The Acolyte approached the gate of the College up the stony road from the valley below, a light Autumn rain wetting his bare head. The tall tower of the Oculus rose dark against the gray sky, looming over a cluster of low buildings grouped around a double courtyard. A broad flight of steps led up the gate, worn by many feet and many years. At the foot of the steps was the small stone hut of the Gatekeep and the Acolyte approached it. The quavering voice of an old man emerged from the shadows within.

  “Who approaches the College, and what is your purpose?”

  “It is the Vermilion Acolyte, and my purpose is to serve the College and its Way.”

  “You may enter. Break no vows and tell no lies.”

  The Acolyte began climbing the steps. Then the Gatekeep spoke again, this time without any formality. “You will want to see the Provost straightaway. He has been asking after you for days.”

  “My thanks, sir,” said the Acolyte. He passed through the open doors of the College and entered the outer courtyard, called the Court of Knowledge. It was more than a hundred paces wide, and paths paved with flat stones crossed it between beds of herbs and vegetables. It was surrounded by columned porticoes. Each of the two hundred columns was crowned by a sculpted capital, each one unique. As a boy the Acolyte’s favorite had been one showing an old scholar scolding a cat that indifferently licked its paw. Now he was fascinated by some that showed abstract patterns of intersecting lines and planes, and by one that depicted only an open door that, when the sun fell on it just so, seemed to open into a vast nothingness. They were all very old, and some within the college believed they encoded part of their founder’s wisdom.

  In the courtyard’s center was a stone well carved with symbols of the Great Arts. Around the well grew four small apricot trees. No one else was in the courtyard, so the Acolyte picked an apricot as he walked past and ate it on his way to the inner gate, casting the pit into a garden bed. The fruit is late, he thought, because it was such a cool, damp summer. One of the white-headed crows that lived around the College flew down into the garden bed to see what he had discarded. Unimpressed by the apricot pit, it turned an accusing eye on him and said, “krawk.” He nodded to it and passed into the small inner courtyard, the Court of Wisdom. This court was all paved with stone, subtle differences in color making swirling patterns under his feet. He went on, passing under another portico and through an open door. This led him to a long room where several men were seated at desks, writing. One looked up and nodded to him, and he nodded silently in reply. He walked to an archway at the far end of the room and paused at the entrance to an alcove. He knocked four times on a wooden panel by the opening, waited to the count of twelve, and then entered.

  The Provost was standing behind his desk, his eyes fixed on a parchment that lay rolled out before him. He was tall and gaunt, his head shaved, his body hidden by the scarlet robes of a master. At first he did not look up, so the Acolyte cleared his throat. The Provost started as if this was the first he had known of a visitor. “Ah, Acolyte,” he said, “We have been expecting you for a week now.”

  “The roads were muddy and the rivers flowed fast toward the sea. Reaching this mountain was not easy. Sir.”

  “Yes, yes, early rains. Come see this drawing one of your colleagues just brought in.”

  The Acolyte stepped around the desk and looked at the parchment. It was a detailed drawing of a dam that spanned a sizable river, according to the scale about 20 feet tall. “Sadly it is from memory,” said the Provost. “They seized our acolyte and took the one he made from sight. But you are all trained to remember such things, are you not?”

  “As you know, sir. Where is this dam?”

  “On the Cerulean River.”

  “So it was the mad monks who seized the first drawing? Our acolyte was lucky to escape.”

  “Indeed. That is why we must work so hard to safeguard our reputation, and take no sides for or against anyone.”

  “Sir, I found it. What I was send to find.”

  “Ah, excellent. I had almost forgotten. Where is it?”

  The Acolyte drew forth the small bag and placed it in the Provost’s hand. He immediately felt a sense of relief, although how much was being rid of the magic and how much was being freed from the burden of carrying such a valuable object in his pocket he could not have said.

  The Provost removed the small gold object from the bag and gazed at it. A smile crossed his face. “Do you know what this is?”

  The Acolyte shook his head.

  “We have fallen so far. Lost so much.” The Provost continued to stare at the little thing in his hand, and it was more than a minute before he spoke again. “This thing, that awes us with its power, that defies time and death, was the mark of the Mages’ most junior servants. At least, the most junior they sent to human cities. These were worn by the Messengers, who carried orders to the Viscounts and Procurators. Each city had an item of its own that somehow recognized these marks and testified to the authenticity of the message.”

  The Acolyte considered this. “Sir,” he said, “Why was such an object in a chest on a merchant cog? And why would the Mages have sent out routine orders in the midst of the Great Storm?”

  The Provost said, “I have read, although I am not sure I believe it, that the Mages sometimes sent out their commands written on parchment, with no living messenger. Perhaps this object authenticated such a message. As to why any message was sent out in the final days, well, you know how little we have been able to learn about those days.”

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  “Could it have been sent by someone who was not a Mage? One of their servants?”

  “In normal times, I imagine not, but in that crisis, I would not venture to guess.”

  “There was a maremorbo in the wreck. So this item did not prevent the transformation.”

  “A maremorbo? I trust you were able to outrun it.”

  “I killed it, sir. It was the only way to reach the chest.”

  “If I were you, I would keep quiet about this. There is already much complaining about researchers taking too many risks.”

  “Understood, sir.”

  “But concerning the final days, we perhaps have a new way to learn more about them. Have you heard of our new guest?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Ah. An old man arrived here a few days ago. Brought on a cart from below by some poor folks who did not know what else to do with him.”

