28
The Repository at Desouk was the largest building in the city of priests, superior in size and importance to any structure within the city, its great hall like the vaulted half of a gigantic barrel full of echoes of sound and dust motes and the smell of time. Sarra Amunet, the Mother Priestess, spotted Noll, waiting for her on the repository steps. Nearby, Ott sat on a low stool, engaged in a game of Coin with another young priest. A crowd of beggar children had gathered around him, watching the match and listening to Ott as he gestured to the various pieces, moving his good arm about in the air. Between turns Ott fed the children with cakes of bread, ensuring that he had an audience.
Noll waved to Sarra. “I’ve been watching your scribe,” he said.
“Have you?” she asked as she joined him on the steps.
“He comes to the plaza every day and feeds the starvelings, teaches them Coin and chats with them about God-knows-what. Sometimes I think he feeds them from his own allotment.”
“The boy can’t help himself, he’s thinner than a beanpole, but he gives his bread to the blind children and the buskers in the plaza,” she said.
“He has a kind heart and keen mind, but surely the Mother Priestess could find a more suitable scribe?”
“Let me know if you find one,” said Sarra. She made her words sound like a jest, but her face held no mirth. “You must know a few things about beggars, Noll. Your accent is Wyrren—isn’t it?”
“Yes, my humble upbringings betray me.” The boy clutched his oilskin sack.
“Where in the southern islands are you from?” Sarra asked. It had been years since she had seen her home in the south.
“Vimur,” Noll murmured, his accent suddenly strong. “I was raised in the northern reaches, but when I became a hierophant I asked to be posted in the southernmost islands.”
“The Stone Reefs? Scargill or Thurso?”
“A bit of both.”
“Why would you go—”
“There? I had my reasons. In the Stone Reefs, there are temples and towers that no scribe has seen in centuries. In the untamed islands there are many relics a scribe cannot find in Desouk or anywhere else. From my earliest memory, the gods have fascinated me: their sacred language, their golden masks, the way the Soleri shelter behind the Shroud Wall. I wanted to read their language so that I might understand a bit more about our unseen rulers.”
“And you found that knowledge in the reefs? I was told you found a great number of ancient scrolls, and that you used those scrolls to somehow decipher the Soleri symbols.”
“The reef folk use the parchment scrolls as bedding. The men sleep on them, the women sew clothes from them. When the locals held up the parchments, they saw only goatskins.”
“I see. And those scrolls were the keys used to understand the old symbols?” Sarra asked.
Noll nodded slightly.
Sarra stood. “Show me what you have found.”
They walked up the stairs and through the arched doorway into the repository. Inside, the priests and priestesses went about their business, lighting the alabaster lamps, laying out offerings to the statue of Mithra. Acolytes wandered the stepped platforms, arranging scrolls on tables and stands. Priests held amber parchments up to the lamps, straining to read ancient markings while all around them servants rolled carts and brushed dust from the many racks. Priests talked and argued, their voices mingling with the sounds of rumpling scrolls and birds fluttering in the vault.
As they made their way, Sarra told Noll about the repository, describing the many tunnels beneath the stacks, the organization of the scrolls, and the archives on the upper level. She detailed the repository’s rare collections and treasured artifacts. From the Salt Barrens, there were parchments fashioned from human skin and inked in ochre-stained fingerprints. From the Wyrre, the archive held oracle bones made from the plastrons of great sea turtles, carved in bone script by shamans of the old faith. There were the butterfly manuscripts from Zagre with their long, spindly leaves and elaborately carved symbols. And, from the Riksard, the repository basement held sandstone tablets chiseled in a forgotten tongue, lumps of stone so great they had not been moved in centuries.
A priest approached Sarra, then another and another. As Sarra walked, as she guided Noll through the hall, priests trailed behind them. Since her return from Solus and her escape from the riots, her priests and acolytes bowed a little more deeply and approached her a bit more often. Each time they were eager to inquire about her time in Solus, to hear how the Mother was touched by Mithra and spirited through the crowds. Always she refused these requests, hoping her reticence would add to her mystique, and it had.
At the far end of the hall, a white-robed priestess greeted Sarra and Noll and led them down a stair to a closed chamber beneath the great floor of the repository. Inside, a pair of scribes wearing the simple wrap of the acolyte—a robe cinched beneath the arms and wrapped into a tight roll across the breast—was kneeling on the floor, eyes deep in thought.
Sheets covered in charcoal impressions blanketed the chamber floor. The mountain chamber Sarra had visited with Noll two days prior had proven a difficult worksite. To make the work easier, Noll had ordered the scribes to make rubbings of the marks they found in the old grain silo and to arrange those rubbings on the floor of this chamber. The priests had carefully marked all of the extraneous symbols with an x, making the text legible without the aid of the late-day sun.
Sarra knelt alongside the scribes.
“Some symbols defied translation,” Noll said, kneeling as well. “The carvings were either damaged or worn. Perhaps one in eight was illegible. In another week, I can finish. Look at this,” he said, retrieving a drawing from the floor.
“What is it?” Sarra asked.
“A map of the empire’s storehouses, dating to the reign of Den.”
“And?” Sarra asked eagerly.
“Ott confirmed that most of these were previously discovered and emptied.”
“Useless.”
“Wait, there’s more. We found a series of characters labeling a road. When transposed the symbols read ‘Amaran Road.’”
“A road to connect the storehouses?” Sarra translated.
“Maybe. This is the character for house.” Noll drew the symbol on a tablet.
“And this is the character for storehouse.” He drew another.
“Except for the gap, they’re nearly identical,” Sarra observed.
“That’s the issue,” Noll said. “Dozens of symbols share the arrow shape—in many cases I cannot be certain which variation we are reading. The structures might be storehouses or they could be any kind of house—goat houses even.”
Sarra groaned.
“But there is hope. At the road’s end, we found a third symbol.” Noll scratched the mark on the tablet with chalk.