The Last Archivist

Taron Hale was halfway across Ashen Bridge when the cold touched the back of his neck. He stopped walking. The road was crowded. Farmers pushed carts toward Marrow Hall. A boy drove six goats ahead of him. Two guards leaned on the stone rail and argued over a card game. Nobody else had stopped. Nobody else had felt it. "You walk slowly for a man with a delivery," said the woman beside him. She shifted a basket of eggs to her other hip. "Keep up, scribe. I want to sell these before noon." "Lisbet." His voice came out thin. "Do not turn around." She turned around at once. Behind them, near the east end of the bridge, the air above the river had gone grey. A tall shape stood inside it. Its arms hung down to its knees. It had no face. Under its feet, where the bridge should have been, there was nothing. Lisbet frowned. "What am I looking at?" "You can't see it?" "I see a bridge, a river, and a man who looks sick." Taron had seen Erasers four times in two years. Each time he had been far away, on a roof or a hill, with plenty of time to run. This one was sixty paces from him. Nobody on the road was looking at it. Nobody ever did. The creature raised one arm and touched the rail. The rail did not crack. It stopped existing. A piece of stone as wide as a hand disappeared, then a piece as wide as a cart, and the gap began to spread west along the bridge. One of the guards leaned back to pick up a dropped card. His back met empty air, and he was gone before he could shout. The other guard looked at the spot where his friend had stood. He frowned, scratched his head, and said, "What was I saying?" Then he walked away toward the city. Taron's chest went tight. He had watched this happen before, and it always went the same way. Something was lost, and then everyone forgot it had ever existed. "Run," he said. "Why would I…" He caught her wrist and ran. Ashen Bridge was one hundred and twenty paces long. They were past the middle, so the west bank was sixty paces ahead. Taron's coat was too big and his boots were too heavy. Lisbet kept up with him anyway, and she insulted him the entire way because she did not know what she was running from. "If this is a joke, scribe…" "It is not a joke!" "Then tell me what…" A soft, long tearing sound ran down the bridge. Carts stopped. A woman screamed. The boy let go of his goat rope and the goats scattered in all directions. Then, one voice at a time, the screaming stopped. People vanished, and the people next to them forgot there had been anyone to scream about. Taron looked back once. The gap was thirty paces behind them and moving faster than a man could run. The Eraser walked on the empty air without hurry. "Faster!" he shouted. "I am carrying eggs!" "Drop the eggs!" "Absolutely not!" Twenty paces. The stone under Taron's boots felt cold through the leather. Fifteen paces. He glanced down and saw the edge of the bridge crumble away one step behind his heel. Ten paces. "Jump!" he yelled. He threw himself forward, still holding her wrist, and the bridge ended under his back foot. For one moment there was nothing under him at all. Then his knees hit gravel and his palms scraped across the road on the west bank. His satchel swung around and slammed into his ribs. He rolled over and gasped for air. Lisbet's hand was still wrapped around his sleeve. She had landed with one boot on the bank and one boot on the last edge of the stone. She looked at him with wide, confused eyes. "Who are you?" she asked. Then her grip on his sleeve got lighter. Then it was gone. The eggs, the basket, and the woman who had been carrying them were no longer there. Taron grabbed at the air where she had been standing. His hand closed on nothing. "Lisbet," he said. "Lisbet!" No one answered. The last pieces of Ashen Bridge dropped out of existence, and the river ran clean and empty from one bank to the other. Where three stone arches had stood for two hundred years, there was only water. Taron stayed on his knees in the gravel. His whole body shook. He knew her name. He knew she sold eggs on the north side of the Marrow Hall market. He knew she had laughed at his coat that morning and said it made him look like a scarecrow who had lost a bet. He knew all of it, and nobody else in the world did. People on the road were slowing down near the water. A farmer stopped his cart where the bridge had always begun, looked at the river, and scratched his neck. Then he turned his horse downstream toward the ford. The others followed him. Nobody asked where the bridge had gone. Nobody remembered it had been there. Taron opened his satchel with shaking hands and pulled out his notebook. The pages were full of small, careful handwriting: a mill in Dunnet, a well in Corrow, a song with four verses, a street of twelve houses. He had filled six books like this. The Order of the Seal called such records "false memory sickness." The town healers called Taron mad. He had stopped arguing with them two years ago. Erasers had first been seen in the eastern provinces nine years ago. Each year they came closer to Marrow Hall. The Order posted notices in every square saying the disappearances were rumors, and that anyone spreading them would be questioned. Only one person had ever believed Taron's notebooks. Maren Quill, the blind librarian who had taught him to read, made him read every entry aloud to her. She said only one thing: "Keep writing. Someone will need this." He wrote with a hand that would not stay steady. Ashen Bridge. Stone, three arches, 120 paces. Erased this morning. Lisbet, egg seller, north market. Laughed at my coat. East guard, red hair, owed his friend four coppers. He stopped. His pen had pressed through the page. A tear fell on the ink and ran the last word into a black smear. He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand and left ink across his cheek. Something cold pressed against the back of his neck again. Taron looked up. The Eraser stood on the surface of the river, thirty paces from the bank. Its feet did not sink. The water around it did not move. It had crossed the space where the bridge had been, and it was coming toward him. He tried to stand. His legs gave out and he fell back on the gravel. He had no sword, no training, and no friends within a mile. He was a failed scribe with a satchel full of notebooks. The creature stepped onto the bank. The grass under its feet vanished with every step, leaving bare dark soil, then nothing. It stopped ten paces from him and lowered its long, faceless head. A voice came out of it. It was not loud. Many voices spoke the same words together, all in a whisper. "Taron Hale." Taron stopped breathing. He had not given his name to anyone on that road. "You are the first name on the list," the Eraser whispered. "And you are the only one who still remembers." Behind him, a farmer called to his horse and drove his cart along the river witho ut looking back. No one on the bank had heard the creature speak. No one would remember if it took him.