Lydee
It appeared that she had in her possession a source of information which could alter the world inevitably. She could not conjure up a statement of such hyperbole as to accurately match the possible importance of what she had read. And it terrified her.
Lydee had not slept more than a handful of hours in the past four days. She kept poring over the documents she had taken (and to be returned at some point, she had told herself) from the library’s basement. When she did stop and attempt to find sleep, her mind continued to race with the possibilities and implications of what she had read. Through the multitude of questions without answers though, one continually rose above the rest- are these documents legitimate?
An untrained observer would have quickly dismissed the booklets. They contained information which had never been documented before, and in many cases, contradicted information that had been accepted as truthful. Only a fool would have believed the writings on the parchment were actual primary sources from the dates indicated. Only a fool, or a professional historian. Former professional historian now, I suppose.
The parchment and the ink were as ancient as the dates. Of that, she was certain. The edges of the material in the booklets displayed the same worn appearance as others of similar dates which had been verified over the years, and the ink was likewise as aged as was to be expected. The leather cover which held the parchments was much more recently created however, which meant that either these were forgeries, or someone had compiled them within the last hundred years. It was an added layer to the mystery. If she were to work on the assumption that the documents were legitimate, and in terms of their physical attributes, all evidence pointed that way, she was led to the conclusion that someone had attempted to safeguard them in a hidden location.
What is his or her motivation behind this? Not research. This person took great pains to hide the documents. Yet he or she kept them in the library. Why? Why not hide them somewhere more reclusive? And what was their plan to retrieve them?
Lydee felt as though she was missing a crucial piece of the puzzle. She had more pressing concerns as well. If true, some of what she had read could bring entire nations down. And a religion. For this reason, she could understand why multiple parties would be keen to hide the information. But then why not simply destroy it? Another question with no clear answer.
Each of the booklets had provided its own seemingly isolated revelation, and each was enough to send her head spinning with the implications.
In the first tome she read through, she had come across an entry that had stolen her breath with its casual audacity. Even the act of holding the covers against her fingers and palms had made her feel like a traitor to the nation where she had lived her entire life.
The entry began with a map. From its outline, Lydee could not place it as belonging to any location with which she was familiar. There were names of cities and bodies of water she had never heard of either. The entry was dated as being from the year 4,122. Near the top of the map however, there was a note around a set of lines which she took to indicate mountains. The note read, “Homeland of the royal imposters.”
It makes no sense. It is written as if the royal families came from somewhere other than Saltion. But they have been the leaders of Saltion from time immemorial.
The claim was as outrageous as it was provocative. Why were the royal families called imposters? The answer was not there, as the page had been ripped in half. The next entry was several pages forward, and unrelated. Lydee was sure there was more, and that someone had detached something critical. All of the other pages of the documents she held remained, as though the removal of the rest of that entry was a singular act of destruction.
The date was another mystery which left her bemused and fatigued. A year from the future, on parchment from the past. It did not add together. There was also no more elaboration, as if the map and caption were sufficient. While she could not formulate a theory for how this all came to be, it did help her with another mystery she had been pursuing—that of Woller. His research would have taken him to the basement and the very shelf which occluded the small room beyond. What if he had entered that room by carving a hole in the wall? What would he have thought when he found these documents? Would he have feared for his life? Enough that he would have fled the nation of Vinredor without a trace? She could empathize with that. What she held now was a threat to Oslian Vinredor and his entire line.
And now I am in possession of this. Should I too fear for my life? Did I not have cause for sufficient concern even before finding this? For all her trepidation, she could not drag herself away from the other booklets. Afterall, the secrets within were staggering.
In the following volumes, the dates had reverted to the past, beginning with a series of entries listed as Year 9. With each booklet she opened, the dates moved forward in time. The parchment did as well. When she found an entry from only sixty years prior, it was on modern paper, upon which was scrawled modern ink.
Most of the entries were notes of places and events the author had witnessed. One entry was different however. Dated 1348, it spoke of Enfildio the foremost herbalist of his time. He was generally credited as having invented the discipline and had grown both famous and wealthy because of that. He was also Richard’s grandfather, and what she read here would be of great interest to him, though it would likely force him into a rage.
It seemed as though two of her friends and former colleagues were intertwined with the implications of what she had found, an insidious thought. It was, however, the third and final booklet she had borrowed which contained an entry which had struck her own sense of self such a vicious blow that she had quite literally fallen to the floor of her home, sending her into a churning vortex of doubt. All objectivity had been lost and replaced with a desperate grasping for holes in the legitimacy of the documents she possessed.
The entry which sent her reeling was from the year 433. As with the other pages, the parchment and ink matched the date. What was beginning to unbalance her though was the script in which the entries were made. Though she was not an expert in calligraphy, it appeared to her eyes as though each entry had been made by the same hand. Her first inclination was that someone had found ancient writing materials, and then added information on them in the present. That would explain how the same hand could have written an entry in the modern day, and from thousands of years in the past. The issue with this hypothesis was that Lydee could not arrive at any motivation for carrying this out. If someone were to forge documents, they would certainly not hide them away so that no one could find them. Additionally, the vast majority of the entries contained information that likely held no value. While a few of the entries listed historical information of note, such as battles and territorial changes in nations, most took a more personal slant. There were lists of purchases, meetings with people who had never acquired fame, maps of places that did not exist in the atlases, notes for the author to recall certain events or places he or she had been, and when, and generally mundane information. And the room hidden behind the wall had been covered in shelves filled with these booklets. It would have taken thousands of hours to write it all. Who would have done such a thing? It did not matter after she read the entry from 433. After that, she needed to believe the documents were forgeries.
