Subterranean Summer 2013 by William Schafer

Author:William Schafer [Schafer, Wiliam]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: science fiction, fantasy, magazine, Subterranean Press

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When I was a novice, you did two years in the scriptorium before they let you anywhere near a reading list. At the time I found this both arbitrary and oppressive—I’d come here to learn magic, not how to copy out old books—and I’m still not entirely sure of the logic behind it. That said, one thing I learned was how to clean off a page of parchment using brick dust and the palm of my hand.

It’s a foul job. Think about it. Parchment is basically just skin, like your hand. The difference is, the parchment has been cured and polished, which makes it hard and durable. The brick dust grinds skin away. Reasonably enough, it takes the soft stuff off first. You can see why page preparation is a job usually assigned to the most junior members of the scriptorium staff.

By the time I’d done half a dozen double-fold sheets my hand was red raw. I went outside and washed it off in the brook. It was just starting to get dark. We’d brought a dozen of the big field-issue candles, enough to read by for ten hours, and one of those army-pattern closed lanterns. You can see your hand in front of your face, but that’s about it.

All the time I’d been mutilating myself in the cause of scientific investigation, she’d been reading. “Any joy?” I asked.

She shook her head. “Sometimes it’s like it’s just starting to make some kind of sense,” she said, “and then I lose it completely. I think it’s supposed to be a reasoned, consecutive argument, but he keeps wandering off, and then it’s just plain weird.”

I wasn’t sure I liked the sound of that. Our department title is forensic recovery, investigation and damage limitation. I had a nasty feeling we were rather too late for the last part of our remit. “I suggest you leave it for tonight and we’ll have a proper go at it in the morning,” I said. I’d wrapped a handkerchief round my hand. My handkerchieves aren’t the cleanest in the world. “I don’t know about you, but I’ve had enough for one day.”

She gave me this look, which I confess I found hard to interpret. “What?” I said.

“Oh, nothing.”

Now I’m a scholar, sworn to the celibate life, wouldn’t have it any other way. But once a year I go home and spend a week with my brother—married for thirty years, two sons, still working the farm—and sometimes his wife says “Oh, nothing” in exactly that tone of voice, and that’s when I make an excuse, take a book and spend a couple of hours reading in the hayloft, because if I was the sort of man who relishes the spectacle of total war, I’d have joined the army instead of the Order. There’s that bit in the General Collect about how you have broken every law, dishonoured every commandment, done every evil, neglected every good. Get a woman to say it and you could compress all that down into ‘Oh, nothing’ and save twenty minutes.

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