The Dark Shore (The Dominions of Irth Book 1)
Page 47
Key: Parentheticals are apocrypha that have entered common usage.
SCROLL ONE (THE SACRED SCREED)
1. Silence listens.
2. Everything watches.
3. (There is) No mystery between human beings.
4. The past is always changed. (Always the past changes.)
5. (Each of us is) A ritual sacrifice, a blood offering, made by the eternal urgency of the dream to the mortal powers of the world.
6. Every (truly) sacred act is felt first in hell.
7. The holy walk the killing floor of creation (and are) indistinguishable from the damned.
8. (There are) No false stories on the killing floor.
9. Scared is Sacred. (Scared Sacred.)
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SCROLL TWO (THE EMPTY SCREED)
10. To the condemned there are no lies.
11. Everything changes everything.
12. It is big inside a human heart.
13. Each horizon is a knife.
14. Where do you think the sevens run when they break out of the circle?*
15. The Goddess provides. Life sucks.
16. (There is) No freedom from our freedom.
17. Music is the judge of silence.
18. Wisdom is not always wise.
19. In the ancient theater of the night, every story is true.
20. To survive, contain the counterflow.
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SCROLL THREE (THE TEMPORAL SCREED)
21. Life shapes itself on the anvil of dreams—and the hammer is death.
22. For the holy and the damned, time weighs a little less.
23. Those who give light are received by darkness.
24. Truth is the most necessary fiction.
25. Does the stream own its water?
26. For the lost and the hunted, time weighs a little more.
27. Hope is sour destiny
28. This is our curse: for every yes, a no.
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SCROLL FOUR (THE SCREE OF LOVE)
29. Love makes a monkey out of a mirror.
30. Love can neither be created nor destroyed.
31. Love is its own justice.
32. Love is the fullness of lack.
33. Lovers await the tread of the Huntsman from whose hand they will feed.
34. Love, and you will have many helpers.
35. Love is a question.
36. Love. Will it fly?
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SCROLL FIVE (THE COMMAND SCREED)
37. To hold the scales refuse the journey
38. Fulfill your limits.
39. Know everything.
40. All else is darkness.
[*14. This adage arises from the perception that the 360 degrees of the circle can be divided evenly by all integers from 1 through 10 except 7; thus, 7 was considered by pre-talismanic witches and sages to “break out of the circle," because breaking the circle by 7 produces an irrational number, whose nonrepeating decimal sequence runs to infinity.]
About The Gibbet Scrolls
The forty aphorisms collectively known as The Gibbet Scrolls originated in pre-talismanic times. About 750,000 days before the Brood of Drozen’s One-Eyed Duke defeated the fierce realms and established the seven dominions of modern time, these adages were first collected. The original scrolls did not survive the razing of Keri during the Goblin Wars, however, numerous copies made over the ages assure that the version extant today agrees in every particular with the most ancient texts.
In the aboriginal Kingdom of the Dog, a region comprising portions of modern-day Mirdath and Bryse, criminals and political prisoners condemned to death were required to write a complete sentence to prove their literacy and their subsequent right to execution by hanging. (The illiterate and recalcitrant were brutally hacked to pieces in a gruesome sacrificial ritual that prolonged death for several days.) The thin wood slats upon which the condemned wrote their last words were nailed to the brows of their corpses and ascended with them on the nocturnal tide.
Turbulent air currents and frequent storms above the falls scattered many of the corpses across the mountain ranges, where they often became ensnared in the briar on the taiga slopes. Nameless sages and witches gathered their remains and launched them once again into the night. Legend decrees that the sage All Clouds collected the slat wood tags from the brows of the dead and culled from them the inscriptions that have come down to us as the Gibbet Scrolls, though modern scholarship indicates that this collation was almost certainly an effort of no one individual but a sect.
Much research has gone into why these forty lines were selected and arranged in this specific sequence on five separate scrolls, and that will not be discussed here. More than five scrolls may well have existed in earlier times, and there are frequent claims throughout history of a sixth and even a seventh scroll being found. Yet none of these alleged discoveries has ever been corroborated.
