Distant tales of the Dichotomy

The singing began on the sixteenth night.

Fel heard it first in his sleep. It threaded through a dream of the burned Hall and drew him gently upward, out of ash and into the dark, until he lay with his eyes open under the reed roof of the saddle and his heart beating slowly and the whole world humming around him. It was a single note. Thin and bright and very clear, it hung in the cold air like a drop of water about to fall.

Then it changed. It slid up, steadied, and a second note joined it, a third, and a fourth, until there were five voices climbing together in a slow, strange, aching harmony that seemed to come from everywhere at once. It was not a song a mouth could make. It sounded like glass remembering how to be a bell.

Beneath him, Old Clatter had gone utterly still.

“Veyra.” He sat up. “Veyra, are you awake?”

“I am.” She was already beside him, crouched at the rail, her bow strung and her face pale in the starlight. “I have been awake for some time.”

“What is that?”

“I do not know.” She said it flatly, as one might admit a wound. “I have traveled the length of Delvishion twice, and I have never heard it.”

Across the saddle, Thara’s head had popped up from her blankets, her spiky hair standing on end. “Is somebody playing music in the middle of nowhere?” she whispered. “At night? On purpose?”

“It is coming from the east,” said Brannoch. He was sitting upright with the great spear across his knees. He had not been sleeping either. “A mile. Perhaps less.”

“We should go the other way.”

“Probably.”

“But we’re going to go and look, aren’t we?”

“Mm.”

“I hate this group,” said Thara, and reached for her hatchets.

They left Old Clatter in the hollow with a bag of oats and a stern word. He lowered his horned head and let out a long, mournful hum, and did not seem pleased. Fel went first, with the black sword in his hand and the ring warm in his palm, down a long stony slope toward a place where the grass gave way to bare rock and a ring of tall grey stones stood under the stars.

There were nine of them. Each was twice the height of a man, rough and weathered and leaning slightly inward, like old men whispering. They had been standing there for a very long time. And on the tallest, balanced cross-legged on its flat top with his face tilted up to the moon, sat a man with a long thin staff across his knees, and he was the one who was singing.

Fel stopped.

He had thought he was prepared for anything. He had fought a mirror-boy and a serpent. He had walked into a burning village. But he had not been prepared for the way the man looked in the moonlight.

He was tall, even sitting. His skin was the color of wet slate, a deep blue-grey, and it was crossed from brow to throat to wrist by hundreds of fine pale lines, thin as hairs, branching and joining like the cracks in old porcelain. In places the lines glowed faintly gold, a soft, shimmering light that rose and fell with the notes. He had no hair. Instead a crest of slender, translucent spines ran back from his forehead over the crown of his skull and down his neck, long as knitting needles and clear as glass, and each one trembled as he sang. He had no ears. At the sides of his head, where ears should be, were two small, delicate fans of the same clear material, fluttering like gills.

His eyes were closed. As the last note faded, he opened them.

They were amber. Solid, glowing amber, without whites or pupils, like drops of honey with a lamp behind them. They turned slowly, taking in the five of them standing among the stones: the archer with her arrow already nocked, the great antlered man, the knife-girl crouched low, the boy with the black sword. They rested on the black sword a moment longer than on anything else.

“Ah,” said the man. “Visitors.”

His voice was very quiet. It had a strange ring in it, a faint double resonance, as if he were speaking from inside an empty bell. He uncrossed his legs and slid down from the stone with a graceful, boneless ease, and when he landed, the spines along his back chimed once, a clear small sound like a dropped coin.

“Forgive the noise,” he said. “I did not expect company. The Standing Nine are the only stones on this plain that still hold a note, and I confess I could not resist.” He bowed. It was a deep, formal, almost courtly bow, one hand crossed over his chest. “Orrin Halvane, of the Vessarine. At your service, if you will have it, and at your leisure if you will not.”

Nobody answered.

“Vessarine,” said Veyra, very slowly. “That is not possible.”

