THE GRIMOIRE

The skies shall tear as parchment, punctured by the sword of a bird and woman's words.
And this shall happen after a year's war that leaves children at the heads of nations.
-The Grimoire

Act I: The Lock

Sena was gorgeous.
At least in the beginning she was gorgeous. By 562, Year of the Salamander-according to the Roll set forth by Yacob Skie-her beauty would change. But in the beginning she was a marvel to look upon. Her skin brought to mind the sands of an hourglass poured through by evening light. Or perhaps a better metaphor for her gleaming skin was church gold; smooth, hard, theft-worthy and stretched so thin and tight it barely covered her nubile body."

page_1: "Yes, Sena was more like church gold, mainly because there was never enough of her to go around.
She might have been a seductive candlestick cast as an altarpiece by the Nilora circa 900 S.K. (Six Kingdoms Reckoning) in the great and errant city of Bablemum on the Tebesh Plateau over seven hundred years ago; but like any of those immoral icons, she too had grown numb to her worshipers' caress. Regardless, from her amber-colored toes to her soft seraphic mouth, Sena's was a body whose every inch wanted description.
On Mresh 8th, Day of the White Moon, Year of the Falcon, Sena stood in a dim room. Nervously, her fingers teased the wild gold curls she had borne since childhood into a sort of counterfeit nevertheless alluring halo while she looked at a dark shape on the table."

page_2: "Her blue eyes reflected a low fat object.
Sena's eyes, some said, masqueraded as wells of infinite depth. Those who fell in, however, found themselves surprised and broken against a shallow bottom. Though they foreshadowed immeasurable lovely things, Sena's terminal blue eyes defined only steel and the spike of the buckler. They were cunning eyes. They were bedroom eyes. Sena closed them and tried to relax but inside her head, the book howled.
The book, Sena thought, was hideous. It reeked of antiquity. Its origin was unspeakable and forgotten. Certainly it had come out of the dim ages before men ever set foot upon the Tebesh Plateau. She touched the dingy crimson hide lovingly. Leather, once bright, had faded and torn. Metal ferrules riveted at the corners held together sagging hide. The ferrules"

page_3: "were beaten to resemble coiled snakes. Their bodies, worn smooth with centuries of handling, harbored greenish pits where air worked the metal. Under Sena's caress, the book felt uncomfortably cool. Though it did not have an actual title, a faint dark scrawl looped across the front. Sena called it the Grimoire, for that was its name in legends.
The Grimoire was locked. No living person had read its pages. In the latch, the tumblers could be seen like the rusted legs of a metal spider that had crawled inside and curled up to sleep.
It was because of the Grimoire that Sena chose to live alone. Her remote cottage sat on the northern edge of a plateau called the Highlands of Tue; it was a raven-haunted landscape empty of people. The Highlands of Tue were lightly wooded and"

page_4: "overlooked crooked wastes to the east known as the Stonelands and less arid grasslands to the north which people called the Marches. The Highlands of Tue were green from storms that brewed south in the Valley of Nifol. During the summer, warm rains fed the Highlands. Nectar-heavy blossoms tangled everywhere and honeybees patrolled the open meadows, packing gold dust on their legs that they carried dutifully back into the trees.
The bastion of society closest to Sena's cottage was the mighty City State of Sandren, established 640 S.K. by a precious metals merchant named Gimmon Mae. Also known as the City in the Mountain, Sandren rested in the Ghalla Peaks, eighteen leagues to the west.
A young nobleman who lived in Sandren had given Sena money to build and furnish her cottage as a gift upon"

page_5: "her graduation from the High College of Desdae. Tynan Brakest was his name. His father owned vineyards in the Valley of Nifol and for him at least gold gryphs did grow on vines. Tynan would have been at Sena's cottage every day had the journey from Sandren not taken an entire day horsed. But infrequent visits suited Sena best and she did not mourn his regular absence.
Despite Sena's reclusive habits, Tynan might never have envisioned his lover as a witch-were it not for a series of events that happened towards the end of the Year of the Falcon 561 and which I will put forth much later in this: a history of my final days in the lands of the Jooly, which by translation is the lands of the Low Children, or the lands of Men. Witches outside Mirayhr were hanged or buried alive. And yet Tynan was not a complete fool."

page_6: "He had been schooled in Sandren at a fine college, though not as fine as Desdae. Since his graduation, he entered into the family business and hauled his father's wine from town to town. He traveled mostly through the Country of Mirayhr to places with names like Skaif, Null Hill and Skellum, selling barrels at shrewd prices to taverns and inns. It was a trade he had been at for several years when he first met Sena in a bakery in one of the nameless hamlets east of Darkling Wood and north of the Highlands of Tue. For him, it was something like love at first sight. But Tynan's fall was nothing anyone could blame him for. Even the brightest boys at Desdae had fallen into Sena's blue eyes.
Tynan began falling immediately.
On a chilly autumn evening, shortly"

page_7: "after Sena's sixteenth birthday, she confided in Tynan that it was her dream to study. Though he had been her lover only six months, he decided then and there that he would pay her tuition at Desdae, the most prestigious school in the Hinterlands. So, a common girl who worked in a bakery in the Country of Mirayhr, traveled to the Kingdom of Greymoor, which lay some seventy-five miles east, across a low bank of mountains called The Spine, and there began exploring the wondrous secrets the world of Adummim had to offer. Unfortunately for Tynan, some of those secrets were other boys.
Tynan's fall was exaggeratedly long and slow. Whatever depth Sena lacked, Tynan made up for with profound denial. Even Sena marveled at his blindness, which continued as intensely as its source-an endless gush of passion that flowed"

