Stalking Darkness

quill.”
    “Can you read it?”
    “I don’t know. It’s so cramped. The script is Konic, used by the court scribes in the time of the early Hierophants, but the language is different, as if the writer wanted to approximate the sounds of one language with the alphabet of another. Yes, that’s exactly what he was doing, the clever old bastard. So, attacking it phonetically—”
    Muttering under his breath, Seregil slowly worked his way through the tangled writing. Half an hour later he looked up with a triumphant grin. “Pure Dravnian! Nysander, it’s got to be Dravnian.”
    “Dravnian?”
    “The Dravnians are a tribal people scattered through the glacial valleys of the Ashek Range, north of Aurënen. I haven’t been up there since I was a boy, but I’ve studied the language. Great ones for sagas and legends, those Dravnians. They have no writing themselves, but this captures the sound of it. This fellow was certainly a student of obscure tongues. Once you untangle all thismess, it’s just the same few words written over and over again to form the design. Written in blood, too, by the way and probably his own if he was loony enough to create something like this.”
    “Perhaps,” Nysander broke in. “But can you make out what it says?”
    Seregil glanced up at him, then let out a crow of triumph. “Ah ha! So that’s what this is all about.
You
can’t read it!”
    Nysander affected a pained look. “I would remind you of the oaths you have given—”
    Seregil held up a hand, grinning smugly. “I know, I know. But after all your restrictions and secrecy, I think I’ve earned the right to gloat a little. All it says is, ‘Stone within ice within stone within ice. Horns of crystal beneath horns of stone.’ Or vice versa. There’s no way of telling which is meant to be the first line. Why he would go to such extremes to hide anything as obscure as this is beyond me, though.”
    “Not at all, not at all!” Nysander clapped Seregil on the shoulder, then began pacing excitedly. “The palimpsest begins in Asuit Old Style, an archaic language of Plenimar, which predates the Hierophantic settlements. The seemingly meaningless hidden phrase
‘argucth chthon hrig’
operates as the key word to the hidden writing. This, in turn, is composed in the alphabet of the Hierophantic court, based at that period on the island of Kouros, yet in the language of an obscure tribe of the southern mountains across the Osiat Sea near Aurënen. I had reason to suspect as much but you, dear boy, have provided the final clues. What an amazing document!”
    Seregil, meanwhile, had been doing some further pondering of his own. “The Dravnian tribes keep to the highest valleys of the Ashek Range, building their villages along the edges of the ice fields. ‘Stone within ice within stone within ice.’ And the horns of stone part reminds me of a story the mountain traders used to tell, something about a place up there where demons dance across the snow to drink the blood of the living. It was called the Horned Valley.”
    Nysander halted in front of Seregil, grinning broadly. “You have a mind like a magpie’s nest, dear boy! I never know what odd bit of treasure will tumble from it next.”
    “If the Horned Valley really exists, then all this”—Seregil tapped the stained vellum—“it’s not just some convoluted riddle. It’s a map.”
    “And perhaps not the only one,” said Nysander. “According to recent intelligence from Plenimar, several expeditionary forces have been dispatched west toward the Strait of Bal. We could not imagine what they were up to, but the Ashek peninsula lies in that direction.”
    “At this time of year?” Seregil shook his head. Crossing the Bal meant making for the southern rim of the Osiat Sea, a place of dangerous shoals and forbidding coastlines in the best of weather. In the winter it would be worse than treacherous. “So whatever this ‘stone within ice’ thing is, the Plenimarans want it pretty badly. And I take it you don’t mean for them to get it?”
    “I hope that you will assist me in forestalling that event.”
    “Well, it would certainly help to know what I’m looking for. If it wouldn’t mean revealing too many sacred mysteries, that is.”
    “It is rumored to be a crown or circlet of some sort,” Nysander told him. “More importantly, it possesses powers similar to those of the coin, which you have already experienced.”
    Seregil grimaced at the memory.