With Dar's help, they managed to convert the Sha'Kar keys into the base languages of all the others, and then they completely memorized the syllabic branch of the language. As Keritanima said, it was much easier than memorizing some ten thousand individual characters, but it still wasn't easy. There were three distinct forms of those syllabic symbols, each relating to a differing level of formality. Three different symbols that stood for the same phonetic sound. In all, there were over four hundred individual syllabic symbols to memorize, and what was more, they had to learn when and where each one was used. But they managed to complete it, and that allowed them to read about ten percent of the Sha'Kar writing before them, consistingly mostly of words borrowed from other languages, words adopted after the syllabic format had been created, leaving the vast majority of the language unreadable. Once that was mastered, they started on the glyphs. It was a painfully slow process, but it did progress. Inside the time-altered dome, they labored for over a month to learn the Sha'Kar language, using the memory-boosting prayer taught to them by Dolanna--which, they found out, was still bound by the time limitations of real time, making it effective for subjective days so long as they stayed within the dome--they did move forward.
It took four days. Four days in real time. In the strange dual subjective time in which they had functioned, however, it took then nearly two months to complete the education in Sha'Kar, and even that was only possible because of the aid from the Goddess. But when it was over, any of them could pick up anything written in Sha'Kar and read it perfectly. Dar and Keritanima had demanded thoroughness, teaching them absolutely every word in the dictionary--after all, they were looking for obscure and unusual information, and it would probably be written using obscure or unusual words. So they had to be masters of the Sha'Kar language to find what they were looking for.
It had been hardest on Tarrin, for he had been the one responsible for keeping the others fed. He would step out into real time, Conjure up some food, and then return. He found out that repeatedly crossing the boundary between the two times had detrimental effects on him. It made him very tired and irritable, and it gave him strange headaches. It also made his sense of the Weave go haywire when he returned to normal time, since his ability to sense the Weave was affected by the shift of time. At the end of every day--the real end--he would drag himself back to his room and collapse on the nearest piece of furniture. Jesmind and Jasana weren't too pleased at his lack of attention to them, but he was honestly too tired to care.
Four days. Four days closer were the ki'zadun, but on the other hand, the Selani were also four days closer. He figured that they'd be attacking the Dals at Ultern any day now. Suld no longer looked like a city; it looked like a fortress. The gates had all been closed and reinforced, forcing anyone wishing to enter the city to do so by ship. All the villagers surrounding the city had come inside, and everyone was hard at work preparing the city for siege. There was no way, nor a reason, to hide the preparations any longer, as houses were torn down to pile against the backs of the city gates and every man with a sword or weapon was pressed into duty to man the walls or patrol the streets against thieves and looters. The Regent for the king had given over all duty and power for defense of the city to Darvon and the Knights, and the wise old military man had deployed the forces and organized Sorcerers as well as could possibly be done.
On the start of that fifth day, they all came back to the courtyard to find the dome gone. Obviously, it had served its purpose, and now they were going to be running in real time while they started looking through the books and scrolls they stole from the Cathedral of Karas. "Well, I guess it was inevitable," Keritanima sighed. "I'd have loved to read the Book of Ages, since we'd have all the time in the world. Looks like I won't get the chance."
"At least not now," Dolanna agreed. "I suggest each of us take up some book or scroll from the cache and start looking. Since we now have very little time, there is no more time for study."
"We didn't need any more time to study," Dar told his mentor. "There wasn't anything else to learn."
"There is always something else to learn, young one," Dolanna told him calmly. "Let us get moving, young ones. Now, there is little time to waste."
"I hate this," Allia growled as they entered the tent, opened chests, and Dolanna handed a book to each of them in turn. "I would much rather be on the walls, looking for the enemy."
"They're coming, sister," Tarrin told her. "No need to go look for them. They can't be very far away."
"True, but it would feel more satsifying than sitting here reading through ancient books," she told him.
"I can't argue with that," he chuckled.
Tarrin sat down with his back to the fountain, using the sound of its running water as pleasant background noise to allow his mind to concentrate on the old leather-bound book in his paws. It turned out to be something of an informal history of the Tower of Zabar, a place he'd never heard of, from two thousand years ago. The book was a personal diary of sorts of a Sha'Kar Sorcerer named Alion, who, Tarrin found out, had a very dry, sardonic wit and a keen understanding of human peculiarities that was very amusing. He found the bustlings of the human katzh-dashi to be endlessly amusing, writing about the idiosyncracies of the humans every day in his journal. His particular favorite human to observe wasn't a Sorcerer, it was one of the servants of the tower, a gardener that was about seventy years old, crotchety, bad-tempered, and set in his ways, with a wizened view of the world that was both disturbingly correct and lightly self-effacing. This gardener, Vilo, seemed to be both the epitomy of human discourtesy and an example of the wisdom the race could display. As Alion wrote, "he is the best and worst I have witnessed in humans, the perfect example of everything that is both best and worst in that very peculiar, unpredictable species. A perfect paradox in a people that seem to contradict themselves on a daily basis." Dolanna and Dar may have found Alion's writings slightly offensive, but Tarrin could appreciate a non-human's view of the human race. He had once been human, so he could see both why the non-humans found certain things humans did to be funny or strange, while at the same time understanding some of the reasons why humans did the things they did.
