The light defeated the endless night and the domain of shadow. The strength of Pyras and his children waned and the firstborn children of Mithra were turned into slaves—witches and dogs whose only purpose was to serve the Soleri.
“Yes.” Noll’s bright eyes pulled Sarra from her thoughts. “The eye of the snake is the eye of Pyras. The slaves of Re and their powers were likely a myth, but the fear they inspired was real.” His finger hung on a carving. “You spoke of other storehouses, was this symbol found at any other site?”
“No—the other storehouses are utilitarian, they bear no marks or decorations. As I said, this chamber is unique.”
“If the eye exists here and nowhere else, we can assume this storehouse contained something absent from the other sites. Something of importance.”
“I see. Why place wards unless you have something to guard?”
“Yes.” Noll cocked his head. “But what were Pyras and his symbol protecting? What is here that we have not yet found?” Noll traced more carvings: a circle in a square, a column filled with rows and rows of grain-sized markings.
As Noll worked, the morning turned to noontime, the brazier dimmed. Priests brought cool amber and salted meat. Sarra chewed the hard strips. Her acolytes fetched Noll’s inventory of symbols, a roll he kept safe in an oilskin sack.
Sarra stoked the brazier’s flames as the boy hunched over the scroll, poring over the carefully noted markings, holding the roll to the ceiling, to the light, making notes in the margins as he scratched his brow.
Sarra finished the amber. Tired of watching the boy work, she found a spot where she could observe a crack of sunlight as it moved across the chamber’s entry. She used the changing light to gauge the hour. When that orange glow failed, when the flames guttered out and evenfall approached, she gathered her things and made for the way out, but Noll halted her retreat.
“Wait,” he said, an outstretched arm pointing to the ceiling.
“What is it?” Sarra asked.
“The light changed.”
“Why would that matter?”
“Normally the light would not affect the reading of the symbols, but in this case it has. I ignored the ceiling at first, because the symbols were illegible, there were too many marks in each arrangement. I assumed the ceiling was written in a script I did not understand or that it was somehow coded so as to make it unreadable. Apparently it was the latter. The raking shadows of the late-afternoon sun are concealing what I now realize are extraneous marks. In this light, with those marks removed, I can finally understand the words,” said Noll. “Do you see it?”
“Where? I see the hieratic characters, but they are not ordered in columns as is customary.”
“If it were a story or a tale of some kind it would make no sense, but this ceiling is neither. It’s a map. Look to the walls, then study the ceiling.”
The markings above were indeed different from those on the walls and floor—those marks were arranged in neat columns. But the markings on the ceiling were ordered in clumps. Sarra had noted the discrepancy upon entering but had not understood its meaning. “It’s a map carved in words.”
“Yes,” Noll said, indicating a mark. “Rather than a picture of a mountain, it uses the Soleri character that depicts a mountain: two lines slanting left.” He leaned his head from side to side and cracked his neck. “The markings could not be seen in the lamplight, only the dark brought them out.”
Sarra was at once fascinated. She took a step back so she could gaze at the whole of the ceiling. It was a map, and a hidden one at that, but what did it describe and where did the road lead? “If they wanted to conceal the map’s contents, why did they carve it into stone?” she asked. “Why not parchments or tablets—they are easier to conceal.”
Noll shrugged. “Such is the arrogance of gods,” he mused. “Sometimes they leave their secrets in the open.”
23
Ren breathed deeply, tasting his freedom, his horse galloping across the wilds of Harkana. The wide blue expanse of the sky above filled him with awe. He had lived underground for too long, he could not stop staring at the vastness of the heavens. That the two soldiers with him barely seemed to register its presence was all the more remarkable. How could they stand it, all that openness, all that space? At any time, he felt the earth might let him go, let him float away into the blue, up and up, as if he were not flesh and blood but a spirit ready to disappear, unseen, unknown.
He flung back his head, craning his neck and closing one eye as he turned toward the clouds, toward the sun that burned on the desert plants, the rocks, and the shoulders of his gray tunic. The sun warmed everything it touched. He would never be cold here, he would never be trapped. He breathed in once, deeply, and felt how fresh the air was, how sweet. At the edge of a small oasis, the rich smell of loamy earth and growing things reinvigorated him, and when they came to a creek, little more than a thin trickle of water running through stones, the water was so clear and bright that Ren stopped his horse, slid himself down, and plunged his face into the cool stream, opening his mouth and drinking until he could not breathe.
When he sat up again and looked around, the water dripping from his hair onto the shoulders of his tunic, he felt changed, charged with something electric. He was a prisoner no longer. He was a free man, a king’s son, and he would prove to his father and to his kingdom that he was worthy of the throne he was born to inherit. The king had asked him to take the hunt, had said that it would enable Ren to prove his worth to the kingdom. I’ve already proven my worth. I survived the Priory and the Sun’s Justice. But the hunt was important to his father, so he would do his best to see it done.
Ren and his Harkan escort climbed their way up the rocky trail that followed the bank of the creek, skirting the rocky lowlands for the hills, when one of his companions spied a horse tied to a tree—a saddled destrier, as if its rider intended to come back at any time. They approached the horse, Ren following his escorts until they stopped. “Look,” the younger soldier said, pointing at the richly ornamented saddle.
“Harkan?” Ren asked.
“I cannot say. Perhaps it belongs to the warden.” The soldier shook his head and motioned for Ren to follow him. They swung wide to avoid the horse and nearly trampled a still-smoking campfire.