The God's Game

Friends

River retreated in to his chambers after breakfast.His master had withdrawn in to his own bedroom, saying that River can have rest of the day for himself.

Once inside , River locked the door and drew his curtains. He contemplated for a minute and dragged his drawer across the floor and blocked the door with it, ensuring  no one can barge in .

River then crawled under his bed and pulled out a heavy book.He sat on his bed and inspected the volume. Aged and weathered ,its parchments bore the yellowish tint of time ,their edges frayed and fragile,each crease telling tales of countless hands that have turned its ancient leaves.

River felt guilt setting heavily on his heart. If he gets the chance in the future ,he will apologize to Einar for breaking in to his ancestral hall in the dead of the night and robbing an ancient script.

Im not stealing it ..Im burrowing it ...for indefinite future .

Yesterday, while he was cleaning ,River had wandered in to an inside chamber of the hall ,trying to find a pail. The room was cluttered with all sort of things,both broken and abandoned. He carefully tip toed around ,trying to find the bucket Einar swore was there .

A decayed wooden floor board gave away under his weight and his foot sank in ,alarming him greatly. When he recovered his wits ,he realized that there was a little compartment beneath where he stood so he took the  floorboard off with great effort, revealing a book ,tightly wrapped in silk.

The cloth was mostly damaged , but the book was in a good condition. River's first instinct was to show Einar what he found ,considering that he found it inside a secret compartment under his ancestral hall.
River flipped through it ,squinting his eyes in the dark , trying to see whats written inside.

The pages were inked in a language River did not recognized. He thought it might be a sword forging manual or something of sorts until he felt the characters looked vaguely familiar.

The short abstract strokes, and loopy curved lines ..he had surely seen these characters somewhere before ... but where ?

The gold !!

Thr gold rods from Saltstand tax office had characters identical to these embossed on them ! River flipped frantically through its pages and realized it was indeed the same characters .

He had read sbout 20 books on ancient linguistics while he was recovering from Shu Huxley's assault but could not find a single charcter map that even resembled those on the rods.

What connection does Whitlocks has to the scrap metal ? What was in the book?

Gears in River 's head was turning rapidly. He needed to find a way to decipher this script,and  for that he needed to take the book out of the hall. But how? He could ask Einar ,but then he would have to explain the whole situation to him ,which Kaizer forbade River from doing. River couldnt possibly take it now without Einar noticing .

But if he left it , he would never get a chance to come back and get it. Kaizer sent hounds behind Einar everywhere he went and since River was his precious deciple ,took the liberty to send hounds to watch over him ,too. He will know if River came back to Whitlock ancestral hall without Einar.

He left the book where he found it , determined to think of something later. As if West god favoured him , Kaizer chose that precise night to get black out drunk.

With the hounds out of the way , the only problem was how to go down the mountain without anyone noticing. Security was tight , and if he was caught lurking around it would be very awkward to explain things to Schulz.

That's when River remembered the secret passageway .  Einar was the one who had shown him how to open it , in a very passionate lecture about leaver and pully systems . River never dreamt the day would come when he had to use that knowledge against Einar himself. River tried to sooth his guilty conscious , telling that once he deciphered the book he will return it back, repair the floorboard and never even think about the passageway again.