Chương 102: The Grimoire Marked with Forty Eyes

On the third day after the long truce was declared, human army operations officer Lauren came to the shelter. He wore human military armor but had removed his unit insignia. Instead, an operations authorization seal hung from his wrist, the kind used for limited reconnaissance and deployment changes. Beneath one arm, he carried a book wrapped in black leather. Seria looked at his wrist.

"Why did you come in person with an operations seal on your wrist, Officer Lauren?"

"I have something to return to him." Kichan looked at the officer's empty hands before he looked at the book.

"Where are the provisions?"

"I brought none."

"Then what are you returning?"

"Payment for the supplies you stole." Lauren set the book on the table. The army had seized it from the ruins of a merchant company's warehouse. No one could tell which kingdom or tribe it had belonged to, so it had been left in storage.

"You found the owners of the grain sacks easily enough." Kichan spoke.

"They bore the royal crest."

"This has forty eyes stamped on it, but no owner?" Round eyes covered the leather binding. When Dust clung to one that still held traces of gold leaf, Riphiel removed it with a gloved hand. At first, they looked like human eyes. Viewed closely, the pupils were round and the outer lines split into feathers.

"Owls." Seria spoke. Lauren offered no guarantee that the book was genuine.

"It may be a boast left by thieves. There are records of gold, herbs, and ancient sacred objects inside."

"Where?"

"In the book."

"No. Where are the things?" Lauren's eyes moved briefly toward the door.

"The rock mountain to the north, from what we can tell."

"Far?"

"A few days for the round trip."

"Why aren't you going?"

"Soldiers cannot abandon the truce line." Lauren did not look away. He simply did not explain why he had brought the book now, after the truce began. Riphiel put on gloves and opened it before Lauren had even left.

"Wash your hands before touching it." You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

"I haven't touched any meat."

"That makes me less comfortable, not more." The paper did not all come from the same period. The first sheets were rough plant fiber. Old elven trade ledgers had been mixed into the middle. The latest additions were ration sheets written with human-kingdom ink and demihuman tribal numerals. Too many hands had contributed to it for the book to be one person's fabrication. Argaon turned the map upside down.

Batu sniffed along its edge, then stopped one forepaw before black stone powder caked onto the drawing of the northern mountains.

"This range isn't shaped like this anymore."

"The map is wrong?"

"Old. Before the human kingdoms existed, the mountains were joined this way." Argaon touched a small triangle beside the rock mountain with one claw.

"Dragons left this mark at ancient sealed sites. It does not mean you must not enter. It means you must not break your way in by force."

"Then we use the door."

"If there is one." The book showed mountain ranges whose names had vanished and old trade roads. There were drawings of people stacking goods before a cliff and rock splitting to either side. The records of the goods were strange. Incoming gold was recorded only roughly, but the number of grain sacks released to each village was exact. Children's clothes, dry blankets, fever medicine, and salt were listed village by village. People's names had been scratched out repeatedly.

On the final page, a short phrase written in neither human nor elven script repeated like a pronunciation guide. Beneath it was a drawing of a rare catalyst. Kichan touched the image.

"With this, molly and mandragora would last longer."

"If it is real." Riphiel spoke.

"All winter?"

"Longer, if we build the preservation box correctly." Kichan did not close the book. He remembered the northern rumors he had heard in the market several days earlier. Light shone from cracks in a cliff during winter. Black stones that swallowed sound rolled nearby without noise even when they struck one another. A large merchant caravan had entered that road and never returned. Every story pointed to the same mountain. Seria summoned the people who had carried the rumors.

A farmer said light appeared three times each winter from a gap in the cliff. A hunter took a sound-eating black stone from his pouch. It made no noise when placed on the table. Valkyrie flowed over its surface, and even the water droplets split without sound. Valkyrie straightened its body and retreated from the stone. A merchant who had last seen the missing caravan placed one finger on the old trade route in the grimoire.

"They crossed this valley before the snow. I never saw their wagons return." Riphiel compared the black stone with the ink along the edge of the book. Argaon marked the farmer's direction on a current map of the mountains. All three accounts pointed to the same valley.

"Let's go."

"Do you trust Officer Lauren?" Theor asked.

"No."

"And you will go anyway?"

"Riphiel checked the book. Argaon checked the mountain." Kichan reopened the page with the catalyst.

"And it'd be good to have this." Riphiel looked once at the closed door.

"The man who gave us the book asked how many days we would be gone."

"Suspicious?"

"Very."

"But the place is real?"

"That is the most troublesome part." Argaon tapped the catalyst drawing.

"If it's a false lure, we ignore it. There's no reason to throw away real prey because someone suspicious told us where to find it." Kichan nodded.

"Let's go and come back quickly." Riphiel said they could not carry the old grimoire into a dungeon. Snow would ruin the paper, and even the damp inside a cave could eat through its edges. On fresh sheets, she copied the map, the final phrase, and all forty owl eyes exactly. Kichan tried to sound out the pronunciation marks beside her and was stopped three times.

"Do not say that aloud here."

"Why?"

"Because we do not know what it means."

"Isn't it what opens the door?"

"It might open your head instead." The original grimoire was entrusted to Seria and Theor. While wrapping it in cloth, Seria discovered a faded seal inside the cover. It showed a wing laid over a cup, an old emblem of the Papal State.

"It resembles the seal from the age of the relief priest who entrusted the Fragment of God's Word to the Church."

"Did that person write this?"

"We do not know yet." Seria did not force a conclusion.

"We will compare it with the records before you return." When she closed the book, all forty eyes on the cover vanished at once. Inside Kichan's magic bag, the sealed box trembled faintly.