Since he did not find the Refugum, he spent the rest of the day reading. Dinner in the Acolytes’ refectory was subdued. Everyone knew that something serious was going on, but the Masters had not explained what they were doing or why, and that made everyone gloomy. No one the Acolyte knew well enough to ask had any more idea of what the Masters were on about than he did. He slept badly.

  In the morning he went to the exercises with the Apprentices and the rest of the Acolytes, working through the forms on which their fighting style was based. His concentration was weak and his movements were so clumsy he actually struck a young student with his staff. None of the Masters were present, so there was no one to chide him but himself.

  Then he waited, pacing, trying to read, until time for the meeting. He saw the Healer walking across the courtyard toward the Oculus and followed him. The Healer was likely to be one of the last Masters to arrive, so lagging behind him would allow the Acolyte to enter just as the meeting was beginning. Not that he was supposed to be in the meeting at all, but there was a rule he would invoke to justify his presence.

  Stealth was among the many things the Acolyte had been trained in, but the Healer was so distracted that it hardly mattered. The meeting room was on the third floor of the tower – in fact it was the third floor of the tower. There was no door; one simply walked in from the landing. The only furniture in the octagonal room was the 12 lecterns, one for each of the Great Offices of the College, plus a blank place where a visitor or Acolyte could stand. Today nine lecterns were occupied, since two Offices were vacant and the Recluse was not there. He must be dreaming in his cave or hiking around the mountains or whatever it was he got up to. The men in the room were the Chancellor, the Provost, the Warden, the Gatekeep, the Catalog, the Secretary, the Alchemist, the Refugum, and the Healer.

  The Acolyte stepped into the room and strode to the empty place and spoke without waiting to be acknowledged. “Masters,” he said, “I must speak to you on a matter of greatest importance to the college.”

  If they were surprised to see him, they did not show it. They kept their faces set in the calm expressions of Masters – did they have to pass an exam on that face before they could be promoted? The Secretary made the response required by the regulation the Acolyte had invoked. “Speak the words it is urgent for us to hear.”

  “The old man in the infirmary has died.”

  “Old men sometimes do,” said the Warden.

  “Before he died, he revealed to me why he was on the mainland and escaped the Fall and the Wave. He had been sent, he said by the Textro, to bring a parcel of valuable books of magic to someone or someplace called Inladir for safekeeping.”

  “Did he say anything else about these books?” asked the Chancellor.

  “Only that the package was wrapped in yellow cloth and bound with green ribbon, and that it was small enough for him to carry.”

  “Just like a Mage to think that the color of the ribbon was the most important detail,” said the Provost.

  “This is interesting news indeed,” said the Alchemist. “Did you report this to anyone?”

  “I reported it to the Provost, under whom I have mostly worked.”

  “I have a feeling,” said the Chancellor, “that you then asked him for something that he declined to grant you.”

  “You are correct, sir. I asked for permission to seek out these books. I believe that I could follow the old man’s trail and learn where he has been for the last twenty years, and that this might enable me to find the books. He was a strange character and I think people would remember him.”

  “The villagers who brought him to our gate will remember him for a long time,” said the Gatekeep. “They thought him a devil.”

  “But,” said the Chancellor, “The Provost refused your request.”

  “That is also correct, sir.”

  “Did he offer you a reason?”

  “Yes, sir. He said that the work of the Ghouls is being ended, that we will no longer venture into the world in search of new knowledge. He said a great time of violence and chaos is coming and we must withdraw from the world to insure our survival.”

  “Can you confirm this, Provost?” said the Warden.

  “It happened as he reports,” said the Provost.

  “And,” said the Chancellor, “You have come to appeal this decision to the Steering Committee?”

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  “I have. If our mission is to preserve knowledge, how can we let these books slip away? Is this not exactly the kind of knowledge we were founded to find and protect? Would the most prized books of a great Mage not be a wonder, perhaps more valuable than anything else in our collections? And would we not want to keep them away from evil men who might find them? I came only because I learned so well to love the College and its purpose. I seek only to find these books and bring them here where they can be studied. It is what I was raised from infancy to do.”

  “We will take a vote,” said the Secretary, “as our Rule requires in such a case. But I believe you will be disappointed. The vote on limiting contact with the world was taken only three days ago, and it was not close.”

  “I do not understand,” said the Acolyte, but the Chancellor cut him off.

  “No, Acolyte, you do not understand.”

  “How can I understand if no one will teach me? You are the Masters. Instruct me. Tell me why we must pull in our heads like frightened turtles.”

  “We have important business to do today, Acolyte,” said the Secretary. “And little time for lessons.”

