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Hannis Arc seemed to be a man fixated on symbology.
The books of prophecy around the room were immense, not only physically, but also in that there were collectively thousands upon thousands of pages contained in them. The thought of studying all of those books to try to find out what Hannis Arc had been up to, or to find a hint that might be helpful in stopping him, was daunting. Small numbers of prophecies were difficult enough to consider. The numbers here were overwhelming. But he didn’t think that prophecies collected in such a suspect manner were really what had occupied Hannis Arc.
Richard turned his attention back to the desk and unrolled a brittle, ancient-looking scroll lying to the side of the desk. The vellum was stained with what looked to be centuries of dirt and dark, ringed stains from mugs and candles used as weights to hold it open.
Richard was stunned by what he saw written in faded ink.
Nicci did a double take when she saw the look on his face. “What is it? What do you see?”
Richard could only stare at the scroll covered with a complex tapestry of lines connecting constellations of elements that made up the language of Creation. He moved to the side a little as Nicci and Kahlan rushed around the desk to have a look for themselves at what had captured his attention.
“That’s the language of Creation used by Regula,” Kahlan said. “The omen machine gives prophecies in that language.”
Richard nodded as he scanned the symbols, already trying to work out the translations. “It’s also the same language used by Naja Moon to leave messages in the caves in Stroyza.”
“I wonder if that means they date back to the time of the great war, the time when Naja and Emperor Sulachan were alive,” Kahlan said as she leaned in, frowning at the scroll Richard held spread open on the desk. “What does this say?”
Rather than answering her, he straightened and looked over at Mohler. “Are there any more of these scrolls? Ones written in this same language?”
Mohler stretched his neck to glance across the desk and look down at the scroll. He appeared to recognize it.
“Yes, there are some more of them.” He pointed. “There is another one of them, there, in that pile. It’s that darker one. Bishop Arc called them Cerulean scrolls.”
“Cerulean scrolls?” Richard asked. “You’re sure?”
“Yes, that’s right. He could read them, but I can’t. He spent a great deal of his time working with them. Whenever a new one came in he spent all his waking time with it for weeks, but that was a rare event. He was very protective of them.
“Years ago he used to study every detail of the new prophecies that I recorded for him. Although he would still come over from time to time and scan the newest entries I had made, over the years his interest in the books of prophecy dwindled until he became almost entirely focused on the scrolls.
“Sometimes he used those instruments on the Cerulean scrolls, doing some kind of measuring and such. If he worked late into the night and left them out, then in the morning when I came in I would put them away for him, but other than that I never had anything to do with them.”
Kahlan looked up from the scroll. “Do you know what ‘Cerulean’ means?”
Mohler shook his head. “That was what he called them, but he never told me the meaning of the word.”
“It’s an ancient word,” Richard said. “It means ‘celestial.’”
Nicci’s brow twitched. “Celestial?”
Richard grunted confirmation as he idly pinched his lower lip, deep in thought about the things he had seen in the room where Hannis Arc spent most of his time. The place contained dusty artifacts from ages ago, most appearing to predate Hannis Arc’s time. While the place was chiefly dedicated to cataloging and recording prophecy, the man hadn’t bothered to open all the newly arrived divinations. Since he apparently didn’t read them closely, it would seem that Hannis Arc wasn’t all that interested in prophecy. Or possibly he understood that the kind of ungifted prediction that arrived daily at the citadel was not true prophecy and largely useless.
It appeared that the Cerulean scrolls were the center of his focus. Richard wondered if perhaps Hannis Arc was only seeking out prophecy as a pretext to send people in what was really a search for scrolls or books written in the language of Creation. The Dark Lands, after all, seemed to be rich with history from the time of the great war. The caves at Stroyza were covered with information from that time.
“Sometimes,” Mohler said, “when I arrived in the morning to record prophecies that had come in overnight, Bishop Arc would still be in here working on a new Cerulean scroll and I would notice, then, that he had acquired more of those strange tattoos. Bishop Arc didn’t like me to speak unless spoken to, so I never asked about them. When we played chess I didn’t like to look upon those frightening symbols tattooed all over him.”
Nicci hooked a long lock of blond hair behind her ear as she leaned over to get a better look at the scroll on the desk. “Was he good at chess?”
Mohler nodded. “Oh yes. He was a master at it.”
“So then there are more of these kind of scrolls, with symbols like this one here?” Richard asked as he impatiently waved a finger at the scroll. “These Cerulean scrolls–there are more of them?”
Mohler seemed a little bewildered by Richard’s interest in old scrolls. “That’s right. Some are written in languages that are slightly different but are similar enough. All of them are kept over there.” He gestured to a cabinet against the stone wall. “Let me show you, Lord Rahl.”
The man shuffled across the room, weaving his way between a display of a family of stuffed beavers to one side, and a marble statue of a woman in a filmy robe that left nothing to the imagination on his other side.
Richard noticed that from his desk, Hannis Arc would not have been able to see the statue very well, but he would have had a clear view of the scene with the beavers, all busily at work chewing tree trunks and reducing them to sticks and small logs to use in their dam building so they could control the flow of a stream.
When he reached the cabinet, Mohler opened the tall, carved door to reveal a grid of cubbyholes, almost every one of them holding at least one scroll, some stuffed with several. They looked as ancient as the one on the desk. Many had dark, crumbling edges. A quick appraisal suggested that there were probably close to a hundred Cerulean scrolls in the cabinet.
Richard pulled one of them out and carefully unrolled it to have a look. It began with azimuth angles that he didn’t recognize. Those celestial observations, he suspected, were meant to show star positions. Richard wasn’t entirely sure how, but he suspected
that it might be a way of establishing chronology, a key element that prophecy lacked. In that light, the scrolls made prophecy look amateurish and incomplete. It seemed to have been an advanced technique, the mastery of which had been lost over time.
Right at the beginning, after the information about azimuth angles, Richard saw symbols that spoke about prophecy, except that they weren’t giving prophecy. Rather, they spoke of prophecy itself, almost as if it were a living thing.
In a strange way, they were revealing prophecy, but only in an oblique manner as they spoke of specific prophecies, using what they said to explain the central subject of the scroll. What, exactly, the subject of the scroll might be, Richard wasn’t entirely sure just yet.
Since in the language of Creation each of the symbols formed a complete concept, similar to an entire written sentence, rather than merely a word in a different language, it would take more time to work out the meanings of all the arcane symbols.
Richard rolled the scroll back up and handed it to Nicci. He pulled out another and opened it wide between his outstretched arms. This one, too, was written in symbols, and although the language was very similar it was not exactly the language of Creation. It was substantially the same, but more arcane, more primitive, written in a kind of less-formal slang. Richard felt a chill run through him at the realization that it seemed to be a language that predated the orthodox form of the language of Creation. A quick look was enough to tell him that he should at least be able catch the gist of it, if not translate it in its entirety.
As he scanned the symbols, they, too, appeared to be about prophecy, but in a different way. He frowned as he studied the scroll, trying to figure out what it was saying.
“Look there,” Nicci said, leaning in and pointing at a symbol. “Isn’t that the symbol for Regula?”
Richard blinked with the realization. “It certainly is.”
