Sitting on the wall, his legs dangling on the outside of the Stone Circle, Yaltring gazed nervously up at the sky. It would not be long, now. The sun was almost directly overhead, just perceptibly off to the east. The cloud he had feared for hours, white trickle of Shulaff’s milk, threatening all morning to cover the sky’s golden window, had put off the encounter till afternoon. It lazed nearby, a silky puff very slowly drifting.

This was the day for which he had waited all year. He was fourteen today, but he cared little for that. All his thoughts now were with the sun.

He twisted his body around and glanced behind him at the strange device that a year ago had revealed the golden gleam, on the far side of the Stone Circle. Turning back, his eyes wandered straight ahead, out into the woods, in the direction where he thought he remembered, just for a moment, seeing a second light, on that first day of the previous summer. Nervously, he checked his pack again for the things he’d brought: brightly colored stone markers, rope, a shovel, an axe. The dagger he’d earned by becoming a man was at his waist.

He knew his time would be short. Twice before he had sought the light, and twice it had faded. Just a little way from the zenith, the sun would no longer pass through the cylinder of stone. Only a few minutes would go by, and his chance would be gone, not to return for another year--and his slow childhood hours spent inside the Stone Circle would no longer turn him towards the Open Road ahead.

He closed his eyes, in fear, in pain. Then he remembered himself and opened them, quickly looking about--but no light yet. There was a tingling in the ends of his fingers. He glanced above. The sun approached the zenith. He looked across the Circle to the little stone cylinder. Below it, he could just barely make out the dim patch of gold.

And then it lit!

He wheeled to the opposite direction, staring wildly. His eyes at first were blinded, still seeing the imprint of the light behind them. When they recovered, he soon picked out a second light amidst the trees. It hung like an enchanted firefly between two great branches, easy to miss for one not seeking it, not nearly so piercing as the first light, though still uncannily bright.

He’d rehearsed this moment in his mind for months. First he carefully fixed the location of the light in his memory; then he leaped from the wall, landing hard on his feet in the dirt, and started running away from the Circle. But he could take no straight path. Ducking around trees and trying to refind his way, he smiled, remembering the capspool hunts of years past, the last of which had ended less than a stone’s throw away from here. He jumped over a fallen log, burst into a little clearing--and there was the light in front of him!

He could now see where it came from. There were two pines, side by side, bearing the two branches he’d noticed before. The tree on the right lay close to a rocky outcrop, which extended from the wall of the Stone Circle. And from the outcrop grew a high spindle of stone, white and easily missed amidst the surrounding trees. He’d been here before more than once, but had never noticed that slender bit of stone. A year’s searching of the area had not revealed it to him.

On its underside, small, but very sharp and clear, there was a yellow light, hanging not a dozen feet from the ground. Gold was set in the stone, just where the light reached--a spot that must be in shadow for all the rest of the year.

The light reflected downwards; he could see it floating in the air, in the dust of noon. The golden shaft pointed to the ground, to a patch of unearthly light, subdued by the matte leaves and dirt it illumined, but still strangely bright amidst the tree-cast shadows. He sprang to the spot and touched it with his hand. His hand itself grew bright. His other hand, trembling, reached to his pack, pulling forth a colored stone. He placed it on the spot and it gleamed ruby red, a blood-drop thrown amidst the vegetation.

Breathless and triumphant, his heart churning, he stared at the little patch of sunlit ground, wondering what to do next. His mind raced as his panting slowly eased. He raised his head and stared again at the light hanging above him, brilliant within the stony spindle. A shadow moved across the light, and in a moment it was gone.

His heart thumped louder, in startlement, almost bereavement. The gold underpatch was now shaded and dull. He turned around to look at the Stone Circle. Standing on his toes, he could just make out the Sun-Pointer.

But there was no more light.

Carefully, he put several more colored stones around the red one, in a circle about ten feet across, so he would not lose the place if he chanced to disturb the precious marker. Trembling and suddenly exhausted, he sank to the ground. Then his curiosity overcame him, and he crawled to the red stone. His hands felt in the leaves around it. He felt nothing, nothing but twigs and pebbles. His eyes searched. He lifted the marker. Underneath--the same.

