162: A Mystery

A Mystery

At least 10 minutes passed before Daneel was able to take a step toward the naked mage.1

Walking up to him with his lips pressed into a thin line, he nudged him with the tip of his shoe to see whether he would wake up. The man just said something under his breath that Daneel couldn't understand, then promptly rolled onto his stomach and dozed off, his snores echoing on the empty land that was silent except for the sounds he was making.

He was thoroughly out cold. Bending, Daneel picked up his hands to ensure that what he had seen from a distance was true.

As he felt them with his fingers, he saw that there was no doubt about it. They were hardened with use, dappled with many wounds that indicated that they had been inflicted when sharp things were handled. They were also burned here and there, the skin having gone just a faint bit tougher at the spots where the damage was still healing.

Walking back to the other two mages, he examined them both. Feeling only a faint bit of shame, he even stripped them completely to check their bodies for signs that might tell more of the tale.

The one he checked first was the man who had created those hammers made of mud. His body was the same, and in fact, his hands had seen even tougher use than the other.

An audible gasp escaped his lips when the leader's body turned out to be worse than the other two. He had fully been expecting that at least this man might show signs of having led a sheltered life, but no. All three of them had lived like slaves.

Choosing a boulder nearby, Daneel sat down and put both his hands around his head. Bending down, resting his elbows on his knees, he stared at the earth as if it held the secret to what he had just observed.

It made no sense. It made no sense at all!

The system has the ability to find out if he was lied to. Alex hadn't lied. And besides, what he had said had corroborated with what all of the citizens of the beggar king's city thought of the Ushanbos.

There was another source of information that confirmed that he hadn't been lied to, or made a fool in any way. In the vast store of data given by the beggar king, the Ushanbo Empire was marked clearly, and all over it, on the map in his room, the man had scribbled many plans that he wished he could carry out to save the slaves he claimed were being tortured day and night by these 'monsters' who had forgotten their roots.

The three in front of him made it clear that the truth was anything but what Noraldin, and most others believed. There was a secret here, and the fact that it was so close that Daneel almost felt as if he could touch it infuriated him to no end. On further thought, the thing that angered him the most was that he saw no way in which this encounter would end with him walking away with the mystery solved.

Originally, the plan had been to beat them into submission and even kill them, if needed. He had changed it to lean more towards the latter after seeing that they were mages, as he had really wanted to collect all the spells that they knew.

Now, knowing that what he had seen was hinting at a truth that would shake the foundation of the islands if it was known, he could no longer go ahead with anything that he had thought of before. He really wished that he could wake up the three and ask them the truth directly, but because they would be walking out of this alive, he would simply be giving the investigators a clear idea regarding who he was, and what his intentions might be.

No, it was safest if he left now, but Daneel couldn't make his feet move. All the ways in which what he had just discovered might fit into the narrative regarding the islands tumbled around in his head like dice that had been spilled into a vacuum, spinning, spinning, spinning unto eternity. Unwilling to accept the truth, he also kept searching for something else he might be able to do even though it was pretty much established that there was no answer he would like.

Finally, he was only able to get to his feet after scolding himself thoroughly, insisting that he should see what was arrayed so clearly in front of him and stop acting like a little child who wasn't getting what he wanted. When his eyes wandered to the mages, though, a sudden idea struck him, and even though it made him feel like a thief, he ran to the sets of robes that lay to the side of the two naked Ushanbos and started to rifle through them.

Most of what he pulled out supported the startling truth that these three had recently been slaves. They seemed to have thrown on these robes hastily, as some of the tools that were used daily by slaves all over the islands were present in the pockets sewn into the inside of the lavish garments embroidered with silver leaves.

It felt incredibly odd when he pulled out the first item. It was a small hand pick, meant to dislodge small crystals in mines. Seeing it emerge from robes that no slave, or even, no free islander would ever have the means to afford even after working for years felt strange, to say the least. He went through the rest of the items quickly, but in the end, he found nothing that could help.

A few minutes later, he got up and sighed, looking down at the two piles of items arranged neatly beside the two sets of robes. Primitive drawings that must've been made by children, dolls that might have been meant as gifts, scraps of bread and cheese that would serve snacks… no matter how much Daneel arranged these everyday items, there was no pattern that showed itself, no magical combination that suddenly explained how these people, who should have led the life of Kings in their own Empire had turned out to be laborers who had recently worked almost as hard as he used to every day before the rebellion.

With another sigh, he made to turn away, but at the last moment, he paused when the sun peeked through the clouds, shining on the robes, themselves, which he hadn't paid much attention to after emptying all the pockets. With a frown, he bent, convinced that he had seen something even though there was no hint of it now.

After a half-hour spent painstakingly going over each and every inch of the expensive garments, he finally succeeded. He even let out a happy yelp when he found it, hidden cleverly in the form of a button that looked normal on the surface.

It was the one at the very top of the robes, near the neck, meant to hold the two sides together. It was half the size of his palm, and although it looked normal lying on its back on his hand with the crest of the Ushanbos engraved on its top, the moment he turned it over, the breath hissed out of him from between his teeth as his eyes fell upon words written there in a tiny script.

For a long, long time after he read them, Daneel sat in silence, repeating them over and over again in his head.

It read:

"In the light, he died, for his shadow to live. We await, to rise. We await, to return. We await, for darkness."

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