On another tack, he realized why the Ancients wrote in Sha'Kar. Since it was a glyphic language, it allowed the writer to pack an amazing amount of information into a single book. A single page written in Sha'Kar held the same amount of information as five pages in a book written in nearly any other language. Since books were expensive--at least they were now--it was only economical for them to make the maximum amount of use out of each and every one of them.
He sat there, getting somewhat engaged in the surprisingly entertaining book, until a rustling got his attention. He looked up curiously, seeing the branches covering the choked opening of the courtyard begin to part. What stepped out from the opening surprised him, snapping the book shut and moving to get back on his feet.
It was Jasana.
Jesmind slid out of the opening just behind her daughter, pausing to look around as Jasana called out to him and trotted over in his direction. Tarrin realized that Jesmind had been serious when she said she was going to come after him if she felt he wasn't spending enough time with her, for there she was, and she had a flinty look on her face.
"I knew I'd find you eventually, papa," Jasana giggled as she plopped down in his lap. "Mother couldn't find you cause your scent went away in the maze, so she told me to find you. I kept looking for you, but I couldn't feel you anywhere. Today, I could."
Today, he realized, he wasn't hidden within the dome of altered time. Jesmind had used Jasana's ability to sense him to find him. That was rather clever. "Well, I see you did," he agreed mildly as the others looked in his direction. "Now, what did you want to do about it?"
"Do about it? Nothing," Jesmind scoffed as she came over to him. "Do I need a reason to want to spend time with my mate?"
"I told you I'd be busy, love."
"That was five days ago. I'm tired of
I'm busy. If I can't spend time with you when you're not busy, I'll do it when you are. Besides, it doesn't look like you're all that busy to me," she said accusingly. "You're just sitting around reading. All of you are."
"You missed what we did before this," he said dryly. "Well, if you're coming in, come on. Have a seat over here with me, and please try to keep it down. This takes some attention."
"What does?" Jesmind asked.
"Come here, and I'll show you."
Jesmind got a curious look on her face, and did as he asked. She sat down beside him, and he showed her the book, explaining that they'd spent the last four days learning how to read the language so they could do what they were doing now, going through the books to find some specific information. "That looks boring," Jasana complained. "This is all you've been doing?"
"Just about, cub. If you're bored, go play. Just keep quiet."
Jasana looked around. "I would," she said in a quiet, conspiratorial voice, "but the shining lady is here. I think this is her garden, and I don't want to break anything. She might get mad at me."
Tarrin looked at her, realizing that she meant the statue. Then he laughed. "I don't think she'd get mad at you, cub. I don't think you can break anything in here, outside of what's in the tent."
"Really? Good!" Jasana said brightly, then she got up and started running across the grass.
"Keep it down, cub!" Tarrin called after her.
"So, what are you looking for?" Jesmind asked curiously, leaning up against his side as he put the book back in his lap.
Tarrin quietly explained what they were doing as Jasana basicly careened around the courtyard, running to and fro, examining the flowers, the benches, getting wet in the fountain, and pestering all the others with about a million questions, no matter how many times he told her to keep quiet. Despite being in the presence of five strangers, she acted like they were all family, behaving before and to them as she did towards her other family members, acting like her usual exuberant, energetic self. Tarrin had a feeling that it was the courtyard that was doing it to her, affecting her with its sense of peace and security to overwhelm her usual shyness towards strangers. Jesmind took the book from him, puzzling over it, then turned it over upside-down and looked at it again. "How do you know which side is up?" she asked, handing the book back to him.
Tarrin chuckled. "It starts in this corner and goes from left to right, top to bottom," he explained, pointing to the first word on the page. "If it was in columns rather than rows, it would go from top to bottom, right to left. This language can be written either horizontally or vertically."
"Why?"
"I have no idea," he shrugged. "Now then, love, let me get back to this."
Of course, it wasn't easy to concentrate on the book with Jesmind right there, but he found some way to ignore the proximity of his mate, whose scent told him clearly that she was not happy with being ignored. He managed to deflect her by Conjuring a book on military history for her to read, so she could better understand why Darvon and the soldiers were doing what they were doing out in the city in preparation for the coming siege. Jesmind was intelligent, but she didn't actively go out of her way to study things she didn't deem to be important.
By sunset, Jasana had managed to wear on every nerve in the courtyard, even her own mother's. Each of them had finished at least one book--Keritanima and Dolanna had finished three--and none of them had read anything that related to the Firestaff or its location. So they left the courtyard after Tarrin picked up the Book of Ages, which had been kept safely within the dome, and returned it to the elsewhere. They had all felt safe to leave it in the dome, but now that the dome was gone, Tarrin had a feeling that it would be best to keep it safely with him. Despite not finding anything, they were all still in a relatively good mood about the whole thing. After all, it had been the first day, and they'd barely made a dent in the first of the four chests of books and scrolls. None of them had really expected to get so lucky as to find what they wanted so quickly.
