The first story the young Acolyte Historian must prepare and enter into the histories is, of course, his own. It is unthinkable that any Historian might himself have a life that is not in the closest possible agreement with Canon. You can not imagine how difficult it was for me to even gain admission to the School of Acolytes, then, having arrived at the Historium in the hands of Father Celestine as a foundling. In Historical circles, foundlings are as so many human palimpsests: the original text has been expunged and another written over it. Although often very intriguing and curious, palimpsests are almost always given a nil rating or placed the theoretical “nine deviations from true” away from acceptable norms. There simply can be no place for documents which say one thing at one period, and then are changed in another, if it is not through the agreed actions of the Historians that these changes be made. In any case, all such historical anomalies are recorded, before they are quite rightly destroyed.
Quite what the Holy Father was thinking of when he brought me here I cannot say, but this much is certain, in researching the beginnings of my own beginnings, I found so many untraced threads and so many unexpected anomalies, that I can only believe that Father Celestine had already written the outcome of my initiation, and thus foreshadowed what my own life story would reveal to the greater glory of the Brotherhood of Historians.
Back then, however I had nothing to go on, and no inkling of what I was to later discover. In the ordinary way, an Acolyte Initiate would begin with his family records if any and then the records of the local township, or Hetman, if the community was too small or impermanent to have reached Township status. I am told that in some of the herding communities, there is usually one old woman, whose task it is to memorize all the family relationships within the tribe. Surprisingly, such pedigree keepers are in the main extremely accurate. In the case of a foundling such as I, however, there is no family to go to, and so I had to begin with Father Celestine himself, to find the most basic information: where had he found me?
I waited until mid-morning, when I had finished my chores, and I knew that the Holy Father would have finished his offices for the day, before I asked the Acolyte Master’s permission to absent myself and seek out Father Celestine. I found him, sitting in the dark in his cell, surrounded by his papers, apparently in meditation, but he spoke to me before I even had time to turn away, calling me into sit across from him. Barely had I settled myself onto the zabutan, when he began.
“Ah. Xandra,” he said, pronouncing my name with the soft guttural of the Northerners, rather than the silly click fashionable among those who would copy all the styles of the Imperials. “Let me see; yes it must be fifteen years now that you have been with us. Yes…. High time and more that you came to fond out about yourself. You show great patience, boy, that is good. But frankly I would have expected more curiosity from a child of mine. Had I been your father, perhaps you would have not waited so long to come and see me, eh? But then, had I been your father, you would not have had to ask, would you? There would be no mystery, no questioning, no wonder…. But I can tell I have piqued your curiosity now, haven’t I? Yes… of course. Mmmm.” He had a curious way of asking questions that was less than rhetorical and somehow more than a verbal cue to the direction your thoughts should go. And then he always seemed to be on the edge of humming quietly to himself.
“Mmmm. Hmmmm. Yes. Hmm. Curious enough now, eh? Good, An Historian must possess enough curiosity to doubt everything, my son, or else we should so easily stray into Error. And as it is we who define Error, that would be unfortunate to say the least, Eh? Mmmm? Do you think? Yes, of course you do. Now then,” he reached behind where he sat and drew out a slender piece of wood, and handed it to me. It was about three-quarters of a cubit long, and as thick around as my middle finger. It was covered with small notches down its length, divided into sections by bands of leather which had been somehow affixed to it with some form of glue.
“There you are, my son, what do you make of that? That was the middle section of the back-brace you were strapped to when I found you.”
“I see, Reverend Father,” although, of course, I could see nothing.
“Liar,” he said without malice. “Please do not waste either of our time with such meaningless pleasantries, boy. You have no idea what it is, or what it means, or what you are going to do with it. Don’t pretend, Xandra. It will do you no good, ever to pretend. Pretending is precisely what you should never do. You are an Acolyte Initiate Historian, young fellow, and Historians do not pretend!”