“I recognize some of the words.” It was almost as if he were talking to himself now, and Lulah's questions were what he had been asking himself as he sat by the fire. His concentration focused inward, and speaking through his thoughts gave them more weight. “I was looking backward to older languages, to see whether any of the lettering or glyphs matched any that I've read before. But I should have been searching differently. If this is from the top of the Divide, whoever wrote it is cut off from the rest of Noreela, and their language has developed in isolation. So I took some of the older, dead languages and tried to present them forward, imagining how they could have developed had they survived. And I started to see things.” He pointed to a splay of words halfway down one page, surrounding the image of a tall, thin humanoid figure with hands raised into a cloud above its head. “Old Narumian,” he said. “Except the structure is all turned around, and some of the words don't make sense. And there's a definite Old Cantrassan lilt to some of the spellings. Strange, but that's how it seems. It's like the roots of these languages were the same, and . . .” He shook his head and blinked rapidly a few times, trying to clear his eyes. Then he spoke a few Narumian words similar to those he saw, attempting to incorporate how the alteration would affect their articulation. It felt wrong in his throat and the words hung heavy on the air.

“What was that?” Lulah said.

“I'm not sure.”

“Well, I'm going to walk around a bit more,” the Serian said, but Ramus barely felt her leave. He was there on his own, and those just-uttered words hovering around his head, as though waiting to be unspoken.

He traced his finger across other pages, different lines, until he saw a line of writing that bore resemblance to an old Ventgorian tongue. Nomi may have heard these words, but she would not recognize them written down. The lettering was different— there seemed to be more letters in this alphabet, at least thirty as opposed to the twenty-four in modern Ventgorian—but Ramus whispered his way along the line.

Something touched his cheek. He started, dropping the pages, standing and stumbling back. He scanned the camp quickly and saw that there was no one there. Putting his hand to his face he found a few specks of dust clinging to his stubble, wind-blown grit that had struck him like a soft fingertip.

“And now I'm spooking myself before sleep,” he said, but in truth he was enthused by his breakthrough with the parchments. He would sleep for a while now, let his unconscious work on the problems. And in the morning, while Lulah prepared breakfast, he would peruse the pages once more.