Out came the shovel.

Clearly, whoever built the little tube of stone had also meant this spot to be found. Perhaps they buried something here--or perhaps something once visible had been covered over by the passage of time. In any case, there was little else he could do. He put aside the red stone, and dug in.

Imme is a warm country. Cool and comfortable in winter, it starts getting hot in early spring. By the time summer begins, most people stay indoors around noon, or rest in the shade of a tarp or sail if they are out at sea. Few do heavy work at that time.

Six inches deep, Yaltring was starting to realize the wisdom of these customs. He removed his clothing, wrapping his shirt into a rough loincloth about his middle, and continued, after a brief and pointless swat at the many mosquitoes and other bugs flying around him. He had long since passed through the thin topsoil. There had not been a heavy rain for weeks, and the ground was tough and hard.

Eighteen inches deep, he was as hot as he had been with his clothes on, and a lot more tired. His body was covered with tiny bites. He took off the loincloth, which was soaked with sweat, muttered a fervent wish that no one would pass by, and redoubled his efforts.

Three feet deep, he was as hot as he’d ever felt, and also exhausted. There was no sign of his dig getting anywhere. The sun, though still high in the sky, had moved a long way from its noontime peak. He was sure he could do no more that day.

He looked despondently into the hole. If he left it like this, the dig would be visible to others from a distance. Sadly, he pushed the dirt back inside, comforting himself that it would be easy to remove now that it was loose. Putting his loincloth back on, he trudged off in the direction of a creek. Few things had ever felt better to him than diving into its cold waters and washing away the clinging dirt and sweat.

That day, that night, he told no one of his find, or what he’d been doing. His mother observed suspiciously that he was sore and lazy.

"Letting the village girls work you over?" she exclaimed in mock rebuke. "Well, it serves you right."

Yaltring managed a nervous smile.

"I notice you don’t deny it," said Sila airily, her lips curling in a presentiment of a grin.

That finally got a giggle out of Yaltring. But what was really the matter, he would not say.

The next day, he did his household tasks quickly and early, then left without saying a word, fired by a wavering hope of finding some unstolen relic beneath the place in the ground where the light had shone so briefly. Certainly there was nothing there covered by the mere dust of ages. But something of great value could perhaps have been deeply buried. Doubtful though his prospects now seemed, he still burned to press onward, and down.

The place of the dig looked as he had left it. Fit and active though he was, his digging muscles were not used to such abuse. They were still sore, and troubled him even while he tossed out the loose dirt. When his shovel hit hard, clay-ridden ground again, he grimaced. Then he told himself to forget it, and continued.

Starting early in the morning, he had had the advantage of coolness. It was still sweaty work, but much more bearable, once his arms resigned themselves to the task. Now mid-morning was turning into late morning, and the heat was starting to surround and oppress him. He was more than four feet deep, and his determination was hardening as hope slowly faded. He thought he would continue on for a long while, and curse the heat. His shovel struck the hard, clumpy ground--thump, thump, thump. At each stroke, a new piece of dirt came loose. He tossed it away, out of the deep hole that now surrounded him up to his chest. His shovel struck the hard ground again--thump, thump, bang.

The shovel clattered to the ground. He looked down at his hands. They were sorely blistered, and much too sweaty. Drying them off on his clothes, he picked up the shovel again, and swung it once more. Bang.

There must be a stone in the way. He cleared out the loose dirt and saw it, the flat edge of what looked to be a large rock. He dug around it. Bang. He could not seem to get away from it.

He tried on all four sides, and each time, his fierce efforts were rewarded with a clatter and another small dent on his shovel.

Clearing the dirt again, he rubbed his eyes. They were streaming with sweat. He dried them on his shirt, then looked again.

