i submit this to your scrutiny. the story came first, so i'm not sure if actually makes gloranthan sense.
apologies to borges, whose style i have attempted to copy (and failed) & some of whose' phrases are implagged in the story.
cheers
guy
Argrath and the Godlearner
Lord,
I humbly beg to draw your attention to the following; a text discovered by the librarian Filk the Grey in the collections of the Great Sage Yrip Tholinsdottir after her death in 1673. Yrip's associated commentary says she purchased it from a Kethaelan seaman in 1635. The mariner claimed to have found it sealed in a bottle, stranded on an island beach in the Mourn Sea.
Yrip apparently paid the mariner well, for she valued the peculiar parchment it was composed upon. Indeed, I have never seen its equal, a soft and smooth vellum upon which the ink glinted like moonlight. (The script is a heavy and archaic Jrusteli, which I have undertaken to translate for you.) It was only in a later part of her commentary, tentatively dated 1650, that Yrip appears to become convinced that the character appearing in the document is in fact the Argrath, an idea she relates to his circumnavigation saga. Yrip herself entitled the document "Argrath and the Godlearner".
I hope our find excites your worthy interest,
Llandidnese
I'm not entirely sure, currently, whether the episode that follows truly occurred, or is, perhaps, merely the accumulation of a lifetime' s longing, given form and inserted into my memories to torment me still further. I walk the halls of my tower with detachment, not wholly integrated with my surroundings; the walls seem unreal, the books on their shelves illusionary. Distant sounds are not of this place, representing events that are forever disconnected from my life. I may dream of, but never know, them. Since the man left I have not spoken to nor seen another soul, although sometimes the echoes of their activities are brought to this craggy outpost by the unceasing winds, which drive these vague noises before them as random memories of a world that has forgotten me.
I need ask no pity from a world that has none to give. Perhaps as you read this I may be already dead, a thought that chills me. I will have no tomb, proud nor humble; my bones left to become dust on the books I love so well. Then, as those sounds driven here by the winds bring memories to me, they bring this parchment to your hands, that you may feel the faint echoes of my life. Yet I digress.
Before I conceived his approach I was content, I think. I knew no other way of living, the pattern was established and unbroken. Sleeping, waking, working, eating and defecating in a prescribed manner that I had never contemplated questioning or examining for meaning. My search was in my work, the study of the books that line the corridors and rooms of the tower, sifting the confused, jumbled mass of data for repeated patterns; in these I found the faint shadows of a world I could not perceive. This task I had assigned myself upon my first awakening here, so long ago its distance has no meaning to me, and I had faithfully followed the rhythms laid out before me; darkness and light, an urge to satiate hunger. When I had want of ought I had only to ask and look, and it would appear. In one tome I discovered, it was indicated that the tower was built by a magus of such power that he conversed, undaunted, with dragons. Here he wrought a great magick that brought him to an absolute knowledge that he stored in the books of this place. These books hold all things that have been, are, or will be; the movement and meaning of each mote of dust throughout time is recorded here; in one of these books there is this text, in another an account of your life, detailed to the moment. What became of him or why he then placed me in this library is beyond my knowledge, but I hazard that I will discover why, encapsulated in dark and heavy print, one day, somewhere.
Through reading I learnt of other people, their acts and their thoughts, the ways in which time would combine isolated happenings into a continuous, flowing chain of events that could be referred to and commented upon. The way in which people interacted with others was of particular interest. It occurred to me that through meeting and reacting to one another histories were formed. Like two balls colliding, angle and velocity would determine future paths. The blank text and its meaningless prose held no enlightenment for me, however. I was still innocent to the feeling and emotion of conversation, blind to the rhythms and currents of cerebral meetings; I could read but I could not know. This began to prey on my mind, at first as a puzzled imagining, would it be like so, or so? Did people flow to the same rhythm, was adjustment necessary? Was the adjustment instinctive or analytical?
I began to practice meeting my first person, studying variations on social customs and graces, analysing the people in what I read, attempting to break them down into various groups, by personality type, interests and so on. I collected vast quantities of data and performed complicated and thorough correlations upon them. By these means I was confident of identifying my person when I encountered him and accurately determining the course and manner of our interaction. When this was done I realised that I still lacked the confidence to fulfil my role precisely and without error. Terrified of not establishing a rapport with my person, of remaining alone still further (yes, it would have been about now that I first became aware of the feeling of isolation) I began to examine my texts for the reason as to why a man would come to such a deserted place. By narrowing down the potential avenues of history I felt sure I could study my part still better. I found a number of reasons why a man might come to a tower on the edge of the world; he might be lost and requiring sustenance and shelter, or he might be on some desperate quest and in need of assistance, or may have heard of this fantastical place and sworn to determine for himself its existence or non-existence. I scoured my shelves for variations on the themes, studying each one with devotion to minor and pointless detail.
