Archived PCs

The Histories of Alistair Ducatt

Part 1. The Printer’s Devil

His world smelled of ink and paper; such was the fate of a Printer’s Devil. Even on the rare occasions when the boy was forced to wash, the evidence of his labor stained his arms and hands from elbow to fingertip and the earthy scent of parchment clung to his hair and cloths, like a rodent’s musk, marking his trade as surely as the brand seared into the faces of the condemned pickpockets who haunted the alleyways around the market square at dusk.

But the boy did not mind the odor. It was the aroma of the life he knew. His father smelled of ink and paper. And for as long as he lived, Alistair Ducatt could not pick up a book without the memory of his father accompanying the action.

The Ducatt’s printing shop stood in the center of the Echomire borough, near the levied banks of the Canker, midway between Eidolon’s financial district and the merchant’s quarter, yet closes enough to the University to attract patronage from among the scholars as well.

Ducatt senior had built a small, but loyal, clientele for his work on the reputation of relentlessly pursuing perfection. This pursuit resulted in a sluggish pace in filling orders and dauntingly exorbitant pricing, but was favored among certain consumers who demanded, some might even speculate that their very lives depended on, absolute precision in the preparation of their manuals and tomes. And it was on behalf just such a client that young Alistair was given a reprieve from the arduous task of scrubbing piling, the paste-like build-up of ink and pulp, from the tiny wells in the recently used foundry type.

“Mr. Mordechai, the solicitor in Bog Hollow, has demanded the immediate return of his client’s manuscript along with these proofing sheets.” Alistair’s father said, thrusting a wrapped bundle into the boy’s arms. “He refuses to wait until morning. Take him the book and return straight away. If you run, you can make it back before full dark.”

Such was the fate of a Printer’s Devil. Though he had lived at the shop for the entirety of his life, and knew more about the art and craft of printing than many of the journeymen employed by his father, Alistair was yet a few months shy of the Guild sanction age for apprenticeship, and so could only occupy the lowly position of Printer’s Devil, whose role it was to fetch and carry, clean and scrub, and run the occasional errand.

With package clutched tightly, young Alistair rushed into the dieing light of evening. The low mist gathering on the Canker spread its nebulous tendrils east across the river reaching for the barbicans positioned along the causeway. The cobbles were slick with the aftermath of the day’s rain, and dark pools of dubious contents bubbled and swirled over the choked mouths of drains, as the bowls of the city’s sewers labored to consume the refuse washed into them from the alleys and gutters, often failing, retching accumulated filth into the streets.

Alistair ran, though not from fear, despite the many cautionary tales he had heard about the dangers that lurked in the mist. No, his haste was born from a desire to rid himself of the bundle that seemed to be growing colder as night drew closer.

As he ran, the boy weighed the minutes spared against the dangers of the route if he chose the twisted path through Gallows Reach. The slum nurtured hazards, like maggots infesting a carcass. Still, the boy thought, the perils of true night surpassed the risks; better to meet a violent end on the point of a knife than suffer a worse fate in the mists.

Gallows Reach was a maze of narrow alleys formed by crumbling tenements and abandoned shops. Years ago fire had ravaged the slum. The council had elected to allow the blaze to continue, concentrating the municipal efforts on keeping the conflagration from spreading to the neighboring boroughs of Bog Hollow and Echomire. The evangelical councilman from Bog Hollow had stabilized his failing political support by calling for the destruction of the slum. “Just as rotting flesh must be cut away and cleansed by fire so to must the Reach be purged” he had exhorted. For three days the fires raged until the mists consumed even them. But support for the urban renewal following the fire never materialized, and so the disease ridden beast that was Gallows Reach lay wounded; a blackened and worm borrowed heart in Eidolon’s breast. What was once home to the poor, became a haunt for those discarded from society.

Alistair ran, wary of the shadows, his breath coming in ragged gasps, his footsteps echoing through the maze of alleys. But the Reach was quiet. No chiding voices called from the tenement balconies as he ran; no pleading cries followed his passing as he raced by the gaping mouths of burned and ravaged shops now home to the desolate. More ominous, missing were the sonorous growls and calls of the starving curs that had banded together in packs to stalk the weak.

