slumbers, can the lesser powers prevail. When they hear the sun waking from his sleep, they run and hide again.”

Seriously?
Ryall chuckled to himself.

Despite his humor and sensing that his time might be wasted, he continued to read. “This is the tale of one whose day has passed and now sleeps as the sun does at night. Toth, storyweaver, came journeying from a land far from here. He told stories of lands that lived forever with people who lived as long as the oldest trees now live. ‘Where did they go?’ his listeners would ask, but Toth could never answer with more than guesses. He told the people that when it was their time again, they would emerge from earth, trees, rain, and light to restore what once was. But for now, this could not be, for the people loved the night more than day, the moons more than the sun.”

Ryall stopped reading and folded up the scroll less gently than he had opened it. “And blah blah blah forever after. Right. Perfect.” Calling over his shoulder to Holden he said, “I successfully found the child section. You’ll do better than me here.” Again no response from Holden came.

“Seriously, come check this out,” Ryall said.

After replacing the scroll he retrieved another, determined to give this section one more chance. He heard Holden sigh and stand up. When the redheaded boy approached, the coupled light from his torch with Ryall’s added greater illumination to this little corner.

“Here’s another one,” Ryall said as he handed it to Holden.

“Feels very brittle.”

“More than the others.”

Holden opened it carefully and read the title symbols. Or rather, he tried to. “I don’t recognize the second symbol, do you?”

Ryall looked closely and then shook his head. “It kind of looks like ‘living’ or maybe ‘lived’.”

There were many unidentifiable symbols, including that particular one, which repeated many times throughout the text of this scroll. They had not noticed them in any of the other scrolls, but there were still literally thousands they had not yet even glanced at.

Holden started to put it back.

“No, wait!” Ryall said. “They are two symbols together. Look!”

“Ancient Heavens!” Holden exclaimed. “I think you’re right! One does look like ‘live’ and the other—”

“Glow,” Ryall finished. “Well, sort of. Morning, dawn, rising, glow,” he rattled on. “They all look very similar. Actually kinda looks like ‘breathe’ as well.”

“But the root seems to be ‘light’. They all branch off of that symbol, although this second symbol, if it is a second symbol, seems stronger than just ‘light’.”

“Light live? Morning life? Breath of Life?” Ryall was trying to work it out in their tongue and way of thinking, which he knew was not a perfect or rational method for interpreting languages, but being only fifteen years of age, he thought he was doing a rather stand-up job.

“How about ‘life light’ or ‘light of life’?” Holden suggested.

“Living Light!” Ryall exclaimed. “Let’s go with that! What’s the next symbol down?”

“I don’t recognize it and it doesn’t appear to be a mixed symbol like the first one.”

“It’s more circular than most symbols,” Ryall said. “Almost like an oval without a top or bottom.”

“I have no idea, Ryall, but the next symbol is ‘clear’.”

“It is? I don’t know it.”

“Yeah, ‘clear’, like I just said. As in ‘transparent’.”

Holden looked up and moved his head back and forth to stretch his neck. “Ryall, it’s late. I mean early. Our sick days are long over. We really need to get to—what in Heaven’s Light is that?”

Noticing Holden gaze upward, Ryall extended his arm fully and raised the torch as high as it could go. “What? I just see more inlets.”

“Are you certain you have not taken any scrolls from up there?” Holden asked.

“Positive. Just the one you have and the other in the cubby next to it. That’s all.”

“But they are in this same section as these other scrolls.” Holden put the scroll he was handling back.

“Uh, yeah, we haven’t moved,” Ryall quipped.

“The cobwebs are missing on several of the upper inlets.”

“So…” But Ryall paused when the understanding finally hit him. The cobwebs were not in fact missing, he observed, but dangling around the opening of several alcoves. His heart sped up.

“I don’t suppose you think that could have happened naturally?” Ryall hesitantly asked. “The wind, maybe?” He knew there was no wind here underground.

The other boy continued to stare at the open inlets that were missing their fibrous coverings. He reached up and took a scroll from one inlet. Nothing seemed to be amiss, though he did not unravel it. He took another from the same inlet and likewise found nothing immediately suspicious. Ryall reached up to another alcove he could barely touch, even on his toes. His fingers could not reach deep enough into the opening to grab anything.

“Give me a boost,” he said.

Holden knelt on one knee and braced his other leg at a right angle. Ryall stepped on his friend’s thigh and gained the height he needed. His hand pierced the cubby all the way until he felt the stone at the back. He pulled his hand out and looked down at Holden.

“There’s nothing there.”

“Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure. I mean, you see me reaching my hand all the way back. There’s nothing here but air.” He knocked against the back of the inlet as if to emphasize his point, but his hand brushed something as he was once again pulling it out of the inlet.

“Wait.” He reached back in and retrieved a small piece of parchment. He hopped down from Holden’s leg and placed the
small parcel in the palm of his hand. Holden stood and inspected it closely.

“It’s a piece of a scroll. A corner. Look, there’s even an ink stroke there at one edge,” Holden observed.

“This means there had to be a scroll there at one time, right?” Ryall asked.

“I, uh…I think so. But however long ago that was we really don’t know. There’s nothing really suggesting that someone was—I mean, recently here or anything, right?”

“No, of course not. That wall I busted through was—”

“Not the original wall,” Holden interrupted. “Not the part we came through at least.”