But my curse was that I knew not whether anyone would come.
Come daybreak I would run up the dusty and spiralling stairs to the roof, where, ecstatic, fearful with anticipation, and braving the spray driven up by the sea boiling on the rocks, I would squint and gaze off to the horizon, desperately hoping to see a sail. Here I would stay for an hour or more, until I panicked at the thought of a sail appearing, and my being unprepared to meet its master. By now I was hallucinating vividly with each passage I read, so adept was I at conjuring the scene completely that I could smell the salt on the other's clothes. Frantically I would delve yet further into the passages, searching out books not yet discovered that might contain useful material. I was becoming convinced that the encounter would take on a certain form, that of the man who has heard of the mage's tower at the outer edge of the ocean, a tower that contains everything that might be known, and has come to discover the answer to some great question. The cross-referencing of stories and compilation of data, as well as his form in my visions all lead me to this. He would be young, yet weathered and toughened by years of looking for this place. His sealskin cape would be cast back, now at last he was out of the salt air, exposing talismans and amulets of protection that would be fingered fearfully in this sombre and sorcerous place. His manner would be eager, but tempered by both a reluctance to end his quest and out of deference to me. Wisely and yet humbly I would show him his answer, and except his servitude and companionship as payment.
An hour before nightfall I would again climb to the roof, wearily this time, for the last vigil of the day.
One day I chanced upon a volume lurking between two others that were of much finer appearance. That I should even have noticed it is no small miracle, had it been passed by I would certainly have never seen it again. As it was I felt strangely compelled to reach out and take it from its place. In my hands it had the unusual property of being both very large and very small at the same time, neither shrinking nor growing, but remaining both simultaneously. Intrigued I opened the book and began to read. On the frontispiece was my name and the dates of my birth and my death. None of these can I remember; they faded from my mind as they faded from my eyes when I turned the page. The next page declared the volume one of a series; I cannot recall the number of episodes but surely it was barely finite.
It was then approaching the hour of the sunset watch, but I broke with the habit of years and stayed at my podium, excitedly devouring the contents of the book. This volume commenced with my first longing for company, my first amazement at the actions of others, and my wish to join in that dance. It progressed in microscopic detail through my searches for information, the beginnings of my obsession, my first visions, the narrowing of future events, full-scale hallucinations and my frantic lookout from the battlements. In blank, unemotional prose it charted the course of my madness.
Darkness was falling. I skipped over sections, desperate to discover
who would come and why. The book, I knew, would describe each and
every detail of the event; I would have to search no longer. I would
not need to fear the encounter, terrified but yearning for the
unknown.
By the dying light I beheld the words, and as I read them they
occurred.
A thunderous knocking startled me from my perusal, the double, ironbound doors of oak thrown back into the hall, sea spray cascading in, soaking those books that lay stacked on the floor. The figure, illuminated viciously by lightning, swaggered into the tower, as if to keep sorcery away by the sheer force of his bravado. At last out of the storm his sealskin cape was cast back, revealing talismans and amulets of protection. Above them were the strong features of a mighty warrior, and as he spoke I could read the words his lips made on the vellum pages of my book.
" Sir Wizard, it is my intention to ask you of the Gods…" The book described in microscopic detail every aspect of the scene, the gestures of command, my own reading of the book, the precise dynamics of each particle of sea spray projected into the room. I absorbed the knowledge at a fantastic pace, sponging the words and their meanings directly by sight, then by intuition, then without being aware of them. Pages turned at a furious rate, driven by the wind. The array of information cascaded across my mind, distinct rhythms being sensed and apprehended. The outer vision of the book and the man, the inner image of the scene, decoded from the lifeless prose, became one. Two driven mountains met, two balls collided with impossible and total force, the rhythms tightened as springs until a symphony became a note. I met his eyes, but can no longer recall my words. There is only a distant memory of instruction, no longer a need for books, but a feeling of omnipotence, an all extending memory that turns everything from darkness to eternal, blinding radiance.
When I awoke, laid out on the floor, he was long gone, the doors closed behind him. The book on my podium too, was gone. The vast, labyrinthed, book-shelved hallway starkly echoed my cries of despair and condemnation as I crawled the passages, frantically searching for that leather-bound guide to my delusions until, finally, exhaustion overcame me and I sank into numbing sleep. Occasionally I still search the shelves for it, but with out much anticipation of success. Perhaps it is better like this, to live one's life instead of reading it, but what is a life of ennui, with no events to form a history? Since he has gone my life has been empty, bereft of meaning but to chase that feeling of sagehood he brought me, the memory of who I really am. I sit in my tower and hear the boiling sea, removed from it by this one, all-enclosing, circular wall, and sometimes I hear the echoes of other peoples' lives, carried here by the driving wind.
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