Indexers

Overview

The Indexers are the filers of the Eternal Record, serving under the Vaultstones. Everything that happens is recorded there, and the Indexers put each new thing in its place as it arrives.

Appearance

An Indexer is small and many-handed, about the size of a child, with a round, smooth body of pale vellum and four or six thin arms that end in long, quick fingers. It has a single large lens for an eye, set in the middle of what serves as its face. It scurries along the stacks, climbing shelves as easily as walking, and is always carrying something: a scroll, a slip, a sheaf of new pages. It makes a constant soft sound of shuffling paper and a faint, dry clicking, like beads on an abacus. It smells of fresh ink.

Habitat and Range

They swarm through the stacks of the Eternal Record, especially where its newest knowledge arrives.

Behaviour and Temperament

An Indexer files. It takes each new record, reads it at a glance, and carries it to its place, never mistaking one. It ignores visitors unless a visitor moves something, and then it puts the thing back.

Abilities

It knows where everything in its part of the Record belongs, and can find anything there at once.

Uses and Dangers

An Indexer that can be persuaded to fetch is the fastest way to find a thing in the Record, and some travellers learn how to ask. Their danger is nil, except to a visitor who keeps moving the books.

Lore and Belief

Clerks on Caeldon have a joke about the little hands that put things where they belong when no one is looking, and travellers' tales of the Indexers may be its root.

Where It Appears

• The Eternal Record