Distant tales of the Dichotomy

She did not send for him until the second morning, and by then he had stopped being able to feel his hand at all.

It was not numb. It was something stranger. The ring had settled into a steady, patient glow, and the blood, which Osha had learned to catch in a small clay saucer, had slowed to a thin ooze. He had asked the old healer what she thought it was. She had looked at the saucer, and at the black, hissing pool at the bottom of it, and said, in a very careful voice, that she was a woman who put broken people back together, and that there were some things she preferred not to guess.

He had stopped asking.

Seluine received him in a small room at the top of the Hall, a round chamber under the roots, lined with shelves and hung with dried flowers. There was a table. On the table lay a map of what looked like the whole of the valley, drawn on a scrap of old, soft skin, and beside it a pot of tea.

She was alone. She looked, in the soft gold light, even older than she had in the Hall, and for a moment, as Fel stood in the doorway, he felt a pang of guilt that he could not name.

“Sit,” she said. “Drink. I have thought about you for a day and a night, and I have not slept, and I would like to have this done.”

He sat. He drank. The tea was bitter and hot and tasted like a pine forest.

“I will be honest,” said Seluine. She laid both hands flat on the map. “I cannot help you.”

His heart dropped.

“Not because I do not wish to. Because I do not know how.” Her voice was dry and steady. “I am old, child. I have buried husbands and children and friends. I have studied the oldest healing and the oldest curses, the songs of the Mother and the languages of the roots. My knowledge is vast. It is not a boast; it is a burden. And in all of it, in all two hundred and seventy winters, I have never once met a boy who came out of the sky with a scar that bled black fire and swords that had forgotten their names.” She smiled, very faintly. “I am, quite honestly, perplexed.”

“Then there’s nothing,” said Fel.

“I did not say that.” The golden-green eyes glittered. “I said that I cannot help you. I did not say that no one can.”

He looked up.

She turned the map on the table, with a soft rustle, until it faced him. It showed the valley, the forest, and the mountains in careful, tiny, beautiful ink. At the top, in the north, sat a cluster of peaks marked with a little cloud. That was Veilrest. And at the bottom, drawn larger than anything else on the page, in white ink and silver leaf, was a great round city, ringed with walls and crowned with a single tree.

“Sorticia,” said Seluine. “The capital of the kingdom of Delvishion. The great white city you saw from the cliff.”

“I saw it,” said Fel quietly. “I was going to walk there. Before the frogs.”

“It is three days’ journey by the high road. Perhaps four, if the bridges are down. It is the seat of our king, Aldemar of the House of Vael, who has ruled for ninety years and who has, if I am honest, grown tired of it.” She tapped the map. “But it is not the king I want you to see. It is his younger brother.”

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“Younger brother?”

“Corvane Vael.” She said the name slowly, with a kind of reluctant respect. “The Wise One. The One-Eyed Grand Seer of Sorticia. He is the oldest clairvoyant and the most learned savant in the kingdom. They say he has read every book ever bound and seen every fate ever woven. They say he lost an eye in his youth, trying to look at something that should not be looked at.” Her mouth twisted. “I have met him twice. I did not like him either time. But I have never known him to be wrong.”

“He can help me?”

“He can see.” Seluine folded her hands. “If anyone alive can read the lines of your fate, child, it is he. He may tell you what you are. He may tell you what has happened to your swords. He may tell you why you have a ring of light in your hand and a name that no one in my kingdom has ever heard. It is the only chance I can offer you.”

Fel’s heart was beating very fast.

“What does he want?” he said. “In exchange?”

She smiled, and it was the smile of a woman who had been waiting for the question.

“You are learning.” She rose, crossed to a shelf, and took down a small, dusty scroll. “The Wise One does not do favors. He does not do charity. He does not, as far as I know, do anything at all without a payment, and the payment is always the same. He wants a bottle of Old Ashaleth.”

“Old what?”

“A liquor. A black spirit, distilled in the first age of the vineyards of the south, and aged four thousand winters in a barrow beneath a mountain. It is the oldest, strongest, and most valuable drink in the world. There are perhaps forty bottles left. A single one is worth more than this village.” She said it without irony. “The Wise One is said to own none. It is his one weakness. He will cross the city for a thimbleful.”

“And we’re supposed to find one.”

“You are.” She turned. “This is the trade I propose. You wish for help, and I cannot give it. But I can give you a road, a letter of introduction, and a company. The Ilvari have a custom, Felanor. When a stranger is saved by us, he repays the debt. You owe us your life. I am not asking you to pay it in coin. I am asking you to pay it in an errand.”

“What errand?”

“Go to Sorticia. Find the Wise One. Carry a letter from me to his hand. Find a bottle of Ashaleth, by whatever means you must, and put it in his palm. And when he has read your fate and told you what he sees, come home and tell me.” Her eyes glittered. “Because I am old, child, and I have never been so curious about anything in my life.”

He sat very still.

A trade, he thought. A debt. A road.

It was not much. It was a rope across a gorge. But it was the first thing anyone had offered him in a long time that felt like a direction.

“Yes,” he said.

“You have not heard the rest.”

“I don’t care.”

“You will.” She sat again, and her face grew grave. “The road is not safe. There are bandits in the gorges, and soldiers on the bridges, and war in the north, and strange things in the forest that were not there when I was young. You are not strong. You are not well. You have no powers, and you are very far from home. I will not send you alone.” She held up her hand, one finger at a time. “A party of five. That is the number the old songs prefer. Enough to fight. Enough to carry a dying man. Too few to be noticed.”

“Five.”

“Yourself, for it is your errand. A guide, who knows the road and the tongue of the lowlands and the habits of the city.” She did not look toward the door, but Fel felt the temperature in the room shift by a degree. “Two hunters, skilled in the killing of things, to stand between you and the forest. And one mount, large enough to carry all of you and your supplies, and stubborn enough to walk through anything.”

“And the guide?”

Seluine’s lips curved.

“I think,” she said, “that she has already volunteered.”

The door behind him opened with a soft click.

He did not have to turn. He knew exactly who it was. He could smell pine smoke and crushed mint, and under it something wild and cold, and he heard a very faint, very dry voice.

“I was not eavesdropping.”

“You were standing in the doorway,” said Fel.

“I was waiting.” Veyra came in and stood at the table, arms folded, chin up. She did not look at him. She looked at the old woman with a stubborn, silent, formidable calm. “I know the road to Sorticia. I have been three times. I know the guards at the east gate. I know a woman who runs an inn. I will go.”

“I thought you might.”

“He will not last a day without me.”

“I’m right here,” said Fel.

“Yes,” said Veyra. “That is the problem