The weight of the secret in his satchel was heavier than any stone. The small, coiled thread of grey silk was a tangible piece of a conspiracy that felt vast and ancient, a serpent stirring in the city's foundations. To carry it was to be marked. To understand it was to be damned. Cædmon knew, with a certainty that settled deep in his bones, that this path would lead him far from the mundane violence of city life and into a shadow from which he might never return. But the alternative—to leave the weaver's final, desperate message unread—was unthinkable. It would be a betrayal of the dead, and his soul was already burdened with too many of those.
His steps, therefore, did not lead him back to his cold, empty rooms. They led him toward the oldest part of the city, where the streets narrowed and the stones held the memory of centuries. He walked toward the one place in Dunholm where a forgotten language of knots might be unraveled: the great archive, the fortress of knowledge, the Rūn-hord.
As he approached, the building rose before him like a cliff face of grey stone, immutable and stern against the bruised twilight sky. It was a structure built not for beauty, but for permanence. Its walls were thick, its windows were little more than arrow-slits, and its great, iron-strapped doors seemed capable of repelling a siege engine. The archivists who guarded the knowledge within were as formidable as the stone that housed them. They did not welcome visitors; they tolerated supplicants. To enter the Rūn-hord was to submit to its rules, its silence, and its unyielding order.
The Keeper of the Outer Door, the ancient and perpetually weary Elric, peered at Cædmon through the small grille. A flicker of recognition, followed by a profound sigh, crossed his wrinkled face.
"The Walker," Elric rasped, his voice thin and dry as autumn leaves. "The dust has barely settled from your last visit. Another soul requires its secrets picked clean?"
"Not a soul this time, Elric," Cædmon replied, his voice low. "A thread."
The old man's eyes narrowed, but he asked no more questions. It was not his place. He drew back the heavy bolts, the sound echoing in the quiet square, and pulled the massive door inward just enough for Cædmon to slip through. The door boomed shut behind him, and the sounds of the city—the distant shouts, the rumble of cartwheels, the ever-present damp hiss of the air—were instantly silenced.
He was in another world. The Great Hall of the Rūn-hord was a cavern of silent reverence. The air was cool, still, and smelled of old paper, beeswax, and the faint, dry scent of dust that was as old as the city itself. Towering shelves, laden with scrolls and leather-bound tomes, soared up into the gloom, their tops lost in shadow. The only light came from high, narrow windows and the soft, steady glow of carefully placed oil lamps that burned with a clean, smokeless flame. The silence here was a living thing, a presence composed of the collective weight of every word ever written within these walls.
A handful of scholars were scattered throughout the hall at heavy oak reading tables, their heads bowed in devotion to their texts. They moved with a hushed reverence, their very footsteps seeming to apologize for disturbing the quiet. Presiding over this domain, from behind a monolithic desk of dark, petrified wood, was the Senior Archivist, Mistress Oriana.
She looked up as he approached, her gaze sharp and penetrating over the top of her spectacles. Her face, framed by hair pulled back into a severe, grey-streaked bun, was a mask of stern authority. She was the absolute ruler of this kingdom of knowledge, and her disapproval was a palpable force.
"Cædmon," she said. Her voice was not loud, but it cut through the silence like a shard of glass. "Your shadow falls upon our threshold with increasing frequency. I trust this is not a matter of idle curiosity. We are not a public lending house."
"My purpose is never idle, Mistress Oriana," he replied, meeting her gaze without flinching. He knew that to show weakness before her was to be dismissed. "I require access to the guild archives. Specifically, the sections on textile arts and ciphers."
Oriana's thin eyebrows arched. It was an unusual request. The textile archives were among the most obscure in the Rūn-hord, a dusty collection of pattern books and weaving manuals that had not been consulted in decades.
"The textile archives?" she repeated, a note of suspicion in her voice. "An Echo-Walker has need of weaving patterns? Are you investigating a crime of fashion?"
The barb was meant to sting, to put him on the defensive. He did not rise to it. "I am investigating a murder," he said, his voice flat and even. "The victim was a weaver. He left a message. I believe he wrote it in a language you would understand better than I."
He reached into his satchel and carefully placed the small, coiled grey thread on the polished surface of her desk. It looked insignificant, a stray piece of lint on the vast expanse of dark wood.
Mistress Oriana stared at the thread. For a long moment, she did not move. Then, with a sigh that seemed to carry the weight of all the books in the archive, she took a small pair of tweezers from a drawer and delicately picked it up. She brought it close to her eyes, turning it over and over in the lamplight. Her stern expression slowly melted away, replaced by one of intense, professional concentration. The archivist had overtaken the gatekeeper.
