Bystanders in a story of lots

Scribe of the Chronicle of Memories

Peroz was summoned on the eighth hour of the night starting the seventeenth day of the first month of Nisan on the twelfth year of Ahasuerus, the great king, the king of kings, the king of the provinces with many tongues, the king of this great earth far and near. It was awfully late for such ceremonials; he rubbed the grime from his eyes as the two Immortals led him across vacant courtyards and through gloomy gateways. But it was precisely when one was this tired that keeping precision as high as it ought to be was so crucial. When one was tired, one was more likely to make mistakes, and mistakes could be disastrous in his profession. Disastrous for the treasury, for the king's courts, for Peroz's life. And so, he made a point of always being aware of the precise time and date. The king's titles might be overdoing it, however.

He was surprised to find the king himself waiting in the moonlit chamber he was ushered into, its walls and marble floor bare but for the royal self and a leatherbound tome atop an oaken table. He was not surprised by the book, however, as he had sensed the musty smell of its weathered paper even before he had entered the room. The Chronicle of Memories was not his only charge, not even his main one, despite what his official title suggested. But none of the strenuous tax ledgers or short, ornate law-scrolls could compare in breadth or age. The stories the Chronicle hid between its ancient pages... in the royal library it was an old olive tree surrounded by last season's barley, reminiscing a world all but forgotten.

"Scribe!" the king yawned, snatching Peroz from his dreamlike state. "Read to me from the Chronicle. I cannot sleep with so many doubts on my mind."

"Of course, sire. Anything in particular, sire?"

"Something is calling me. I feel it in my stomach like something remembered from a dream. I don't know what it is, but the book calls for me. That sounds delirious, I know. Maybe it's the full moon."

It did not sound delirious to Peroz, for the Chronicle called him always like a forgotten Arabian djinn or Greek siren. Or the Persian moon-god, he supposed.

At the king's request, Peroz opened the great tome at random, relying on Ahura-Mazda to guide his hand.

sung to him, the spirit within waking at his touch like a napping lover. The passages were a song, to anyone with the mind to listen, and not only because they were poetically exaggerated and purposely vague. Heroes and maidens greeted him from beyond years and paper. Stories of war and conquest flowed through him to the king, tales of political intrigue and genius, ballads of peace and fortune...

"More recent!" the king called impatiently. "Whatever is unsolved is from my reign. Someone in court wishes me harm and I must know who and why. They think me impotent, those at court. But I know more than they think, and I sense this threat."

"As the king commands"

"And scribe, I have many servants to read me bedtime stories. I need you to find me the right one, the unfinished one. Nothing more."

Grudgingly, Peroz left the tales of the past behind, flipping a fistful of pages forward in time. They fell in a puff of dust and sour wind, and he began skimming the pages.

Finding the "unfinished story" was not hard – many of the king's dealings were unfinished, leaving scattered spaces amidst the dense calligraphy, yellow spots undisturbed like patches of virgin meadow locked between tilled fields, left to be filled with conclusions that never came. Peroz was astonished. In all his time studying the Chronicle, he had had very little to do with the reign of the current king. Little of note had happened in those twelve years – wars of conquest returned emptyhanded, long rivalries simmered to mere grumbles as the money sustaining them dried out. And besides, the Chronicle was a document for historians, not bureaucrats. But it appeared those bureaucrats have not been doing their jobs.