RECAP

The folio has thin wood covers, and contains loose sheets of paper covered with dense text in cipher. Burned onto the cover is a reproduction of a famous woodblock print of Three Banners Pass. Round clouds scud over the pass, with Keizai princes depicted heroically standing against the Khalq hordes.

It took some time, but the cipher turned out to be a mathematical formula where the date of the battle in Three Banners Pass provided the key to decoding the text.

I stand in the bones of a city, swallowed by the white ash of the Hedj. Only the lintels of the doorways are uncovered and they are too narrow for a man to walk into. The Khet burns on the horizon from north to south, dirty red and hot all day and night. Doyvet says that we are still days away from where it becomes too hot to get any closer.

Some entries concern an expedition into the Hedj in search of a cave beneath the ash. It takes some sorting to get them into the correct order.

These tunnels were old when the iaret came. Their secrets lurk behind polished smooth walls. The Rinpoche speaks even less now; if he is overwhelmed here what hope do I have of comprehending. I have only my goal. A great working was performed here and I must know how.

The narrative resumes after some sort of discovery, referred to only obliquely.

This will serve. All these pieces must fit some day: the tales of the kindred seer, charts of the other ocean, the flames pouring eternally between worlds. It may be that now I can peer at the inner movement of existence more than any mortal soul in centuries but it is not enough. There is little joy to be had in finding only clues, but I have spilt and spent blood for less. The return to Baltine territory will be more difficult without Doyvet and his squad.

Other pages concern meetings with a Khalqist city, but it is not clear if these came before or after the expedition.

Grey dunes roll by as the Anthem knifes through them. I know this is for my benefit: Jeen observed more circumspect navigation before we made contact. The jirga looks to impress me with their invincibility, the strength of their machines, their carelessness of the elements. They needn’t, I know they can be in position at the appointed time, with the correct enticement.

Interspersed are observations of the desert landscape, along with mention of the writer’s father.

It was today that we received word of father’s death. Fitting, of course, that I should be among his murderers. He died before the walls of a city, perhaps like this one. Fighting in the ash and sand is like no other terrain. The soil drinks the blood and clings to everything, eager for more. It returns nothing and its thirst is never slaked. It just bakes dry again. I hate this land and everyone in it.

The remaining papers are all invoices and reports on the formation of the Belligidor mercenary company. The writer sought out various commanders, and dictated the structure of the company through intermediaries, making its formation seem organic.

The company is composed of a core of heavy infantry, skimirshing formations, and a small airborne squad on wyvernback. While was created specifically to serve the Marchioness, it would appear independent to any outsider, and probably to most of its members. It has taken short non-related contracts, recruits according to its own needs, and has control of its own finances.