Something was amiss in Gallows Reach.

Fear gripped the boy as the distant bells of Lamentable Moll tolled the hour. With the first chime of Gloaming, the hour following dusk that preceded the onset of true night, the dread chill seeping from the book grew more intense as if it would steal the warmth from Alistair’s blood and freeze his heart in his chest.

The beast came from above. An unnatural shadow flitting across the street as it leapt from rooftop to balcony and dropped to the street. What it carried was not human, but it might once have been.

With speed born of terror Alistair flung himself into the mouth of a nearby alley and crouched huddling in fear, the icy bundle clutched to his chest. The wet and meaty sounds of the creature’s meal painting abattoir images in the boys mind behind clinched eyes.

The creature paused in its repast and the silence, more dreadful than the sound, was broken at irregular intervals by the wet and nasal sound of the creature inhaling, searching for a scent on the evening breeze.

With a guttural growl the beast discarded the remnants of its meal. It took a few tentative steps, pausing again to test the scents carried whispered breath of night.

Alistair waited for the end, surely if the creature could not smell him, it could hear the hammering of his heart, threatening to burst the confines of his chest.

But no end came.

Alistair cautiously peered around the crumbling wall of the alley. The square was empty; the creature gone. Without waiting for further confirmation of its departure, the boy sprang to his feet and darted across the wet cobbles of the plaza, careful to avoid looking at the broken mass of flesh discarded by the creature.

Alistair ran for his life. He was no longer certain of his route, but he knew that the river was to his left which meant he was at least heading in the right direction. His only thought to escape the horror that prowled the slum.

And suddenly he was free of the Gallows Reach.

The boy stumbled to a halt. Damn the cursed book, and solicitor in Bog Hollow, and the rotting, twisted alleyways of Gallows Reach; but above all damn the night, and the mists, and the horrors they brought with them. He would abandon the book and return to the shop, and in the morning when the solicitor called upon his father he would take his beating and be glad that the ordeal was at an end.

“Oy lad, Devil of a time to be about.” A man called from the corner of the avenue. He wore the traditional grey long coat of the city’s Lamplighters. The man thrust the end of a long pole into the lantern of one of the avenue’s gaslights and with a soft pop the lamp burst into light spilling a globe of radiance across the rain slick cobbles.

“What brings you out so close to true night boy?” The man’s voice was low and rough and fit well with his appearance; disapproval evident in his tone.

“A client of my father required the immediate return of this book, sir.” Alistair responded holding out the terrible bundle he had been plotting to abandon moments earlier. The Lamplighter reached for the package, but evidently changed his mind, withdrawing his hand and thrusting it into the pocket of his long coat.

“Who is this client that your father would risk your life over a book?” The Lamplighter asked.

Alistair was a cautious boy by nature and disinclined to speak of his father’s business to strangers, but the truth involuntarily slipped from his mouth.

“A solicitor in Bog Hollow, near Crow’s Willow,” the boy said.

The man paused as if he would say something, but once again seemed to change his mind.

“I know the street lad, you’re not far now. Maybe ten minutes walk; less if you’ve breath enough to run. Keep to the lighted streets, no shortcuts through darkened alleys. And when you’re done it’s straight home with you. Up the High Road on your way back, and stay clear of Gallows Reach. It’ll take you a few minutes longer to get where you’re going but there’s less chance of…unpleasantness.”

The boy thought of the remnants of the meal abandoned by the creature and shuddered involuntarily.

Alistair bobbed his head in thanks and started off up the lighted avenue at a trot.

From the warehouses to the south Alistair could hear the foremen rousing the Stitch Gangs for the night shift

The solicitor’s residence stood back from the street behind a wrought iron gate and a dieing rose garden. The boy entered the first and studied the second as he made his way towards the house. While far from an expert, Alistair had recently assisted in setting type for a series of horticultural texts for herbology professor at the University, and it was his opinion that something unusual had very recently caused all of the roses to die.

As he wrapped on the door with the brass lion’s head knocker it swung slowly inward. He called into the darkened foyer, announcing his arrival. The darkness consumed his greeting and returned nothing. Alistair became suddenly aware once again of the unnatural chill bleeding from the package in his arms.

