The Third Scroll

by Dana Marton

  I walked among the traders until we reached the forest and were out of sight from the walls of Karamur, then slipped into the woods as if to relieve myself. I watched from the shelter of a dense bush but, as I belonged to no one, no one stopped to wait for me. Crouching low, I backed away until the undergrowth became thick enough so I could be sure I would not be seen when standing.

  I looked around at the massive emerald giants that reached to the sky and waved their smaller branches as if welcoming me. The sky was but a splatter of pale blue above. I drew a shuddering breath of freedom, then turned my attention to the ground and soon found an animal trail that led up the mountain.

  I followed the trail as far as I could without turning from my intended direction, then turned east and, under the cover of the majestic trees, made my way toward where I thought the Forgotten City lay.

  A couple of tiny brownish-gray birds kept me company and flittered from bush to bush in front of me as I marched forward, stopping to chirp some comment to each other. From time to time, they stopped to examine, their tiny heads tilted, the creature who had disturbed the peace of their forest.

  I did not see any other animals, not even a stray deer. Perhaps the noise of my approach had scared them away. I had lived too long among the Kadar and forgotten the way of the woods. I walked as a visitor, not as one who belonged here.

  I kept my eyes open for any sign of danger and prayed to the spirits to keep me from the path of predators. I hoped not to see a tiger and, more importantly, not to be seen by one. I fortified my spirit by convincing myself that the great beasts would not wander so close to the city. And if they did, I hoped the Guardians had placed upon the mountain some protection.

  Evening approached, my stomach grumbling with hunger, by the time I considered I might be lost. I looked for anything edible and found a low-growing vine that I knew had starchy, bitter roots, suitable for eating, although not pleasant.

  I kneeled and with a broken branch dug the soft earth around the base of the vine, not wanting half the root to break off in the ground as I pulled. But no sooner had I started than I heard a branch snap somewhere nearby.

  My hand froze in the air.

  The snapping of a dry branch was not unusual in any forest, but this was followed by a series of softer sounds. Something moved through the woods. Toward me.

  I dared not move, for the slightest noise would have betrayed my location. If the animal had not caught my scent yet, I still had some chance of escaping its attention, huddled low by the bushes, close to the ground.

  A flash of brown moved among the trees. A tiger. Terror gripped my heart. A giant beast it looked to be, as tall as a man, from what little I could see.

  And then it finally came near enough to—

  The Guardian of the Scrolls stepped into plain sight, looking mightily unhappy.

  I went limp with relief.

  “There you are,” he groused, squinting. “Darkness falls fast in the tall woods.”

  I jumped up and ran to him, and would have hugged him if the scowl on his face did not hold me back. “How good it is to see you, Grandfather. Did you know I was coming?”

  He glanced at my hair and clothes but did not comment on them. “I felt the scroll.”

  I pulled it from under my dress and handed it to him. “Would you read the prophecy to me again?”

  He nodded and turned back the way he had come. “When we are warm by the fire.”

  “Batumar knows,” I said as I walked behind him. “About the prophecy and me. He wants to see the Forgotten City.”

  The Guardian shrugged. As we came out at the edge of the woods, he pointed to a gorge below us. “If he comes, this is what he will see.”

  The dim light of dusk revealed a steep slope, covered with jagged rocks, a puff of cloud resting on the bottom. I saw no path as he walked down into the gorge, and yet somehow he found foothold where there had been none, and stepping in his steps, I was able to follow.

  We arrived at the bottom much faster than I had expected, and once we broke through the cover of mist, the Forgotten City spread before us. The soft glow of the Forum’s golden dome shone in the middle like a great jewel. We were but a short distance from the Guardians’ Cave.

  “Why are the Sacred Scrolls not with the rest in the Forum?” I asked, remembering my mother’s tale about how the honeycombed walls held all the knowledge of the world. I would have loved to have seen that. Maybe those other scrolls, not the ones in the Sacred Cave, contained the answers to our questions.

  “The Forum stood empty since before my ancestors came here, the scrolls hidden by the First People during the long decades of wars. Many things they did not pass on to the Seela.”

  Like a blow felt his words. The thought of such treasure of knowledge lost forever ripped with pain through my flesh. I still struggled to comprehend that loss as we reached the cave.

  The other two Guardians welcomed me with joy and shared their simple meal of soup and bread. The Guardian of the Cave gifted me with a hooded brown robe similar to his own. Its hem swept the floor of the cave as I walked.

  It made me feel, if not renewed, then different. Not Tera, daughter of Chalee, not Tera the slave or Tera the concubine, but someone I did not know, yet still wished to be.

  The Guardians prepared for me a sleeping place in the far corner of the cave and did not ask me any questions. They seemed content with what I would tell them and left me in peace.

  But before he retired for the night, the Guardian of the Cave came to me. He pulled an apple from his robe and set it on the stone by my side.

  “What do you see?” he asked gently.

  “A green apple.”

  He gave the apple a quarter turn.

  “A red apple.” That side must have been toward the sun.

  Another quarter turn.

