Demon Heart | Prince of the Barren Sands Volume 1

Chapter 9 (Part 1 of 4)

"Have you found anything?" Kaden, only wearing his urk, and having left Hernah to sleep off their latest round of lovemaking, hovered over Sahl's shoulder.

His friend and slave sat at a small desk packed with parchments, scrolls, and books while rubbing his weary eyes. "Yes," he said. Then added, "And no."

"All right, since you know I'm going to ask you what you mean by that, don't make me." Kaden's tone had the sharp crack of a master's whip behind it. One that had been growing more and more prominent.

"Of course I do." Sahl replaced his current book with a loosely bound stack of parchments tied along its one edge with various colored strings. "So, I've been researching Imeron history, like you asked. And you know how it is. Normally we work with oral accounts. Simply because most people don't know how to read. Usually we'll go back pretty detailed three, four, maybe five kings from the present. But, after that, things start to get glossed over and become a little more hazy."

"Good thing then, as alchemists, we were taught to read."

"Yes. Now that I have access to the Royal Library, I have access to the source material behind those verbal traditions. What I'm seeing are things that don't make a lot of sense. Especially when I go back further than the most recent rulers and to about a thousand years ago."

"Here's the point where you tell me this has something to do with Ieron and the Rohs Fang?"

"Maybe." Sahl thumbed through the brittle pages of his current book. He was careful not to break the paper around the chipped holes through which the string ran. "Hard to tell. There are no references to either. And definitely nothing about mysterious princesses ruling the desert between the modern day principalities. Or these Sava Warrioresses. Look here." Sahl displayed an open page for Kaden. "Everything back to this point here is very detailed. Page after page after page of droning specificity. Detailed lineages. Flowery records of deeds. Witness testimonials to events of all sorts." He flipped the pages back further in time. "Then, things start to get a little more murky. Pages obviously missing. Some that are there are torn in half. Others were replaced entirely."

"Well, it was a thousand years ago. And it wouldn't be odd for scribes to replace damaged pages in order to preserve what was there if they caught the damage in time."

"I get that. Different times. But it's not consistent. Sometimes a king's reign is very well chronicled. On par with today's standards. But more than half the time what's within the pages, mostly where newer pages have obviously replaced old ones, they are at best, and most politely described as anomalies."

"What kind of anomalies?" Kaden was intrigued by the findings. Even if they weren't discovering what he wanted.

Sahl showed off about three pages that showed little wear, but were a record from a long time ago. They were obviously much newer than the ones both before and after. "What's really the problem is the types of records on these replaced pages just aren't the same."

"What do you think?"

"If I had to place a wager? Not only were these pages replaced, but so was the history itself."

"Interesting." Kaden could see what concerned Sahl as he browsed the words on the pages for himself.

"Yeah. It is. Plus, some of the names just don't make sense. Like you can see how names transition over the records. Some across multiple reigns. But some of these names are more like just random combinations of letters meant to sound like names. Almost as if they were just made up to fill space."

Pondering what he was seeing, Kaden sought an explanation. "Are you saying someone has rewritten history? Perhaps a successor trying to make his predecessor seem less great?"