The Secret of the Calligraphers' Ink: Sharp Mere, #2

By Alex Rooth

Sharp Mere is a place of secrets. None more so than the Order of Calligraphers. Zharn Korrall, a young calligrapher, wants answers.

His artistic talent sets him apart but skill alone will not unlock the door to the greatest mystery of all - the secret of the calligraphers' ink.

Nor will Zharn's ability with a brush be all that is required of him when ordered to work for the Lord of Sharp Mere. The Lord is as unpredictable as he is powerful and nothing goes as planned. Face to face with the Lord himself, a lethal bodyguard and a beautiful stranger, Zharn will have to use all his wits to emerge unscathed.

This is a complete story in itself but follows on from 'Jennifleur Quazarian and the Order of Truth'.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Alex Rooth
• Release date: May 1, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224427895

Book preview

You’ve come to the attention of Lord Flaxuss Crème, said Lantryn Scharp.

At last, I replied. I’m surprised it wasn’t sooner.

His bodyguard, Lance, has been enquiring about you. I don’t like it. The timing is bad, so close to the cook’s death.

I thought the Master was worrying too much.

Perhaps he simply has some work for me.

Unlikely! Lord Crème doesn’t like books, art or reading.

I find that hard to believe.

You don’t know him. He’s been like that since he was a boy. Did I ever tell you that he stayed here briefly as a lad? Like many young people, Flaxuss had no interest in anything resembling work. He used our crow quill pens as darts and splattered the walls with ink.

That must have been years ago. How do you know he hasn’t changed?

Of course he hasn’t. Everyone knows his nature. His only interests are drink and progeneration.

What do you mean?

Wine and women.

The Master frowned.

Oh! he said. It couldn’t be something to do with a woman, could it? Surely not. That would be very dangerous for you. You must be careful.

I wondered which work of mine had piqued the Lord’s interest. I should have paid more attention to Lantryn’s warning.

*

Before I became a calligrapher I worked in the Order of Scribes. Prior to that, like all other children in Sharp Mere, my first years were spent in the Order of the Crib. My earliest memories are of warmth and the press of bodies around me. Next was the Order of Junior Perfection and Education. There we ate in communal dining halls and slept in large, airy dormitories.

Those early years were unremarkable, neither happy nor sad. I recall childish games, the occasional fight, a nose bleed - rare enough for me to remember it, and the smell of cinnamon and crumble. Mornings and afternoons we recited the laws of Sharp Mere. Perhaps that’s my most vivid memory, listening to the peculiar cadence of many voices reciting in unison, accompanied by a desperate longing to escape the hall. I wanted to play hide and seek with my friends in the stone caverns or chase round and round in the Circle of Light.

Later we were observed to see where our natural skills and interests lay. Tools and other objects were left on the floor for us to do with as we pleased. I immediately picked up pens and paper. Two girls fought over a hammer and chisel. One child had no interest in playing with anything. All he wanted to do was run and jump.

I kept the pens and paper to myself and drew everything I saw around me. Among my first subjects were the instructors who taught us to recite the laws of Sharp Mere. I quickly learned that the slightest inaccuracy of line in a human face can produce a gross distortion. It seemed natural to exaggerate the features that stood out and my first attempts at a likeness were not flattering. A nose larger than usual became a mountain erupting from a face, the nostrils dark caverns.

One of the Instructors of Law had shadowed, hollow cheeks and frown marks that were so deep they seemed like vertical cuts in the bones of his forehead. My sketch resembled a terrifying skull. His colleague had a smooth, round face. I drew him as a ball with beady, beetling eyes.

The other children shrieked with laughter at my drawings, disrupting the morning recital. One boy became hysterical. His shoulders shook, he convulsed, his snorts of laughter echoed round the hall. It was the first time I had felt the power of my art. The response from the instructors was more muted but when the time came I was assigned to a group that made daily use of pen and paper, the Order of Scribes.

On our allocation day, I remember being congratulated and patted on the head. The woman who usually looked after me squeezed me tightly before letting go. Her face was hot against mine and damp with tears. All I recall of her was that her skin was warm and that she smelled of chocolate.