"Extraordinary," she murmured, her voice losing its edge and taking on a note of academic wonder. "This is thread-cant. A weaver's cipher. I have read of it, but I have never seen a physical specimen. The knots… the tension of the loops… this is the High Guild variant. It has not been in common practice for two hundred years."
She looked up at him, her eyes sharp with a new kind of interest. "The weaver who made this was no simple artisan. He was a master, and a historian of his own craft. To leave a message in this form… it implies a great deal about the danger he was in, and the nature of the person he feared."
"My thoughts exactly," Cædmon said. "Can it be read?"
"In time," Oriana replied, placing the thread carefully back on the desk. "The key is not a simple one-for-one substitution. It is a conceptual language based on the principles of the loom. The tension of the thread, the number of loops, the direction of the knots… each element contributes to the meaning. It requires the original cipher-keys, the Guild Primers. They are kept in the Sub-Vaults. Access is restricted."
She fixed him with a stare. "I will grant you access. But you will not be alone. The Sub-Vaults are a labyrinth, and their contents are fragile. A junior archivist will accompany you, to ensure the proper handling of the materials and to serve as my eyes and ears. I will not have an Echo-Walker, however well-intentioned, rummaging through my most delicate collections like a badger in a hen house."
It was more than he had hoped for. He had expected to fight for access, to plead his case. But the thread itself, the sheer rarity and craft of it, had been his most powerful argument.
"That is acceptable," he said.
Oriana rang the small, silver bell on her desk. The clear, pure tone chimed once, a perfect, crystalline note in the vast silence. A moment later, a figure emerged from the shadowed stacks, moving with a quiet grace that seemed to absorb the sound of her own footsteps.
And as she approached, the world inside Cædmon's head fell silent.
It was not a gradual quieting. It was a sudden, shocking cessation. The dull, persistent ache in his knee, the weaver's parting gift, vanished. The low-grade hum of psychic residue, the constant companion of his waking hours, was extinguished. The echoes of a hundred other deaths that always churned in the depths of his mind were becalmed. For the first time since he had left his chambers that morning, he felt truly, utterly alone in his own mind. The silence was not the hungry, waiting silence of his tomb-like room. It was a clean, peaceful, absolute silence. It was a miracle.
He stared at the approaching archivist. It was the same young woman from his last visit. Leofwynn. Her face was serene, her pale blue eyes focused on Mistress Oriana, her expression one of respectful attention. Her flaxen hair was pulled back in a simple, neat braid. She wore the plain, grey tunic of a junior acolyte, yet as she drew near, she seemed to radiate a palpable aura of peace.
He had thought, on his last visit, that the profound calm he'd felt was a product of the Rūn-hord itself. He realized now how wrong he had been. The archive was silent, yes, but it was a heavy, watchful silence. This feeling, this incredible, liberating peace, came from her. She was the source.
"Leofwynn," the Senior Archivist said, her voice crisp. "You will escort Cædmon to the Textile Sub-Vault. He requires the Guild Primers on thread-cant. You are to retrieve the requested materials for him and observe the proper handling protocols. Do not allow him to touch the primary codices directly."
"Yes, Mistress Oriana," Leofwynn said. Her voice was as quiet as her footsteps, a soft murmur that was part of the library's hush. She turned her gaze to Cædmon. He saw no fear in her eyes, no morbid curiosity. He saw only a calm, professional readiness. It was the most comforting gaze he had ever met.
"If you will follow me," she said.
He could only nod, his throat suddenly tight. He scooped up the precious cipher-thread from the desk and followed her, feeling like a man stepping out of a storm into a quiet, sunlit garden.
She led him away from the Great Hall, through a heavy iron grille that she unlocked with a key from a ring at her belt, and into the deeper, older parts of the archive. The air grew cooler, the smell of dust and time more pronounced. Here, the shelves were made not of oak, but of dark, pitted stone. The silence was even deeper, broken only by the faint, whisper-soft sound of their own movements.
He walked behind her, matching his longer stride to her measured pace. He was intensely aware of her presence, of the bubble of absolute peace that surrounded her. He studied the back of her head, the neatness of her braid, the way she held her shoulders, straight and focused. He tried to understand how it was possible. Was it a form of magic? An innate ability? Or was her soul simply so quiet, so centered, that it absorbed the psychic noise that clung to him?
