The Magestone

11 Mereth—events at Lormt (7th, 8th, & 10th Days, Month of the Ice Dragon)

During the few remaining hours of that night, I doubt that any of us found ease in sleep. I lay down, but my troubled thoughts denied me rest. Although I was far removed in time and distance from the torments of the Dales’ war, I found it still painful to contemplate the necessity of assisting, even working in the same room with an Alizonder baron. Yet if the warning that Kasarian had voiced was true, Estcarp lay in deadly peril. Should Estcarp fall, we of the Dales could not expect the mere expanse of sea alone to shield us, as we had learned to our earlier sorrow.

Kasarian’s and the Lormt folk’s talk of Dark mages unsettled me. I could contribute no useful lore from the Dales, except to express my intense terror at the notion of such beings. I supposed that I might be of some use in sorting documents, provided that I could read them. My prior acquaintance with old Estcarpian scripts was limited to the small collection of kinship records preserved by Dame Gwersa, together with some few other scrolls I had encountered in my own researches.

My thoughts persisted in returning to my betrothal jewel. That it should even now adorn the chest of a primary baron of Alizon made me clutch my quilts tightly about me to subdue a trembling not wholly provoked by the winter chill. As soon as an opportunity arose, I resolved to query Kasarian about this Baron Gurborian and why he had been awarded my jewel.

At first light, I hastened to the food hall, hoping to encounter Morfew, but he was not there. I ate what was placed before me—it might as well have been boiled wool for all I tasted it—and hurried to Ouen’s study.

Ouen opened the door when I tapped with my staff. Nolar, Duratan, and Jonja were already seated at the table. Ouen told me that Morfew had offered to eat with Kasarian before escorting him to join our conference. Morfew had thought it possible that Kasarian might confide in him as a fellow Alizonder, although the old scholar was too honest to hold out much hope on such a brief acquaintance with so wary an adversary.

When Morfew and Kasarian entered the study, we all stood while Ouen pronounced an invocation for guidance from the Light in all of our deliberations. Kasarian appeared bemused, but held his tongue until invited to speak. He immediately requested our decision. Would Lormt allow him to search its archives for, as he phrased it, “weapons of knowledge to be used to deflect Escore’s sorcerous dagger raised against us all?”

Ouen gazed at each of us in turn. “I ask you to declare,” he invited, “whether you believe that Lormt should open its store of documents to this petitioner. Duratan?”

“I do so believe,” Duratan said firmly, “with the stricture that one of us be always present to observe what is being read.”

Nolar nodded. “I agree,” she said, “with the proposal and the stricture.”

“As do I.” Jonja glared at the Alizonder. “As to the stricture, I am prepared to serve at any time as one of Lormt’s observers.”

I proffered my slate for Jonja to read aloud. “If permitted, I, Mereth, will also serve.”

To my surprise, Morfew suddenly chuckled. “What a grim lot of scholars we appear,” he said. “It is true that the cause for our searching is of the utmost seriousness, and we must press forward without delay, but consider the opportunities for discovery! All those previously unknown documents revealed by the Turning—I have been longing to sort them properly. Now I shall have willing and able assistants to speed the task. I urge all of you to join me in the study area near my quarters. I shall instruct the more agile of our helpers to fetch there the materials that we should survey.”

And so began our great search of Lormt’s archives. To permit uninterrupted work, Ouen arranged that food and drink were also brought to us along with the seemingly unending stream of documents.

During one such brief respite while we were eating, I queried Kasarian on my slate concerning Baron Gurborian and the jewel, but he feigned to know little about the matter of the awarding of the pendant. He claimed that it had been bestowed during the Dales’ war, when he was, as he termed it, “a pup.” I did not entirely believe him, but saw no way to press him at that juncture.

As I had suspected, my skills in interpreting the Estcarpian scripts, especially the ancient ones, were not sufficient to deal with the older documents. Morfew kindly showed me how to distinguish the writing styles of various periods, with their forms for certain key words, such as “mages” and “Escore,” so I could at least assist in the initial winnowing process. Nolar, Duratan, and Jonja were all able scholars, and together with Morfew and Ouen, they sorted through heaps of scrolls, bound leaves of parchment, and fragments. By intense effort, Kasarian appeared to decipher the ancient scripts he had not encountered before, and soon he was proceeding almost as quickly as the Estcarpians. I noticed that Morfew or Ouen were carefully retrieving and examining each document that Kasarian laid aside. At first, Kasarian affected not to see; then he showed his fangs in an Alizonder smile, and simply handed each leaf directly to one of the Lormt folk for their perusal. This continued for a while until Morfew threw up his hands and exclaimed, “We are foolishly wasting valuable time in reading after Kasarian. Either we accept his discernment, or we do not. How say you?”

