Four-line parchment

The four-line parchment is a written sheet in the campaign Zincirsiz ("Unchained"), kept on a low pillar under glass at the centre of the Hall of the five doors. Through the mist on the glass it could be seen to bear far more words than the doors' inscriptions, in an unknown alphabet that could not be read. The glass looked as though it could be lifted, but no one lifted it, and no spell could test it without a touch.¹²³

Left in place

When the companions found the way they had come had caved in, Max suggested taking the parchment as they left. Jonathan River refused, for fear of provoking whatever might dwell there and guard it, and the parchment stayed where it was.⁴

As the companions passed from one version of the hall to another, the books, cups and other pieces of the collection changed, but the pillar and the parchment at the centre always seemed the same. Jonathan came to think that it might be the key to their escape. He asked a lost fey in the shape of a stag to break the central glass after the companions had gone through the door of the future, and when they returned, the glass was broken and its mist gone; the fey had touched the glass but not the paper.⁵⁶⁷⁸

Taken

Wearing protective clothing, Jonathan picked the parchment up. It held four lines in an unknown tongue. At his touch a wind rose and covered all sight; Jonathan told Max, to calm him, that he was performing a ritual, which was not true. When the wind ceased, the companions stood in a smaller room with a single door, and the parchment was still in Jonathan's hand.⁸⁹

In that room Jonathan showed the parchment to the Amnesiac sleeper of Elm, a man who remembered nothing of himself. He read the four lines with ease, as he read every script put before him. What the lines say is not recorded.¹⁰