“No, no, no! You are absolutely, entirely and utterly incorrect!” Caste raged not twenty minutes later. He was arguing heatedly with Emeri who was not only holding her own, she looked as though she was enjoying it.

“I really think I am not.” She retorted, gesturing to the tapestry. “This predates Himal’s doctorate on which all of the Order of the Grail’s assumptions…”

“Assumptions!”

“Yes, assumptions,” Emeri continued, not bothered by Caste’s interjection, “that the mount of Maul is a naturally occurring phenomenon.”

Caste stuck his hands through his hair, the red strands sticking up, as wild as the discussion they were having. “How could it be anything but a naturally occurring phenomenon? It’s a mountain! That spews out monsters!”

“Yes but has it always been that way?” Emeri argued. “Consider that monsters have always been superior in strength to humans and their very nature demands that they feed on our flesh. How is it possible that humans survived at all to the point of developing clans, let alone the knowledge and manpower to build the wall? Surely if what the Order of the Grail maintains as truth were the case, monsters would have become the dominant species, consuming all humans then dying out themselves when there was no one left to eat!”

“Obviously they restrained themselves, roaming the south of Terramaul until…”

“Until when?” Emeri folded her arms. “Until they ran out of food sources?”

“Well…yes.”

“Human food sources…as in…my people? The people of Maul?” Caste floundered for a moment. “Even I will agree with the Order that monsters don’t eat livestock or wild animals. They’ll kill them but not eat. Clearly they had to be eating something…or someone.” She leaned against a pillar. “Which leads to a rather interesting conflict of theologies. Either the Order is wrong about the mount being a naturally occurring phenomenon…or they are wrong about my people being aberrations of humanity. Because, if my people existed in the south of Terramaul as legitimate humans, it was they that died first when the monsters began to infest our world.” Emeri put her hands on her slender hips. She was ready to keep arguing but saw the stricken expression in Caste’s eyes, covered by indignation and stubbornness. She paused and dropped her hands, breathing out. “I’m not trying to call into question the doctrine of the Order of the Grail…”

“Oh really?” He snapped which she ignored graciously.

“But it seems to me that there have been a number of assumptions made about the nature of Terra, Maul and the human race that don’t line up with the manuscripts in this library.”

Caste folded his arms and eyed her dryly. “Such as?”

“This tapestry,” Emeri explained, taking him to the pillar where a tapestry depicting the mountain of Maul stitched against dyed red fabric with black stick figures below and a lighter outline of mountains in the background, “has always been seen as the view from the wall.”

“Yes, that would seem to be accurate.” Caste said from between gritted teeth.

“And I would have agreed,” Emeri said gently, taking his elbow and propelling him to a table where she had a map laid out, “until you look at this map. Now, see the way the range behind the mountain of Maul is depicted?”

“I do.”

“Well, if you were standing on the north side of that range, the mountains would be on the left of the mount of Maul.” She ran her finger just above the line on the map. “However, if you look at the tapestry again,” she turned around, Caste with her, to look at the tapestry, “you see that the mountain range is on the right.” She faced Caste with bright eyes and expectation in her expression while he was less than receptive. “Don’t you see? If the tapestry had been made by those in the north, they would have put the mountains on the left. Even if you hung off the eastern edge of the continent, the mount of Maul would never have mountains to the right of it. It’s a geographical impossibility.”

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

Caste listened with a furrow on his brow.

“But if the tapestry is accurate, and there is no reason to believe that it is not, then it was made by humans who lived south of the mount of Maul…my people…”

He still said nothing. Emeri sighed and moved away. She suspected she had pushed him too far with her theories. She hadn’t meant to overwhelm or insult him. It was just so pleasant to be able to share her thoughts with someone. Being educated, even if only by books, set her apart from her people. If she didn’t open her mouth, she blended in with the background, both in the village and in the fort but the moment she did, Emeri could feel a yawning gap between herself and others. It wasn’t as if her own people were unkind or distant but Emeri yearned to debate and share ideas.

Terras wouldn’t let her.

Her own people wouldn’t understand her.

No wonder she spent so much time in the library.

She went to her desk and picked up her inkwell. She needed to make up more ink so she worked quietly as she usually did, grinding the mix until it was a powder then adding purified water. Thankfully there had been a book on the grinding and mixing of inks in the library and what with her ability to collect minerals from the mountains, Emeri never needed to beg Cleric Severo for ink. Parchment was not so easy to come by and soon she would need to ask him to request more brought in.

Cleric Severo resented any request that made him exert even the smallest effort. Emeri returned to her stood and sat down on her stool, sitting the ink well in its holder and dipped the brush into the mix.

“What if the tapestry is not as old as you think it is?” Caste’s voice floated to her through the deadened atmosphere of the library where the books seemed to soak all excess sound. Emeri glanced up. Caste was gazing at the offensive wall hanging, glaring at it to be precise. “Surely something that old would have fallen into dust by now.”

“That might have been the case except this tapestry was in a sealed chest, found in the foundations of the fort itself.” Emeri put the brush down.

“Even in a chest, I’m surprised it lasted a hundred years, let alone as many as you think it may have done.”

Emeri licked her lips. “It was not the only item in the chest. There were documents too, manuscripts…all old and very precious.”

Caste turned to her, intrigued by the notion of such unique manuscripts. “What happened to them?”

“I do not know.” Emeri sighed. “I never saw them. Cleric Severo was drinking heavily one night and rambled about the chest and its contents. He couldn’t be persuaded to tell me where they were while he was soaked and when he sobered up, he was less than…receptive to my enquires.” She picked up the brush again, gazing at the work in front of her. “There is, I suppose, no way to really know when the chest was put into the foundations…certainly not who…”

Caste let her work, mulling over the options in his mind. The manuscripts might not be as confirming to the doctrine of the Order of the Grail as he would prefer…but Caste’s intrigue was piqued and when it came to archives and documentation, he was a master at working out how to work it out.

“Perhaps we might never know without a doubt who hid the contents of the chest,” he admitted, glancing briefly in Emeri’s direction, “however…we could narrow it down…”

Emeri’s head lifted, her dark brown eyes bright with hope. “How?”

Caste smiled smugly. “We of the Order of the Grail have our ways…”

Emeri raised her eyebrows. “Care to share those ways?”

Needing to claw back some ground from the rather clever Maul woman who had caught Caste completely off guard, the young cleric decided to include her in the process, just so she would be able to comprehend his brilliance.

“You have fort records in the library?”

“Not the current ones. They are with Cleric Severo.”

“But all the past records?”

Emeri nodded and stood up, leading Caste to a dark and somewhat forgotten corner of the library. “These are all the records of the fort,” she explained, “but I do not understand…”

“You said the chest was sealed in the foundations of Fort Omra?”

“Yes.”

“Then there should be a notation in one of these volumes about the work done regarding the foundations which would be signed off by the cleric assigned to the fort at the time.” Caste was rewarded with surprise and pleasure in Emeri’s expression.

“Oh! That’s brilliant…and if we line up the cleric with the knight who presided over Fort Omra…”

“We will have an idea of at least the bare minimum age that the tapestry is.” Caste preened a little then let out a gasp of air as Emeri thrust one of the volumes at him, taking up one in her own arms.

“Let’s get to it!”