Duratan frowned, then nodded ruefully. “Our mutual need must outweigh our traditional suspicion. Let him proceed without further oversight. This task before us is too daunting for us to diminish our supply of able readers.”

Kasarian wordlessly saluted him, and redoubled his efforts.

We were wearily persisting in our labors two days later when one of Morfew’s helpers lurched in bearing a heavy wooden chest blackened by age and dust-snarled cobwebs. He said it had only just been discovered in a remote cellar breached by the Turning. Kasarian peered at the rust-bound hasp, then pried it open handily with a table knife someone had misplaced from our last meal. I happened to be nearby, so I looked inside the chest when he raised its lid.

The top layers of parchment leaves had been damaged by rain or flood. Kasarian lifted them out, disclosing more parchments and several books. As I reached to assist with the emptying, my fingers brushed across a rather small, nondescript leather-bound book. I jerked my hand back instantly—it was as if I had unwittingly stroked a swarm of Anda wasps. Startled, I recalled the similar shock I had felt when I first touched my betrothal jewel.

Kasarian regarded me quizzically, but Nolar rushed to my side. “Have you cut yourself on a splinter, or been bitten by a spider?” she asked, offering to examine my hand.

I shook my head, and wrote on my slate, “I felt a strange sensation when I touched a book in that chest.”

Nolar stood quite still while she read aloud my comment. “I, too, have encountered such a wonder here at Lormt,” she said, her eyes shining with excitement. “Can you distinguish which book affected you so?”

I deliberately grasped the volume I had dropped back into the chest, and as I did, a surge of mental images nearly overwhelmed me. I fell as much as sat on the nearest bench, striving to retain my senses. Jonja hurried to pour me a restoring cup of wine, while Nolar set a stack of clean parchment before me. Struggling to catch my breath, as if I had run a long distance, I wrote as quickly as I could. All the others crowded closer to hear Nolar read my words.

“We have discovered here,” she voiced for me, “the journal belonging to a puissant Escorian mage from that very time a thousand years ago, which Morfew spoke of. I sense the writer’s name—Elsenar—and that he possessed the very jewel of such concern to me . . . to us all. It was a stone of great Power. I cannot convey my dread that forces of the Dark now active in our day might seize it for some frightful use.”

Jonja had immediately consulted her rune board. Her voice shook with relief when she reported, “There is no taint of the Dark associated with this book. Mage its writer may have been long years ago, but he was of the Light, not the Dark.”

“May I see the book?” asked Ouen. He glanced at first one page, then another, and frowned. “Morfew—what do you make of this peculiar script?”

Morfew gazed over Ouen’s shoulder. “I regret to say—could you turn that page? Yes, it is quite clear to me that I cannot decipher a word. The hand may be fairly written, but it is in no script known to me.”

Nolar and Duratan jointly examined the book, then Jonja, and lastly Kasarian, but none of them could read it. Not being within reach of my staff, I thumped the table with my hand. Ouen handed me the book, its lines of neat script arrayed across the pages, completely unreadable. . . .

I shut my eyes for a moment, and then looked a second time. My hand trembled as I retrieved my message parchment. “I, too, cannot read this script,” I wrote for Nolar to read aloud, “but perhaps because of my gift of touch, I can sense in my mind the meaning of these writings. I believe that I can transcribe all that is written here. Pray fetch me more ink and a brighter lamp. I shall begin at once.”

At some time, the initial pages of Elsenar’s journal had been infuriatingly water-blurred, but when I turned to the first undamaged leaf, the substance of the ancient mage’s account was instantly clear to me. As I completed copying each sheet of parchment, Morfew softly read it aloud to the others while I continued to write.

When I glanced up occasionally, pausing to flex my fingers, I could see that the entire Lormt company shared my feelings of excitement mingled with alarm. After more than a thousand years, we were doubtless the first in Estcarp to learn when and whence Alizon had been settled. Kasarian sat rigidly in a high-backed chair, his jaw muscles tight-clenched, his only movement the turning of his signet ring. It seemed to me that when Nolar had read out the name “Elsenar,” Kasarian had reacted to it instantly. The general illumination in Morfew’s study chamber could scarcely be termed bright, but I vow that the Alizonder paled visibly. Being so fair of skin, he could blanch only slightly, but I do not think my eyes deceived me. He knew the name of that ancient mage, and whatever else he knew concerning Elsenar, the knowledge must have been daunting. I wondered whether Elsenar’s written revelations surprised Kasarian, or had he already been aware of Alizon’s turbulent origins?

I wrote until my fingers cramped. Nolar kindly warmed a basin of water to ease my aching hand. When Morfew grew hoarse, Jonja took up the reading. Elsenar’s tale seized us like a fighter’s grip on our very throats.