Free Beneath the Eye of God (The Commodore Ardcasl Space Adventures Book 1) by Lee Payne Page B

here?"
    "I didn't even know the roads were roads. I've heard stories about the giants' cities but I've never seen one."
    "Of course, we still haven't seen one. Just that arch. But that was spooky enough."
    "Maybe it will be less spooky on a full stomach," Ohan said hopefully.
    "I doubt it but I'm willing to try."
    The crackling fire guided them back to camp. The twins had used the sonic insect repeller to clean the moss and dirt from the base of one of the pillars. The odd carved figures they found there cast dancing shadows in the firelight.
    "Glyphs, children," the Commodore explained as they drew cautiously nearer. "The words of great kings forever emblazoned here to remind lesser mortals of their bold deeds. Only there's nobody left who knows how to read them. Let's eat."
    That night Ohan laid his bedroll facing the half-fallen arch that rose silent and dark against the roof of leaves behind it. He tried to imagine the crowds of people who once passed along the road beneath it, some outward bound on business far away, others entering this great portal of a busy city under the watchful eye of the guards who manned watchtowers on either side. Ohan listened in the sighing stillness for their long dead footsteps but heard nothing. He searched with his mind for their faded images but saw only the warm darkness of the forest and a single strange intruder—the dark form of a half-fallen arch.
    Leahn too, watched the arch and tried to sleep. This night spent on the threshold of a lost forest city reminded her somehow of nights long ago before feast days when the dawn promised great wonders if only she could endure the endless night. She drifted off to dreams of warm beds tucked in by loving hands, where in familiar shadows a child listened to mysterious rustling noises downstairs mingled in the cold pine air with the sweet smell of good things being baked and the laughter of people now long dead. In her dream the child began to cry.
     
    ***
     
    In the morning the twins cleaned the other pillar, recorded them both and then carefully covered them up again. Elor explained that they were probably looking at stylized portraits of gods and animals, each representing a letter, a sound or a phrase in some ancient language.
    "Then there's no way you can decipher it?" asked Leahn.
    "On the contrary, my dear," the Commodore said. "It clearly welcomes us to the great city, what's-its-name, built to the everlasting glory of whichever god by the mighty king, whoever-he-was, may his name be blessed forever. That's what they all say, with minor variations. We just don't know whether to read it right side up, upside down or backwards. If we find more glyphs, we might be able to start filling in some of the blanks."
    "But you gave the place a name yesterday," Ohan said.
    "Did I?"
    "You called it Rome," Leahn added. "You said all the roads led here."
    The Commodore nodded. "And so they do. We saw that from our aerial survey. We stand at the gates of one of the great cities of antiquity, a builder of roads, a seat of empire and a far-flung commerce. But it's not Rome. That was another empire on another world. And how all the roads could have led to that far-off Rome, I don't know. I looked it up once. It was on a little narrow peninsula."
    He climbed aboard his horse, turned it toward the arch and urged it forward. "The important thing is that these people, whoever they were, could write. If they wrote in books, we may make a profit on this dustball after all."
    They rode for some time without seeing any more mounds, though the twins, riding off in opposite directions a short distance from the road, reported that the ground was more uneven than usual. The Commodore muttered something about "suburbs" as they continued on.
    Toward midday the road seemed to open out into a large, relatively flat area still overgrown with trees, though they seemed smaller and more widely spaced. It was as if the river they had been following had suddenly flowed into a