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.
12
Elsenar—his thousand-year-old journal transcribed by Mereth at Lormt (10th Day, Month of the Ice Dragon)
“. . .Which we had often done in our collaborative work as Adepts in Escore. I had begun to suspect that Shorrosh might be dabbling in magics perilously edging near the Dark, but when I confronted him, he vowed to me that he had never employed forbidden spells. At the time, his protests of innocence appeared genuine. I resolved privately to monitor all of his activities. We were about to embark upon a most challenging experiment, for we planned to travel to the empty northern lands to essay the conjuring of a Gate. Our arts had revealed to us a place far removed from our world, but threatened by disaster. Shorrosh’s magic glass had indicated that killing walls of ice were about to spread across that land. All living things—plants, animals, people—would perish unless they could be removed. The folk of this place called themselves the Aliz. They were a sturdy, aggressive stock, strikingly pale in hair and eyes when compared to the blackhaired, gray-eyed Old Race of Escore.
At first, Shorrosh and I were able to conjure only a small portal to link the two worlds. Shorrosh insisted upon daring the passage himself, pointing out that if he should be lost in the transit, I could safely close the portal. That defensive measure proved unnecessary, however, for his initial passage delivered Shorrosh to the primary fortress of the Aliz. When he proclaimed himself to their ruling council, the Aliz mistook his name, hailing him as the embodied Voice of Chordosh, their chief war god. Shorrosh did not correct them, but reveled in their adulation.
Through a smaller scrying glass he had carried with him, Shorrosh reported back to me. The Aliz, he discovered, had no notion of magical Power. That absence of experience contributed mightily to the impression Shorrosh made upon them; his slightest spell or even the most childish of magical entertainments utterly astonished the Aliz. Shorrosh suspected that they might possess hidden magical talents subject to activation and instruction. I warned him not to proceed in that regard, but to leave the Aliz untouched until we had learned more about them.
From his location there, Shorrosh was able to determine that the advancing ice cliffs had not yet approached the more settled areas. We thus were allowed a limited time to organize the rescuing transfers we hoped to provide, once we enspelled a larger portal—a true Gate. We invested substantial energy in our Gate spell. As soon as it was securely framed, Shorrosh led an advance party from Aliz through it into the bleak moorland north and west of Escore.
That first party of Aliz nobles were sorely disappointed by the harsh emptiness of the land, but Shorrosh promised them wondrous improvements to be wrought later by exercise of his magical arts. I feared that he was promising them too much, but I assisted in the spells to raise castles and smallerscaled living quarters in an area suitable for habitation by active folk. The settlement flanked a navigable river, and Shorrosh soon grandly termed it ‘Alizon City.’