He felt a strange, unfamiliar impulse to speak, to ask her a question, any question, simply to hear her voice and see if it would break the spell. But he crushed the impulse. He was terrified of shattering this fragile, perfect peace. He had not felt this clear-headed, this much himself, in years. He wanted only to bask in it, to let the silence heal the raw places in his mind.
They descended a winding stone staircase, the air growing colder with each step. Leofwynn lit a small, hooded lantern, its light casting long, dancing shadows down the narrow corridor. They were in the Sub-Vaults now. The archives here were not for general study. They were the primary sources, the oldest and most fragile artifacts of the city's history.
She led him to a heavy, iron-bound door, marked with a single, faded rune. She selected another key from her ring and unlocked it, the mechanism turning with a well-oiled click. The room within was small, dry, and meticulously ordered. Scrolls and thin, vellum-bound codices were stored flat in shallow, stone drawers.
"The Guild Primers," she said, her voice a soft echo in the small space. "Do you have a guild of origin? A specific era?"
"The High Guild," Cædmon said, his own voice sounding loud and clumsy in the delicate quiet. "Approximately two centuries ago."
She nodded, her expression all business. She moved to a set of drawers, her ink-stained fingers running lightly over the small, ivory tags that identified their contents. She was entirely focused on her task, seemingly unaware of the profound effect her presence was having on him. To her, he was simply a consultant on official city business. A problem to be solved with the correct application of knowledge.
He watched her, a strange mix of emotions churning within him. He felt an immense gratitude for the peace she unknowingly provided. He felt a sharp, protective urge to keep her away from the darkness of his own world, a world of murder and conspiracy. And he felt a deep, aching loneliness, a sudden, sharp awareness of how truly isolated he was, that the only respite he could find was in the accidental proximity of a stranger.
She pulled open a drawer. "Here," she said. "The Loom of Language: A Primer on the High Guild Cant." She carefully lifted out a thin, fragile-looking codex. Its cover was worn, its pages the colour of old cream. "This is the primary text. I will place it on the reading stand. You may not touch it directly."
She carried it to a small, stone lectern in the center of the room and opened it with a reverence usually reserved for holy texts. She placed weighted, silk ribbons on the pages to hold them open.
Cædmon stepped forward, his heart beating faster. He looked down at the page. It was filled with intricate diagrams of knots, loops, and weaves, each with a corresponding definition written in a cramped, archaic script. It was a dictionary of thread.
He carefully took his own small coil of grey silk and laid it on a clean piece of linen beside the open book. Now came the painstaking work of translation.
He began with the first knot. It was a double-loop, pulled tight. He scanned the diagrams in the primer. He found it on the third page. "Concept: Urgency. Danger. A warning."
The next section was a series of three small, tight knots in a row. He found the corresponding entry. "Qualifier: Secret. Hidden. Watched."
He continued, moving from knot to loop, from twist to tension. Leofwynn stood nearby, a silent, patient guardian of the archive's treasures. She did not pry or ask questions. She simply stood, her hands clasped before her, her presence a steady, calming anchor. Occasionally, when he needed a page turned, she would do so with a delicate, practiced touch.
The process was slow, mentally taxing. The thread-cant was not a direct alphabet. It was a language of ideas. A loop might mean 'man,' but a slightly tighter loop might mean 'man of authority.' The tension of the thread between knots indicated the relationship between concepts. It was a three-dimensional language, and reading it was like solving a complex puzzle.
As he worked, he was acutely aware of the silence. It was so complete that he could hear the soft sound of his own breathing. He felt the layers of psychic grime, the accumulated stains of years of Echo-Walking, begin to flake away. He felt his mind sharpen, his focus becoming absolute. He was not just the Echo-Walker here. He was a scholar, a cryptographer. He was Cædmon.
Hours passed. The world outside the Rūn-hord ceased to exist. There was only this small, cold room, the ancient book, the cryptic thread, and the quiet girl who was his sanctuary.
Finally, he reached the end of the thread. He had a series of concepts, of words and warnings. He arranged them in his mind, finding the syntax, the grammar of the knots. And the message resolved itself. It was not long, but its implications were staggering.
He read it once, then twice, the words seeming to burn themselves into his memory.
Warning. Secret. Watched. The Serpent Circle lives. They seek the Wyrm's Tooth. Magister is the key. Betrayal. Do not trust the echo.
Cædmon stared at the thread, a cold dread washing over him, so powerful that it momentarily overcame the peace of Leofwynn's presence.
Do not trust the echo.
