Distant tales of the Dichotomy

The Hall of the Ilvari stood at the very top of the village, where the rock ended in a single spire of grey stone like a finger pointing at the sun.

It was not built so much as grown. Three enormous trees, ancient things with trunks as wide as houses, curved together at the crest of the spire and wove their branches into a great open dome, and beneath it, under a roof of living green, stood a circle of seats made of polished root. A fire burned in a stone bowl at the center. The light fell in long, soft columns through the leaves. It smelled of pine, and old smoke, and something older, like the inside of a book.

Fel stood in the middle of it with Veyra at his back and tried not to look nervous.

There were five of them on the seats. They were old. They were all very old, wrinkled and dignified and tall, with horns of every shape, and they sat with the stillness of people who had learned long ago that nothing worth saying needs to be said quickly. In the middle sat a woman older than any of them, a great, thin, ancient creature with skin the color of dried lavender and a crown of antlers as pale and branching as the roots of a tree. Her hair, which hung to the floor, was white as frost. Her eyes were a clear, burning, golden green.

“Felanor,” she said.

Her voice was low and cool and very steady. It rang off the leaves like a bell.

“Yes, Elder.”

“I am Seluine, speaker of the Ilvari. These are the Five of the Hall.” She did not gesture at the others. She did not need to. “You have been among us eight days. You are well enough to stand, which is more than we expected. Veyra tells me you are polite, which is less.”

There was a faint stir among the old ones. Somebody coughed into a sleeve. Behind him, Veyra drew a very small, very quiet breath.

“We do not often receive strangers,” said Seluine. “We do not often fear them. You are an exception. Sit.”

He sat. The seat was a circle of root, warm and smooth, and it held him like a hand.

For a long while the old woman said nothing. She only looked at him, and he had the strange, uncomfortable feeling that she was looking not at his face but at something just behind it, as a woman looks at a lake to see the fish.

“Three nights before Veyra found you,” she said at last, “the sky over the Weeping Forest turned white. It was not lightning. It was not fire. It lasted perhaps the space of a breath. Every one of us in this village saw it. Some of us were blinded for an hour.” She folded her long hands in her lap. “The next morning my huntress went down the mountain to look for what had fallen. She found a boy.”

“I’m sorry,” said Fel. “I didn’t mean to…”

“You did not fall from the sky, Felanor. I have been over the place myself. There was no crater. There was no burn. There was only a boy in a ditch with two swords.” The golden-green eyes did not move. “The light was in the air. It came from above and it went out in a heartbeat. It was the color of nothing. It was the color of a thing that has never been named. I would like to know why it came, and what it wanted, and whether it is likely to come again.”

The silence went on.

“I don’t know,” Fel said.

“Then tell me what you do know.”

He looked at the fire. He looked at his hands. Then, slowly, haltingly, he told her.

He did not tell her everything. He did not say the word Silence. He did not say Jörmungandr. But he told her about a school beneath a castle where children were trained as knives, and a hall of black glass, and a boy with mirrors for eyes. He told her about the circle on the floor and the five men in black cloaks. He told her that something enormous had come through, and that he had been fighting it, and that when he knew he was going to die he had put everything he had into his sword, and everything had gone white.

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The old ones listened. They did not interrupt. Only once, when he said the word Empire, did a flicker pass among them.

“An empire,” said Seluine. “Of what?”

“The Ortumocorvis Empire. It’s… it rules the three realms. It rules the Dichotomy, and Arboritia, and the…” He stopped. Something in her face had changed, a vague, polite, perfectly sincere blankness. “You’ve heard of it.”

“No,” said Seluine.

“It’s the largest empire in the world.”

“I see.”

“They’ve been in power for a hundred and twenty-five years.”

“I see,” said the old woman again, quite gently. She glanced to her left, at the elder with the hooked nose. She glanced to her right. A look passed between them, quick and quiet, like a bird passing over a window. “It must be a very long way from here.”

