The rear of any scriptorium was quite different from the outer room for customers. That of the Upright Quill was filled with tall, slanted scribing tables and matching stools, along with one large desk and a chair.
Although it was halfway to night’s first bell, lanterns still hung about, filling the space with saffron-colored light. Stacks and sheaves of blank, crisp paper and a few of the more expansive and traditional parchments were piled on shelves lining all the walls, except for the space where there was a heavy rear door. There were also bottles of varied inks, jars of drying talc and sand, binding materials, and other sundry tools and supplies. Everywhere lay scattered quills, blotting pads, bracing sticks to keep a scribe’s hand off the page, and trimming knives.
It was rather chaotic compared to what patrons saw out front.
Most of Pawl’s staff had gone home for the night, including his master scribe, Teagan. But he still awaited the return of two apprentices—Liam and young Imaret—sent off on an errand. He never sent anyone out alone after dark.
Pacing the floor of the workroom, he ran a hand through his shoulder-length black hair. Although a few strands of it appeared grayed, his face looked young. Glancing down, he noticed a smudge of chalk on his charcoal gray suede jerkin, but he didn’t try to rub it off. He was too preoccupied.
Spring had edged in and the nights were growing warmer, but Pawl had been trapped in the same stalled state since last autumn. Two seasons past, his shop—along with four others—had been almost overwhelmed by work from the Guild of Sagecraft. The guild had undertaken an enormous translation project. Pages upon pages of translator’s notes from a wild array of ancient tongues were sent out for transcription into more legible copies. Later came final transcription to finished pages. But the languages didn’t matter, for all materials were written in the sages’ Begaine syllabary, a script that few nonsages could fathom.
Though no one knew it, Pawl was one of the exceptions. A number of pieces he’d read had left him shaken.
He’d read every page that passed in and out of his shop, but there were too many gaps and disconnections. Likely the guild’s premins had purposefully made sure that no one shop, no one scribe, worked on any lengthy, contiguous passages.
Though Pawl had remained stoic and self-possessed, he had grown frantic for more information, as the pieces he’d seen didn’t answer his questions. His mind had churned with an urge he’d put aside so long ago. Then, two sages carrying back finished work from his shop to the guild had been murdered in an alley.
Everything changed—worsened—after that.
Before all of this, pages sent to varied shops were always mixed. Pawl had pieced together only a little of what he did read and much of it was incomplete. But after the murders, the Premin Council decided to have all transcription work completed inside their grounds, and only one scriptorium’s scribes were to be brought in to continue transcription.
Pawl a’Seatt made certain his scribes were the ones chosen, but it had cost him to make it so. Unfortunately, even then, his access to the work became more limited.
While on guild grounds, his scribes were individually cloistered. None of them saw what the others worked on, and none had the gift of memory that Imaret did.
Pawl himself was cut off almost completely.
On occasion, he was allowed to check on his scribes on the pretense of reviewing the quality of their work, but he was always watched. He could never pause too long at the shoulder of one of his people or it would be obvious that his attention was on the content and not the quality of those sheets.
He closed his eyes, and unwanted memories came ... or fragments more disjointed than those snippets of ancient writings sent out for transcription.
Had it truly been a thousand years—or was it less or more? Like so many among the fearful masses of nations long forgotten, he had gone to war, or tried to. Had he been compelled by a father, a conscription agent, or a tribal elder? Or had it been his own choice? Memories were sketchy things, like the simplistic renderings of a historian who hadn’t experienced the events he recorded.
Pawl remembered hints in the lengthy shadows of time that he’d gone south along the western coast, like so many other young men. He had no memory of actual war and comrades-in-arms. He did know that he never made it that far. But he remembered a white-faced woman.
Her shiny black hair hung in wild tendrils almost to the waist of her oddly scintillating robe. That fabric, like silk or elven shéot’a, was covered in swirling patterns of flowers. It covered her small, lithe body, shifting over her diminutive curves. That full wrap robe or gown was like no attire of any people he’d ever seen. Had she come from somewhere far away, perhaps beyond the western ocean? And her eyes ...
He would never forget her eyes.
Almond-shaped and slightly slanted, they were not those of an elf perhaps suffering under some paling illness. She was far too short for that race. Her irises, seemingly black for an instant, had changed to something akin to clear crystal. Cold and uncaring as they fixed on him, they held hungered obsession as she had stepped closer on the rocky shore.
Pawl could no longer remember if he had touched her. He remembered only awaking beneath the surf, his lungs filled with saltwater.
Even beneath the water, in the darkness, his eyes could see, except for the cloud of blood floating around him. He choked in panic at first, and the chill water rushed in and out of his chest as he tried to breathe while clawing for the surface. When the breaking surf tumbled his body onto the stony shore, he was still trying to breathe ... and didn’t need to. He rolled onto his hands and knees and heaved out seawater in his lungs. Air rushed in to replace water, but it did not matter.
So much could be forgotten, and the longer one existed, the more one lost. Only those memories most precious, most horrid, lasted until they alone remained, disjointed and disconnected among newer memories that replaced the ones fading again and again over centuries.
And where was this woman he had seen only once on the night he’d awakened as from drowning ... with his throat torn open, his body cold to the core?
Pawl opened his eyes in the back room of his scriptorium. If he still existed, so must she. He had seen names in those scant sheets for transcription from the guild. Was she one of them? Could that be possible?
He ran his hands down his face. No matter the hatred and need that clung to those few, unbroken pebbles of memories, his responsibilities here came first. He had his existence, in his city, to attend.
The world he’d created here for himself was his best protection. He never lost sight of this, and he glanced at the unlocked back door, its stout iron bar leaning beside it. What was keeping Liam and Imaret?
Despite the guild having both slowed and altered the project, they still provided his shop with a good deal of other work. A journeyor in the order of Sentiology had recently returned from his first year’s assignment. Premin Renäld had engaged Pawl’s scriptorium to transcribe the young man’s journals for the guild’s archive. The deadline was today.
Upon arriving at the shop this evening, Pawl had found that his scribes weren’t finished. He sent Imaret and Liam to assure the premin of completion by tomorrow at closing. As a matter of principle, he kept all patrons fully informed. A one-day extension should cause no concern.