that was the most effective advertisement of all. Word that someone had paid a few measly pyras for a first edition of Monken Maksud’s Beacon in the Gloaming would spread like wildfire and the shop would be besieged all night long by customers in search of similar lucky finds.
The bookstores that catered for a mass clientele had either bricked up their entrances to the catacombs or concealed them behind bookcases to prevent their customers from straying inside. Only a few streets away from the big bookstores and cheap cafés, however, things became more interesting. The shops were smaller and more specialised, their shopfronts more artistic and individual, their wares older and more expensive. They also granted access to certain areas of the catacombs - certain areas, mark you, because they allowed their customers to descend only a few storeys, after which the entrances were bricked up or sealed off in some other way. It was quite possible to get lost in these subterranean passages for several hours, but everyone found their way out in the end.
The further into the city you went, the older and more dilapidated the buildings, the smaller the shops and the fewer the tourists became. In order to enter some of these antiquarian bookshops you had to ring a bell or knock. From them you could really descend into the catacombs without restriction but at your own risk. If the customer was a new and unknown Bookhunter the staff would issue exhaustive warnings, informing him of the dangers and drawing attention to the fact that torches, oil lamps, provisions, maps and weapons were on sale in the shop, as well as balls of stout string for attaching to hooks on the premises - a device that enabled you to venture into the depths in relative safety. Other bookshops offered the services of trained apprentices who were well acquainted with certain parts of the catacombs and would take you on guided tours.
I had learnt all these things from Regenschein’s book, so my knowledge of them made those inconspicuous little shops seem to me like doorways into a mysterious world. For the moment, however, I was uninterested in leaving the surface of the city. I was engaged on a very special mission: bound for Pfistomel Smyke’s antiquarian bookshop at 333 Darkman Street.
I came to a spacious square - an unusual sight after all those narrow lanes and alleyways. What struck me as more unusual still was that it was unpaved and dotted with gaping holes among which tourists were strolling. It wasn’t until I saw that these pits were inhabited that the truth finally dawned: this was the celebrated or notorious Graveyard of Forgotten Writers !
Such was the popular name for it, its official, more prosaic appellation being Pit Plaza. It was one of the city’s less agreeable sights and one of which Dancelot had always spoken in hushed tones. It wasn’t a genuine graveyard, of course. No one was buried there - or not, at least, in the conventional sense. The pits were occupied by writers too impoverished to afford a roof over their heads. They wrote to order for any tourist willing to toss them some small change.
I shivered. The pits really did look like freshly dug graves, and vegetating in each of them was a failed writer. Their occupants wore grimy, tattered clothes or were swathed in old blankets, and they wrote on the backs of used envelopes. The pits were their dwellings, a few tarpaulins being their only makeshift protection at night or when it rained. They had reached the bottom of the professional ladder, the very lowest point to which any Zamonian author could sink and the nightmare that haunted every member of the literary fraternity.
‘My brother’s a blacksmith,’ a tourist called down into one of the pits. ‘Write me something about horseshoes.’
‘My wife’s name is Grella,’ called another. ‘A poem for Grella, please!’
‘Hey, poet!’ yelled a Bluddum. ‘Write me a rhyme!’
I quickened my step and hurried across the
The bookstores that catered for a mass clientele had either bricked up their entrances to the catacombs or concealed them behind bookcases to prevent their customers from straying inside. Only a few streets away from the big bookstores and cheap cafés, however, things became more interesting. The shops were smaller and more specialised, their shopfronts more artistic and individual, their wares older and more expensive. They also granted access to certain areas of the catacombs - certain areas, mark you, because they allowed their customers to descend only a few storeys, after which the entrances were bricked up or sealed off in some other way. It was quite possible to get lost in these subterranean passages for several hours, but everyone found their way out in the end.
The further into the city you went, the older and more dilapidated the buildings, the smaller the shops and the fewer the tourists became. In order to enter some of these antiquarian bookshops you had to ring a bell or knock. From them you could really descend into the catacombs without restriction but at your own risk. If the customer was a new and unknown Bookhunter the staff would issue exhaustive warnings, informing him of the dangers and drawing attention to the fact that torches, oil lamps, provisions, maps and weapons were on sale in the shop, as well as balls of stout string for attaching to hooks on the premises - a device that enabled you to venture into the depths in relative safety. Other bookshops offered the services of trained apprentices who were well acquainted with certain parts of the catacombs and would take you on guided tours.
I had learnt all these things from Regenschein’s book, so my knowledge of them made those inconspicuous little shops seem to me like doorways into a mysterious world. For the moment, however, I was uninterested in leaving the surface of the city. I was engaged on a very special mission: bound for Pfistomel Smyke’s antiquarian bookshop at 333 Darkman Street.
I came to a spacious square - an unusual sight after all those narrow lanes and alleyways. What struck me as more unusual still was that it was unpaved and dotted with gaping holes among which tourists were strolling. It wasn’t until I saw that these pits were inhabited that the truth finally dawned: this was the celebrated or notorious Graveyard of Forgotten Writers !
Such was the popular name for it, its official, more prosaic appellation being Pit Plaza. It was one of the city’s less agreeable sights and one of which Dancelot had always spoken in hushed tones. It wasn’t a genuine graveyard, of course. No one was buried there - or not, at least, in the conventional sense. The pits were occupied by writers too impoverished to afford a roof over their heads. They wrote to order for any tourist willing to toss them some small change.
I shivered. The pits really did look like freshly dug graves, and vegetating in each of them was a failed writer. Their occupants wore grimy, tattered clothes or were swathed in old blankets, and they wrote on the backs of used envelopes. The pits were their dwellings, a few tarpaulins being their only makeshift protection at night or when it rained. They had reached the bottom of the professional ladder, the very lowest point to which any Zamonian author could sink and the nightmare that haunted every member of the literary fraternity.
‘My brother’s a blacksmith,’ a tourist called down into one of the pits. ‘Write me something about horseshoes.’
‘My wife’s name is Grella,’ called another. ‘A poem for Grella, please!’
‘Hey, poet!’ yelled a Bluddum. ‘Write me a rhyme!’
I quickened my step and hurried across the
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