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part ten.
IP: 2.27.240.21
Posted on June 3, 2014 at 09:59:47 PM by georgia

PART TEN The Castle "I sent two guards to Sebauza Ruins," Arthur said gravely. "There might be something there." Morgana nodded. The king turned a critical eye back over the paper she had given him, before handing it over to Zed. It meant nothing to him. Unfortunately, by the way Zed stared blankly down at it, it meant nothing to him either. He shook his head and passed it to Charlton, who took one look at it, shrugged, and tried to hand it to Rhaegar. Rhaegar glowered at it without taking it, so Zed took it back and frowned at it. "Too bad our linguist is still out cold," Charlton sighed, staring wistfully at Tristan as if he hoped he'd suddenly morph into his grandfather. There was a shuffling sound and a small cough, and the deities turned in unison to behold Khasekhemwy with surprise. He shrank back under their gaze, but coughed again pointedly. Charlton clapped his hand to his forehead. "What am I saying! Sorry, Khase, I forgot you were into this stuff too." The Palestinian deity took the document gingerly and studied it, holding it carefully between his bony fingers. He took a lot longer than everyone else, but in the end couldn't draw any more conclusions than Allianah had. "It's definitely Aura's handwriting," he mumbled. "This part is in the ancient language, but this part isn't. I don't know what language this is." "Can you read any of it?" Zed asked him kindly. Khasekhemwy shook his head, looking thoroughly miserable at being limited only to English by his lack of magic. "Well," Zed looked just as disappointed, "unless anyone knows anyone who can read the ancient language without using magic..." There was a mute pause, after which the young prince spoke up for the first time. "I know someone," he announced confidently, and smiled up at his father. They made eye contact, and Arthur understood right away. He stood up. "Follow me," he told them all, and led the way out of the meeting room. The king, prince, princess, lord and five deities walked purposefully down winding corridors, following the path laid out by the former two. Or, at least, some of them walked purposefully. Rhaegar trailed moodily at the back, Allianah was defiantly slow, and Khasekhemwy seemed to be spending most of his time trying to avoid both of them than actually following where everyone was going. Morgana and Mordred quickly deduced where they were going, and exchanged small smiles. In no time at all the unlikely group were standing outside a deep wooden door, on which Arthur rapped smartly. There was a pause, followed by a scuffling sound, and he door cracked upon an inch to reveal a suspicious brown eye. Once the eye saw who was standing out there, the door opened wider to reveal a young boy about Tristan's age, staring at them all in wonder. It wasn't often a teenager got a visit from most of the royal family and half the Council of Originals all at once. "Hello, Thoth," the king smiled. "Mind if we come in?" Thoth stared at him mutely for a moment, before stepping back from the door to let them all in. His room was the tidiest Arthur had ever seen it, which was probably largely because of the additional room he had recently been granted to use as a laboratory. His bed was unmade and there were still more books than there were bookshelves, so they all had to weave around stacks of heavy leather-bound tomes, but it was no longer the mess of mouldy petri dishes and half-forgotten experiments it had once been. The only animal present was Thoth's odd water-fox familiar, which was curled up on the messy bed, sleeping. Thoth cast a number of the deities dirty looks, but none of them seemed pertubed. All but Rhaegar were gazing at him with unconcealed curiosity; Rhaegar himself was lurking in the doorway. Zed broke the silence. "Are you able to translate the ancient language?" He asked, holding out the document. Thoth glanced first at Tristan (who grinned) and then at Arthur (who was watching carefully with encouraging eyes), before he shrugged noncomittally and took the paper. The colour drained from his face as soon as he glanced at it. "That's... my mum's writing," he mumbled, his voice shaking slightly, and he looked up at Arthur again. There was a subtle but distinct sympathy there. "Where... why...?" "Can you translate it or not?" Allianah snapped sharply. Thoth threw her a cold look. "There are two simple nominal A pw B sentences, where A is a noun phrase and B is a noun in both cases." He shot back, making her blink in surprise. "The recurring 'magic' determinative indicates that this is the ancient language and not the human form. Repeated use of hen'a suggests that these are verbal equations. But this bit," he pointed to the lines which had stumped the deities before, "isn't the ancient language. I couldn't translate this even when my polylingual powers were working." Tristan sniggered, but stopped quickly when his father gave him a stern look. Allianah just scowled. "Wait a minute," Mordred said slowly. "You said you couldn't translate this when your polylingual powers were working? Does that mean you've tried before?" "Yeah," Thoth glanced back down at the document. "Only language I've seen that I haven't been able to get even the basic gist of." "So you've seen this language before?" Mordred persisted. "Yeah," the young demigod raised his eyebrows. "My mum had a bunch of papers like these, always in a mix of the ancient language and this one. I didn't pay them much attention at the time so I couldn't tell you what they said now." The adults in the room exchanged looks. "Can you translate the parts in the ancient language now?" Arthur asked soberly. Thoth looked at the paper in his hands thoughtfully. "An A pw B sentence equates one noun or noun phrase to another. This sentence has five words: three as part of a noun phrase in the A part, the pw, which loosely translates as 'is', and a single noun for the B part. The middle word in the A part is hen'a, which translates as 'together with'. So it's very clearly a verbal equation." "Anyone else following this?" Charlton