On Dreamstones, and the Door That Wakes

A slender book on a stock paler than any the Vale's mills turn out, bound in a manner not used in the Vale, and water-stained along the lower margin of every leaf. It is older than most of what sits beside it. The hand is a copyist's, even and unornamented, and the copyist's table of contents names four parts: Of the Dream, Of the Stones, Of their Making, and Of the Door. The copy carries the first three and stops at the end of the third. Whether the fourth was already lost when the copyist began, or lost afterward from this volume alone, the book does not say.

No author is named anywhere in it. The voice is a teacher's, plain and declarative, and it hedges only where it says outright that a thing was taught to its author and never proved by him. The volume is held in the Aldra'vhen Bequest, a scholar's deposit in the Lower Collection of the Great Library, and is consulted under the depositor's standing instruction.