Chapter 16

"History shall not die until the day it is forgotten and the language of its record is passed beyond human interpretation."

~

Lady Minerva's Chambers,

The Physician's Wing of the Imperial Castle,

Kingdom of Tristendyre,

The first Phriday of the Second month,

XXI Year of Regency

A knock rapped against the door of the Chief Physician's Office and Lady Minerva arose to attend.

"Ah, Serilda dear", greeted she.

The Lady addressed stood there, a peasant smile painted over her serene face, her attire mildly wet. "M'lady Minerva", spoke she, disrobing the moist cape from off her shoulder.

"It was announced that all the Chiefs of the Castle should render their attempts at unravelling the sense behind the inscription of the pillory, for it may be as urgent news as a warning."

Lady Minerva nodded, "I see. Did you spend your venture of breaking the script, Serilda?"

"Not yet, m'lady. I was asked to fetch a likeness of the words and bring it to the castle in parchment", said the Lady, handing a copy thereof to her.

"You have my deepest gratitude, dear, I was hoping for a chance to reconcile the text with my understanding, this evening", said the Physician, mind on the words traced.

"I am honoured to be of service, m'lady", said Lady Serilda. As that was said, her eyes widened from sighting Crescence, the maiden under her jurisdiction, within the chambers of the Lady.

"And what business have you herein?" the Kitchen Chief directed her question to her vassal.

The girl stuttered hopelessly, before Lady Minerva interceded: "Don't fret, my dear, the child has taken ill and I am nursing her lack of health."

"I was near Azaire this morning, I assume his sickness was contagious", Crescence added, without need.

Lady Serilda nodded to the couple, wished the Physician and went her way.

Minerva's ministry was directed to con the cryptic font and decipher the heart of its secret subject.

"ஏசாயா ௨௰௮: ௰௭"

The value behind the words and the denotation thereof seemed to prove a greater challenge than she had anticipated. But the rescue of her dearest apprentice rested with these words.

Crescence left the office wordlessly, in order not to cause falter to the woman's undispersed focus. With the voice of silence accompanied by the sound of the thunderstorm, the lady's quill and parchments assisted her efforts channelled to the process.

Was it an archaic language that had fallen extinct? Were these signs in shapes that illustratively represented arcane scenes? Were these tidings in the quotation of a champion of yore? Was this the tongue of the dragons gnashed against the stone for a false warning to instill fear?

The very cause for the message was indiscernible. She strolled around to exhaust the building tension until even the very sound of the rushing waters from the heavens began to distract her acute concentration.

The Physician consulted diverse prose of prehistoric and ancient languages and legends and lore until her study was strewn with text and paper and ink.

There was a lapse of about an hour's worth, before the Lady had assembled the books that formed the premise of her thesis:

Volumes of "the Origin of the Erdengaur's Blade", "The Assault of Leviathan", "Prophecies of Judah's Forthcoming War", "The Descent of the Thamizh Tongue", "The Chronicles of Rook Zephaniah's Ascendancy against Sisera", Extracts from the Books of Prophet Isaiah and Nehemiah, Chronicled accounts of "Ehud versus Elgon", "The Preamble, Precepts and Laws of Tristendyre", records of the translated scripts of "Rengaulian and Wroshmanian Generations and Dynasties" though this work was only of scant completion, Scrolls of Psalms in various languages, The Genealogy of the Ryder Knights, A trilogy of "The Fangs of Jezebel" where the authors' clan had perished before a fourth part could see embodiment, Atlases that accommodated within their wingspan spreads lasting from the glacial heights of Laish to the dark and mysterious depths beneath Celtynweiss' archipelago and various other such works.

She had paid a great deal of her deficient time in the congregation of these volumes, for they had been requested from the Royal Library. They were each large and unconquerable in the finite period she was granted.

She foraged through the pages, scavenging for insight. With the passage of every minute, hope was spent.

In the book of "The Descent of the Thamizh Tongue", she had found syllabaries akin to the text from the Pillory, but there were variations. Lady Minerva deemed the differences to owe their sources to the haste of etching or per-haps a difference in hand-scripting.

However, if her concept bore fortune, the latter portion of the message appeared to be the art of numerical icons in the archaic language.

Perhaps the message left as a scar of the pillory was the mention of a particular hour? Of time and date? Or they could be measurements of a location.

The probabilities and notions began to grow endlessly, although none confined to the numbers deciphered:

The first was a composition of two and ten with an eight which was either "two hundreds and an eight-teen" or "eight and a score" (regarding the score to be the product of two times ten), the latter seeming more likely. This said numeral stood in a ratio to a ten and seven which could sum to "seven-teen" or multiplied to yield "Four scores lacking a ten".

These numbers, however, did not harmonise with any of her perceptions for a day with its night was divided into only a four and score parts of hours (being twenty and four).

This chance had felt like grand achievement until there was not so much as an hour left and Imogen's appointed time of execution was reached, but no further advancement in the discernment of code.

Throbbing head in cold hands, the woman conceded defeat. There was no hope left to save the young darling of her heart.

She thought of what a sweet child Imogen had always been, bringing her flowers and baked delicacies.

In fact, Minerva had even decided, in the course of her lifetime, that it would be a worthy decision to bequeath her beautiful disciple with the sacred liniment brewed by the coven of warlocks in the feudal past, preserved to that very day. It was an embrocation that had specially been granted to Lady Minerva by her erstwhile Royal Physician. But such dreams were fleeting.

It had been wildly unnatural to expect the child's day of demise to outrival her own. As drops of despair began to melt her eyes, a single tear trickled down her face and met the surface of a paper upon her table, distorting the font of the words written.

Lady Minerva wiped her eyes and dabbed cotton over the leaf, careful for the text not to be erased, until her realisation established resemblance to the characters of the script from the pillory with the article in hand. Chills of excitement coursed through her veins.

She had split the ore.

~