K Parker - Shadow

Pages. He wasn't tired; at least, he was very tired but he knew perfectly well he wouldn't get to sleep. But the generous and thoughtful Falx Roisin, by his duly appointed agent Quartermaster Eolla, had provided for him in just such an emergency and ordained that he should be issued with a small pottery lamp and a book. Two books, in fact. The man was all heart.

He lit the lamp, chafing a knuckle on the tinderbox in the process, sat down in his chair and examined the two books. He hadn't given them a thought since he'd received them, hadn't even opened them to find out what they were called or what they were about. That was ungrateful of him.

The first one was quite old; the ink was brown, the parchment was almost translucent in places, and it creaked alarmingly as he opened it. How do you look after books? he wondered. Are you supposed to rub the bindings once a month with neat's foot oil, the way you do with harness and boots, or would that make the ink run? Did the stitching down the middle wear out, and if so, was it easy to replace?

He chose a page at random:

…Two pounds of chopped leeks, three cups of light white wine, a pound of raisins, half a pound of fresh celery and six eggs. First, hang the hare for twelve days. On the thirteenth day, remove the skin and guts, fillet and coat in flour. Pour the wine into a bowl…

A quick flick through confirmed his suspicions; it was all like that. He frowned, closed the book and put it on the floor. One to save, he decided, until he was really desperate. That still left the other book, which was not quite as old, though somewhat shorter and thinner. He was a little apprehensive about opening it; if it turned out to be another dud, could he take them both back to Eolla and demand to be allowed two replacements, or was he stuck with them for the duration of his service? He forced himself to remember that he'd had the pick of the books in the box, and had chosen these two of his own free will, purely on the basis of size. Nobody to blame but himself, and typical, he felt, of the luck he'd had so far in making choices.

He picked up the second book and decided that it probably wasn't going to bite him. This time, he started with the very first page:

The Complete Temple Of Wisdom

(That's more like it, he thought.)

Comprising a complete digest of all the other books heretofore written that merit the attention of scholars, soldiers, government officers and those of gentle birth and breeding, including but not confined to the books of religion, natural science, medicine, philosophy, law, the skills and crafts; the best works of the finest and most acclaimed divines, homilists, commentators and grammarians, historians, poets and writers of prose fiction; also including comprehensive tables of weights, measures, rates of exchange, statutes in force, common ailments and their symptoms and cures, fasts and festivals, prosody and metre newly explained, auspicious and unauspicious days; to which is appended the complete letter-writer, comprising over two hundred model letters for all occasions; the complete understanding of the counting-board, abacus and string tally; grammars and glossaries of all the known languages; the farmer's almanac and helpmeet (newly revised); the mariner's guide, including all necessary charts and tables of tides and a completely new and unabridged treatise on the practice of navigation by the stars; with over one thousand illustrations, diagrams and maps; by A Scholar of Sansory. Copied and bound at the sign of the Brown Dog in the precinct of the Old and New Temples, Sansory. Price: three quarters.

The last bit let the rest down, he reckoned; three quarters for all that wisdom. Admittedly the book was vilely copied in a tiny cramped hand on low-grade mutton vellum that had been scraped back at least three times, which probably helped to keep the price down. On the other hand, all the answers to all the questions in the world, not to mention ten pages of indices and a free bookmark, all for the price of a night in an inn-maybe that was all the concentrated wisdom of mankind was worth. That would explain a great deal.

Having nothing better to do, he looked up 'Poldarn' in the index. There was one listing, page 474; he flicked through, and read: An obscure southern god, now neglected. Iconography: a crow with a ring in its beak. Assigned duties: war, fire, sundry domestic and industrial crafts, the end of the world. Literary amp; cultural significance: none. Also known as Bolodan (Sthrn), Polidan (lit.), the Dodger (colloq.). See also: Mannerists; Life of Fthr Azonicus of Lomessa; Enlightened thought; prophecies; end of the world, the; Land and Sea raiders, the; carts amp; wagons.

He frowned, and stuck the bookmark in to mark the place, then looked up Josequin (two pages, mostly recommending popular inns, taverns, brothels and carpet stalls), the Guilds, Sansory (eight pages; lots of taverns), Mael Bohec, the empire and a number of other things, until his eyes were too tired to stay open and he fell asleep.

He woke up an hour later (just as he opened his eyes, he thought he saw two crows, wonderfully carved out of huge lumps of coal, come to life and flap away, croaking resentfully) with pins and needles in both feet and a sore neck, just in time to blow out the lamp before it burned up the last few drops of his monthly oil ration. Sleeping in chairs, he decided, wasn't good for him. As he stood up, he felt something under his foot (extremely painful, in the circumstances) and guessed from the size and shape that it must be the book, fallen from his hands when he dropped off. He groped around for it but it wouldn't come to hand, and he let it lie till morning.

'It's just as well you happened to be in the area,' the magistrate said, quickening his pace to keep up. 'We've been going through the books trying to figure out which jurisdiction these clowns fall under, and it's starting to look depressingly like they slip down between the cracks. But of course, what we know about ecclesiastical law in this town could be written on the edge of a knife.'

'Don't look at me,' Brother Monach replied over his shoulder. 'I'm not a lawyer.'

'Yes, yes, I appreciate that,' the magistrate panted. 'But you're a priest, a brother of the order, so that must make you an expert, yes?'

'On what?'

Gods,' the magistrate said, 'and stuff like that. You see, this isn't what you'd call a passionately religious town-'

'I'd noticed.'

'Yes, well.' The magistrate was wheezing alarmingly, so Monach slowed down a little. Not too much, though. 'We all serve the Divine in different ways, don't we?'

'Do we?' Monach stopped, his progress impeded by a heavy oak door. The magistrate caught up and paused for breath before knocking on it. A panel shot back, through which Monach could see a nose and a pair of eyes, then the door opened and a guard snapped to attention. For some reason, the magistrate seemed to find that embarrassing.

'This way,' he said. 'Look, I appreciate that you may not think of yourself as an expert in this field, but you're a damn sight more of an expert than anybody else I can think of in this town. Will you help us out? Please?'

Monach, who'd come here with the express intention of getting a chance to interview the prisoners, reluctantly agreed that he would. This seemed to make the magistrate very happy.

'That's wonderful,' the magistrate said, taking a lantern from a sconce on the wall. 'Basically, we need to know if there's a case to answer on the ecclesiastical law charges-blasphemy, incitement to heresy, tempting providence, that sort of thing-because if there is, it'll be quite simple: we can hand them over to you-'

This was, of course, exactly what Monach wanted. 'Me?' he said sharply. 'What the hell am I supposed to do with them?'