What the Scrolls Were Worth

Ephesus stands at the height of its confidence — the crowded harbour, the great temple on the hill, the craftsmen's quarter loud with a pilgrim city's trades. Philaretos copies the binding-names of the old Ephesian art: the curse-scrolls and healing-charms people pay good silver for. His is the surest hand in the quarter. Whether a name answers, once cut, was never the copyist's part.

Then a teacher new to the city argues, in a borrowed lecture-hall, that the names are no keys at all — and a wrongness he cannot reason away settles into his work. His old mentor offers the sensible course: keep the scrolls, let two kinds of power coexist. A kind argument, and a good living.

But a man cannot go on copying words he has stopped believing — and a day is coming when he must decide what the scrolls in his chest are worth.