“I thought so,” Fel said. “I thought… maybe somewhere past the sea, or…”

“Perhaps.” She did not seem to believe it. She did not seem to disbelieve it either. “You have been honest with us, child. I will be honest with you. We do not know where you came from, or how you came here. We do not know whether the thing that burned the sky is gone. We know only that you are hurt, and young, and very far from anywhere you know, and that the Mother does not turn away a child who comes to her door.”

She leaned forward, and the antlers caught the firelight.

“Draw your sword.”

Fel blinked. “Which one?”

“The black.”

He rose. He drew Falling Star from its scabbard in one slow, smooth motion, and held it in the firelight, black as a hole in the world, the red ruby gleaming at the hilt. The old ones leaned forward as one. A faint breath went around the circle.

Nothing happened.

The blade did not hum. The ruby did not glow. The fire in the stone bowl did not bend toward it, and the shadows in the corners did not stir. It was a long black sword, and a well-made one, and that was all.

He saw Seluine’s face. It was perfectly still, but behind it, he thought, something had flickered and gone out, like a candle in a window.

“It is quiet,” she said.

“It was never loud,” said Fel. It came out a little bitter. “It’s… usually… I don’t know. It doesn’t do anything right now.”

“No,” said the old woman. “I do not think it does.”

She sat back. For a long moment, the Hall was silent except for the crackle of the fire, and in the silence, Fel became aware of a thin, prickling warmth in his left palm, as if someone had pressed a live coal against his skin.

It was not an unfamiliar feeling. It was the same heat he had felt once, a lifetime ago, on a river path, when a golden blade had bitten into his hand.

No, he thought. Not here. Not now.

The lamps along the wall had begun to dim. It was nothing, only the afternoon wind stirring the hanging moths. But in the sudden soft dusk of the Hall, a faint light bloomed at the corner of his vision, and he saw Veyra’s face change.

She had come around in front of him. She was staring at his hand, which hung at his side with the fingers half curled. Her violet eyes had gone very wide.

“Elder,” she said, in a very odd voice.

Seluine had already risen.

She crossed the circle in four swift strides, with an agility that no one that old should have had, and stopped in front of him. She took his wrist in one long, thin, dry hand, turned it over, and gently, firmly, uncurled his fingers.

Fel looked down.

The scar was gone. The old round scar, the one that had been split in two by a thin red-black line, the one that had faded to a ghost on the morning he woke in the forest, had vanished from the center of his palm. In its place, burning like a brand, lay a ring.

It was a thin, perfect circle of light, pale as moonlight and as cold, no wider than a coin. It pulsed softly in time with his heartbeat. And from the center of it, slow and thick and silent, something dark welled up and spilled over the edge: blood. It was black as pitch where it pooled, and red as embers along the edges where the light touched it, and it ran down the inside of his wrist in a thin, steady thread and dripped from his elbow onto the floor. Where it struck the stone, it hissed. A fine curl of smoke rose from every drop.

It did not hurt. That was the worst part. It did not hurt at all.

“What is it?” said Fel. His heart had begun to race. “What’s wrong with it? What do you see?”

For a long moment, nobody answered.

Then the old woman let go of his wrist. She turned, very slowly, to look at the others, and all four were on their feet, standing in a ring around him with their long hands pressed to their mouths. Somewhere behind him, Veyra drew a breath and did not let it out.

“It is weeping,” said Seluine, very quietly. Her voice was steady, but something lay at the bottom of it that he had not heard before. “Do you not feel it? The light wakes in the dark and the wound bleeds without a blade. I have seen a great many wounds, child. I have never seen one that was glad to open.”

He closed his hand. The blood ran out between his fingers anyway, black and red, and the ring burned through his skin like a small cold sun.

It was a scar, he thought. It was just a scar. It was gone. I looked. It was nearly gone…

“Tell me,” said Seluine. The golden-green eyes bored into his. “Tell me, boy, and tell me plainly. What did you do to your hand?”