“Is it not?”

“The Vessarine are a story. A nursery tale. The people of sky-glass, who sang their cities out of the mountains and fell silent in the night, a thousand years ago. My grandmother told it to me. They are gone.”

“Ah.” Orrin smiled. It was a small, wry, rather tired smile. “Your grandmother was a kind woman, I think, to tell it so gently. We did not fall silent in a night. It took nine years.” He glanced at the stones. “And we are not all gone. There are some of us left. Not many. I would be a poor liar if I said otherwise, and I am a poor liar in any case.”

“You’re a what?” said Thara. She had risen from her crouch, and her hatchets dangled forgotten from her hands. “You’re a story? You’re a walking nursery tale?”

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

“I prefer ‘endangered,’” said Orrin.

For a moment she stared at him. Then she burst out laughing.

It was not a mocking laugh. It was a delighted, helpless, wheezing whoop, and it rolled out over the plain and set the stones humming. Orrin tilted his head. A faint gold light rippled along the lines of his cheek, which Fel would later learn was the Vessarine way of blushing.

“I like him,” said Thara, wiping her eyes. “Brann, I like him. Can we keep him?”

“We do not keep people,” said Veyra.

“We kept you.”

“I was not kept. I volunteered.”

“It’s the same thing, with more paperwork.”

Fel had not moved. He was looking at Orrin’s staff. It was longer than he was, a slender shaft of pale metal, and at its head, in place of a blade, rose a pair of long curved prongs, joined at the base and open at the tips, like a tuning fork the size of a man’s arm. The metal was etched with tiny spirals. A hairline crack ran through one of the prongs, half an inch wide, glittering with dust.

“It’s broken,” he said.

Orrin looked at him sharply.

“Your… fork.” Fel felt his face warm. “Sorry. I notice cracks. I’m not sure why. There’s a crack in the left prong.”

For a moment the Vessarine said nothing at all. His amber eyes had gone very still. Then he lowered the staff, and held it up to the moonlight, and turned it slowly, and the crack caught the light and flashed.

“Yes,” he said at last. “It is broken. A year ago, in a place I would rather not name. It was a very good staff.” His voice was soft. “It was my mother’s. She was the last Chorister of Aelun, and she sang the last song of our city, and when it was over she put it into my hands. It used to ring like the first morning of the world.” He closed his fingers around it. “Now it rings like a cracked cup. I can still use it, but it is… a wound. It will not mend by itself. I have been looking for a smith.”

“What kind of smith?” said Veyra, a little warily.

“The best in the world.” Orrin looked north. “I am going to Dun Vurrim.”

The silence stretched.

“Oh,” said Thara. “Oh. Well, that’s very convenient.”

“Is it?”

“We are also going to Dun Vurrim.”

“Are you?” For the first time, the courtesy in his face slipped, and something quick and surprised and almost hungry showed beneath it. “Then I think perhaps the stones brought us together. They do that, now and again. They are old, and they like a good story.” He bowed again, shallowly, to Fel. “You, with the black sword. Tell me, what are you looking for there?”

Fel hesitated.

Careful, said Gideon’s voice, in the back of his skull. Strangers are strangers.

He sang to the stones, thought Fel. He’s not a stranger. He’s a story.

“I’m looking for someone to mend my swords,” he said. “And then I’m going to go and kill a king.”

Silence.

Orrin did not laugh. He did not so much as blink. He studied Fel’s face for a long moment, as if he were listening for something beneath the words. Then he slowly nodded.

“I see,” he said. “It is a good reason to need a smith.”

“You believe me?”

“Child, I have seen what you carry.” Orrin lifted one long hand and pointed, without touching, at the ring in Fel’s palm. “That is not a thing that was made by a living hand. And the sword at your belt is singing so loudly that I have been trying not to wince for five minutes.” He lowered his arm. “I will not ask what they are. I would only ask, with respect, to walk with you. It is a long road, and I have walked it alone for seven months. I am, as it happens, a rather good fighter.”

