Descendants of the Scythians - Страница 11

The parchment meanwhile had gone dark brown throughout; on the dark brown rectangle, boldly standing out against the background of the table, not a single word could be made out. It even seemed to have collapsed somehow, spreading closer to the surface of the table, almost sticking to the white paper. The thought of what would happen to the mysterious piece of parchment next flashed through the minds of both Artem and Dmitro Borisovich simultaneously.

“Maybe it should be removed to a safer place,” said Artem uncertainly.

“Yes, I think we should do so, at least for now… though I’m afraid it’s a little too late!” the archeologist replied plaintively. “There’s a piece of paper underneath the parchment. Let’s try to put it the way it is into a suitcase or something. The thing is not to touch the parchment itself. Artem, fetch an empty suitcase, will you?”

In a minute, the suitcase was placed open on the table. Dmitro Borisovich and Lida took the paper with the parchment on it by the corners, and very carefully began lifting it…

“Watch it! Don’t breathe on it!”

But lo and behold! The stunned onlookers saw a small piece tear away from the parchment and soar into the air like a black piece of ash, disintegrating as it went down. One of the bits lit on Lida’s hand, and she did not even feel it touch her skin, so small and almost weightless it was. In a few moments, only two or three tiny brown pieces were left to be seen on the sheet of paper that Dmitro Borisovich and Lida were still holding. This was all that was left of the parchment that had been found in the bronze chest — a couple of small pieces of brownish gossamery substance.

Only one little piece the size of a postage stamp was still floating in the air. A draft was carrying it toward the door, and all the eyes followed it. The flake floated right to the door, turned over and disintegrated…

“Well, my friends, how long are you going to keep holding that empty sheet of paper?” the voice of Ivan Semenovich rang out. He was wearing a broad smile. “Of course, it’s too bad our parchment has ceased to exist, but nothing can be done about it. After all, we still have the photographs, and they’ll be of some help, right? Don’t grieve over the loss so heartbrokenly, Dmitro Borisovich! Besides, you’ve copied down the text, haven’t you?”

“Yes, I have,” the archeologist said gloomily. “I can’t be sure I’ve not made mistakes, though. The photographs.are our last hope.”

“Can you read and translate what’s written here? We’re dying to know what it says in some detail,” Ivan Semenovich said, feeling encouraging stares of Artem and Lida directed at him.

“I think I can.”

“That’s good, since, to the best of my knowledge, you’re the only person among us who can read ancient Greek. Let’s sit down and try to make out what it says. The text must be of extreme interest. It mentions gold, doesn’t it? If so, it concerns geology as well as your archeology.”

“How fast… how fast it disintegrated…” Dmitro Borisovich muttered as he sat down at the table. He pulled his handkerchierf out of his pocket and wiped his eyeglasses, misted over with perspiration. He put them back on and picked up the notebook with the text he had copied down. Lida was looking furtively over his shoulder. Artem chose to sit close to the chest, examining the tangled and intricate design on its top. They were reminiscent of some ornament, only not a single motif, not a single group of lines was repeated anywhere.

“I can’t say everything is absolutely clear to me as yet,” Dmitro Borisovich began, looking attentively at his notes. “As I’ve told you the text’s written in ancient Greek, but liberally mixed with another language, in all probability one of the Iranian group. But it is rather clear in general. Someone who wrote this parchment in the remote past… My, how fast it has disintegrated! How terribly fast! Right in front of otir eyes it turned to ashes… You all saw it happen…”

“Dmitro Borisovich, you’ve promised to translate what’s written here, and not to keep on bemoaning the sad fate of the parchment,” said the geologist, putting his hand on the grieving man’s shoulder.

“Yes, yes… It’s so painful to think about. Now, back to what I was saying: someone in ancient times wrote this parchment. Considering the fact that it has disintegrated so quickly, turned to ashes so to say before our very eyes…”

“Oh, Dmitro Borisovich, there you go again!”

