FEAST OF THE EXALTATION OF THE HOLY CROSS. The chronicler looked down at the words he had last written, on that still-unfolded creamy-silky sheet of vellum. It was good to be back. No one had touched the desk in the weeks he had been away. All the way down the page, and where the other pages would be once the quire was folded and the pages cut, he had lightly pricked the guide-lines for continuing the list of noteworthy events, enough for years to come. Enough for the rest of his life, surely, even if that life proved long and full of years, and witnessed great happenings. Straight and evenly spaced, the ghostly lines marched down the white surface, trapping the future behind their bars before it had even happened. The inkhorn was dry, just a rusty stain – there would be more in the store. But instead of going at once to fetch it he hitched himself on to his stool, gazing at the blank area of the quire until it blurred under his gaze, and thought about the nature of time and space. Here they were, living somewhere towards the end of the Sixth and Last Age in a world grown old and tired with sin, and in these islands on the farthest edge of the Ocean, as far from the hub of Jerusalem as one could well be.