asked, frowning. "It translates as something and something is equal to something," Khasekhemwy muttered, surveying Thoth with a rare mixture of interest and admiration. "Can you work out what the nouns are?" "This one, mu, means water," Thoth pointed at it. "And I think the B part is referring to water too - some kind of water magic, judging by the determinatives. So something and water is equal to water magic." He put the paper down on his desk and traipsed across the room to one of the enormous piles of books. With some difficulty, he extracted a particularly large, heavy one from near the bottom, carried it back to the desk and dropped it with a loud thunk. Khasekhemwy shuffled forward and peered at it keenly while Thoth flipped through, muttering under his breath to himself. "Is this Gardiner's book?" The Palestinian deity asked, sounding overjoyed. "Yes," Thoth grinned up at him. "Third edition. I prefer some of Allen's terminology, but you can't beat Gardiner's grasp of the language." "I have a first edition," Khasekhemwy beamed back. It was the first time Arthur had ever seen him smile. "Have you read anything by Griffiths?" Thoth looked awed. "I'd like to see a first ed. And no, the library is rather lacking in anything from the Griffiths Institute. Do you think - " Zed placed a hand on Allianah's arm, since she looked as if she was about to stride over and whack them both with her stick, and coughed pointedly. The two enthusiastic linguists jumped and returned to flicking through the book quietly, but not before shooting each other a mutual knowing smile. There were a few minutes of silents while the teenager compared the symbols on the page to the ones in his book. Shortly after he began muttering again to Khasekhemwy about spelling variations, fairy-specific determinatives and other things which made no sense to the others. After a while, when it was clear that they had both forgotten other people were in the same room, Zed coughed again. Khase jumped for a second time, but Thoth continued to frown at his book. Before anyone had a chance to say anything, there was a rather cautious knock on the open door. Rhaegar stepped to one side to reveal one of the royal guards, who was holding an ordinary-looking purple rock under one arm. "Excuse me, Your Grace," he bowed his head. "But this was found in Sebauza Ruins, in Gwythr's office." He held out the stone for Arthur to take, while the rest of the royals and deities gazed at it with equally curious but blank expressions, clearly indicating that no one knew why Gwythr would have chosen to keep a stone in his office. A pet rock? Arthur turned it over in his hands and noticed the strange symbol scratched into the top, which looked familiar somehow. It took him a moment to realise that the symbol looked like the same line-like markings no one could identify on Aura's parchment. As he glanced up at the two linguists, he saw a dawning light of similar realisation appearing in Khase's eyes. "Thoth," the Palestinian began slowly, "that determinative we couldn't identify... what does it look like?" Thoth frowned. "It's just a blob, it could be anyth - " his eyes widened. "Oh! You think - " "I do." "Then this is - " "Yes." "Wow," the demigod looked impressed. "That does make sense." "Glad it does to someone," Charlton muttered, rubbing his temples. Khasekhemwy touched the stone in Arthur's hands with obvious reverance. "This is a rune stone." Arthur glanced around. Judging by their expressions, nobody else knew what a rune stone was either. "Aura and Sennefer speculated on the existence of rune stones from mythology, but I didn't know either of them had ever found solid proof," Khasekhemwy murmured. "They're a form of ancient magic, but one that fairies can control. It was believed that, when collected and combined, rune stones could generate magic that fairies can tap into. Thoth, show me that paper again." Thoth handed it to him, and Khasekhemwy lowered it so that the others could gather around and see. He pointed at the lines. "Look - the ancient language lines up with the rune symbols. The word 'water' lines up with this symbol, which must be the symbol for the water stone. And this one - " he pointed at another symbol, and then pointed at the stone. The two symbols matched. "This lines up with the word for 'fire'. What we have here is a fire stone. According to this document, if you combine this with a kinetic stone, you can generate the power of fire manipulation. If you combine a kinetic stone with a water stone, you can generate water manipulation." "Those are the only two?" Zed frowned. "The only two written here," Thoth pointed out. "Like I said, my mum had loads of these papers." "So how many rune stones are there?" Allianah demanded to know. "And how do we use them when we find them?" "That," Khasekhemwy answered slowly, "is going to be interesting to find out." "Hang on now, Khase," Charlton glanced around at the other originals. "How come we've never heard of these rune stones before?" Khase shrugged. "How many of you have shown an interest in Aura and Sen's magical research before?" He enquired nervously, avoiding their eyes. Charlton nodded as if to say fair point, and Khase continued. "The last I heard anything of it, it was all pure speculation... but that was thousands of years ago. If Aura found a rune stone on Shaman, she probably picked up her research again here. That's why none of us know anything about it." "So we find some stones, pile them up, and then we can pound that creature into giving us our real magic back," Allianah summarised. "How much magic will we be able to generate? If we cannot substitute divinity - " "First thing's first," Zed interrupted her. "Let's find some more of these stones. It'd be a good idea to find some more of Aura's papers too, so that we know the combinations required to generate magic." Silence fell for a moment, as the room's occupants contemplated the future of their planet. Morgana smiled. "Let the search begin."

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• epilogue. - By georgia June 3, 2014 at 09:59:27 PM

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