Say
Hello to Fantasy’s Most Reluctant Hero 

Scribe
of Destiny

by
Paul Barrett & Steve Murphy

Genre:
Fantasy Comedy 

Crow pushed open the door and walked in before me. Protocol dictated that I, as the guest, should have been allowed first entrance—just another petty slight. I was going to have to invent an outstanding payback. Crow had to know it would come. He didn’t serve the Archbishop at all times, and when he was off-duty, he was fair game.

The chamber was large and well decorated, with straight walls covered in soft sheer curtains and tapestries, most depicting saints martyred in gruesome ways while serving Ubel. A four-poster occupied one corner, wrapped in dark blankets. A stout wooden desk sat in the room’s center, clean except for a single sheet of parchment upon which the Archbishop scribbled with a quill. Light streamed in from an open window, aided by large oil lanterns that gave off the salty scent of whale.

As I looked about the room, a strange sense of unreality walked over me, a collision of what was with what used to be. For the briefest moment, I felt like a piece of taffy tugged on by two ravenous children, each wanting the lion’s share of my mind. This chamber was how the rest of the cathedral should be but wasn’t. Or was the cathedral right and the chamber wrong? It gave me an instant headache.

“Are you okay?” the Archbishop asked in his dull, grating voice. “You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.”

“Ghosts don’t exist,” I said reflexively.

“Don’t they?” the Archbishop said with an amused smile. He looked at Crow, who stood beside the large desk, and his smile faltered. “Why are you still here?”

“I await your Grace’s pleasure.”

“Well, his Grace’s pleasure would have been to have breakfast ready before he left home this morning, but since you were nowhere to be found, his pleasure now is that you depart since nothing here concerns you.”

Crow’s face fell as if the Archbishop slapped him. Which he had, in a way. Only great effort kept me from cheering. Crow glared at me. I offered a smile and a dismissive wave of my hand. We both knew I had won this round.

“As your Grace wishes.” He bowed and left, closing the door harder than strictly necessary.

The Archbishop eyed me for a moment, as a butcher might study a choice cut of meat. I shifted on my feet and stared at the rug-covered floor, unable to meet the man’s gaze. Today was the most direct contact I’d had with him my whole time in the Church since I usually worked with the priests or the archivist.

He cleared his throat, and I looked up to find him folding the parchment. He grabbed a small taper, dripped wax onto the fold, and pressed a ring into the wax. “Have you had any more strange feelings since I saw you last?”

You mean other than the feeling this room exists in someplace outside the rest of the building, I wanted to say. I still could get no sense of what the Archbishop thought of my earlier peculiar behavior and didn’t want to push things. But I couldn’t outright lie either. “Just a headache,” I said.

The Archbishop held up two pieces of parchment, one large and square, the other small and rectangular. “I want you to deliver these to Elder. This one,” he indicated the smaller one, “he is to read.” He waved the larger one. “This he is to deliver to the Holy Unseen.”

He gave me another grin, the kind you offered to people at funerals. “I understand from the priests that you are a good scribe. It will serve you well. Now take these.”

Puzzled at his strange comments, I walked over and took the parchments. As I touched them, I caught the thought nice working with you and felt the kind of sizzling jolt you might get from a torch smashed across your forehead. I looked at the documents as the Archbishop stepped back. These documents were another piece of the life-shift puzzle that had begun to assemble this morning. I couldn’t make out exactly what would happen, but I felt the answer was close.

Had I known how close, I would have burned the parchments, scattered the ashes, and moved to the swamp for the rest of my life.

A Note From The Authors

People often ask us why we write fantasy and science fiction. Or, more accurately in our case, space opera. It comes down to writing what you know and love. Sure, Paul knows the film business inside and out, and Steve knows all about being a cop, but that’s our real life. We read to get away from the day to day and the ordinary. That’s the same reason we write what we write.  A movie about the film business or being a cop might be interesting, and we may decide to write something about those subjects someday. But we both grew up reading fantasy, starting with The Lord of the Rings and expanding from there. And we were both huge Dungeons and Dragons geeks, so fantasy was in our blood from the beginning. We know the tropes and the characters and the history and all the things that go with the genre. That makes writing it particularly enjoyable and also gives us, in the case of Scribe of Destiny, the ability to poke gentle fun at the genre.