“Call them by name, lady,” said the Examiner. “What good can possibly come from this evil place? They are the Fiery, Children of the Fire, and they shall be put to the fire, every one, until the Order rules supreme and the world is Cleansed of them forever.”

A hum of approval went around the gathering-but Nat noticed that Crazy Nan did not join it and that several others looked a little anxious. It was easy to see why, he thought; even in World’s End such powers as the Examiner’s were rare, honors conferred upon the highest and holiest rank of the clergy. Torval Bishop wouldn’t have approved; to an oldster like Torval such things would have seemed dangerously close to magic-which was, of course, an abomination-but to Nat Parson, who had traveled and seen a little of the world, there could be no mistaking one for the other.

“Not children, though,” persisted Nan. “I mean, goblins, Good Folk, that’s all right, but we’re not going to Cleanse any real children, are we?”

The Examiner sighed. “The Children of the Fire are not children.”

“Oh.” Crazy Nan looked relieved. “Because we’ve known Maddy Smith since she were a bairn, and she may be a little wild, but-”

“Lady, that is for the Order to judge.”

“Oh, but surely-”

“Please, Miss Fey,” interrupted Nat. “This isn’t just common business anymore.” His chest swelled a little. “This is a matter of Law and Order.”

3

“The Word?” said Maddy. “You mean it exists?”

“Of course it exists,” said the Whisperer. “How else do you think the Æsir were defeated?”

Maddy had never read the Good Book, though she knew “Tribulation” and “Penitences” well enough from Nat Parson’s Sunday sermons. Only Nat and a handful of prentices (all boys) were allowed to read any part of it, and even then, their reading was restricted to the so-called Open Chapters of “Tribulation,” “Penitences,” “Laws,” “Listings,” “Meditations,” and “Duties.”

But some chapters of the Book were locked, with silver clips that pinned the pages shut, the key kept on a fine chain around Nat Parson’s neck. No sermons were ever preached from these Closed Chapters, as they were called, although Maddy knew some of their names from One-Eye.

There was the Book of Apothecaries, which dealt with medicine; the Book of Fabrications, in which were histories of the Elder Age; the Book of Apocalypse, which predicted the final Cleansing; and, most importantly, the Book of Words, which listed all the permissible cantrips (or canticles, as the Order preferred to call them) to be used by the special elite when the time of Cleansing came.

But unlike the rest of the Closed Chapters, the Book of Words was sealed with a golden clip, and it was the only chapter of the Book that was closed even to the parson. He had no key to the golden lock, and although he had tried several times to open it, he had always failed.

In fact, on the last occasion, when he had taken a leatherworker’s awl to the golden lock, it had begun to glow alarmingly and to get uncomfortably hot, after which Nat had been careful not to interfere with it again. He knew a charmed lock when he saw one (it was not so very different, in fact, from the runecharm the Smith girl had placed on the church door), and though he was disappointed that his superiors had shown so little trust in him, he knew better than to challenge their decision.

Maddy knew all this because when she was ten years old, Nat had asked her to remove the lock, saying that he had lost the key and needed to consult the Book for parish purposes.

Maddy had taken malicious pleasure in refusing. “I thought girls weren’t allowed to touch the Good Book,” she’d said modestly, watching him from beneath her lowered lashes.

This was true; Nat had said so only the week before, in a sermon in which he had denounced the bad blood, disorderly habits, and weak intellect of females in general. After that, of course, he could not insist any further, and so the Book of Words had remained closed.

That had done nothing to endear Maddy to Nat; in fact, it was at that moment that the parson’s dislike of Maddy had turned to hate, and he had begun to watch for any sign that might justify an official Examination of Jed Smith’s pert, clever daughter.

“But the parson doesn’t have the Word,” Maddy said. “Only an Examiner could have-” She stopped and stared at the Whisperer. “Examiners?” she murmured in disbelief. “He’s called in the Examiners?”

Not kings, but historians rule the world. It was a proverb that One-Eye had often quoted, but even Maddy didn’t quite realize how true it was.

The Order of Examiners had begun five hundred years ago, in the Department of Records in the great University of World ’s End. It had to have happened there, of course. World’s End was always the center of things. It was the financial capital and the home of the king, the Parleyment was there and the great cathedral of St. Sepulchre, and rumor had it that in the vaults of the Department of Records, there was a library of more than ten thousand books-poetry and science and histories and grimoires-to which only the serious scholars-Professors, Magisters, and other senior staff-had access.

In those days the Examiners were simply officials of the University. They were entirely secular, and their Examination procedures consisted merely of written tests. But after Tribulation and the dark time that followed, the University had remained a symbol of Order. Gradually its influence had grown. Histories were written, conclusions drawn, dangerous books hidden away. And quietly, studiously, power had passed. Not to kings or warriors, but to the Department of Records and the little clique of historians, academics, and theologians who had appointed themselves the sole chroniclers of Tribulation.

The Good Book had been the culmination of their work: the story of the world and of its near destruction by the forces of Chaos; a catalog of world knowledge, science, wisdom, and medicine; and a list of commandments to ensure that in the future, whatever else happened, Order would always triumph.

And so the Order was begun. Not quite priests, not quite scholars, though they shared elements of both, over the years they had become increasingly powerful, and by the end of the first century following Tribulation they had extended their authority far beyond the University. They controlled education and ensured that literacy was restricted to the priesthood, its prentices, and members of the Order. The word University was expanded to make Universal City, so that as years passed, folk forgot that once there had been free access to books and to learning and came to believe that things had always been as they were.

Since then the Order had grown and grown. The king was on the coins, but the Order told him how many to strike; they governed the Parleyment; the army and the police were under their jurisdiction. They were immensely wealthy, they had the power to seize land and possessions from anyone who broke the Law, and they were always recruiting new members. From the priesthood, for the most part, although the Order also took students from the age of thirteen, and these prentices-who gave up their names and renounced their families-often turned out to be the most zealous of all, working tirelessly up the ranks in the hope that one day they might be found worthy to receive the key to the Book of Words.

Everyone had heard tales: of how some prentice had denounced his father to the Order for failing to attend prayers or how some old woman had been Cleansed for decking a wishing well or keeping a cat.

World’s End, of course, was used to it, but if anyone had suggested to Maddy Smith that a villager of Malbry-even one as vain and stupid as Nat Parson-would deliberately court the attention of the Examiners, she would never have believed them.