And finally, he saw what he had suspected all this time, but had not dared hope. Beneath him lay a slab of stone, smooth and flat as pond-water, like no unhewn rock he had ever seen. It was more than a foot across, though he could not yet see its full extent.

From that moment on, he had given no thought to rest. It was a long while before he finally cleared away the dirt surrounding the stone slab. He sank down wearily upon it, pondering its miracle.

It was a perfect square, eighteen inches across, almost silky to the touch. All four edges sank vertically, at right angles to the slab, though barely visible above the dirt. If that were not proof enough, one of them curled up slightly, elegantly, in a smooth curve like a stony ruffle. This was no rock crushed by earthquake or giant and trimmed by wind and water. This was the work of human hands.

His fingers glided out upon its smoothness. His hands caressed it. He reached around its sides. His fingers clutched the ruffled edge. He gripped, and to his amazement, felt the stone move, almost imperceptibly.

He pulled harder. The stone began rising from the end he was clutching. It was heavy, heavy. He dropped it, pulling his fingers out of reach in a flash, and it landed with a heavy crack.

Groping around the edges, he touched something strangely shaped on the opposite side. Bringing his eyes close, he saw two small stone plates, with a stone cylinder between them. One plate joined with the top of the slab, the other with its side.

He stared for a long while before he realized what he was seeing. The configuration was familiar enough; but he had never seen it this large before, nor in stone. Nevertheless, in the end there could be no doubt.

It was a hinge.

There was a stone door now between his weary hands and the deeper secrets of the earth. But he would have to wait, at least to get his breath back, before he dared try to open it.

At last he steeled his muscles for the great task. He crouched to the side of the door, careful and solemn. He lowered his fragile fingers to their dangerous task. He positioned his arms. His mind heaved, and then his body.

The door was thick and extremely heavy. This was a job for two full-grown men, not one tired digger barely out of boyhood. But he did not want to let anyone in on his secret.

He pulled harder. The stone door slid open with a very slight creak. He lifted it higher, higher, stepping back behind the hinge, his arms at the limit of their endurance. A black opening yawned beneath him. Still he pulled, reaching into his last reserves. The slab was now vertical. He moved as far out of its way as he could, then pushed it over and jumped. It just missed hitting him as it landed with a strong muffled thump on the dirt wall of the dig.

Trembling, he bent over and looked inside. A bitingly musty scent wafted up to his nose, the dankness of old clothes mixed with the coolness of a cave. A dark hole yawned beneath him, but he could see little.

When he had again regained his breath, he clambered from the dig and retrieved a torch from his pack. His usually agile fingers fumbled and slipped on his tinderbox. Finally a spark flew loose and encircled the torch in an orange wreath of flame. He climbed back into the dig, and thrust the torch inside the hole. It quivered in his hand. Before him, perhaps, was the danger his mother had warned of. Or perhaps--and this he feared more--nothing.

He saw a hollow space beneath him. Its walls sloped outward as they went down, rough and irregular. At the bottom seemed to be some sort of gray dust. Carefully, he put the torch down on the underside of the open door.

His heart was thumping as he lowered himself into the hole.

The air he felt was quite cool, a startling contrast to the punishing heat outside. The powerful smell grew and surrounded him. His feet hit a firm, flat bottom. He reached up for his torch and brought it in.

He was crouched inside a small cave of sorts, or a chest, a yard and a half deep, whose floor was much wider than the door, perhaps six feet long and four feet wide. The mustiness was at first almost overpowering. As the air freshened and he got used to the slowly fading scent, he began to perceive more of what was around him.

The torch-flickers caught dimly on gray stone walls that showed no signs of carving, narrowing as they went up, as rough as nature had made them. Only at the very top, just before the door, were they flat and smooth, their rough lips hewn into a square. Yet the floor he trod was quite flat, though thick with a dusty coating.

He knelt, and ran his free hand through the dust. It was a darker gray than the walls, odorless, finer than crushed ash. He squeezed it in his palm, a silky nothing that crumbled away. His hand dug in deeper, seeking the floor, and bumped into something hard, something that moved at his touch.