The allocation ceremony took place in a pillared building with faded paintings on the ceilings and walls. The craftsmen of the past had favoured red and blue but now only traces of pigment remained. I remember that there were almost as many children as adults in the hall. A number of seats sat empty at the front, as if more children had once been expected at the ceremony. Another thing I recall about that day was that the boy who liked to run and jump was assigned to the Order of Runners and Messengers. He was so happy that he couldn’t sit still. He ran round the hall as fast as he could.

The end of the ceremony marked the beginning of my new life in the Order of Scribes. It was a good Order, and though only of average status, located in a pleasant, airy part of the mid-levels. If it weren’t for a chance encounter I would have spent the rest of my days there.

The senior members of the Order of Scribes were meticulous and disciplined. They were not inclined to pomp or extravagance and ran the Order with calm authority. Voices were rarely raised in anger. We were kept busy and worked hard. The demands were exacting but not unkind.

Junior members were well looked after. Over countless years the scribes had learned how to best protect young hands (that would one day become old hands) from injury and swollen joints. They passed on this knowledge as well as teaching correct penmanship and other essential skills of the craft. The work of a scribe requires knowledge of letters and the meaning of words, so as a matter of course every person in the Order was taught to read.

Later the Head Scribe would irritate Lantryn Scharp by telling him that my success in the Order of Calligraphers was all due to my training as a scribe. We even taught him to read, he would say. It never failed to annoy Lantryn, but in public he maintained a diplomatic silence. In private he complained about my having to unlearn years of bad habits.

The job of a junior scribe was to make copies of rules, laws proclamations and endless minutes of meetings. These were then taken away for filing. Scribes rarely talked about what they had copied from one sheet of paper to another. It wasn’t so much that it was forbidden to do so, but rather that the content was of no interest. I found out later that the more important and stimulating documents usually ended up at the Order of Calligraphers.

We preferred natural light for our work. The senior scribes said that letters written in such conditions would always look better than those produced under glow lamps. We would troop from one end of the Order of Scribes to the other, filling and emptying the different rooms according to the time of day, chasing the sun until its rays were blocked by the walls of our neighbours. I liked the morning and late evening sunlight. The nib of my pen threw a long, spiky shadow and the smooth paper seemed to be pitted with jagged holes and craters.

Though the Order was a happy one, the work was monotonous, especially for a child. Every day I looked forward to the breaks. Other children would run about, pushing and shoving, shouting and playing games, but I used to sit and sketch. No one objected to me spending my time in this way. I refrained from doing portraits of the senior members of our Order and was allowed to use as much scrap paper and ink as I wanted.

Drawing gave me a feeling of freedom compared to the endless copying of laws and decrees, and the endless reproduction of row upon row of letters, characters and symbols.

I had a favourite spot beside the courtyard wall. I would sit on a lion statue next to a stone water butt. The lion’s head and ears were worn smooth by weather and time. Water pipes descended from the rooftops high above and even on sunny days my sketching would be accompanied by the occasional drip or sudden gurgle of water. In winter everything froze over and I would look back at my fellow scribes stamping their feet beside the ponds. The older ones held mugs of tea and coffee and the steam rose like smoke.

Winter was not my favourite time. My hands became too numb to draw. But in summer, along the wall and on the ground nearby I discovered a world in miniature.

I drew the flowers that clustered within cracks in the stonework and creeping vines that glued themselves with tendrils to the rocky walls. I drew every type of leaf - lobed, waxy, star-shaped and perfectly circular. I drew needle-shaped mosses with slender hair-like stems.

I drew beetles, spiders, ants, butterflies, birds and other creatures I couldn’t name. I tried to make them come to life on the paper in front of me. Of the many different birds, crows were the most frequent visitors. The black of their feathers fascinated me. They came for scraps of food. Sometimes a whole flock would descend on the courtyard, jostling one another and shrieking noisily.

I was proud of my drawings and kept the best ones on my person so that I could look at them at odd moments throughout the day. When there was no more room in my pockets I made holes in the paper and threaded them on a string around my neck.

Many scribes, young and old, enjoyed looking at my pictures. Word of my skill spread and sometimes the Masters would show my work to visitors and outsiders.

One particular drawing changed my life. During the midday break I had rushed outside to sketch as usual. It was early summer and the courtyard was alive with buzzing insects. Flowering shrubs basked in the sun and gave off heavy, perfumed scents.