  “Who is he?”

  “We are not sure. He is broken in health, perhaps on the edge of death. His mind wanders, and he often speaks as if dreaming. But he speaks of the final days, of carrying messages among the great ones. What he says matches everything we have learned of those days and goes beyond them as well.”

  “Why did not the valley folk simply leave him at a temple? Or even leave him to die?”

  “I think he frightened them with talk of the Mage Lords. Some still fear them, you know, and others fear talk of them as bringing bad luck. So they brought him here.”

  “Sir, the Gatekeep said you wanted to see me right away.”

  “Yes, I suppose I did leave that instruction. I thought I had another task for you. But now I fear you will be staying here for a while.”

  “Sir?”

  “There is a special meeting of the Steering Committee tomorrow. To talk about our work, the work of the Ghouls, as they call us.”

  “Surely–”

  “Nothing is sure, Acolyte. You know the wisdom of these missions has been questioned in certain quarters.”

  The Acolyte nodded. There were those who thought that the College’s mission to study and preserve knowledge should not extend to risking life and limb to collect it.

  “So you have a day off, I suppose. I’m sure you can find some way to keep busy until after the meeting.”

  The Acolyte wandered into the refectory, where his colleagues were gathering for lunch. Some turned to grin at him, and he saw why: at a place marked with his title was the drink. The drink was the foulest-tasting concoction in the history of the world, and it was an absolute rule of the College that every Ghoul returning from an assignment had to drink it. And keep it down; if you threw it up, as the Acolyte had the first time, you were given another drink and locked in a bare cell where there was no place to hide or dispose of anything. You stayed there until you did keep it down, no matter how long it took.

  The Acolyte showed the others a brave smile and stepped up to the tall glass goblet. He lifted it, gazed for a few seconds at the purple-brown liquid within, and then drank it as fast as humanly possible. It went down like a hard kick to the groin. It was not just awful but bordered on torture. He breathed in slowly, then out again. After three breaths the horror of it began to ease, and he opened his eyes and smiled. People whooped and pounded the table until the Purveyor stuck his head out of the kitchen and glared at them. The Acolyte rinsed his mouth with water and began to chew on a piece of bread, which experience had shown was the best way to help the awful thing stay down.

  The meeting went on all day, as gatherings of the Masters often did, so the Acolyte was thoroughly bathed, shaved and rested before he was given his new assignment: taking care of the elderly stranger who had been dumped at the College gate by villagers from down the mountain. He did not even see the Provost, but received this news from the Refugum, who added nothing to the bare instruction. It felt like a punishment. Not for him, he supposed; he had only done what the Provost directed him to do. So for the Provost, and for all those who supported the Ghouls and their work. As troubles mounted across the old Empire, some wanted to draw in, to turn the College away from the world. Now they seemed to be ascendant. Without thinking the Acolyte turned toward the window that faced down the mountain and looked out upon the world.

  When he arrived at the infirmary, just after dawn the next day, the old man was asleep. The Acolyte sat on a chair nearby, reading the book he had snuck out of the College library and watching the bright morning sun creep steadily across the stone wall of the little chamber. It was a chronicle from the chaotic age before the rise of the Mage Lords, full of petty wars and barbarian incursions. Like his own time. Except, he thought, that we know it does not have to be this way.

  It was nearly noon before the man woke, opening his eyes blearily and gazing around him. “Would you like water?” the Acolyte asked.

  “Do you have wine?”

  “No. Only water.” It was a rule of the infirmary, where everything a patient might eat or drink was controlled by detailed regulations keyed to the patient’s condition, the season of the year, and the positions of the stars. Today old, demented men received only water.

  “I always used to have wine, then.”

  “When?”

  The old man took a sip from the brown earthenware cup the Acolyte had offered him.

  “In the old days. Before.”

  He said no more, so the Acolyte ventured a question. “Whom did you serve then?”

  “I served the Textro. I did his bidding, and he rewarded me. He honored me, called me first among his servants.”

  The Acolyte, like everyone else in the College, had been made to learn by heart everything that was known about the Fall, but the word “Textro” meant nothing to him. It must be some kind of title, he thought. Weaver? Woven? Everything about the Mage Lords was obscure, for they held their secrets close. Just like them to give themselves titles that would mean nothing to outsiders.

  “I always drank wine, in the Textro’s house. I had a room with a view of the harbor, where I could watch the apprentices racing boats, each with his own wind.”

  Just as the Acolyte began thinking that his day might turn out to be interesting after all, the old man nodded off again. So few survived who had even seen Quaestor that very little was known of the city. Those who entered service on the island never left, so they had all perished in the cataclysm. How had this old man survived? He must have been off on some mission when the awful day came. Was he a Messenger, or perhaps one of the Doomsayers, whose white staffs showed that their judgments carried the authority of the masters? Those men were well known, described by witnesses all around the Middle Sea. But the Acolyte had never heard of these boat races. What a sight that must have been: little craft in bright colors driven by magic winds across the harbor of the mighty city, its white towers rising high above.

  But that glimpse was, it seemed, all he was to get this morning. He settled back to read more about wars with hill tribes.

  Then the old man spoke again, croaking out a hoarse whisper without opening his eyes. “I saw a woman torn apart. She was lifted into the air, screaming, the winds tearing her clothes to shreds on her body. Then she was ripped to pieces. The whirlwind turned red with blood.”

  The Acolyte sate up abruptly, but the tale was over as soon as it had begun. The old man slept on, saying no