Distant tales of the Dichotomy

The Wise One lived at the top of the tallest tower in Sorticia, and the tower did not want to be climbed.

It stood on the crest of the Sixth Hill, a slender spire of white stone and green glass that rose a thousand feet above the city and seemed, from a distance, to sway very slightly in a wind that no one else could feel. Nine great copper vanes turned at its summit. A ring of pale lanterns floated around its middle, bobbing like fireflies. At its foot lay a courtyard paved in black and silver tile, and in the courtyard there was a stable, and in the stable, with a nosebag of cabbages hung from his horns, stood Old Clatter, humming to himself.

“Leave him,” said Veyra. “He will not mind.”

“He’s eating a bench.”

“He will not mind that either.”

Two guards in silver-green armor stood at the great door, with long halberds and expressionless faces. They had been told to expect a party from the mountains. They examined Seluine’s letter, which was written on thin white parchment and sealed with a drop of green wax, for a very long time. Then one of them said, in a flat voice, that the Wise One would receive them, and that there were nine hundred and eleven steps.

There were, in fact, rather more.

The stairs were a spiral that clung to the inside wall of the tower, and they rearranged themselves as you climbed. Fel counted a hundred, and then found that he was on a landing he had passed ten minutes ago. He counted another hundred, and the staircase turned upside down. Thara swore. Brannoch, carrying the black bottle in both hands like a sleeping child, did not break stride. Veyra walked ahead with a hand on her bow, saying nothing, and every time the stair changed its mind, she paused for exactly one breath and picked a new direction without a word.

“How do you know which way?” said Fel.

“I do not. I guess.”

“You’re guessing?”

“It has worked so far.”

The tower hummed. It was a low, shivering, restless hum, like a plucked string, and the walls were hung with thousands of pale threads of silver light that drifted and shifted in the draft, tangling and untangling like seaweed in a current. He touched one. It slid across his fingers, cool and slick, and for a moment he heard a whisper in a language he did not know.

“Do not touch them.”

“What are they?”

“I do not wish to find out.”

At the very top, the staircase ended in a plain wooden door, and the door opened as they approached.

It was the largest room he had ever seen.

It was a dome. The walls were glass, clear and floor-to-ceiling, so that the whole city lay spread below them like a map: the white walls and silver rivers, the towers, the gardens, the great pale glow of the Tree. The ceiling was a mosaic of black and silver tile, laid out in the pattern of the stars, and each star was a small, steady, real light. In the center of the floor lay a wide, shallow basin of black stone, filled with something that looked like water and moved like smoke. Around it, on stands and tables and shelves, stood a thousand strange instruments of brass and bone and crystal: astrolabes, hourglasses, orreries, a skull with a candle in it, a globe that turned on its own axis and showed a world Fel did not recognize.

And in the middle of it all, in a chair, sat a very old man.

He was thin. He was so thin that the robes of silver-black silk hung from his bones like cloth on a drying rack. His face was long and gaunt, drawn tight over a high forehead and a hooked nose, and his skin was the pale grey-violet of old ash. His hair, white as bone, hung to his waist in a loose, silken fall. Two great antlers rose from his brow, white and thin and branching, bare of velvet, and so old that they had gone translucent.

He had one eye.

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The left was gone, and where it had been there lay only a puckered seam of old scar, drawn shut. The right eye was wide open. It was the color of liquid silver, with no pupil, and it was fixed on them with an expression of a bottomless and terrible patience.

“Welcome,” said the Wise One.

His voice was soft, and dry, and very old, like pages turning. It filled the dome without effort.

“Welcome to the Spire of Nine Winds. I am Corvane Vael, brother of the king, grand seer of Sorticia, reader of the Weave. I have been told that you bear a letter from the Ilvari, and a gift.”

Brannoch stepped forward and set the black bottle on the table.

The old man did not move. For a long time, he only looked at it. Then, very slowly, he reached out one long white hand, and his fingers closed around the neck, and a shiver ran through his whole body from his head to his feet.

“Ashaleth,” said Corvane Vael. It was almost a whisper. “The Year of the Third Frost. I thought the last had been drunk.”

“There were forty left,” said Fel.

“There are thirty-nine.” The silver eye turned toward him. It was like being looked at by a coin. “I have waited ninety years to hold one of these. You will forgive an old man’s weakness.”

