…a dark man sits in a dusty room in the back of an unkempt cleric’s office, built at the edge of a lonely town somewhere in the western sands. In his lap are molded clays, flat, wide sheets of earth filled with strange, archaic symbols set in frames of Holly Oak, which he’s uncovered in the archives. He traces through them with his napstrak, a thin, blunt instrument of wax that he’s attached to the end of his finger, lips moving, eyes darting, torso turning every now and then to a length of skin he’s set to his side, on which he makes a mark or two with a stick of char he holds in his hand. The town, once known as Al’Jaziera, but which, in the centuries since this scene took place, has decayed into an unnamed cloud of hovels, pits, and shallow graves, settles into dusk around him. Children finish at their chores and answer mother’s call to sup, horses whinny in the livery, hoping, perhaps, for one more stub of root or one last nibble of grain before the nighttime game of swatting flies. A lone peddler pushes his wares down the trampled pathways that pass for streets on a homemade, rickety mess of a cart, hoping to fleece one final patron before he drinks his profits away and starts it all again tomorrow. Long sunlight filters through the myriad cracks in the office’s walls, lighting bars of airborne dust in orange, almost reddish hues and letting in all these distractions.

He sits cross-legged on the floor – there are no tables in this office, only a lining of shelves and cabinets – poring over one of the clays as he held it in his lap. It is not the first time he has held it. Some months ago, while visiting a neighboring town, he heard rumors they existed, and he came to check them out. But they were useless to him then, written in a language he could neither read nor name, and it has taken all the intervening time to find someone to help him translate. It was a wizened, doddering old woman, who’s turned feet and rheumatism left her scarcely spry enough to earn her keep by cooking and cleaning for one of the town’s wealthier merchants. She gasped when she saw the rubbings, light sparking in her eyes for the first time in the dark man couldn’t guess how long. “Yes!” she exclaimed, speaking broken common tongue around a cup of lukewarm tea, “yes, Nema knows this words before! Clays like this old Master has when Nema is a little girl, Nema not allowed to touch!” She wasn’t able to translate for him, but together, over a weak second steeping of the same spoonful of leaves, they identified the language, and visits to one and then another of the nearby cities unearthed the cipher he would use…

Now he’s back, rubbings translated, cipher secure, saddlebags relieved of nearly half a stone of silver he’d had to part with to secure it. Back because Nema, sweet, blessed, half-demented but beautiful Nema, reminded him to check the frames before he left, which he’d forgotten when he took the rubbings he had taken on his search. Sure enough, there are markings, etched into the Holly Oak that hold the crumbling clays together.

tek…dekali…aćvienci-hermidad…the record eyewitness of…

He begins to translate, imagining Nema as he does. Imagining her as a child, of eight, maybe ten years old, peering through her master’s keyhole, or a crack in one of his doors, or from behind some luxurious drapery long enough to hide her feet yet loose enough for her to see through, spying on her master as he turned them over in his hand, inspecting them in much the way the dark man is doing now.

…metada…uop…tek-untkuvántka…bur…method for the invocation of…

He thanks her silently for all her help. For sneaking peaks at all the symbols, and taking note of how he’d turned it, and remembering for all these years the time he’d spent inspecting the frame. But most of all he thanks her for sharing those memories with him when he shared his rubbings. He hopes the powder he left with her has done something for her hands.

…aggra…akiva…denegar…keeper (of) Justice, Regulation

The etchings on the final frame are clunky, and defy translation. The dark man cannot tell if they are nouns or proper names. But it doesn’t matter. He knows what they hold by now. Someone in the murky past actually tested three separate of the rituals, and has documented the results.

He reads through the rubbings again, interpreting them very differently now. Two of the methods had failed miserably, it seems, having no effect or worse, but the third...

He sweats cold despite the heat that holds this country in its grip. There might actually be a way…