  “A wormy apple.” I stared at the dark opening of a worm hole in the middle of a rotten brown spot.

  He stood and walked away, leaving me the apple.

  I thought long and hard on what he meant to teach me. To see better, I thought, to see more thoroughly. To see every side. Of what? My destiny? The war? Batumar?

  “Eyes are the organs of distraction,” my mother used to tell me. “They notice the smallest things, crowd everything full of useless detail, and steal attention from where the focus should be.” Many times she had bidden me to see with my heart.

  I could not then, and no matter how hard I tried, I still could not now. I saw no answers, only questions wherever I looked, about the coming war and my place in it.

  I lay down. The uneven rock bed dug into my side even through the furs, so I moved around to find a more comfortable spot. Too fast I had grown used to my feather bed at the palace and the comforts of Pleasure Hall.

  Although neither my hair nor my clothes needed Leena’s ministrations, I missed her and hoped she was not punished for my escape. But as I lay on my pile of furs in the corner of the cave, I refused to miss Batumar. Still, I could not stop my thoughts from going to him as I looked out into the darkness and watched the stars through the mouth of the cave. I half expected to see him appear there, having come after me.

  I spent the next three days and nights with the Guardians, most of it in the Sacred Cave of the Scrolls. I also spent some time at my mother’s grave, where I felt closest to her spirit. On the fourth day, after the Guardians of the Gate and the Cave had left for the Forgotten City in the morning, I rolled out once again the first scroll, still the only one to open.

  I was determined to make more sense of the prophecy, to unlock some secret meaning. The enemy neared with every passing day. We had little time to waste. The Guardian of the Scrolls watched from the corner of his eye but looked away when, after a while, I once again rolled up the scroll and set it aside, frustrated to the brink of tears.

  “I went to visit the Seer last night,” he said.

  Since he brought up the topic, I did not think it would be terribly impolite to inquire further.
“What did you wish her to see for you?”

  “I wanted to know how your Leena fares, but—” He held up his hands as if to stop my hopes from springing too high. “Selaila was on another search.”

  That seemed to be her way. Her body forever in her hut, her spirit unreachable. Twice the Guardians had thought to introduce her to me, but we were sent away by her mother each time with prostrate apologies. So instead, they had shown me the Forgotten City, its curious buildings and solemn people, even the empty Forum, the sight of which greatly saddened my heart.

  “Thank you for trying.” I smiled my gratitude.

  “You have been worried,” he said gruffly and turned away.

  I had spoken of Leena and Batumar a lot in the past few days, I supposed. We passed the evenings trading tales, the Guardians about the Seela and their past, I about the fortress city of Karamur. A great curiosity they had for the place that stood so close to them yet remained mostly unknown to their people.

  Still, that the Guardian of the Scrolls would go as far as seeking the Seer surprised me. Of the three Guardians, he had shown the least interest in my tales, although I had caught his gaze on me time and time again as I had relayed the happenings of the palace.

  Maybe he was softening toward the Kadar. Or perhaps he was softening toward me.

  “Grandfather,” I addressed him with the utmost respect, then brought up once again the thought that had been nagging in the back of my mind since the beginning. “I do not think the prophecy is about me.”

  He turned my way but did not groan from the movement as had been his habit. He had finally, the day before, allowed me to prepare for him a tea of herbs and was now moving around easier. His complaints had decreased by half, for which the other Guardians had privately thanked me.

  “It is only natural that you should worry,” he said. “Such a great task you face.”

  I pointed to the passage in question and read it out: “…well-favored by the spirits, for she will have all three spirits of the people of Dahru and even the spirit of our forgotten people.” I looked at him. “How could that be?”

  “You have the spirit of the Shahala from your mother,” he said. “And the Kadar from your father.”

  “But the others?” How could I have the spirit of the Seela? And how could I have the spirit of the First People when they have been gone for centuries?”

  “The Seela are said to have in them some of the First People’s blood and with it their spirit, from whence come our gifts.”

  So between the two of us, we had all four spirits. But that was not what the prophecy called for. I mentioned this to the Guardian, but he shrugged, looking not the least concerned.

  “Then how about—” I read on, “She will know all people, for she will have been all people.”

  “You have been the child of a powerful mother, and then an orphan. You have been a slave. And now you are the sole concubine of the most powerful warlord of the land,” he said. “Most of us start out our lives and the path before us never changes. At birth, I was a Guardian, and I will die a Guardian. But you have walked the path of many.”

  “But I have not been all people. I have not been a merchant, I have not been a mother, I have not been a warrior—”

  “You have been enough. And the next passage says: …they will raise their eyes to her with hope so that as she had cast out their pain, so she might cast out the darkness also. You cannot deny that is true. You are a healer and have cast out the pain of many.” He fell silent then, and we sat like that for some time, each absorbed in our own thoughts.

  “You can read the scroll now,” he said after a while.

  I nodded. He had read the prophecy for me until I knew the words by heart and began to grow familiar with the strange letters that created them. I already knew the language, so I only had to connect letters with the sounds.

  “Then you no longer need me.” His voice sounded tired and listless again as it had when I first met him. “My work is finished.”