What they did do was gather around a dining table and discuss what they'd read. Keritanima had read a ledger of names on the rolls of the tower at Abrodar, in Sharadar, and the other two books turned out to be scholastic books. The first was a book of the Weave written for an Initiate, just like the books they'd read in the Initiate, and the other was a book all about the common magical spells of the other three orders, and how to most effeciently counter them. Miranda had read a history book about the fall of the Dwarves, and Allia had read a book chronicling the study of one katzh-dashi named Embor on the fluctuations of the Weave over a five hundred year period. It was a long book of dusty, monotonous observations, she had related with a grunt. Dolanna had read a book on the societal customs of the early Arakite empire and how to best fit in at the tower located in Dala Yar Arak, a tower none of them knew had ever stood, and she had also read a book of theoretical thaumaturgy, concepts and ideas for weaves that were theorized to be possible, but had yet to be researched or attempted. Dar had read a book about one katzh-dashi's attempts to take spells of other orders and researching weaves that achieved the same result, and, he admitted with a blush, had read portions of a book that turned out to be erotic poetry. He did page through the book to make sure that that's all it had in it, but didn't read every line on every page. Tarrin had only managed that one book, but everyone understood why and didn't press him about it. They'd all been there to watch him reprimand his daughter and answer questions from his mate. They had been distracting him. As they'd expected, the books were more or less about magic, but it turned out that that wasn't all that they were. Finding books on the society of Arak and erotic poetry proved that. They also had learned a little bit about those who had come before them.
"From what I read, the Ancients were more or less just like us," Keritanima announced. "They may have known more, but the same basics are there. Humans and Sha'Kar working towards the goals of the Goddess, whatever those were."
"Studying magic and maintaining the Towers," Dolanna told her.
"I think instead of reading each and every book, tomorrow we go through them and see if we can't sort them by subject," she said. "Today was important because it allowed us all to read in Sha'Kar and get used to it, but I'd like to be done with this before that army gets here, so we don't have two things on our minds. We need to weed out the books that probably won't matter. It shouldn't take too long, since most of the books make their subjects pretty clear in the first ten pages or so. We need to sort out and read the books on history, magic, and mythology."
"Why mythology?" Dar asked.
"Many old myths have some basis in fact," she told him absently, tapping her muzzle with a finger. "And sometimes they pass on information that the people at that time either would not or did not put in their histories. You never know, we may find what we need couched in the flowerly language of a child's fable."
"I never thought of that."
"I'm not surprised. Most people discount fairy tales because they're just that. Stories. Repeat a story enough times, and it stops being history and becomes legend. Legend becomes myth, and myth becomes a bedtime story." She looked at the Arkisian. "Of course, the story is all blown out of proportion because it changed so much over the years, but the nugget of truth is still hidden within the story itself."
"I think that is a good idea," Dolanna agreed. "Keritanima, if you feel up to it, you and I can return and sort them out after eating. It should not take too long."
"Sure, it shouldn't be that hard," she agreed.
"It'll be even easier if I help out," Miranda said with a cheeky grin. "I want to go get the book I wrote when we translated the Sha'Kar language, anyway. I think I might tidy it up and edit it a bit, so we can teach others written Sha'Kar more easily."
"You wrote yours in Wikuni," Tarrin pointed out.
"And you wrote yours in Sulasian, and Dar wrote his in Arakite, and Dolanna wrote hers in Sharadi. I think that represents the four most commonly spoken langu
ages in the world, my friend," she grinned. "Between the four of us, we've penned the most comprehensive translation guides in the world."
"But they don't have everything in them," Dar admitted. "I know I stopped writing them down after I started understanding how the shape and form of the glyph told you what kind of word it was. And they don't have definitions. Just the words."
"What one won't have, one of the others might," Miranda shrugged. "So I want to borrow the ones you all wrote too. As to definitions, I don't need them. The books are for teaching written Sha'Kar. That means you have to be able to speak it first."
"I didn't know you could read Arakite, Miranda," Dar said.
"I can't. But you can, can't you, Dar?" she asked with a cheeky grin. "From what I understand, you can read Sulasian too."
"Why do I get the feeling I'm about to get roped into something?" Dar asked to himself.
"I'd never rope you into something. I'll just convince you that it was what you wanted to do in the first place," she told him with a wink. "That's how a woman does things, you know."
"Only small, weak ones," Jesmind snorted.
"We all weren't born with your advantages, Jesmind," Miranda told her. "What I lack in size and muscles, I make up for with this," she said, pointing to herself. Tarrin wasn't sure if she was talking about her body, her mind, or both. Miranda certainly had enough of both of them to make her formidable. "So, you want to give me a hand, Dar? It won't take long."
"I guess, if you can talk to me about something for a while."
"About what?"
"We'll talk about it later," he said with a look around the room, standing up.
"Well, alright then. Coming, Kerri?"
"In a minute. I want to eat this first," she said, motioning at the piece of pie before her. "I can never say no to apple pie." She looked at Tarrin. "And I want to hear this story the Goddess told you, Tarrin. This story of the past."
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