The Prophecy

22

The Ulster Archives was nestled against a sturdy outcropping of rock, shielding the wooden fortress from the Alpine winds that roared through the region during winter. Nut-brown timber made up the bulk of the chalet’s framework and blended perfectly with the broad gables and deep overhangs of the roof. Square windows were cut into the front facade at regular intervals and were complemented by a triangular pane that had been carved under the structure’s crown. A large picture window ran vertically through the middle of the chalet, giving people on the main staircase a spectacular view of the Alps.

Petr Ulster ignored the view as he trudged up the steps towards the document vaults on the upper floors. It was a journey he made several times a day, moving from room to room, helping researchers from round the world with their pursuit of historical data. Although he didn’t consider himself an expert in any particular field, Ulster had a working knowledge of every significant historical subject from A to Z.

It was a skill set that served him well as curator of the facility.

Unlike most libraries, the main goal of the Ulster Archives wasn’t to provide books to the general public. It was to bridge the evergrowing schism that existed between scholars and connoisseurs. Typical big-city museums displayed 15 per cent of their accumulated artefacts, meaning 85 per cent of the world’s finest relics were currently off-limits to the public. That number climbed even higher, closer to 90 per cent, when personal collections were factored in.

Thankfully, the Ulster Foundation was doing something about it. Since the Archives had opened in the mid-1960s, they had promoted the radical concept of sharing. In order to gain admittance to the facility, a visitor had to bring something of value — whether it was an ancient ornament or unpublished research that might be useful to others. Whatever it was, it had to be approved in advance by the Archives’ staff. If for some reason they deemed the item unworthy, then admission to the facility was denied until a suitable replacement could be found.

Breathing heavily, Ulster paused on the secondfloor landing. He fumbled through his pockets for his ID badge, then swiped it across the electronic sensor mounted on the nearby wall. Once he had typed in his pass code, he stepped forward for an optical scan. A moment later, the unit beeped, a light turned green, and the electronic lock buzzed open. Without delay, Ulster hustled inside and pulled the door shut. If it had stayed open too long, a team of armed guards would have been notified of a possible breach. In a building that housed some of the most valuable artefacts in the world, there was no such thing as too much security.

Especially after the events of three years ago when a violent squad of religious zealots had tried to burn the Archives to the ground. Their goal had been to destroy a series of ancient relics that threatened the foundation of the Catholic Church, including evidence about the True Cross. Thankfully, the attack had been thwarted by Payne and Jones, who had been at the Archives conducting research of their own. Without the duo’s heroism, Ulster and his staff would have been slaughtered, and everything would have been lost for ever.

Though they expected nothing in return for their bravery, Ulster would feel indebted to them for the rest of his life. Because of this, he always gave them the highest priority, dropping whatever he was working on if they needed his services. Tonight, that meant postponing dinner while he worked on the academic riddle they had sent to him. Despite his growling stomach, snacking wasn’t an option on the upper floors due to the no drinking, no eating, no smoking policy in all the document vaults. Even for Ulster. The books and artefacts were far too valuable to put in harm’s way.

With another swipe of his ID card, Ulster entered the Renaissance collection room. Similar to the other document vaults at the Archives, the floors were made out of fireproof wood — the floorboards had been coated with an aqueousbased resin — while the white walls and ceilings had been treated with a fire-retardant spray. The texts themselves were kept in massive fireproof safes protected behind bulletproof security doors.

Beeps filled the air as Ulster entered his tendigit security code on the digital keypad. The sound was soon replaced by the low rumble of the partitions as they inched across the floor in their motorized tracks. Once the glass had disappeared into the walls, the dials on the individual vaults — which were thick storage drawers embedded deep into the walls — started to spin in unison until all the locks popped open, one after another, in perfect synchronization. Now he had access to any file that he required without having to constantly unlock drawers.

From the supply cabinet in the corner, Ulster grabbed a notebook and a box of coloured pens and placed them on the wooden table that sat in the middle of the room. If he had been handling an ancient manuscript, he would have lined the table with a plastic laminate similar in texture and strength to Formica. But since he would be using modern textbooks to translate the riddle, a sterile liner wasn’t necessary.

Ulster had printed the letter in the centre of a crisp sheet of paper. It consisted of four lines of text, written in fancy calligraphy, composed in a multitude of ancient dialects that had been scrambled together in one message. On the top page of the notebook, Ulster made a list of words he recognized. He made a second column for the modern translation of the terms, followed by a third column where he identified the language. Older forms of French, Latin, Greek, and Italian were obvious because he had worked extensively with them over the years. Hebrew was slightly more difficult due to his lack of practice and expertise, but he stumbled his way through it with the help of a translation guide.

The final language, Provençal — which was a dialect spoken in southern France — took the longest to classify because of its similarities to other Occitan dialects. But once he had identified it through trail and error, he called his elderly assistant, Hans, who brought him a language primer from Ulster’s personal library in his residential suite.

After that, it was just a matter of time before he deciphered the cryptic text.

Ulster knew every language utilized a unique word structure that determined where different parts of speech (adjectives, pronouns, etc.) should fall in a sentence. He also realized that a sentence’s meaning often hinged on two parts of speech in particular: nouns (people, places, and things) and verbs (actions). Because of this, he temporarily ignored all the minor words like articles and prepositions, and focused on the words that he considered important.

Slowly but surely, the hidden message came into view.