Ryall’s heart continued to thump loudly in his chest, and, looking at Holden, he knew his was as well. Chills crept up the nape of his neck like a spider feeling its way through a tattered web to its trapped prey. He looked back at the wide-angled corner and had an eerie suspicion.

“Let me stand on your leg again.”

“What?” Holden asked, confused.

“Come on! It’ll only take a minute.”

Reluctantly, Holden knelt back down and Ryall stepped up. He felt the walls where the corners met. It really looked more like a bend in the wall than a corner, sending the two walls off in different directions from each other. As he ran his hand up and down the natural corner, his fingers stopped in a small cavity. It seemed nothing more than a crevice but he thought he felt—

“Hand me a torch!” Ryall said excitedly.

Holden grunted and raised a torch to his friend as he tried not to wiggle too much.

“You need to go on a diet,” he said.

Ryall brought the flame to the crevice. He waited. Nothing. Stooping down just a bit and pulling the torch back so he didn’t burn himself, he tried to look through but the flame did not illuminate far enough back. Or there was nothing really to see.

The fire flickered.

“Ah!” Ryall moved the flame closer to the small crack. It flickered again. “It goes through!”

“It?”

“The crack, here! A breeze is coming through. It must go to an opening on the other side!”

“Just like the cracks in your head you call your ears,” Holden retorted.

Ryall began chipping at the crack with the tapered butt end of his torch. Embers fell from the head of the torch as Ryall continued to chip away at the crevice and landed on Holden’s head. The boy quickly swatted them away.

“Blasted Heavens, Ryall, watch where you throw your fire!”

Another dull bang sounded, followed by another as Ryall repeatedly punished the wall with the wooden shaft. Holden covered his head as a small shower of sparks continued to rain down on him. His leg was starting to ache.

“Ryall! Come down!”

The sound of small rocks giving way made Ryall stop. Excitedly he brought the torch back to the crevice to give light, and he did indeed see several small stone chips the size of fingers that he had managed to dislodge. He cleared the debris, and this time the hole was large enough for him to put his eye up to it and also allow some of the yellow torchlight to peer through. He saw a small room through his peephole with dark silhouettes of—

“People!” he shouted and fell back with surprise off Holden’s leg. He hit the ground hard, knocking the wind from his lungs.

Holden stood up in alarm. “Ryall, are you all right? What happened?”

Coughing but otherwise unhurt, Ryall recovered quickly and stood. He held his torch out in front of him like a weapon.

“People!” he whispered loudly. “In there!” He pointed to the wall.

Grabbing his own torch, Holden approached the small opening. He hesitated for a second but then put his eye up to eyelet, leaving enough space for the light to accompany his sight.

He pulled his head back suddenly but then stopped. Cautiously but less concerned, he moved back to the hole.

“See?” Ryall whispered.

Holden nodded. “Yes, but they are not alive. They are just statues.”

“What?” Ryall moved back to the eyelet and peered through once again. He still had butterflies flapping wildly in his stomach. Five people appeared in his vision. Two standing, two kneeling and one sitting. They were in different parts of the room, each holding a gesture of some kind.

They were motionless. Statues, as Holden had said. But Ryall also saw other things in the room despite the poor light. More inlets and alcoves, more scrolls and other relics. And a yellowish shimmer that threatened to again cause him to fear until what he saw dawned on him.

Water!

Pulling away from the opening, he looked left. He followed the wall as it curved toward the indoor pond where the stalagmites protruded from and came to the water’s edge. Drops from the ceiling and stalactites interrupted the water’s smooth surface with shallow ripples. With his right hand on the wall that had led him away from the opening he had enlarged, he stood at the water’s edge, pensive.

“What?” Holden asked.

“There’s water in that room.” Ryall knocked on the rock partition. “Just on the other side of this wall.” He glanced at his friend with a look that Holden knew all too well.

“No,” Holden snapped. “No! You don’t know if it goes through!”

“Purity,” a new voice sounded. Ryall thought he felt the breath of the single spoken word.

The two boys dropped their torches and spun around in fright, deep breaths trapped in their lungs. They did not exhale.

“Purity,” the foreign voice repeated. Ryall could not discern the speaker in the darkness. “That’s the meaning of that symbol you were searching for, the open oval. The title of that scroll,
in our tongue, reads literally, ‘Living Light of Open Purity’ although ‘transparent’ or ‘clear’ could also be acceptable. It is the Hardacheon symbol for the Lumenatis. However, you’ll find copies of that same scroll in various places here. It’s not as insightful as I had hoped when I first ran across it. But under the water,” he continued, “yes, through there rests true knowledge.”

“Wh-who are you? I don’t know your v-v-voice,” Ryall stuttered as he released some of his pent-up breath.

“There are none who know me anymore,” came the answer through the darkness. “I have been called by many names, none of them true.” The sphere of limited reaching light produced by the torches at the boys’ feet did not find the face or form of their unexpected visitor. Holden reached down and picked them both up, handing one to Ryall.

“Step into the light!” Holden demanded, trying to show courage.

“I tried that at one time in my life. Now, I much prefer the Dark. It is so much more comforting. For when you know the Dark, what else is there to fear?”

“Perhaps you fear the light since you won’t come forward,” Holden said.

“Ah, yes, the tempting of one to conform to your desires through trickery is a powerful tool. Flattery is another, but not appropriate for this setting. I must admit, I am impressed that someone else has found this lost repository and obviously applied themselves so vigorously to learning. Well done, my young ones.”