The Fox Hunt

Prologue

The City chooses who it keeps. It is old, it is vicious, and it remembers the time before. That was the time of blood promises. When even children knew that the price of knowledge was a fall from grace.

But knowledge is an intoxicating thing. It was the City’s siren song.

The first scholars came and found that their thoughts flew faster.

Within the walls of the University, theories seemed to write themselves.

Invisible hands pushed a flurry of quills onward, onward.

Writers stumbled out of bed, catching at the words tumbling from their mouths.

Where knowledge trod, fame followed, and riches.

More scholars arrived, from the cold North and the ancient South, from the rough new nations across the Western Sea.

They spoke of the City in as many tongues as there were nations. The greatest seat of learning that had ever been. It filled the annals of history with discovery, peopled the world’s halls of power. And generation by generation, those who came to its gates began to forget the ancient truth.

As each wave of scholars dressed the University in the finery of their age, it slipped on a cloak of civility. The buildings, now, are gracious. Soaring spires and honey-colored stone. Symmetry and order. Courts enclosing courts enclosing cloisters, like a rose blooming.

Or a fist closing.