The Withdrawn

A large illustrated volume, its plates given over to rubbings and copies of old carvings: the colours faded, the vellum gone soft with age. No author's name stands anywhere in it. The hand that wrote the commentary calls itself only the compiler, and says the plates were taken from temples, tombs and roadside stones across the Vale and beyond it, over many years. Each plate is followed by what the compiler could gather of the stories attached to the carving, so that the book is as much a gathering of stories as of stones. It is held among the supervised references of the Great Library, in the Reference Rooms, and is read at a numbered desk for a set time.