The Flames of Time (Flames of Time Series Book 1)

by Peter Knyte

  Harry lead the way for our group and we headed out on a slightly more northerly road than the one we’d used when entering the city, but it was much the same in its varied state of preservation, and I could easily see how the different roads could quickly become confusing.

  While we were making our way Harry explained the difficulty of the task ahead of us.

  ‘Even when we’ve located the main city gate, it still won’t necessarily be straight-forward to find the inscribed lapis.’ He began, earnestly. ‘It’s location is described as beneath the city gate, but that doesn’t necessarily mean under the columns. It could just as easily mean under a portion of the road either outside or inside the gate, or even within the columns of the gate itself, and that can mean a lot of excavation.’

  Once we got to our first gateway, it turned out to be quite a bit smaller than some of the others, so we were able to quickly move on clockwise around the city walls to the next gate, which looked a little more promising. Once we got to it, it didn’t take me long to realise that I wasn’t a natural archaeologist. After half an hour of carefully scraping away the built up soil and dust from one of the gate posts with a hand trowel, I was ready to move on convinced there could be nothing else of interest to us here, but Harry insisted we just keep at it.

  It was hot again now, and as the sun climbed higher into the sky it became ever more difficult to keep in the shade. We were definitely working on one of the larger gateways, not that I could tell, but according to Harry the gate posts whilst mostly brick were topped and bottomed in sandstone, and that was only used for higher status structures. We cleared the posts themselves and discovered stone footings that continued across the road to form a stone threshold. This was buried beneath several inches of baked hard earth, but again, Harry and Peter just kept on working.

  I was taking a break, stretching my spine and quietly praying that one of the other groups would discover something to save me from this backbreaking task, when Harry suddenly lurched up and back away from the patch of road that we’d all been clearing. Peter recoiled as well obviously reacting to Harry’s sudden movement.

  There didn’t seem to be anything on the ground that could have caused such a response, but Harry had gone as white as a sheet, and was staring fixedly at the stones we’d been unearthing.

  Peter fetched some water from one of the horses, perhaps thinking Harry was feeling the heat, but a moment later Harry seemed to come back to his senses enough to explain.

  ‘The stones, can you see the pattern in the stones that we’ve uncovered.’ He asked, still pale but apparently calming down.

  I looked and there was some sort of vague circular pattern that looked like it might be repeated in a carving on one of the bigger central stones. A stone that I was fairly sure Harry had been excavating in the centre of the road.

  I indicated to him I’d seen it, but for the life of me still couldn’t understand his response. We’d uncovered all manner of carvings, and patterns around the place, each of which we’d duly sketched or described for later examination. This one, while perhaps a bit bigger, looked no different to any of them.

  Regaining his composure, Harry spoke again very carefully. ‘This is the symbol I saw in my dream beneath the rock face in Africa, when we drank from the potion made by Nelion. The memory of it faded once I was awake, and I couldn’t remember what the symbol had been like. Well now I do, and that is it.’

  It was our turn to be shocked. I looked at Peter and then back at the symbol in the floor, but I just couldn’t seem to get my mind around what Harry had just said. Africa and the night at the Singing Stones seemed like a distant memory to me now, but I remembered Harry’s enthusiastic account of his dream and his meeting with his old archaeology professor.

  I tried to pull myself together, Harry was talking again and I hadn’t heard what he was saying. He looked at me quizzically for moment and then repeated himself.

  ‘I said it would be quite some coincidence if the carved stone we’re looking for happens to be buried beneath that symbol.’

  We had a little more time before we were due to head back and meet up with the others, and we used it to quickly uncover the rest of the stones in the centre of the road, and the pattern that they made up. The symbol itself was a relatively straight-forward circle, but with nine identical radial markings breaking up its circumference, almost like the markings on a clock face, or the key stones of an arch.

  We didn’t quite have time to expose the outer stones that mimicked the nine-points of the clock symbol on the central round stone, but it was clear the outer circle was exactly the same, even down to the alignment of the radials.

  It almost seemed unnecessary to document what we’d found, as I couldn’t imagine this wouldn’t be the first place we’d come back to excavate. Harry though was a stickler for detail, and after we’d uncovered as much of the threshold as we could, he then insisted we sketch not only the symbols, but also document the sizes, and make a quick positional sketch so the others could see exactly what we’d discovered.

  Once we got back to the centre of the city and met up with the others, I began to wonder whether Harry’s motivations in documenting the gate had actually been more involved than I’d suspected, for although he presented the evidence of our find quite persuasively, he seemed reluctant to mention the connection back to Africa. Not that there was any real contest with what the other groups had found, purely in terms of size and the use of stone for construction it seemed our gate was more likely to be the main gate, but still he seemed to hesitate.

  Finally though, perhaps after seeing the questioning looks from myself and Peter, he also told the others about the reference back to Africa. It was like a small shockwave running through the group, and even Androus seemed taken aback. Very little was said in response, everyone clearly having questions but knowing nobody would be able to answer them. Talking about the night with Nelion did however seem to put Luke understandably out of sorts, and he just walked off to his horse to wait for the rest of us. The revelation also seemed to affect Marlow, who strangely just thanked Harry before he also moved off.