He did not drink. He broke the seal with a thumbnail, and a smell came out of the bottle, rich and dark and fiercely sweet, like burnt sugar and old smoke and forgotten summers, and filled the dome. The lights on the ceiling flickered. The silver threads on the walls shivered like wind-stirred grass. He poured a single drop into a glass, and held it up to the light, and his shoulders trembled.

“Four thousand winters.” A pause. “It is a fair price. Sit.”

They sat. Chairs had appeared. Fel did not see them arrive.

“I’m Fel,” he said. “Felanor TeneDente. Seluine said…”

“I know who you are.”

“You do?”

“I know nothing.” The old man smiled, a thin, ghastly thing, like the crack in a vase. “That is my art. I know nothing, and I see everything, and I charge a very great deal for the difference. But I have read the letter. Tell me your tale. All of it. From the beginning.”

So Fel told it again.

It was easier the second time. He had polished it. He had learned which parts made the listeners go quiet and which parts made them frown. He told it plainly, from the Gallows to the Sanctum, from the mirror boy to the serpent and the flash of white, and the old man listened without moving, his silver eye unblinking, his long fingers folded around the stem of the glass.

When Fel finished, the room was silent.

Corvane Vael set down his glass.

“A fascinating story,” he said.

“It’s true.”

“I am sure you believe it.” The old man leaned back. His tone had not changed. It was kind. It was infinitely kind. And it was the kindness of a man speaking to a child who has insisted that he saw a dragon in the garden. “There is no Dichotomy, Felanor. There is no Ortumocorvis Empire. There are no six titans, and no Seven Nations of Sorrows, and no city built in three tiers on a hill. I have a library of three hundred thousand volumes, and I have read them all. None of these things is in them. None of them has ever been.”

“But…”

“I think,” said the Wise One gently, “that you have hit your head very hard.”

Thara made a small, strangled sound. Brannoch’s eyes narrowed. Veyra, beside Fel, went perfectly still.

“It is not uncommon. A blow to the skull. A long fall. A great fright. The mind, in its distress, builds a place to hide. A world that makes sense, with names and maps and wars.” He spread his hands. “I do not say that you are lying. I say that you are wounded. The scar on your palm, the light, the blood, these are real. But the rest… I am afraid the rest is a very beautiful dream.”

“It’s not.”

“Is it not?” The silver eye did not blink. “Then where is it, boy? Show me. Show me a single trace of your Empire in the whole of the world. Show me a coin, or a flag, or a word.”

Fel opened his mouth. Nothing came out.

He had Falling Star. He had Krashing Fyr. He had a ring of light in his hand. He had a glove, and a coat from Veilrest. He had a head full of memories, and no way on earth to prove that any of them had happened.

Tori.

Orcus.

Vili. Loria.

“I don’t have anything,” he whispered.

“No,” said Corvane Vael. “You do not.”

The words were gentle. They landed like stones.

Fel looked down. His hands were shaking. A warm, steady pressure settled against his shoulder, and he realized that Veyra had leaned close to him, just a little, not touching, just there. Neither of them said anything.

The old man watched them with his one silver eye. Something shifted in his face, so slight that Fel could not tell what it was.

“But there is a thing I can do,” he said, in a different voice. “Your swords.”

“What about them?”

“You say they have ceased to function. I cannot tell you why. I am a reader of fates, not a smith. But I know a place where such things are understood.” He raised one finger. “In the Ashen Hills, to the north, beneath the mountain called Karzhul, there lies the hold of the dwarves of Dun Vurrim. They have a forge there, the oldest forge in the world, that has been burning for ten thousand years. It is said that any weapon, however broken, however strange, can be understood there. It is said that the smiths can hear what a blade is trying to say.”

“Dun Vurrim.”

“It is a hard road. There is war in the Ashen Hills. But if there is anywhere a smith can help you, it is there.”

“Thank you,” said Fel. He meant it. “Thank you.”

“Do not thank me yet.” The old man rose.

He was taller than Fel had thought. He unfolded from the chair like a heron from a reed, with a long, slow, creaking grace, and crossed the floor to the black basin in three strides. He bent over it. The liquid inside shifted and swirled, and the silver light of the stars caught in it and flashed.

“You have paid for a reading,” said Corvane Vael. “I always keep my bargains. Come here, boy. Give me your hand.”