Chart of labelled rune symbols

Eighteen figures in a grid, each with its little Latin-looking name beneath. Angelic Power, a sharp diamond with its tail trailing. Soundless, a single falling drop. Mourning, a knot pulled tight until it bites. Osric copied every one onto vellum with a goose quill he cut himself, and the abbot said they were for the infirmary, to be drawn on a wrist before a bone was set. Osric believed him, and so did the sick who came across the causeway from Sutton Wash.

Then Wenna came, an eel-man's daughter, carrying her brother who had been burning for three nights. Osric drew Heal/Painless on the boy's arm with his tongue between his teeth. The girl wanted Recall, a hook that curls back on itself, to pull her brother home from wherever fever had sent him. Osric drew it for her too, though the abbot had forbidden it. The boy lived. The girl did not come back for the sign, and the tide took her father's boat the following week, with her in it.

Osric has not drawn one since. Every night he begins the last sign on the chart, Wedded Union, and every night he leaves its final stroke open, so that whoever comes after him might close it. Ask him why and he only says that a mark is finished by the one it is meant for, and then he blows out the lamp.

Now go on to your beds. Mind the step by the door; it is loose.