page_8: "like the rich juices from his father's press. For eight years, Tynan paid her way at school, harboring a futile hope that his generosity and kindness would pay off. Perhaps if Tynan had been at her cottage on the 8th of Mresh, he would have finally crashed. Perhaps tonight he would have noticed how Sena's eyes strayed to the ancient Grimoire as if it were her newest lover. Then might have begun the questions whose answers-spoken or not-would inevitably sunder their relationship.
The shadows from a solitary candle hovered tensely over Sena's table and the worn split wood seemed to grimace. Farther back, the white daub of the walls stood phantom-like at the edge of the light. And tacked in the beams overhead, pungent-smelling herbs hung like spidery seraphs,"

page_9: "clawing over an unholy rite. Sena's whole cottage seemed to hold its breath. But she could not open the book. Its latch required a key no locksmith could produce. So Sena looked at the Grimoire with frayed attention and moved to stand restlessly in the doorway to her home. Beyond the open door, a meadow glimmered with queelub. They flitted through the weeds, flashing their fat blue insect bodies at each other while dusk settled over the singularly lonesome Highlands of Tue. It was early spring and the fresh air reminded her of graduation.
It had been two years since she left the High College of Desdae to search for the Grimoire. She thought back four years to when she had been a student deeply imbedded in ink-rich clutter."

page_10: "Poking through the private notes of her instructor, Morgan Gullows, she found a bit of doggerel. In the dank cellar of Githum Hall, from stained and dog-eared pages, rose a myth. The words lifted themselves into Sena's eyes like a resurrection of dead lore and spoke of the legendary book now lying on her table.
The Grimoire was a book unlike any other. Nearly two decades ago, during the Year of the Crow, it belonged to a warlock-king who lived in the north most country of the Duchy of Stonehold. But the warlock's luck had taken a turn for the worse. His estate auctioned, emptied and hollow, was left crumbling in the foothills of the Healean Range. Now he rested out back with his ancestors, amid young trees and ancient headstones. That was the rumor."

page_11: "Since the warlock had no family, the curios in his estate were bought by extravagant collectors from the South. The Grimoire must have been auctioned along with hundreds of other books. Sena left Desdae, obsessed with the possibility of finding it. What luck when it turned up in a bookshop in Sandren, thrown on a pile with several codices of moral law. Sena could not believe her eyes. I want this one, she said, holding up the faded volume.
The proprietor smiled with lips like wood shavings-pale smooth and tight, Comes from Stonehold, it does-very old. Can't open it though. Latch's rusted shut, see? He took it in his hands and shook it as though that were the best way to illustrate.
How much do you want? Sena looked at him coyly, then turned away, pretending to consider.
It's very old, his thin fingers"

page_12: "caressed the leather. The binding suggests it might have come from the islands before I found it in Stonehold. He did not get customers like her very often. In the midst of his dim shop, amid waves of age-tinctured books, she was a bright nymph with cunning charms.
I'll give you five gold gryphs, Sena said.
He simpered at her. But she was pretty as a new coin.
Ten? she offered.
Ten? he echoed.
And it was sold. The Hinterland's most potent and most inauspicious book of spells traded hands for the price of two good draft horses.
Sena looked across the queelub-speckled meadow. Beyond the playful insects, a storm drifted unconsciously below the level of the plateau-as though it rose from the mythic edge of the world."

page_13: "Thunderheads rumbled. Rain and lighting hung in heavy veils below their bellies. If only it could drown out the howling in her head. Like a gruesome infant, the Grimoire screamed to be opened. Finally, Sena succumbed. She left the sweet smell of blossoms behind and went inside to write the letter she had long known she must write. Her range of alternatives had dwindled to naught, yet she smiled. There are spells, she whispered to the book whose thickness exceeded her arm, even for things like you.
As Sena stepped through the tiny house, Nis watched sleepily from a straw-seated chair. Sena patted his head once, went up the stairs and sat down at a spindly desk.
The loft was small as it was clean. Her narrow bed barely fit below the angle of the rafters. It smelled of fresh linen and dried"

page_14: " flowers.
From the desk, she took an expensive sheet of parchment and penned a brief letter. On a second sheet, she drew a funny little map, frowning in frustration as the ink refused to shape itself into proper images of trees. After what did not look like thirty minutes of concentration, she gave up, blew the ink dry, and folded both pages together.
Sena paused as the quiet enfolded her. The crickets were silent. Only the wind blew softly across the shingles, reminding her of a place far away where not even the Grimoire's abysmal moaning could penetrate; the musky-smelling memory of a boy's warm body, of a lonely place and the danger of theft."

page_15: "It was the reminiscence of thousands of books, millions of paper-scented words, of love in the dust, forgery and deceit. Sena blinked to clear her mind and took out a slender brass key. It was tarnished and flecked with paint. A bit of paper had been wired to the handle that read Attic. This she removed delicately. She touched the key to her lips, smelling the old metal. Then she put the key, the letter, and the map in an envelope she folded herself.
The instant she sealed it, the Grimoire's howl returned. Oh yes, her lovely lips hissed, There are spells for things like you.