“The Rin fought a war against the Fui and the Lin over control of the Hanz So River. The Rin were routed,” was all the entry read. No map, no other details. The following entry was from the next year, an unrelated list of purchases assumedly made by the document’s author. For most people on Saltion, such an entry would have been meaningless. An ancient war on East Saltion for ownership of a river was not remarkable. Unless you were, as Lydee was, a follower of The Path.
In Justice, the third holy book of The Path, a full third of the chapters center around the wars of conquest of King Denish Rin, the progenitor of the modern Hon Rinese dynasty, during the fifth century. The continent of East Saltion was even more fractioned hundreds of years ago than in its current state of nearly forty different nations. In the year 433, when the wars of conquest began, there were an innumerable quantity of nations, from tiny tribes who claimed proprietorship of lake islands, to intransient peoples who swore fealty to no one. According to the writings in Justice, Denish Rin was granted a vision directly from The Hero. The King was told to unite the lands around his paltry kingdom under the followings of The Path. The Hero told him he would win all of his battles until his kingdom stretched from The Hanz So River to the eastern coast of the continent. And so it happened. The final battle was fought in 451, and saw more than fifty groups of people united under the common banner of the Rin. The unification lasted for more than five hundred years and after a period of adjustments in which the majority of the territory became the domain of the dual dynasties of the Hon and the Rin, the nation settled to near its current state, with various fluctuations of minor note.
The unprecedented string of victories, many of which were achieved against unfavorable odds, gave credence to Denish Rin’s claim that he had been blessed by The Hero, that lone human who was chosen by the gods to guide humanity. The writings in Justice were corroborated by other historical documents, granting validity to the claims in the holy book. It was in fact taken as truth that the wars occurred as they were written in Justice. Lydee had never heard of an alternative description of the wars of conquest. Therefore, what she read had struck her a deep blow. For the author of the entry had said the Rin had lost the battle. Denish Rin, in every historical account, never lost so much as a skirmish, for he was blessed and chosen by The Hero to win. The infallibility of The Hero and Denish Rin’s command showed the veracity of the religion. If this entry was true, it would turn one of The Path’s greatest triumphs into a lie.
It could not be. Lydee would not accept it. Her life had been shaken enough in the past month. To accept that the religion she followed, a faith which put her in danger of persecution and even imprisonment, was erroneous, was a truth much too bitter to swallow.
It was days before she could face the light of the world. After much contemplation, she had determined a course of action. She would prove that the accounts of the war of conquest in Justice were true. She would show herself that the documents she found were falsifications written by a madman. But first, she would find her old friend. For she believed Woller had found these documents as well, and he was the only one she could speak to regarding their existence.
Yara had goons all over the city searching for the former historian. Was it related to what he had found in the library’s basement? If so, then Lydee was at risk as well. She needed to reach her friend before the councilor did. It was a matter then of how to find a man who did not wish to be discovered.
Her only idea had been to return to the library. Though the thought of returning there made her sick, she saw no other options. Yara had been ahead of her during this pursuit, but Yara did not think like a historian. It was there that Lydee would find her edge.
Woller had worked in the history department for decades. He had worked with many people, many of whose names had been forgotten and were not to be found on the last staff roster. To find the names of those people, one had to look into Woller’s research, a place where a council member such as Yara would not have divined to search.
Entering the library flushed her face and made her heart race. It was as if she were returning to the scene of a vicious murder she had committed, taunting the authorities who were attempting to capture her. At least she did not need to return to the basement.
Before heading to her destination, she took some time to walk around the first floor, pausing every so often to check if she was being watched. It was midday and the coolness of the expansive space of the library brought in many more people than were truly interested in finding books. After nearly an hour of her façade, she felt secure enough to walk up one of the grand marble staircases to the second floor.
Woller’s published works focused on the social consequences of royal policies. While he was cautious enough not to write on Vinredor, he cunningly chose policies in Ebanigan and Xu that mirrored those enacted by Oslian Vinredor. He was perhaps overly cautious, as it recently came to light that no one in the Crown was monitoring the works of the university staff and students. Though he is being hunted now. He may have been right to hide his intentions.
His two books had been dead ends, though fascinating in how well he had criticized Vinredor without ever even mentioning the nation. The third publication delivered what she had been looking for however. For the first time in weeks, she felt a burst of hope break through the dark clouds of her mood. In the dedication, there was a singular name. Lydee knew the name, and who he was. More than that, she knew what he was. He was a follower of The Path.
He may have answers to more than one of my questions. I need to believe he can assist me in finding Woller, and in dissipating the torment of doubts which plague my thoughts. He must.
The challenge was that the man lived underground. She had met him but once, many years ago, when she was first hired at the university. Although a brief meeting, it stuck in her memory, for he had made a vague comment that would have snuck by unnoticed by most. Within that comment, he had embedded a line from one of the prophecies. “Bring clarity to the clouded eyes of the blind.” He had said it while looking directly at her, and when her eyes lit up, he had given the slightest of nods. She had taken it as his way of saying, “I see you are a follower of The Path. I am here if you ever need me.”
And now she did.
Ever more exciting!