The Library of Ilksar

Wum Lon felt the breeze flow through her hair as she contemplated what awaited her at the end of the journey. A mix of emotions rolled across her mind, as the landscape below scrolled by under the stratoship.

She felt a sense of cautious optimism. When the ship landed today, it should be the culmination of years of research and dreaming and planning. The object she had spent her life looking for should be in hand soon.

There was also a sense of righteousness, that she would be able to tell all the people who had doubted her or stood in her way that she was right. Maybe this feeling was more of an anticipation of vindication.

But beneath all of this was an undercurrent of fear. The fear that she had chosen the wrong interpretations of the ancient writings; that she had translated and transferred the maps incorrectly. She distinctly felt the fear that, despite all her preparations, if she missed the measurements by even a short distance, her teams could dig for a year and not find anything, even though they were only a few feet away.

Her thoughts were interrupted by the sound of boots on the deck behind her. She turned to see the eye-catching, but reserved, Captain Johuan Iquila standing with his feet wide and arms behind his back, as the wind carried over the deck of the Wayse of Trisson and whipped the edges of his pressed, blue uniform.

“Madam Lon. I hoped to find you here. How are you handling the journey so far?” Iquila's resonant voice carried over the sound of the wind and he stepped closer to see the view over the railings with Lon.

For a moment, Lon studied Iquila through her dark, almond shaped eyes. She had met Captain Iquila through a mutual contact as she was looking for a guide to take her and her team to this remote part of the world. She was struck by the sense of capability and the air of respect that he commanded, but she struggled with his enigmatic flair. It seemed that she couldn't quite guess what his intentions or motivations were.

“This journey has been remarkably smooth. Your crew seems to understand this ship as if it was their own. The discipline is quite amazing.” Lon let her eyes wander over the flat deck of the open-topped ship they were flying on, as the crew went about their orders.

Iquila stood ramrod straight beside her, still watching the ground ahead of his flying ship. “Most of the members of my crew have been with me for over a year. I make no demands for their length of service, but most choose to stay on after each stay in port.” He turned and pointed to a well built man, carrying a large bundle of rope across the deck. Lon noted that he walked with a distinctive limp.

“That man, Riylo, is the only one that's new for this journey. He comes with recommendations, and he seems to be a strong crewman. The rest of the crew like him well enough, so, if he continues to prove himself, I may like to keep him on as my regular crew.”

Lon watched the man carrying his load towards the bridge at the far end of the ship. The Wayse was a small ship for its class, only 100 meters long and 28 meters wide. The man disappeared in the distance as Wum Lon turned back towards Captain Iquila.

“If I have been paying attention, Captain, we should be getting near to our site. Have you been able to find any other logbooks from this area?”

The Captain gave a congenial smile. “Interestingly not. Though Gidade is a large world, and much has been left unexplored for centuries, I would have expected to have found something in the records. Even the ancient records, from before the advent of stratoships, only contain passing references to the people that lived here. The Ilksar?”

Lon nodded. “They were a nomadic people. Their earliest records are lost to time. They are generally considered the inventors of written language and record keeping. Almost every other culture traces their history back to the Ilksar.”

Iquila listened, intrigued. “I have an interest in the history of this land, just for the principle of knowledge. I'm quite excited to see what you dig up. We should be landed and your equipment unloaded by this evening. My crew will be available to assist in any reasonable capacity during your excavations.”

“Thank you, Captain. You and your crew have been most hospitable and I'm very grateful for your help to get this far.” Lon smiled as she spoke, and the Captain nodded, then turned and walked back towards the bridge of the ship.

-----

2 Days Later

“This is spectacular,” Captain Iquila's voice sounded muffled in the limited space of the trench that had been excavated through the desert sand over the last two days.

Wum Lon’s narrow eyes danced with excitement. The last two days had been filled with exhilarating discoveries. Her calculations had been correct, and, within an hour of digging, her team had found the first signs that this site was the location of the ancient Library of Ilksar. This was the culmination of a lifetime of dreams, researching, arguing, being dismissed by the most prestigious archeological minds in the world.

Now she stood in front of the large stone doors that she hoped would lead to the greatest historical find in the last thousand years. The doors were once decorated with symbols and writings, but all had been eroded through time. The only depiction still decipherable was squarely in the middle of the door and appeared to be a globe held up on some kind of turning apparatus.

Lon’s excavation crew, as well as volunteers from the Wayse of Trisson had cleared the doors and were ready to pull the large ropes that had been attached. She gave the signal and the ropes pulled taut. They struggled for a long moment, but there was no movement. She saw the fatigue in her workers eyes, and watched as their grips failed on the ropes.