Cautiously, he entered the residence, his footsteps alarmingly loud on the marble floor of the entry hall. The boy called out again his voice sounding weak and scared in his own ears.

Light flickered in the gap beneath a door to his left causing shadows to dance across the polished stone floor. Alistair knocked before entering. The gesture of civility was unnecessary. The room’s occupant was clearly dead.

The grey haired man sat behind a great leather-topped wooden desk, his head back, mouth opened, as if he had died screaming. Whether it was a trick of the firelight, or a physiological response within the corpse beyond his understanding, but as Alistair entered the room, the dead man’s eyes seemed to shift in his direction.

He didn’t intend to scream, but of the many times he later reflected on the incident, he could see no way to have avoided it.

As if in ghoulish parody of the corpse Alistair threw back his head and gave voice to accumulated horrors he had seen this night.

He did not remember consciously deciding to flee from the house, but suddenly found himself running, his lungs burning and his throat ragged, though whether from the exertion of his flight or the screaming he could not tell.

Instinctively heeding the Lamplighters advice Alistair followed the main, lighted, roads back to Echomire. As promised the journey took longer, but passed without incident. Until he came within sight of his father’s shop.

Fire was always a concern in a printing shop, because of the ready availability of fuel for the ravenous flames. Ducatt senior had instilled the need for the greatest care in all those who worked for him. Alistair knew that the blaze now engulfing his home could not have been an accident.

Unbidden an image of the dead solicitor came to mind and Alistair found himself running towards the burning print shop.

Later when Alistair would hear priests speak of the fiery torment that awaited the wicked he had no difficulty in imagining the scene because he had already seen it as a boy.

The world he knew was in flames.

The smell of paper and ink vanished in the blaze, replaced choking smoke and soot, and something far more sinister.

A storm of glowing sparks and grey ash raged through the air as flames greedily clung to every surface. Amidst the destruction, beyond the burning press, stood a man untouched by the flames holding Alistair’s father aloft by the throat.

The man was saying something, but the noise of the inferno consumed all of his words but two; “Lexicon Malificarum.” The book. The damned and cursed book.

If that is what this monster wanted Alistair would readily offer it in exchange and be glad to be rid of the hateful thing.

Alistair called to the man, stripping away the tattered packaging to show that he had what was wanted. With as much confidence as he could manufacture the boy shouted that he would give up the book in exchange for his father.

And as Alistair watched the man broke his father as if he were crushing a flower.

And suddenly the man was next to him and the book was plucked from his numb fingers, and with casual distain the man struck Alistair as if he were an insect. The blow knocked him from his feet and sent him sprawling on top of the burning press.

The scalding type seared through the thin material of his shirt and into the skin of his back, branding the images into his flesh. Alistair’s screams were lost in the conflagration as he rolled across the scorching plates to drop to the floor.

The darkness that embraced him was a welcome release from the horrors he had witnessed.

Epilogue

Alistair awoke in pain. More pain than he had ever known. More pain than should have been possible.

It took him several moments to realize that he was suspended. Hanging from the ceiling by leather straps as if he were a side of meat on display at a butcher’s shop.

“I’m afraid the marks are permanent.” A gruff voice said below him, just beyond his field of vision.

Alistair could not find his voice in order to respond. His throat felt as if he had been forced to drink molten lead. The only sound that he could manage was a rough croak.

“It’s really rather remarkable.” The voice continued. “Although the manuscript itself was lost, Mr. Codex believes that roughly a quarter of it can be recovered, thanks to you.”

Bewildered Alistair tried to move his head in order to see the man who was speaking. It was then that he noticed the precise black markings covering his chest and what he could see of his arms.

“Obviously a result of the ink being introduced into the open wound, but there is something more. Mr. Cutter has said that the markings seem to resist his attempts to remove them. Not that we would, until our studies are complete.” The man stepped into view and it was a moment before Alistair recognized the Lamplighter.

“The name’s Mr. Flint, by the way. Get some rest. We’ll begin your training when you’ve recovered some of your strength.” With a swish of his grey long coat the man turned to leave, then paused, “Welcome to the Order of Lamplighters, Mr. Book.”