Alar ignored our dynamic. "But without a key, it's impossible to decode. You'd need to find the same text written in both this language and the one we can read, and as Shovia pointed out, if such a text existed, it would have been found a long time ago."
I nodded. "Remember the cipher we invented?"
Alar chuckled. "That was all you from start to finish."
Shovia blinked. "What are you two talking about?"
"When we were teenagers, Alar and I created a secret language for passing messages. It looked like nonsensical scribbles unless you had the key—a piece of paper showing how our symbols mapped to letters."
"You made up a whole language?" She sounded impressed.
"A cipher, technically. Not a full language." I turned back to the pillar. "But it taught me about language structure. The problem is that interpreting it is impossible without a key, and you are right that someone would have already discovered it if it existed."
"Hey." Morek had wandered over during our discussion, and now he clapped a hand on my shoulder. "Archeologists find new things all the time. Your key might still be found one day."
I appreciated his encouragement, but logic was logic. If Shaman Saphir Fatewever, who'd lived for a thousand years,hadn't found a translation key, one probably didn't exist.
"You have a good eye, Cadet Teress," Saphir said from behind me.
I spun around to see him standing a few feet away with Moki perched on his shoulder as usual. How long had he been listening? The shaman had a way of materializing from thin air.
"Thank you, Shaman." I suddenly felt self-conscious.
"What makes you think that these symbols are a written language rather than symbolic art?" He sounded curious rather than mocking, which made me more confident.
"Several things. First, the directional flow. The symbols consistently move from left to right, which suggests reading order. Second, complexity variations. Some symbols are simple, others elaborate, which often indicates different grammatical functions. Common words tend to be simpler. Third, positional meaning. Certain symbols only appear at the start of sequences, others only at the end. That's structural, not decorative."
Saphir's eyebrows rose. "Interesting. You've figured all of that out only from observing these symbols for a few minutes?"
"I'm good at recognizing patterns." The words came out defensive. "I like solving puzzles and mysteries."
"He invented a secret language with his cousin," Shovia offered, her skepticism apparently forgotten. "When they were teenagers."
"A cipher," I corrected automatically. "Not the same thing. A cipher is a system for encoding and decoding messages in a way that is unreadable to anyone who doesn't know how to reverse the process."
"What prompted you to do that?" Saphir asked.
"Annoying tutors," I said.
I explained about Alar and me needing ways to communicate that our tutors couldn't intercept. How we had started with simple letter substitution and gradually built something more complex, with symbols that combined to create meaning.
"It taught me about language structure," I finished.
Saphir nodded sagely. "So, a translation key is necessary to unlock the language of these symbols."
"It's the only way. Without something bilingual, we'll be just guessing at meanings. We could assign any translation to any symbol and never know if we were right."
Saphir was quiet for a moment, studying me with those ancient, wise eyes of his. Then he smiled. "Perhaps we'll get lucky and find such a document." He winked.
Wait, was he mocking me?
My face heated. Of course, he was.
I was just a first-year cadet, an Elurian, and I was suggesting that I could solve what Elucian scholars had puzzled over for centuries. He probably found me arrogant, or just stupid.
"How much longer until Nyxath returns?" Ravel walked over, either having not heard the entire discussion about deciphering the ancient language of the temple or ignoring it. "It'll be dark soon, and I'd rather not have cadets in underground chambers at night."
"Nyxath didn't expect me to need her so soon," Saphir said. "So she wasn't immediately available, but she's on her way."