She gave another signal to relax and shook her head. There was still a fire in her eyes. Five thousand years of sand and corrosion wouldn't keep her from her discovery.

“Come, gentleman,” she suddenly heard a rich, deep voice encouraging the assembled laborers. “We have come to the far end of the world and you would let a little sand stop you? Gather your strength, men, and let's pull together again. All at once, now!”

Iquila moved to stand at the front of a line and picked up the rope. All the men did the same and, at Wum Lon’s renewed signal, they all pulled against the tremendous weight of the doors.

Again, at first there was no movement. “Keep pulling, gentlemen,” yelled Iquila through gritted teeth.

Suddenly, there was a rumble at the doors and a small trickle of sand cascaded down from the top. With a deeper, rolling grind, the door opened a fraction of an inch, enough to see through. Iquila rallied the men again and they redoubled their efforts.

The sound from the doors threatened to collapse the entire trench, but they slowly, laboriously moved apart, pulling three feet wide. It was enough for Lon. Before the ropes had gone slack, she was shining her light through the door and excitedly walking into a part of history unknown to anyone in the modern world.

-----

Inside the chamber, Lon’s light bounced off columns and structures covered in dirt. There appeared to be statues scattered around on an open floor, half buried in the sand. There was a wide semi circle of columns around the statues and, beyond those, the light caught aisles of shelving, filled with dirt, stretching out into the darkness in all directions.

Captain Iquila entered the chamber and stood next to Lon, his amber eyes taking in all that the light exposed. They were breathless with the extent of the discovery.

The light finally shone on a small round globe, roughly in the center of the statues and columns. It was cradled in a stone basin that would have stood four feet high if the floor was clear, but now, only barely topped the sand.

When Lon’s light caught the globe, she stopped. Her hand nearly dropped the light and her heart felt like it would explode. “It can't be,” she whispered. “It was supposed to be destroyed.”

Iquila stood reverently aside. Lon took a small step, finding it difficult to even breathe. She then took another, and another, before running up, on her hands and knees, to examine the globe only a nose length away.

“The Mishmi Bolaam!” Lon spoke in an excited gasp. She turned to Iquila, who was now approaching and kneeling down to her level. “This is the world! Do you see? It's the world as they knew it, five thousand years ago!” Her voice fell into a broken sob. Lon found that she was laughing and crying at the same time.

The immensity of the discovery was overwhelming, to the point that Iquila had to take her by the shoulders and sit her down on the ground several feet away. Lon slowly caught her breath and faced Iquila, gripping his arm with surprising strength.

“The Mishmi Bolaam. It was, no is, an artifact, referenced throughout antiquity, as the official record of the ancient world. There are many stories about it that can't be true, stories about it being alive and choosing the leaders of the ancient kingdoms, or that it would change or rearrange itself without people doing it. But it was kept by the Ilksar and used by the kingdoms to draw their boundaries. Each nation or empire would be represented by a different gem or mineral and, if there was ever a dispute, the Mishmi Bolaam would be referenced and the Ilksar would act as mediators.”

She got back to her feet and approached the small globe again, her voice gaining strength and starting to echo around the chamber.

“If the stories are true, just the material value of it would be immense, much less the historical value. But, most importantly, it should tell us all of the old kingdoms. It will have names and borders and…” Lon lost her words as she reached the globe and knelt back down.

She gently reached out and brushed away the dirt. Under the inches of sand, she exposed a small area of glimmering redness, then, next to it, matte green. Her breath caught in her throat again, as she was awestruck by each brushstroke.

Suddenly, there was a resounding crash from the shelves on the edge of the chamber. Lon and Iquila, both startled, jumped to their feet and looked around. There was movement in the shadows at the edge of their lights.

Iquila motioned for Lon to stay where she was, and he slowly approached the aisle of shelves where they had noticed the movement. As he reached the columns, another skittering movement came from his left, deeper into the chamber.

Lon had risen to follow Iquila and, as she turned to see where the new sound had come from, she caught the image of a man, doubled over, as though trying not to be seen, scampering between the aisles. She shone her light directly at it, but, like an ancient ghost, there was nothing there.

Iquila made eye contact and she could see determined confidence in his face. Somehow, she doubted that Iquila would let anyone, or anything for that matter, keep him from fulfilling his mission to support Lon. She felt she could trust him to capture whoever was in this chamber.

Iquila moved slowly in between the bookcases, stepping softly to avoid making sound with his boots. When he reached the end of the shelf, he darted around the corner, then stepped back in surprise. There was no one there. The next passage was empty.

