Ujjayini, 1180 CE
Eshaan had visited the palace archives only once before, and that visit had lasted less than an hour. At the time, he had been looking for an astronomical manuscript that had supposedly been transferred from Pataliputra to Ujjayini more than twenty years earlier. The archivist had shown him several catalogues, two damaged registers, and a collection of copied observations, but none of them had provided a clear answer. Eshaan had eventually left with more questions than he had brought in.
This time, he knew which record he wanted to find.
The difficulty was that he did not know its title, its date, or even whether it was a book. All he had was an archivist's recollection of a circular mark on an old register, a notation from the Vedha Shala that referred to the Sixth Seat, and a line stating that a custodial transfer had proceeded west. It was not much to work with, but it was more specific than his earlier searches.