“We don’t need…” Veyra began.

“Show us,” said Brannoch.

Everyone looked at him. The big man was standing at the edge of the circle with his spear planted and his arms folded. His face was unreadable.

“Show us,” he repeated. “The staff.”

Orrin considered him. Then, without a word, he stepped away from the stones into a patch of bare rock, and swung the cracked fork once, slowly, in a long curving arc.

A note rang out. It was low, harsh, and slightly flat, and it shook the air.

The ninth stone, the one nearest him, a pillar of granite taller than three men, shattered.

It did not crack or topple. It simply came apart, every grain of it at once, and collapsed in a hissing cascade of sand that spread across the rock and ran out over their boots. The ringing note died away. Orrin lowered his staff. In the silence, a last small pebble rolled down the heap and came to rest against Thara’s toe.

“Ah,” he said, with real regret. “I am so sorry. That one was very old.”

“Mm,” said Brannoch.

That was all. He unfolded his arms, turned, and began to walk back toward the hollow. After a few steps he looked over his shoulder.

“The beetle needs to meet him,” he said.

Old Clatter took to Orrin at once.

This was surprising only to Fel. The beetle rose, shook the dew from his shell, and walked straight up to the tall blue-grey man where he stood among the oats, and lowered his enormous horned head until it rested against the Vessarine’s chest. Then he began to hum. It was a low, trembling, enchanted sound, and it matched, note for note, the one Orrin had been singing at the stones.

“Oh,” said Orrin softly. He laid a hand against the great glossy cheek. “Oh, you remember.”

“He remembers what?” said Fel.

“The Choirs. The Ironhorns were bred in the Vessarine cities, long ago, to carry the great bells.” He did not turn around. “They have forgotten almost everything else. But they have not forgotten the sound.” There was a catch in his voice, and the spines along his back trembled. “I did not think there was anyone left to remember.”

No one said anything. Thara had stopped joking. Veyra lowered her bow, finally, and slid the arrow back into the quiver. She walked to Orrin’s side and stood there a moment, looking at the beetle and the tall bowed figure with its crest of glass.

“My grandmother also told me how the story ended,” she said, gruffly. “She said the Vessarine did not die. She said they went quiet, and that one day the world would need them, and they would sing again.”

“Your grandmother,” said Orrin, “was a very wise woman.”

“She was also a terrible cook.”

Orrin laughed. It was a rich, ringing, startled sound. The gold light ran through all the lines of his face, bright as a lantern, and Fel thought, with sudden certainty: he’s been alone for a very long time.

Later, when the others slept, Fel climbed to the top of the saddle and found Orrin sitting there with his legs dangling, looking at the stars. The tall man did not turn.

“You are wondering whether to trust me,” he said.

“Yes.”

“Good. You should.” The faint double resonance of his voice drifted out over the dark. “I would tell you my whole story, but it is long, and most of it is sad, and I think you have enough sadness. I will tell you only this. I am not here for the king. I am not here for the sword. I am here because my people are dying, and the only thing left in the world that might save us is a very old forge in a very cold mountain.” He glanced at Fel. “If I help you, it is because it will also help me. That is not noble. But it is honest.”

“That’s… fine.”

“Is it?”

“I don’t trust people who say they’re doing it for free.” Fel sat down beside him. “I trusted someone like that once. It’s better if it’s honest.”

Orrin looked at him for a long time. “You are rather young to be so tired,” he said.

“I get that a lot.”

“I am sure you do.” The Vessarine turned back to the stars, and smiled. “Well. Then we shall be tired together. It is more efficient.”

They sat in silence for a while. Far below, Old Clatter began to hum, very softly, the first bar of a song that had been dead for a thousand years. Fel closed his eyes and listened. Somewhere inside the black blade across his knees, something that was not a voice, and not a sound, answered, once, gently, in the dark.

It was the first time in a month that he had slept without dreaming.