“No, this time it’s to the point. Considering this fact, I can tentatively date the parchment as being at least twenty five hundred years old. In other words, the writer was a contemporary of the ancient Scythians. No doubt about it. But I must admit that the text does not make any mention of Scythians. Which makes it a little more difficult to attribute the document to some particular people… But of course we’ll make a joint effort to determine what’s what in due time. Here it says in my somewhat free thanslation with… er… some guesswork due to the words not known to me, since they’ve been borrowed from a language other than ancient Greek. So here it goes!”

The archeologist adjusted his eyeglasses, looked round again and began:

“’The one who wants… to find the treasure will do it… if he keeps going further and deeper into the cave… until he gets all the way to the spot shown on the map. He’ll find four heads and three horses to guide him… Beyond the torches pointing upwards and… torches pointing downwards he will find the fifth head and a boar. May the gods help him. He will find the treasure there. He will find there a lot of gold and… will dig it up… as I, Pronis, did. I found that gold and left it in its place. The one who reads this is a lucky man. He’ll take the map… and will find the gold in the walls as it was discovered by me, Pronis.’ That’s all, friends.”

In the deep silence that fell, one could hear the loud breathing of the dog.

Dmitro Borisovich wiped his eyeglasses again, looking at the listeners inquiringly with his myopic eyes.

“What do you make out of it?” he asked at last.

“Well, whatever it is, it’s not just a joke. It appears to be quite a serious document… a sort of testament,” said Ivan Semenovich.

“No, I don’t mean that. I mean that it has some very important information. It speaks about ‘a lot of gold in the walls,’ for example,” Dmitro Borisovich said as though thinking aloud.

“As long as it says something about gold in the walls, then we geologists must be all ears,” replied Ivan Semenovich. “Incidentally, the clues the parchment gives us shed light on some other things, too.”

“Like what?”

“I told you once that in the past attempts had been made to dig for gold in the Sharp Mount, remember?”

“Yes, we do,” affirmed Lida.

“It came to nothing then as negligible amount of gold had been found. The poor veins disappeared as close to the surface as the copper ones did… But if this parchment is accurate, and it is not just gold artifacts but real deposits, then…”

“Then what?”

“Then, apparently the gold veins must reappear exactly like the copper ones somewhere inside our naughty mount. Anyway, it opens some new vistas we didn’t expect…”

Ivan Semenovich grew pensive, reflecting upon his own supposition.

“But, Dmitro Borisovich, is Pronis really a Scythian name? It seems to have… I don’t pretend to know anything about it, but nevertheless… it seems to have a Greek ring to it…” Lida hazarded a guess.

“It does, beyond any doubt, sound Greek,” the archeologist supported Lida’s guess.

“And isn’t the language of the text Greek as well, even though there are foreign words in it?”

“So what of it?”

“What about the Scythians then? Where do they come in here? You said it was a Scythian document, didn’t you?”

“As a matter of fact, what I had in mind was that it has come down to us from the time the Scythians lived here in the vicinity of the Sharp Mount. In other words, I was referring to its age. That’s one thing. Second, proceeding from this fact, I assumed that…”

“All right, if it comes from the Scythians, why is it written in Greek and why is there a Greek name in it?” persisted the tenacious girl.

“As a matter of fact, some ancient Greeks could have found their way to this area too… say, some merchants. The ancient Greeks travelled very widely in general… But why should you pick on me, Lida, pestering me with all these questions? I’ve just hazarded a guess, quite plausible to my mind. Of course, I can’t prove it now with hard fact. But you keep battering me like a tiresome opponent in a scholarly debate.”

“Oh no, Dmitro Borisovich! The reason I’m asking all these questions is because I just don’t understand.”

“Besides,” said the archeologist, “there are some incomprehensible passages in this text.”

“Like where?” asked Ivan Semenovich.

“Well, for example here. What can it mean: ‘torches pointing upwards’ and ‘torches pointing downwards’? What are these ‘four heads’ and ‘three horses’? And further on — ‘the fifth head and a boar’? What did the writer mean by this?”

“Maybe it’s some kind of a code…” the girl hazarded another guess.

“No, I don’t think so.”

Then suddenly Artem’s voice rang out triumphantly:

“I know what kind of heads he means! The heads carved into the walls of the cave, some of which we’ve already found. And when we go deeper into it, we’re sure to find the rest the text mentions.”