  “But I do need you and so does everyone else.”

  “I am but a useless old man. A coward at that—” His face darkened. “For I fear what is to come and look only for a way to avoid having to live through it.”

  “The Shahala have a saying: There is no greater courage than to accept one’s destiny.”

  He looked up at that.

  “You dedicated your whole life to guarding the scrolls, and when I came, you taught me. You sacrificed much, and there is honor in it. I question my fate with each breath of the day and wish to run from it. You completed yours.”

  “I did what I had to.”

  “And gave up much along the way for your people and strangers you will never know.”

  He looked at the stone floor at his feet. “I would have liked to have had a family.” He admitted the first personal thing since I had known him.

  “You have a son.”

  He remained silent for some time, and when he spoke, the words fell heavy from his lips. “At the time deemed right by the then Seer, a young woman from the maidens of the city was selected. She came up to this cave and conceived our son, then walked back down, and I never saw her again. When my son was the right age, he came to me for training. A few days before you appeared out of the mist, he ascended the mountain to purify his mind and body and to wait for the word of my death so he can descend and take over his duty.”

  “And the other guardians?”

  “The son of the Guardian of the Gate is on a journey through the gates to learn them better. The son of the Guardian of the Cave…” Disapproval filled his eyes. “A restless one, that one, and undisciplined. He decided to go on a quest, searching for other sacred caves in the mountains.”

  “There are others?”

  “So the legends say. One holds the great sword of Bergan. Another hides a thousand virgins frozen in sleep by a sorceress of old. And there might be more that the legends forgot about.”

  I sat up straighter. “Could not the great sword of Bergan help Batumar win the war better than I?”

  “The sword is prophesized to unite the world after a thousand years.”

  “A thousand years from now?” That much war I could scarcely comprehend.

  “A thousand years from when the prophecy was made.” He hung his head, his lips in a grim line. “Unfortunately, no two Guardians have ever been able to agree on that date. But we do not think the time is near.”

  All fairy tales, I thought. Especially the thousand virgins. If a cave such as that existed, the Kadar warlords would have been looking for it day and night to claim the virgins for their Maiden Halls.

  “In any case, those other prophesies have not been entrusted to the three of us. Our duty was to await you.” The lines on his forehead eased somewhat. “Which we did with honor. And should we pass before you fulfill your fate, our sons stand ready to assist you.”

  My throat tightened at his words. For legends and vague prophecies, generations of young men had been forced to sacrifice their lives. “The Shahala value families above all. No office asks its holder to forgo that. Why is it so among your people?”

  “The first Guardians believed the Great War of the prophecies would come soon and their services would be urgently needed. They thought the prophecy would be fulfilled in their own lifetimes and feared a family would distract them from their duties. They forswore it for this reason. The example of the first Guardians was followed until it had become unbreakable law among my people.”

  I thought of those generations of Guardians, their entire lives spent waiting for me to walk out of the mist. I could scarcely comprehend such a thing.

  “Sometimes our worst bonds are of our own making,” he said, his tone glum.

  “But it is not too late. You can still find your son’s mother.”

  He shook his head. “Too late for me.” But then he added, “Maybe not so for my son.”

  Before I could respond, I caught sight of the Guardian of the Cave and the Guardia
n of the Gate hurrying up the path. “Kadar warriors are all over the mountain,” the Guardian of the Gate said once they were close enough. “Shall we show ourselves? With the war upon us, is our time here?”

  The Guardian of the Scrolls shook his head. “I do not want warriors in our city. First, let us speak to their High Lord. We have been isolated too long. Go now, Tera, and tell Batumar we are coming.”

  I nodded with reluctance, knowing that the High Lord’s anger would be fierce when I faced him. “When should he expect you?”

  “After the evening meal,” said the Guardian of the Gate.

  I had been away from the palace for nearly four full days.

  I rolled up the scroll carefully and left it in their keeping, then said farewell to the Guardians and went to face Batumar, hoping to find mercy in his sight.

  ~~~***~~~

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  (The Sacred Gate)

  No sooner had I walked out of the valley than I saw Lord Gilrem, his men fanned out behind him in the woods. They looked as if they had been searching the past four full days, tired and rumpled from sleeping on the ground.

  “Lord Gilrem,” I said calmly as if I had gone only for a stroll.

  “Lady Tera.” He rushed to my side, then stared at my short hair. He held up his hand to signal his men to stay back. “How do you fare?”

  “Fine well. And you, my Lord?”

  “My son grows and strengthens.”

  “And his mother?”

  He nodded.

  “Will you return with me to the palace?” he asked in a voice low enough so none but I would hear.

  I searched his face to make sure I did not misunderstand him, but his intent was clear. Now that I had accepted my destiny and the fact that I could never return to the life I had once known, the choice was finally offered to me.

  The spirits were not without a sense of humor after all.

  I swallowed the lump in my throat. “I shall return to Karamur with you, Lord Gilrem.”

  He smiled his relief, then sent some of his men to the other search parties to call them off. “We have been looking for you since your absence was discovered.”