Gandalf Grey's Arc

Chapter 1 of 8

Gandalf Grey had walked far too many roads to die in a stranger's stairwell. But three men in scribes' livery stood in the bookshop below, and one held a lantern to the wall of maps. The old wanderer pressed flat against the loft ladder. His staff creaked in his grip. Somewhere on the shelves behind those men lay the stolen map, and hidden under its inked coasts was the road he had chased his whole life. The far shrine. The one place a wanderer might set down his cloak and stay. A girl crouched beside him in the dark. Sable Vorn, the young scribe who had fled her masters' archive with that very map. She had brought it to this loft a week ago, sleeve pulled low over the glowing mark that spread up her arm. He had helped her read it. Now her masters had followed her scent. "They'll search the shelves," she whispered. Her ink-stained fingers shook. "If they find it, they find me. And you." "Then they find nothing," Gandalf said. He reached past her and slid the map from the satchel at her feet. He rolled it tight. Below, a scribe's master called for the shopkeeper to bring light. Gandalf muttered, low and fast, and for a moment his voice split into two arguing tones. Sable had heard it before and stopped flinching. He tore a strip of faded ribbon from his staff. He wrapped it around the rolled map, then jammed the bundle behind a loose loft board. "Take the window," he told her. "I'll turn them." He climbed down alone. The three masters turned as his boots hit the floor. Gandalf spread his empty hands and smiled like a fool. "Gentlemen. A poor lodger, roused from sleep. Search where you like. You'll find only dust and a old man's snoring." They searched. They pulled books. They knocked the walls. One climbed to the loft and swept his lantern across it. He passed within a hand's width of the loose board. He found nothing. Gandalf kept talking the whole time, cheerful, harmless, a wall of words. At last the lead master spat on the floor. "The girl was here." "Girls come and go," Gandalf said. "So do old men." They left. The bell above the door rang once, then silence. Sable dropped from the window ledge, breathing hard. Gandalf pried the map free and pressed it into her hands. "They didn't take it," she said. "No. But they know your face now, and they'll watch every gate in this city." He looked at her sleeve, at the light seeping past the cuff. "We can't stay. The road on that map leads out through country their patrols hold. We leave tonight, on foot, before the mark climbs higher than you can hide." Sable nodded and shouldered her satchel. The old wanderer took up his staff and opened the door to the dark street.