  Following the initial shock there was no mistaking the anticipation in the air as we moved through the city on our way to the gate.

  It was a difficult task clearing the rest of the road and raising the stones, without knowing how they were supported below. But Harry and Peter had been thorough in the equipment they’d purchased in Jerusalem, and in no time we had a winch in place and were ready to start trying to lift the stones. It was a slow job and everyone was anxious not to allow anything to drop once we’d started to raise them up, but gradually we managed to remove the central stone and then those surrounding it. Beneath there seemed to be distinct layers of clay and then sand, beneath which was a sheet of hammered copper, and then another layer of stone into which were set nine perfectly preserved and exquisitely carved tablets of lapis lazuli. Androus was visibly shaking as they were each passed to him, before he wrapped them in a cloth and placing them in a bag.

  It was scorching hot by now with no escape from the sun, which made us all tired, but both Harry and Androus insisted we again take the trouble to sketch and document the site, before reconstructing the road with all its layers. Even burying it with all the compacted earth covering we’d worked so hard to remove, in order to preserve the site until it was time for us to tell the world of our discovery.

  CHAPTER 11 – POINTS OF LIGHT

  We made our way slowly back to the camp in almost complete silence, Androus carrying the tablets like a child cradled in his arms the whole way. Once back though it was a different matter, and we all crowded around as he took out the tablets one at a time and placed them side by side across the low mound of earth we’d earlier used as a map table. Even to my ignorant eye they were exquisite creations, the intermingling shades of blue, highlighted here and there with flecks of shining gold. Each tablet perfectly shaped and carved with flowing unbroken lines of script. As for the
text, before we even knew what it said we still marvelled at the precision and elegance of it, carved deep into the stone, each figure perfectly chiselled, but on a scale that could compare to any modern printed page.

  Androus and Harry were in a world of their own, apparently oblivious to our crowding, questioning and chattering, but eventually, after reclaiming the tablets from the greedy hands surrounding them, and spending several minutes examining the start of each, Androus attempted to describe what the text said.

  ‘These tablets are written using the same language as the scroll, with those same unusual word forms and script, but there seem to be some differences…

  ‘There are at least three distinct sections, here a version of the story we know…

  ‘Sha nagba imuru… The one who saw all… who knew all and who still walks amongst men I will tell about… He has seen the great mysteries, and knows the hidden, and tasted the fruit of the earth before the great flood…

  ‘Ah yes,’ continued Androus completely absorbed, ‘here, here this looks like it could be more detail describing Gilgamesh’s journey or route to the African temple from this very place. This seems to continue for three full tablets, and then there is some kind of break. The fourth tablet then starts with what looks like a description of Ziusudra and the ordeals Gilgamesh had to endure, presumably before being granted the breath eternal. That takes up a further four tablets, at which point there is another break and… this seems to be Ziusudra speaking… of his first great temple and the story of how he travelled from there to Africa. I need to study this section in more detail, but it does look like there are place names and descriptions in the text…’

  ‘A chronicle of the journey?’ broke in Harry enthusiastically, ‘descriptions of the places and route taken to get here.’

  ‘Yes… yes possibly.’ responded Androus, obviously only half hearing Harry’s question.

  It was going to take some time for Androus to get to grips with the translation, so after another few minutes of unsuccessful questioning we reluctantly decided to leave them to it. The first stage; as we all knew after seeing Androus working on the translation of the scroll; was to accurately transcribe the endless lines of lettering from the tablets to paper. This would allow the text to be more conveniently studied and broken down into individual words, phrases and sentence-like sections.

  Being familiar with the text and the technique would enable Harry to help with the first part of the work, and remove a laborious step in the process. But the segmentation of the words and subsequent translation was still the most skilled and difficult task, and that was something Androus would have to do by himself. At best it would probably be several days in not a few weeks effort, which we couldn’t really expect even Androus to complete from a camp site.

  It was too late in the day to be thinking about packing up and starting the journey back to Jerusalem, so with the intention of making an early start in the morning we busied ourselves as best we could preparing, packing and making arrangements.

  It was a slightly surreal time, I don’t think I’d quite come around to thinking about what we would do next, once we’d successfully located the map we were looking for. In truth I don’t think I’d quite gotten to the stage of thinking we’d actually find anything, yet here we were with the tablets literally ‘in the bag’.

  There was still a good hour of daylight left by the time we’d finished our preparations, and the evening air was beginning to cool down again to a more comfortable level, so I decided to try and find someone interested in an evening stroll. There was no point even asking Harry or Androus, and it seemed that several of the others had had enough exertion for one day. But Jean with just a hint of that theatrical exuberance, which seemed to occasionally possess him, readily agreed.