Since pre-talismanic time, the Gibbet Scrolls, also known as the Five Screeds, have been revered by numerous religious and sociopolitical groups. In modern times, the collection has fallen upon disrepute among the Peers in favor of the Talismanic Odes, the compilation of the spiritual and sociological insights from the workers of sorcery.
Cast of Characters
All Clouds—legendary priest of pre-talismanic times. She is reputed to have collected the adages that comprise the sacred text of the Gibbet Scrolls.
The Bold Ones—murderous gang of scavengers who attempted an uprising against the Peers, the ruling class of Irth, and were defeated by Lord Drev.
Cacodemons—phantoms from the Dark Shore that wield enormous power on Irth.
Caval—retired weapons master for the Brood of Odawl; also, an acolyte in the Brother- and Sisterhood of Sorcerers and Witches, and a trespasser of the Dark Shore.
The Council of Seven and One—Irth's ruling body, comprised of a regent from Ux and one representative from each of Irth's seven other dominions:
Drev, regent, Duke of Ux
Altha, Margravine of Zul
Keon, Margrave of Odawl
Lyna, enchantress of Mirdath
Mac, Earl of Sharna-Bambara
Ralli-Faj, warlock of the Spiderlands
Rica, conjurer of Nhat
Thylia, witch queen of the Malpais Highlands
Crabhat—security agent for a factory complex in Saxar, Zul.
Dogbrick—beastmarked thief from the industrial warrens of Saxar.
Drev—wizarduke of Hoverness, duke of Ux, and regent of the Council of Seven and One, inherited his position after the assassination by the Bold Ones of the former regent, his sister, Duchess Mevea.
Fakel—Baronet of Ux, widower of Duchess Mevea, father of the wizarduke's two nephews, who are the last of his bloodline.
Falcon Guard—menace squad designed to protect the regent.
Fallen Star—star-shaped entity indigenous to the sea of Charmed ethers in the mid-heaven above Irth.
gremlin—an imp of the Dark Shore possessed of black magic and evil intelligence.
Hazar—renowned patron of the arts, spouse of the sorceress Altha.
Jyoti—daughter of Keon of Odawl.
Lara—a witch murdered upon the Dark Shore.
Lazor—virtuoso Charm master and early innovator of talismanic tools and weapons.
Leboc—marshal of the Falcon Guard.
Master Ah!—adept at the sanctuary of sages near the summit of Irth's most sacred mount, the Calendar of Eyes.
Mevea—Duchess of Ux, regent, assassinated by the Bold Ones.
Nette—mercenary from the Brood of Assassins.
ogres—powerful and clever protohumans disdainful of Charm.
One-Eyed Duke—great-grandfather of Duchess Mevea and Lord Drev; he defeated all the armies of his time and united Irth under seven dominions to be ruled by Ux.
100 Wheels—security agent for the industrial magnates of Saxar.
Owl Oil—the nom de guerre of Rica the conjurer.
&n
bsp; Phaz—father of Keon of Odawl, grandfather/mentor of the Margravine Jyoti.
Poch—son of Keon.
Ripcat—the beastmarked guise of Reece, a magus from the Dark Shore.
Romut—half-gnome torturer for the Bold Ones; the only one of the gang to escape the wrath of Lord Drev.
sibyls—sprites of the mid-heavens who occasionally roost on Irth - famous for their oracular powers and a tradition that they never lie.
Sisterhood—witches, partners with sages in the religious applications of Charm.
Three Blind Gods—Death, Chance, and Justice.
trolls—fierce, necrophagous denizens of the Qaf, Irth's wasteland.
Tywi—orphan from the cliff streets of Saxar.
Whipcrow—corrupt factory manager in Saxar.
Wise Fish—reformed thief, philosopher, and proprietor of a fish grill on the wharves of Saxar.
Wrat—leader of the Bold Ones and their betrayer to the gremlin of the Dark Shore for power over the cacodemons.
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The Perilous Order of Camelot