A tremor ran down his spine. He slid his hand over the hard thing, clutched it, and pulled it out. It was small and triangular, covered in dust and altogether unrecognizable.

He stood up, tasting the hot, fresh outer air, and put the hard thing outside to look at later. Then he stooped, put the torch down, and started brushing aside the dust on one side of the floor. He was afraid his weight might break anything else that could be found within the dusty pile, and wanted a clear spot on which to stand.

The dust flew up into his nostrils and eyes. He blinked and coughed and kept sweeping with his hands until he’d cleared a patch of floor near one wall. The clear patch was very smooth and perfectly flat, just like the door. He ran his hands over it, admiring its silky precision.

Putting his knees and the torch firmly upon the clear patch, he dove into the dust with both hands, searching for more solid things. His fingers brushed the stony bottom. As they slid along the floor, he felt something strange.

The floor his hands were touching was not like the floor he was standing on. It was not everywhere smooth. His fingers hit a groove, two grooves, many, as he explored. He could not imagine what they were.

A chill ran from below his ears all the way down his back. He began frantically sweeping again, clearing away the dust with both hands. It billowed into the air and piled up thick and heavy on the other side of the floor. Though half-blinded and hardly able to breathe, he refused to stop, and through barely opened eyes he could see dark lines starting to appear on the stone floor. Dust was still everywhere, smearing them. He swept and swept until nearly all the dust was off to one side. Then he raised the torch to see.

As the light spread, his hands began shaking again. The torch almost fell from his grip. Though he had been blazing hot half an hour ago, suddenly he felt very cold inside his sweaty clothes. Each heartbeat within him was a tick of doom.

Beneath him, carved into the very stone, were figures he had seen all his life. They had shapes he recognized, though their form was crude and strange, and he had never before seen them below the ground. He had seen them painted on parchments. He had seen them carved into ancient trees. He had seen them chiseled on tombstones.

They were letters.

There were many of them, arranged in three rows, tall, thin letters, six inches high and nearly two inches wide, running across much of the floor’s length. Yaltring was proud that he could read, unlike many islanders. Yet he could not make out the words.

His lips moved. Was he simply too anxious, too eager, to read?

He started speaking out loud the letters he saw, though there were some marks he didn’t understand:

ARNA+^.DEZOKO^.DELUME^.ANZOR
FINE^.AFALU^.YAXANA^.YERGUN
NAXU^.AHIMEN^.EADA^.YERMOR

No, it was not his muddled mind. It clearly did not make any sense in his tongue. He wondered what language it was.

"Delume," he muttered after looking at it a while, "and yaxana. That reminds me of what my mother calls the sunlight, ‘yakhane de-lume.’" And in fact he thought that most of the words had something of the sound of that language she had brought from her girlhood on Tizrach, the furthest south and east of any land in the world. But it was not that language. He could not make out any of it.

He sat for a long while, thinking. Then he went laboriously through the whole dusty pile, bit by bit, seeking more hidden treasures. Nothing was there but dust within dust. He stood up and slowly pulled himself out of the chest, picked up the hard thing he’d discovered, and climbed out of his dug hole. It felt good to be up in the open air. He stretched his weary limbs and took a long swig from his water-jug, pouring some water onto the hard thing before replacing the stopper. Carefully, he washed away the dust, revealing a strange, pyramid-shaped object, clear on the outside, dark on the inside. It looked like a black grape sheathed in a transparent casing. The casing was very clear, very hard, perfectly triangular, and not much larger than it needed to be to completely enclose the round black lump. His fingers wandered its four identical sides, finding not a trace of a bump, and its feel was stony silk, thrilling the spine.

He had no idea what the thing was. Perhaps the inscription would tell him--if only he could understand it.

Putting it away in his pocket, he settled down to a cold lunch of fruit and fish. When he was finished, he went back into the hole and did more digging around the outside of the chest. He wanted to see if anything else was buried there. To his surprise, his shovel struck stone again almost as soon as he started. Was there another chest next to the one he’d discovered, or just more rock? Hastily, he shoveled out loose dirt, dug more, shoveled more. And then he was even more amazed.

