Aldous
Maren's late mentor in the scriptorium
A scribe of the Pale who spent his life copying sacred texts and, in his last years, taught the novice Maren the discipline of the pen. He watched her hands the way one watches a musician's, alert for the moment technique becomes something more. He died three seasons ago, unexplained, and his cell still stands empty. The notes he left behind seem written for someone who can read them.
Description
Aldous was a copyist of the Order, one of the quiet lifers of the scriptorium, and Maren's mentor for as long as she can remember. He was patient, observant, and careful in the way of scholars who have learned that carefulness keeps a person alive in the Pale. If he ever suspected what his student was teaching herself, he never said so aloud.
He is dead now, three seasons gone, and the manner of his death was never truly accounted for. Strangely, his cell has never been reassigned, though space in the Pale is scarce. Tucked among the practice-sheets he left behind, in cramped archaic marginalia, are observations he clearly meant to survive him — including a final, hurried instruction: *find Fen.*