  “This is important business,” said the Acolyte. “So far as I can tell, you have told nobody about this decision. None of the other Acolytes knows. Have you told even the lesser officers? You will have to explain this decision, and soon. Practice on me.”

  “You wish to know?” said the Refugum. “Answer this, then: what is the first fragment of the elder Heraclion?”

  “The brighter the light, the deeper the shadow,” said the Acolyte.

  “And what did Vermod write about the fall of the Servants?”

  “They fell so far because they rose so high.”

  “What do we know about the chaos that followed their fall?”

  “Almost nothing. Fragments of poems that read like nightmares.”

  “What is the first principle of Dagdo’s system?”

  “What we learn rests on what we know.”

  “Do you see where this lesson is going?”

  The Acolyte considered. “You see a parallel between that time and our own. But that seems a weak argument, to establish a pattern from a single case.”

  “Not a single case,” said the Refugum. “We believe there was another great empire before the Servants whose name we do not even know.”

  “Two cases.”

  “Acolyte, there is much more. There are the prophecies in the hymns from Ocanderal, the story of Erkan and Melinda, the Book of the Sybils of the Grove. There are even words attributed to our founder that may apply. Do you remember them?”

  “Perhaps you mean, The pride of the Mage Lords will have a terrible end.”

  The Refugum nodded. The Acolyte said, “But we could consider that prophecy already fulfilled. The pride of the Mage Lords indeed ended terribly. The Teacher said nothing about a terrible end for everyone.”

  “You are splitting hairs. You know the Teacher had great fear of the Mage Lords’ course, and that implies that he feared their end would be disastrous for others as well. If they were only risking their own lives, he would hardly have reacted so drastically.”

  “Was the Wave not terror enough?”

  “Again, you are quibbling about single points, not seeing that each is part of a constellation. Arrayed all together, the dark signs support each other.”

  “But there are also prophecies of hope. About heroes who save the people from ruin.”

  “Humans will cling to their hopes. They cannot face the truth, so they make up stories about old heroes who come back from the dead to rescue them, or new ones born to beggars in ditches.”

  “But somehow still with royal blood,” put in the Gatekeep.

  “A true scholar would pay them no attention,” said the Refugum,

  “The same could be said for many prophecies of doom,” said the Acolyte.

  “True enough. But there is more, that you perhaps do not know. The Recluse was here last week, for the first time in many years. He has been dreaming of our ruin. It was this that triggered our vote. He sees catastrophe riding toward us.”

  “So we will abandon the people of this world to their fates? They are out there in their towns and cities, fighting to survive, struggling to rebuild. Can we just wash our hands of them? They could use our knowledge, and our aid.”

  The Secretary said, “Aiding the people who happen to be alive in this unfortunate moment is not our mission, Acolyte. Our mission is to think of the centuries to come. Our mission is to preserve what knowledge we can for those born long after we are dead. If we sacrifice the future for what seem to be the urgent needs of the present, then we will have failed.”

  “Besides,” said the Chancellor, “all the signs say that this world is falling rapidly, and nothing we could do would be much help.”

  “That is not so,” said the Acolyte. “People have moved past the despair that gripped them after the Wave. On my last trip I saw nobody huddled in a ruin without even the strength to sweep it out. In Calyxia the harbor was full of ships, the market full of goods from as far as Valkarn and Kadakan. In Arandia there were many refugees but they say the grain harvest was the best since the Fall, and the festival was the most joyous I have ever seen.”

  The Catalog waved his hand. “Yes, there is a small recovery, mostly because with so many people dead there is more food to go around. But the long-term trends are unmistakably bad. There are refugees because the horse barbarians and the wild hillmen are both on the march, taking over more of the old empire every year. Death cults and worse spread among them. Just this year the Western Shore lost the Nimeru Valley, which is more than a hundred square miles. If the realm keeps shrinking at its current rate it will disappear in thirty years. And even what we have is falling apart. All the great lighthouses lie in ruins, and none can even think of how to rebuild them. In the Arandia city hall there is a broken window that nobody knows how to repair, because it was a gift from the Mages. In Pulloreno just down the hill the mill does not work, and they cannot fix it, because all the millwrights in the valley were killed in raids or died of a pestilence. That is the state of the old empire, more lost every year, and more forgotten.”

  “Acolyte,” said the Provost, “You have made your case. You may now return to your duties. Please deliver your staff, knife and pack to the Armorer. You will no longer need them. Until such time as the committee chooses to make a change, you will work in the scullery. You will be informed of the results of our vote.”

  The Acolyte bowed his head.