The Third Scroll by Dana Marton Read Free Book Online Page B

not by a flat roof but something that looked like a giant bowl turned upside down. They called it a dome.”
    She gave no indication that she heard me, but I went on with the tale.
    “The outside they covered in sheets of lustrous gold. The inside of the building was one large open space, with seats enough for multitudes. They painted the ceiling blue and attached golden symbols for all the stars as they stood in the moment of the creation of the world. So exact were their measurements that scholars came from distant kingdoms to study them.”
    I glanced at Keela, and although she did not look in need of clarification, I explained anyway. “Scholars were magical people who studied all things and could explain even the unexplainable.” I did not know anything more about their strange order than that.
    “In exchange for seeing the Map of Eternity, they brought wondrous gifts, metals many times the strength of iron, and lamps that used less oil and burned ten times brighter than the ordinary ones. They even taught the people of the Forgotten City how to make water come to their houses, so nobody had to pull water from a well or go to the creek.”
    This had always seemed the most impressive part of the tale to me, and as a child, I had often wished the secrets of the Forgotten City were still known to us.
    “These scholars gladly gave any knowledge they had for a glimpse at the Map of Eternity, for when they compared it to the position of the stars of their own times, they could tell many things that passed before in the world and even predict events that were to come.”
    I went on, for her sake as much as my own. I needed to think about something else than what would happen to me if I failed to restore her health.
    “Other strange people came to the Forgotten City too, philosophers, the wise men of the world. They came together in the Forum—their name for the building with the dome that held the Map of Eternity—and by sharing their knowledge, they increased it a hundredfold. The three Guardians of the city asked only one thing of all these masters of knowledge—that before they left, they wrote their wisdom onto scrolls to preserve in that place. The walls of the Forum were covered in holes from floor to ceiling, like honeycomb. And these recesses held all the knowledge of the world.”
    I wondered what Keela would have said to such a thing could she have talked. Many of the Shahala did not believe the myth of the Forgotten City and thought of it as another of our many tales that were but entertainment for small children. My mother, however, talked about it often and with such detail as if she had been there, so it lived vividly in my memory.
    “I do not know what to tell you,” I said to the pale-faced girl and squeezed her hand. “Each person must choose what they believe.”
    The breeze brought the smell of baking bread from the kitchen and the sound of servant women singing. I could see the blue sky through a small window that stood open to let in fresh air. It seemed as if all life stretched out there, shut away from me, and I was already buried in the dim chamber with the listless body that lay on the bed.
    The thought clenched my stomach and replaced the hunger of my missed morning meal with nausea. I had not seen any Kadar tombs around the House of Tahar. Maybe like the Shahala, they had sacred places to rest their dead. Did they bury the spiritless bodies in the hillside as my own people did? Or did they use caves like some foreigners? Did they burn the bodies until only the bones remained?
    Everything I had ever heard about funerals in distant lands flooded my terrified mind, as my thoughts circled back to the same unimaginable horror again and again—what it would be like to be buried alive.
    Keela whimpered, startling me out of my anxious wonderings. I wiped her brow, frustrated that I could not do more, and tucked Kumra’s red silk coverlet around the girl’s body. I held Keela’s limp hand and