Time was limited so I worked fast, focusing my attention on a group of crows. Their feathers were more than simply black. Some were shinier than others, some were duller, some were the colour of coal. Others were pale grey.

The birds were regular visitors and over the years I had learned to recognize individuals as much by their behaviour as by their appearance. They were creatures of routine. They would arrive carrying all sorts of objects in their beaks. Usually it would be berries, pieces of stone, coloured bark and leaves. Sometimes they brought rare flowers. Dropping whatever they were carrying, the crows hastily pecked at the bread and other scraps of food left on bird tables by the scribes. If approached too closely they would hop away and flap into the air cawing angrily. They never left without snapping up whatever object they had arrived with.

The crows had a freedom denied the scribes. I used to watch them flying upwards over the wall and wheeling out of sight like black smoke in the direction of the Order of Calligraphers. It seemed as if our courtyard was simply a stopover on the way to a more important destination. The crows always flew by the same path, arriving in a mass on one side of the courtyard and departing in the same way from the other.

On that hot summer morning something had attracted the attention of an old, irritable crow. It had greying feathers and a thick powerful beak like a chisel. The bird was turning its head from one side to another as if trying to convince itself of what it was seeing. Then it hopped out of sight. I stood up and saw it pecking at something that shone in the morning sun. Dust was flying and the crow’s beak made a noise like a hammer on metal. The thing it had attacked was unlike any creature I had ever seen. I had the impression of a jewel with legs. It sparkled in the sun, throwing light in all directions as it was knocked this way and that. The crow was too busy to pay any attention to me. I stepped closer and saw that the small beast resembled a large, shiny beetle, about the size of a woman’s fist.

The crow landed several spear-like strikes and I assumed the creature to be dead. I’d sketched a crow’s beak enough times to know what a sharp and deadly tool it is. The last blow had knocked the beetle thing on its back. It lay unmoving. The crow caught one of the creature’s legs in its beak and twisted its head in a rapid, screwing motion. I expected to see the leg fly off but it remained attached. The crow threw the creature to the ground, flapped into the air and attacked with its claws. It used its beak again and the force of the blow sent its victim skidding along the ground. It lay on its front, unmoving. The crow hopped closer to investigate. The creature straightened its legs and a set of golden wings on its back flickered and unfurled like a fan. The crow was as surprised as I was and jumped backwards.

The crow’s attacks, for all their ferocity, had been futile. The creature still had all its legs and was unmarked by the bird’s beak. If anything the crow was looking defeated. Its feathers were ruffled - one had come loose - and it stood where it was, unsure of its next move. The creature, not moving very fast, took refuge in a gap beneath the water butt.

I heard the bell ring. The reward for lateness was additional pen washing and paper-sorting duties. Reluctantly I returned to work with the other scribes. Later in the day I came back to check on the creature but there was no sign of it.

I had seen enough to be able to draw the beast from memory. In broad design it resembled a beetle. Several pairs of jointed legs were arranged symmetrically on either side of the body but unlike an actual beetle one pair was fixed directly on top of the other. The legs were barbed and the creature’s mouth had serrated jaws like the blades of a saw. Its claws were almost like hands with three angular digits on one side and a spiky opposing thumb on the other.

Apart from the shiny wings, the creature’s most distinctive feature was a pair of large eyes that stood out in its head like coins. Almost as extraordinary as its eyes was its back. The wings were encased in a shiny mirror-like shell inlaid with finely etched patterns. At times the shell had looked multi-coloured, as if the surface was covered in a film of oil. Sunlight striking it had bounced off in all directions.

My sketch couldn’t do justice to the colours but with a fine pen I was able to pick out small details and show the contrast between light and dark. I was surprised at the final result. The creature had a look of intelligence in its eyes.

The drawing joined my collection and people often asked to see it. They loved the realism and complimented my powers of imagination. I enjoyed the praise so much that I neglected to say that I had seen the creature with my own eyes. Before I knew it, I had a reputation as an original creator of work. I was warned to be careful as the laws of Sharp Mere generally prohibited new and creative endeavours.

Not long after, I met Master Lantryn Scharp for the first time. I was sketching a small blue-green lizard when I was interrupted by a voice.

You like sketching animals, do you, boy?

An old man dressed in the robes of a calligrapher looked down at me from an open window. The lizard turned its head at the noise