The Dark Highlander

Page 91

“And why didn’t she tell us?” Dageus said, incredulous.
Silvan snorted. “She thought we knew and believed she wasn’t supposed to know.”
Dageus shook his head. “And ’tis another library?”
“Och, son, it looks to be our entire history, undisturbed for centuries.”
Stunned, and she suspected a bit forgotten by the two Keltar men for the moment, Chloe followed Dageus and Silvan into the dark void, down steep stone steps into a cavernlike chamber that was roughly fifteen feet across and twice that long. The chamber was lit by dozens of candles in wall sconces. It was lined from floor to ceiling with shelves, dotted with tables, chairs, and trunks.
Chloe’s head whipped left and right, back and forth at a dizzying speed.
Focus, Zanders. You’re going to make yourself sick from excitement.
No archaeologist entering a heretofore sealed and forgotten tomb could have felt any giddier. Her heart was racing, her palms sweaty, and she was not managing deep breaths very well. She strode forward, pushing past the two men, determined to see all she could before they remembered her and perhaps thought twice about letting her see it. She was in an ancient underground chamber, surrounded by her most favorite things: dusty relics from ages long past. Relics that would send the scholars in her century into paroxysms of joy, giving them topics to gnaw on and argue contentedly about for the rest of their lives.
There were stone tablets chiseled with Irish oghamic inscriptions. More stones with what looked like Pictish ogham script, a script modern scholars had never succeeded in translating, as Picts had adopted Irish ogham but hadn’t been able adapt it to their own language since Pictish and Gaelic were phonetically incompatible. Maybe they could teach her how to read it! she thought, dizzied by the possibility.
There were cloth-bound volumes, secured and tied in faded fabric, leather-bound volumes and scrolls, enameled plates, hand-stitched codices, bits of armor and weaponry, and—heavens—even that long-forgotten flagon was a relic!
After a few moments of breathless perusal, she glanced over her shoulder at Dageus and Silvan who’d paused just inside the chamber, their heads bent above a squat stone column upon which lay a sheet of gold.
“Da, is this what I think it is?” Dageus’s voice sounded strangled.
“Aye, ’tis The Compact, as legend told, etched upon a sheet of pure gold.”
“That’s not very sensible,” Chloe pointed out faintly. “It’s too malleable. Pure gold is too soft, too easily damaged. That’s why so many of the ancient torcs had cores of iron beneath the gold. Well, that and to help deflect a potential sword. What Compact, anyway?”
“Precisely their purpose,” Silvan murmured, lightly tracing the edge of the gold sheet. “ ’Twas said they did it to symbolize how fragile The Compact was. To underscore that it must be handled gently.”
“What Compact?” Chloe asked again, stepping gingerly between a pile of leather-bound tomes and a heartbreakingly rusted shield, peering deeper into the shadowy corners of the chamber. She wondered if they’d let her live down here for a while. Another glance at Dageus made her recant that thought. Unless he lived down there with her.
“The Compact betwixt the Tuatha Dé Danaan and man.”
Chloe sat down heavily on her bottom.
“Not on the tomes!” Silvan gasped.
Chloe, startled, toppled sideways and sprawled on the dusty stone floor, appalled that she’d just planted her rump on a pile of priceless texts. “Sorry,” she mumbled. “I’m just a little over-excited. How old is it supposed to be? What language is it in? Can you translate it? What does it say?”
Silvan busied himself sorting through an urn of scrolls.
Dageus shrugged. “No idea what language it’s in.”
“You can’t read it?”
“Nay,” Dageus muttered.
Silvan harrumphed.
Chloe’s eyes narrowed but she decided to leave it alone for the moment. She was feeling light-headed again and didn’t want to push it. She needed to slowly absorb her new perspective of history, one that included both Druids with the power to manipulate time itself, and the existence of an ancient civilization that had possessed knowledge and technology advanced far beyond anything man had ever achieved.
Grandda had been right—the Tuatha Dé Danaan had once lived, and not just in myth!
Breathe, Zanders, she told herself, dropping to her knees on the floor and reaching for the nearest tome.
Many hours later, Chloe rested her head back against the cool stone wall and closed her eyes, listening to Silvan and Dageus talk. Languages she couldn’t translate, scribed in long-unused alphabets, danced on the insides of her eyelids.