  We decided to set off in the opposite direction to the gate, toward the great Ziggurat that lay just outside the city on its western edge, on the off chance there might be a better perspective of the city.

  We’d been walking for a few minutes, and I was just about to try and draw out Jean’s thoughts on how long it might take Harry and Androus to come up with a first draft of the translation, when Jean pre-empted me with a comment of his own.

  ‘It has been an interesting day, has it not George?’

  There was something about his tone, that made me look at him, and I could immediately see something was amusing him. But Jean being Jean I could tell he wouldn’t answer a straight question, especially when he thought it more entertaining to make his audience guess. So with a good-humoured sigh, I played along in the hope that his revelation wouldn’t be too far off.

  ‘Such a fascinating city, is it not,’ he continued tormentingly, his smile almost consuming his entire face, ‘and so nice to be able to spend some time with one’s friends.’

  I couldn’t imagine where he was going with this, but just as I was beginning to concede, it occurred to me that he’d paired up with Luke in the morning.

  ‘You asked Luke about the young lady we saw him with in the park didn’t you?’

  His exasperation couldn’t have been more perfect, he veritably exploded with disappointment at being thwarted.

  ‘How could you possibly have guessed so easily,’ he blustered, before continuing to give me the details.

  ‘But yes, as it happens George, you are correct… After failing to get him alone while we were in Jerusalem, I had been attempting to pin him down on the journey, but with all the changes in our transportation, he managed to elude my grasp. But we Gascons do not give up easily in our hunting, especially when we know our quarry will not stray far. When we entered the city to begin our search, I saw my opportunity…

  ‘What I had not considered was how I was going to broach the subject once the moment presented itself. But I was determined to get him this time, so I eventually decided to pursue a ‘conversational’ approach, as though I were not so very interested at all...

  ‘By the way Luke, I said, while pretending to be interested in some half collapsed doorway, I did not know you had friends in Jerusalem. Almost as though the thought had just occurred to me. Quite naturally he walks into my not so clever trap and claims to not understand my meaning.

  ‘In the park at the bottom of the Armenian quarter, I was walking with George on the morning that Androushan awoke us all so early, I’m sure it was you we saw walking and talking with a young lady.

  ‘Well, that stopped him, I do not think poor Luke could have been more shocked, had I taken my revolver out and fired a shot over his head.’

  ‘Yes, but what did he say Jean, why did he greet her so formally?’ I couldn’t help but interject.

  ‘Now that is the interesting thing. After a moment or two of desperately trying to escape me by pretending not to recall the occasion, he eventually claimed not to have known the young lady at all, she had simply approached him after getting slightly lost, to ask for directions. As it turns out she was also a fellow countrywoman of his, so he had offered to guide her as best he could, which according to Luke must have been the point at which we saw him.’

  We both had to admire Luke’s quick thinking, while at the same time being disappointed not to find out who the young lady really was. We walked and talked for a while longer, before turning around to make our way back to the camp. But just was we did so, Jean stopped suddenly and stooped to examine the ground.

  ‘Hoof marks! It must be at least a dozen riders going into the city.’ he said moving back and forth to try and get a better look at the prints in the fading light. ‘But I cannot tell how recently they were made.’

  We quickly examined the tracks to either side of where our paths had intersected, to see if we could get a better idea of how old the marks were and how many riders there were, but the ground was far too dry and hard. So much so, that if we hadn’t crossed their path at a slightly sandier point, I don’t think we’d have even noticed them.

  We quickened our pace on the way back, both to warn the others, but also to make
sure we didn’t get caught in the open in the now deepening gloom.

  It didn’t take long to explain the situation to the others, and although we were probably too large a group to be in any real danger from local bandits, we decided it would be wise to take a few extra precautions just on the off chance. This meant keeping the fire low, and surreptitiously making our camp a little more defensible.

  We were all rather tired out by the heat and exertion of the day, and I was struggling to stay alert by the time the attack finally came in the small hours of the night. But in addition to our two obvious lookouts, we’d also taken the precaution of deploying two extra people covertly inside the darkened tents to keep watch out of the rear, with one person sleeping and the other on watch. Harry had just relieved me in our tent, and I was just beginning to doze when suddenly he called my name and then started shooting through the hole we’d made at the back of the tent.

  I was stunned for a moment, caught half way between sleep and wakefulness, and then I was grabbing my rifle and following Harry out of the front of the tent. It seemed like there were hundreds of them at first, galloping at full speed straight through the centre of our camp. Whooping and screaming as they came and firing rifles at anything and everything, before disappearing out of the firelight and back into the darkness.

  I came to my senses though as a bullet hit the ground a few inches in front of where I was kneeling, spraying my legs and chest with grit. But the attacker had already fallen from his horse with a bullet from Harry in his chest. It was then I realised our assailants weren’t quite as numerous as I’d first thought, and that my friends were effectively picking them off. I’d known Harry, Jean and Luke had all served in the army, but what I hadn’t realised was the degree to which the years of hunting had refined their skills and efficiency with their rifles.