Velysara had given me a token after I'd asked her about the gate for the third time. A small bronze disc stamped with a crest I didn't recognize. "If you must dig," she'd said, "there's a repository in the Clerical Quarter. Old records. Census ledgers.
Things the nobility stopped caring about generations ago. Show that to the keeper. He'll let you in once."
"Once?"
"Once. Don't waste it."
---
The repository was not what I expected. I'd pictured something grand. Marble columns. High vaulted ceilings.
Rows of leather-bound books rising into the shadow. What I got was a squat stone building wedged between a tanner's shop and a tavern. The sign was faded. The door was warped.
The windows were small and grimy, letting in just enough light to read by. A public records office that no one visited. The keeper was an old man with more ear hair than sense. He looked at the bronze disc, grunted, and unlocked a side door without a word.
I stepped through into a room that smelled like old paper, dust, and beeswax. Hundreds of books. Thousands. Stuffed into shelves that bowed under the weight.
Stacked on tables. Piled in corners. The door clicked shut behind me. I had until sunset.
Most of the books were useless. Tax records. Weather observations. A treatise on sheep husbandry that was somehow both too long and too short.
Lists of grain prices dating back sixty years. Genealogies of noble families I'd never heard of. But then I found it. Bottom shelf.
Back corner. Wedged between a book on irrigation and a crumbling hymnal.
...
...Chronicles of the First Years...
...
The binding was cracked. The pages were yellowed. The ink had faded to a pale brown that was hard to read in the dim light.
I pulled it out carefully, half expecting it to crumble in my hands. It didn't. I carried it to a reading table near the window. Sat down.
Opened it to the first page.
...
...In the year the sky broke, we came through the gate...
...
I read that line three times. The gate. The same one the grey-cloaked woman had walked through, the same one Velysara had mentioned, the same one that had spit me out into this world with a pizza oven and a system I didn't understand. I read on.
The writing was dense. Formal. The author was some kind of chronicler, a scribe who'd been tasked with recording the arrival of what he called "the thousand." Families. Whole families, from a world without magic, pulled into this one by...
something. The book didn't say. Or maybe that page was missing. I turned to the middle.
The pages here were different — more worn, like they'd been read more often. The corners were dog-eared. There were marginal notes in a hand different from the main text. Someone else had been here before me.
Someone else had been looking for answers.
...
...The gate that closed behind us left us stranded. There was no return. The magicians who opened it died before they could reopen it. Some say they died on purpose...
...
I read that line four times.
Died on purpose. That wasn't an accident. That was a choice. Someone had decided that the gate should never open again.
Someone had decided that a thousand families from another world should be trapped here forever. And then they'd made sure of it. I copied that line into my notebook. Hand-written.
Cramped. My wrist started to ache. The ink was cheap and watery, but it would hold. A few pages later:
...
...The first years were hard. The thousand did not know this world's plants or animals. They did not know the weather or the seasons. They did not know which waters were safe to drink or which woods held predators. Many died in the first winter. More died in the second. By the third year, fewer than half remained...
...
Five hundred families. Dead in three years. Starved.
Frozen. Eaten. Because someone on the other side of a magical door decided to close it and swallow the key. I sat back.
Let that sink in. Then I kept reading.
...
...Among the common folk, a strange sickness spread. They called it time-sickness. Those afflicted lost their sense of hours and days. Some forgot entire seasons. A farmer might plant in spring and swear it was still winter. A mother might hold her child and believe he was still an infant...
...
Dyschronometria. I'd recognized the symptoms on the ship.
The sickness that afflicted this world's ordinary people. The same thing that had made Al's hands shake when he tried to read the hourglasses. Not a curse. A side effect.
A symptom of something breaking when the gate opened. I copied every word. My hand cramped. I shook it out and kept going.
The book went on for another hundred pages. Accounts of settlements. Wars. Famines.
The slow spread across the continent. The disappearance of the gate from public memory. But the first years. The arrival.
The sickness. That was what I needed. I spent three hours in that library. Read until the light through the window turned orange.
My hand cramped. My back ached. The chair was the most uncomfortable piece of furniture I'd ever sat on. When I finally closed the book, I had six pages of notes.
Hand-copied. Detailed. The first real clue I'd found since I woke up in this world. I returned the book to its shelf.
Carefully. Precisely. Like it was made of glass. The keeper was still at his desk, half-asleep.
He didn't look up as I passed. "Find what you were looking for?" he grunted as I reached the door. I stopped. Turned. "Maybe." He grunted. Went back to his dozing.
I stepped out into the evening air. The street was busy. People heading home. Carts rumbling over cobblestones.
Lanterns being lit one by one. I touched my jacket. Felt the folded pages inside. The gate.
The thousand. The sickness. It was all connected. And somewhere in this city, there were people who knew more.
People who'd been there. People who remembered. Velysara. The grey-cloaked woman.
Maybe others. I walked back slowly. The pages rustled against my chest with every step. I didn't know what I was going to do with the information.
Didn't know who I could trust. Didn't know if the truth would help or hurt. But it was mine now. I tucked the pages deeper into my jacket and kept walking.