At any rate, arranged for Camherst girl to return and study the tablet. In exchange, she has promised her endorsement for me entering the Antiquarian Society. Membership at last! Quite cheaply bought, too; picked up this tablet for a song in a bazaar in Chiavora.
Note to self: ask around tomorrow re: translator for fragment. Surely there are others of skill in Falchester. I recollect hearing something about a fellow, M-something—can’t recall the name.
DOCKSIDE RAID
The Hunt for Smugglers
An Empty Net
“An innocent businessman persecuted”
Yesterday the Royal Investigative Agency’s Port Division raided a shipment unloaded from the Tayralba, a cargo vessel sailing out of Qaemolsar, in response to an anonymous tip that the crates might contain illegally smuggled antiquities. Led by Detective Inspector Timothy Wright, constables stormed the dock and took control of the crates immediately after they were signed over to Joseph Dorak, a noted Falchester antiquities dealer. Despite thoroughly searching the cargo, they found nothing except artifacts legally acquired overseas.
“It’s sheer persecution,” Mr. Dorak said afterward. “I’m an innocent businessman. But certain parties that have political influence right now in our government are determined to prevent Scirling citizens from acquiring Draconean materials, even when they do so through legitimate channels. The protectionism being shown here is frankly worrying.”
This is not the first time Mr. Dorak’s shipments and warehouses have been raided. The Royal Investigative Agency’s personnel have been pursuing him for the better part of a decade, and he has thrice been convicted of trading in smuggled antiquities, paying a fine each time.
Audrey—
Emmerson’s is hosting an auction of Draconean antiquities next Selemer. Do you think you could spare a few hours to attend with me? I would never dream of suggesting that you might buy something and then donate it to the Tomphries, whose budget is never as large as I would wish, but I have taken the liberty of noting the inscribed items from the catalogue.
Of course if any without inscriptions happen to catch your eye, the Tomphries would be happy to give those a good home, too! Though be cautious of what else you bid on. All the ones I have marked here should be aboveboard and traded on the legal market, but I can’t vouch for everything else in the catalogue.
—Simeon
Sale 1228: Draconean Antiquities
LOT 16
PECTORAL CENTERPIECE
Late Period, Haggad
Trapezoidal plate of gold hammered with winged sun motif and vine border, with loops for attachment to adjoining pieces, now lost. Reverse side bears a standard prayer to the sun for protection and wealth.
8 cm. high, 6 cm. wide at base, 4 cm. wide at top
LOT 32
ALABASTER JAR
Middle Period, Seghaye
Calcite alabaster jar with lid. Handles are in the shape of two supporting human nudes, one male, one female. Lid features a lotus flower. Traces of gold foil decoration remain. Inscription along inside rim, a formulaic wish for eternal vigor.
12 cm. high, 8 cm. wide
LOT 55
GAME PIECES
Middle Period, Vidwatha
Three circular disc playing pieces from the game of “dragon chase.”
Two are lapis lazuli inlaid with ivory in a mandala pattern; single ivory inset missing from one piece. The other piece is carnelian inlaid with ivory. Each bears an inscribed sign on the reverse.
1.5 cm. diameter, 4 mm. high
LOT 65
BASALT FRAGMENT
Early Period, Akhia
Presumably from a broken stele. Inscribed on flat side with nine lines of undeciphered text.
20 cm. high, 15 cm. wide, 9 cm. thick
LOT 71
CERAMIC SUN DISC
Early Period, Seghaye
Polychrome fired clay winged sun disc. Inscribed on reverse side with a short prayer.
40 cm. wide, 15 cm. high, 3 cm. thick
Tablet 14118: “The Justice Fragment”
Trans. Audrey Camherst
[. . .] two-faced one, the falsifier of dreams, the one who sought to kill the four.
He hid amid the beasts of the wild, beneath the leaves of the trees, behind the stones of the ground, in any place he could find. The people went out in search. They found him and dragged him back.
She was the first to speak for justice. She said, “You have been the poison at the heart of the people. I have passed through a chamber awash in the salt tears of those who have been betrayed; my sister has passed through a labyrinth of rotting flesh, the place of those whose bodies have rotted and fallen to dust unmourned in the wilderness; my sister has passed by the ghosts of those who have spread malicious gossip and lies. We have seen your work among the dead.”
She said, “We can no longer be defeated by the demon of ignorance. We can no longer be brought low by the ghost of our betrayed mother. We are no longer the eyes that may be open or closed without change. We name you for what you are: the false one, the betrayer, the murderer, the liar. Only [. . .] you now. Will you make amends, or will you suffer for your crimes?”
He stood with his wings spread, with his crest high [. . .] full of poison. He was the liar, the murderer, the betrayer, the treacherous one. He said, “I will do nothing. I regret only that I failed to kill you in the egg, that I failed to kill you in the wilderness.”
She said, “Take his teeth and pull them out. Take his claws and break them. Take his wings and cut them off. Take him to the desert, and there let him die, to rot and fall to dust without rites.”
This was the first judgment spoken, and they did as she said. Then she [. . .] on a stone, in memory of her brother, and [. . .] laws to [. . .]
From: Audrey Camherst
To: Kudshayn
16 Messis
#3 Clarton Square
Dear Kudshayn,
I believe the proper word here is “Eureka!”
And by “eureka,” I mean “traitorous.” That’s the meaning of šiknas —or rather, šikennas, which is how it’s written in Lepperton’s fragment. I think the closest cognate is probably from Arkubb, gansaa. (No, I don’t have an Arkubb dictionary in my back pocket. I raided Grandpapa’s library. He and Grandmama are not here—they’re in Tser-nga, making arrangements for next winter—but Papa has a key to their townhouse.) The cognate means “backward” or “inverted,” so your guess about the root for “reflection” was accurate; we just took that sense in the wrong direction when we speculated that it might be another way of saying he was wise. It’s “reflection” in the sense of being reversed rather than thoughtful. Lepperton’s fragment outright calls Hastu false and a liar, so I’m pretty sure of the general sense of my translation, though you and I can quibble later about how exactly we want to render it in Scirling.
The fragment is pretty clearly about our quartet and Hastu. It doesn’t use their names, and the whole thing is in a much later style than the epic—it isn’t a fragment of the same text so much as the same general story—but there are references to their journey through the underworld. Presumably the Anevrai audience wouldn’t have needed those parts explained. There are some lacunae in it, but not any terribly big ones, and it makes so much clear.
You commented to me back when we translated the bit about the rites of passage that it was peculiar to see the poet break his pattern: instead of telling us Hastu’s dream, then repeating it when Hastu told it to the people, we only got the latter repetition. I think that’s because Hastu never had the dream: he made it up out of whole cloth, because he wanted the siblings to die. He tried to get Peli to crush the egg, and then I think he killed Peli, in that bit we couldn’t translate—this fragment doesn’t say it outright, but it calls him a murderer and talks about the siblings’ “betrayed mother,” so it sounds like that to me. I bet you can sort out the difficult line now that you have this to lead you. And it makes sense of how the sisters get defeated in the underworld, by their ignorance and blindness and so forth; all of that was pointing to Hastu.