The words were a direct contradiction of his entire existence. His gift, his curse, the very tool he used to find the truth… the weaver was warning him that it could be a lie. That the memory he had walked, the face he had seen, the entire scene of the murder, could have been a fabrication, a trap planted for him to find. The idea was a violation, a sacrilege against the fundamental nature of his magic. Could a gemynd be altered? Could an echo be forged?
The last entry in the index from his previous visit flashed in his mind. They sought the power to enter the gemynd, not to witness, but to alter.
It was possible. The Serpent Circle, this Circulus Serpens, had not just been a philosophical society. They had been pioneers in a dark, forbidden art. The killer he had seen in the echo might not be the true killer at all, but a phantom, a scapegoat implanted in the weaver's dying mind.
He felt a sudden, chilling certainty. The book. The missing book from the memory. It had not been a confabulation. It had been a mistake. A flaw in the forgery. The memory-assassin, the Scrivener, had crafted a detailed, false echo of the murder, but had made a single, tiny error. He had included a book that wasn't there. It was the only truth in a sea of lies.
He looked at Leofwynn. Her face was calm, her expression serene. She was unaware of the abyss that had just opened at his feet. He felt a desperate urge to protect her from this knowledge, from the existence of a power that could turn a soul's final testament into a weapon of deceit.
He carefully, reverently, picked up the small grey thread. The message was no longer a clue. It was a declaration of war. A war fought in the shadows, in the minds of the dead, for the truth of history itself.
"I have what I need," he said, his voice quiet, but filled with a new, hard resolve.
Leofwynn nodded. "I will return the codex to its place."
He watched as she gently closed the ancient book and slid it back into its drawer. He wanted to thank her, to explain what her presence meant to him, but the words would not form. How could he explain a lifetime of psychic torment to a soul so quiet? How could he describe a storm to someone who had only ever known peace?
He simply gave her a nod, one that he hoped conveyed a fraction of the gratitude he felt. "My thanks for your assistance, archivist."
She offered him a small, shy smile in return, a brief, beautiful flicker of light in the dusty gloom. "It is my duty. I am glad I could be of service."
They walked back through the labyrinthine corridors in silence, but it was a different silence now. His was charged with a terrible new purpose. And as they stepped back into the Great Hall, the noise of his own mind, the echoes and the stains, came rushing back in as he moved away from her, a familiar tide of torment. But this time, it was different. He had a memory of the silence. He had a sanctuary to hold onto.
He gave a final nod to Mistress Oriana as he left, the Senior Archivist watching him with sharp, calculating eyes. He stepped out of the Rūn-hord and into the night, which had deepened to a starless black. The city was quieter now, settling into its uneasy sleep.
He was alone again, but not as he had been before. He carried a terrible secret and a cryptic message. The Wyrm's Tooth. Magister is the key. He had a destination, and a name. And he had the memory of a quiet girl in a silent library, a memory that he would guard more fiercely than any secret. For he knew that in the dark days to come, the memory of that peace might be the only thing that could keep him sane.
From the Rūn-hord: A Scholar's Note
On the Nature of the Gemynd (The Mind-Echo)
It is the foundational principle of Echo-Walking that a profound, violent, or emotionally charged death impresses a psychic residue upon the deceased's immediate surroundings—a gemynd. This is not the soul, which the priests of the Old Way claim departs for the Summerlands, nor is it a ghost in the traditional sense. Rather, it is an echo of consciousness, a recording of the final moments of a life.
The Echo-Walker, through a dangerous and poorly understood discipline of mental projection, is able to "inhabit" this echo, experiencing the sensory and emotional data of the deceased's final moments as if they were their own. It is widely held, and legally accepted in the courts of Dunholm, that this experience is an infallible record of events. The gemynd cannot, by its very nature, lie. It can be fragmented, confused by trauma, or incomplete, but it is always held to be a true representation of the deceased's final perception.
However, fringe theories have persisted for centuries. The most heretical of these is the concept of the "Forged Echo." Proponents of this forbidden theory suggest that a sufficiently powerful and skilled will—a mind trained in arts far darker than simple Echo-Walking—could potentially overpower a dying consciousness and impress a false memory in its place. This "Scrivener," as the theoretical practitioner is known, could effectively rewrite the victim's death, creating a perfect but utterly false gemynd for any subsequent Walker to discover.
Such a practice is, of course, considered impossible by all reputable scholars. To alter the very fabric of a person's final truth would be an act of soul-murder, a perversion of the natural laws of magic and memory. The Rūn-hord contains no credible accounts of such an act ever being successfully performed. All texts relating to the theoretical practice were proscribed and ordered burned during the reign of King Theron II, following the dismantling of the philosophical society known as the Circulus Serpens.