What he’d thought might be another chest was actually an outcrop of bedrock. The stone chest looked as though it were resting directly against it. But when he examined more closely, he could see no crack, no seam, between the chest and the stony outcrop.

A queer feeling came over him as he realized that the stone chest was actually part of the bedrock of the earth.

Slowly now, with plenty of rests, he set to work again, widening his dig to confirm what he’d found, until at last he was able to explore six inches around the chest on every side. Wherever he went, his shovel dug a short ways and found the same layer of stone. The rough, uneven bedrock stretched out in all directions from the mouth of the finely finished door.

Deep within the earth, he had found a hollow in the bedrock, hewn into a chest. And words were carved within it.

"Well, Yaltring, young man, what brings you here?"

He was in a village he did not often visit. It was called Nuela, and it lay in the southwestern part of the island. Like all the villages and nearly all the dwellings of Imme, it was a short but safe distance from the shore. He had come here because it contained the only man he knew who was wise with letters. Yaltring stood, now, in the doorway of his little study, which was also his shop and home.

"Natarak, I need your help."

"Glad I’d be to give it to you, though I hope you don’t want help with sailing! I’ve got a gammy leg. Not that I’d be much help anyway, from what I’ve heard about you, sir." Natarak fixed him with a penetrating stare from behind white whiskers. "The last I spoke to you, you were but a boy, nine years old, and wanting help with your reading. Since then, I hear, you’ve read more upon water than parchment. Ah, that’s the way of this land, and who am I to question it?

"Still, I remembered you. When you were being made a man, last year, I saw you, and I thought, ‘What ever has become of that bright young boy I once knew?’"

"He has done plenty of sailing, and some reading, too," said Yaltring. "I have not forgotten my letters. But today, I need your help. For I saw letters I did not understand."

Natarak’s eyes narrowed. "Where, young man, where?"

"On a stone I found buried in the ground." Natarak looked at him with an air of suspicious waiting.

"There were words carved there, Natarak. Words that used the letters you told me never to forget. But the letters made no words I know."

Natarak’s eyes narrowed further. "Do you know who buried this stone you found?" he asked, his voice probing and strange.

"I have no idea." Natarak looked even more suspicious. "I think--" Yaltring went on, "I think it was carved very, very long ago."

The man’s face changed. He drummed his fingers against his desk, strewn with old parchments and secret seals. "Well," he said. "I can guess why, then, you were not able to read it. Languages change, and old lore is not written in the same speech as today’s. Do you have the stone with you?"

Yaltring shook his head solemnly. "The strength of all the men of the island would not shift it."

"Indeed?" said Natarak, looking at him closely again. "Well, do you remember some of the words?"

Yaltring pursed his lips. "I think it began," he said at last, "something like ‘arna desoko delume,’ but I don’t quite remember."

"Ah!" said Natarak, slowly and decisively. "Now I know why you did not understand it. It is not an older version of our speech, but a different language altogether. Only in the Far South islands is that language still spoken--especially Tizrach."

Yaltring’s head jerked in amazement. "You mean Tizrach’s tongue is spoken on Halastan and the Nose too?"

"Only by some," said Natarak. "On Tizrach, it is the only language spoken. Some call the language itself Tizrach, but that is ignorance. The language is called Ezrain, and it was in these parts before the Eastern we now speak was known here."

Yaltring’s eyes widened. "You mean, the people of Imme--"

Natarak nodded again. "Used to speak Ezrain, everyone here. Ezrain means southern, and once, it was spoken throughout the Southern Group, from Tizrach to Deth Guil. That is why inscriptions can still be found written in it, such as the one you came upon." And again he looked hard at Yaltring.

"But sir," said Yaltring, "I know that speech! Or at least, I know some of it. My mother speaks it, she was born on Tizrach. I don’t speak it, but I understand it pretty well."

