The Inner Scriptorium of the Schismatics was sealed by a door of solid green snake-like stone, five inches thick, bolted with three heavy bronze barrel-locks that bore no keyholes.
To open an ordinary door, one needed a key or a crowbar. To open a Schismatic door, one needed the correct grammar.
Ren Vale stood before the stone portal, his fingers resting on the smooth snake-like. Beside him, emerging from the silver ash at his right shoulder, stood Master Ren—the Scroll-keeper.
The Tier V summon wore no velvet and carried no sword. He was dressed in the severe, ink-stained robes of an academician from the First Spreading, his throat wrapped in high linen bandages that hid the scarred throat cords he had surrendered to learn the forbidden tongue of the First Epoch. In his left hand, he carried a heavy slate palette. In his right, a carved pestle of fossil mammoth bone tipped with blackened silver.
Master Ren didn’t speak. He raised his metal pen and rapidly scratched three characters of ancient Khorat High Notarial script across the snake-like stone:
Condition. Breach. Payback.
The bronze barrel-locks clicked in rapid row. It slid back into the stonework with the smooth, oiled care of a bank vault.