Lon turned back towards the center of the chamber and suddenly cried out loud. “It's gone!” The basin that had held the globe was empty. As though there really was a ghost, it has disappeared.

Iquila was immediately at her side. “Come, they couldn't have gone far. Stand by the door and call for my first mate to watch with you. I will follow them. If they try to escape, you will stop them at the door.”

The surety of his voice was contagious and Lon realized the logistics of the situation. Whoever was in the chamber must be working alone, it would be too dangerous to have a second person in the room, it just increased the chances of being discovered. There may be other exits from the room, but none of them had been excavated, so the thief was either going to run through the open door, or try to hide in the depths of this ruin before Iquila caught them.

Iquila looked towards the basin and saw a set of boot tracks that didn't belong to either Lon or himself. He noticed that the left foot pressed deeper than the right. Obviously, this had to be the thief. He ran after the tracks. Running through sand is difficult, adding the heavy boots the crew had worn to protect themselves from the heat made it arduous, but Iquila maintained his physical conditioning and knew he would not be outrun by anyone in his crew.

The tracks led back into the stacks of bookshelves. Iquila could hear his quarry shuffling in the sand. Once, he saw an area where it appeared they had tried to climb on top of the shelf, but apparently the shelf had broken under the weight and the thief had continued to run.

Suddenly, Iquila rounded a corner and was tackled around the waist. The bandit had been waiting and threw Iquila to the soft ground, trying to smother him with his bulk.

Iquila managed to keep one arm free, but his opponent was large and obviously very strong. Every time Iquila managed to push himself one way to escape, the attacker pulled him back and tried to pin him back to the ground.

“Riylo,” Iquila grunted under the weight of his adversary. “How do you plan to get away from here, now? Did someone hire you to join my crew?”

The large deckhand laughed. “How did you know it was me, Captain? Surely I'm not the only fellow on your ship that you don't trust.” Riylo sat up and looked down at the Captain, keeping him trapped between his knees.

Iquila saw an opportunity. He reared his hips, while pulling on the shelf next to him, throwing Riylo sideways, while tipping the shelf over on top of him. Riylo threw his hands up and tried to turn away, giving Iquila the chance to scramble out of the way.

Riylo was a second too slow. The shelf came down on his broad shoulders and he was pushed into the sand as his arms and legs collapsed under him.

“I trust all my men, until they prove that they can't be,” Iquila spoke sternly. “You are the one man who hasn't had the chance to prove himself, until now. You also are the only one who limps, leaving uneven tracks. Now, tell me where the globe is. I will have the rest of the crew dig you out once it's secure.”

Riylo’s eyes shifted to a mound in the sand next to Iquila. “It's under there. I suppose you'll send me to the brig? No food until we get back to port, huh?”

Iquila dug up the object and carefully examined it in his hands. “I will treat you humanely, sir. I am no monster, nor is it my place to exact justice on you. But you will be kept in observation and you will be turned over to the authorities in port.”

This announcement brought Riylo to exasperation, which he expressed heartily as Iquila returned to the entrance with the globe in hand. He found Lon and First Mate Quine standing nervously by the door. When he arrived, Lon rushed to take the globe out of his hands.

She held it in the light that streamed through the door and they were all mesmerized by the glittering scintillations thrown around the room. “It's truly marvelous, Madame Lon,” said Captain Iquila as he led them back outside.

1 Month Later

“Over one million scrolls and books. Honestly,” the normally serious voice of Wum Lon carried a tone of girlish excitement as Iquila overheard her speaking to the reporter.

His crew had retrieved Riylo and secured him in the brig, before carrying him to the nearest port. Upon turning him over to the authorities, Captain Johuan Iquila restocked his stratoship with supplies and returned to Lon. Soon an actual caravan of reporters, historians, archeologists and the generally curious followed.

The initial survey revealed over one million separate records from antiquity, each dating over four thousand years old. There were hundreds of statues and busts from ancient historical figures; frescoes and murals depicting scenes from battles, the coronations of kings, even simple pastoral landscapes.

But the most profound object was the Mishmi Bolaam. Its historical value was priceless, depicting the borders of every ancient kingdom. Each time the borders changed, through conquest or treaty, a new layer would be laid on top of the old. This solid globe, large enough to fit in both hands, was made of the most precious gemstones and minerals, making its material value priceless, as well.

The excavation would take years to fully uncover all the history that was contained in that chamber. Lon would spend fifty years before finally retiring, as the most prolific historian in the

world.

And Captain Iquila, that dauntless leader of the Wayse of Trisson, continued to ply the skies, in search of new adventures.