"You?" said Natarak. "Now, there’s a thing I had not suspected. I’d forgotten about your mother’s birthplace, though, of course, I remember now."

"And," said Yaltring, "the words, whatever they were, were not in Ezrain, as you call it. I thought there might be a resemblance, but it was past recognition."

Natarak nodded his head, more slowly now. His eyes narrowed shrewdly. "Yes, I thought the words you said sounded strange. ‘Arna desoko delume,’ did you say? They are clearly Ezrain, or related to it, but I cannot decipher them. And yet that tongue, too, must have changed much over the ages. Of this I know little. I have seen old Ezrain texts, centuries old, yet they differed but little from the speech of today--so little that even I, who read the language with difficulty, could make it out. This must be older still.

"I know of only one person on Imme who could help you. He is Alkhartren. Do you know where he lives?"

Yaltring slowly nodded. "I have seldom seen the man you speak of. I think he was at the Feast of Passing last winter, but not in the summer, and I haven’t seen him on other holidays. But he lives in Dunak, does he not?"

Natarak shook his head gravely, knowingly. "No, Yaltring. He does not live in any village. His cottage stands alone, and within the woods, though it is true that it is not far from Dunak."

"He lives in the woods?" Yaltring asked. He had never heard of anyone living in the woods, though he knew some wild boys who sometimes pretended to for a few days. But they had houses in the village to go back to.

"Yes, and he lives alone. He does not speak to many. But he would speak to you, if you told him I sent you, and for what purpose."

Yaltring did not say anything then for a while. "Oh, come now, young man," said Natarak. "He is more afraid than to be feared, that man. You are a sturdy young fellow, and he is forty or fifty--don’t be a coward! But speak quietly, when you first approach. He will not try to harm you, but he might lock himself in if you’re not careful."

Yaltring nodded. "Very well," he said. "In that case, there are three things I would ask of you."

"What are they?"

"One would be the directions to his house. As for the second--I need a parchment and ink. Do you have any very big parchment?" He spread out his arms.

"Big parchments cost a lot," said Natarak, eyeing him shrewdly. "What do you have to trade?"

Yaltring suddenly felt empty and exposed. He did indeed have a number of items of value, most of them connected with sailing. But he needed them all. What if Alkhartren couldn’t read the chiseled message? Yaltring might have to wander a long way from Imme to get answers.

"Perhaps a thin parchment wouldn’t be so expensive?" he asked.

Natarak shook his head. "What do you need such a big one for, anyway?"

"That’s how big the inscription is. The letters don’t look the way I’m used to, and there are marks I don’t recognize at all. I thought I should make an exact copy."

"Well, if you want my advice--and I know you’re not used to this sort of thing--but it’s quite easy to copy the same shapes and spacing in a smaller size. Just shrink it all down. It will be cheaper, and much easier to carry around. Believe me, it’s not as hard as it sounds."

"That makes a lot of sense," said Yaltring slowly, feeling much relieved. "So, do you have a small parchment, and ink, and a pen I could buy? I think one of my brothers stole my pen three years ago."

Natarak sighed. "And why hasten to replace something as silly as a pen? After all, you can’t row a boat with it."

Yaltring raised his eyebrows, but didn’t say a word.

"Very well, Master Yaltring. I will not delay your mission, since I see you are in haste." He turned towards his desk, stopped, and turned around again. "What was the third thing?" he asked, with a shrewd, curious frown.

"Oh," said Yaltring. "Well, I would like to ask that you keep my visit to yourself, begging your pardon. I’m a bit worried about curious inquiries."

Natarak nodded. "I hope you have this stone well hidden," he said, still frowning. Yaltring said nothing.

A few minutes later, after surrendering three-fourths of the length of rope in his pack, he had what he needed. Outside, the sun, though far to the west, was still high in the sky. It was the year’s second-longest day, and the sundials were running slow. Yaltring smiled confidently. It should not take long to write the letters, he thought, unpracticed though he was. He would reach the cottage before nightfall.