Distant tales of the Dichotomy

He ran, or something like it. He stumbled, slid, caught himself on a trunk, and ran again. He could not see more than ten paces. He could not hear anything over the rain. He only knew that if he stayed in the open, the wind would pick him up and the rain would finish whatever the glass had started.

The tree saved his life.

It lay on its side across the slope, the biggest thing he had ever seen that was not a building or a mountain. Its trunk was wider than a Gallows street. Its roots, torn from the earth by some old storm, stood up in a great ragged wall, forty feet high, a tangle of black wood and clotted earth that curled back on itself like the ribs of a ship. And in the hollow beneath that wall, where the roots had pulled away from the ground, there was a cave.

It was dry. Mostly. The roots overhead were so thick and matted that the rain came through only in thin, steady threads, and the floor of the hollow was a bed of old leaves and soft red dust that smelled like a cellar. Fel crawled in on his hands and knees and lay on his face for a long time, breathing.

Then he tried to make a fire.

He had no flint. He knew that. He tried anyway. He struck the two swords together until his arms shook, and sparks sprayed off the edges and died in the damp, and he held a handful of dry-looking leaves against them and blew until he was dizzy. Nothing took. The leaves went black and sullen and smoked and went out. He tried the ruby on Falling Star’s hilt, which was stupid, and the golden saber’s edge against a flat stone, which was stupider. By the time he gave up, his hands were bleeding too.

“Of course,” he told the dark. “Of course.”

He wrapped his arms around his knees. He was cold in a way he had never been cold, not in the Gallows in winter, not on the road to Tohei. The cold came from inside, from the place where the blood was leaving. His teeth chattered so hard he thought they would crack. The wind howled in the roots overhead, and beyond it, far away and muffled, something huge was moving through the forest, and the ground shook faintly with every step.

He drew both swords and laid them across his lap, and sat there in the dark, wet and shaking, alone.

It was Tori he thought about first.

He did not mean to. She came the way she always came when he was at the bottom of something, the long grey hair, the crooked smile, the smell of clove and spilled beer. In a battle of fists or words between strangers, the one with the confidence and the wits to best the other always wins. She had been so sure of it. She had been so sure of everything.

And she had burned in a tavern while he ran.

Then Orcus, because Orcus was always standing behind Tori with his arms folded and his terrible grin. Your projects, not mine. The old Raskian had slammed both fists into the floor so that Fel could get away, and Fel had not even turned around to see.

He thought about the Gallows, which had been his home until a purple flame took it. He thought about Tohei, which had been a home for three months and which he’d left for a dungeon of mirrors. He thought about Gideon on the river, laughing over twelve shims, and the way the old man had lowered his hat for a dead friend. He thought about Karmina, who had counted empty cots.

Everything he touched, he thought, ended up somewhere else. Burned, sealed, buried, left. He had a gift for it. Anyone he came to care for stopped being within reach, and the only person he had never lost was himself, which seemed like a poor joke.

And now Vili and Loria.

He had left them in a crystal in a garden at the bottom of a false city. He had walked into a hall to fight a boy with mirrors for eyes, and he had won, and the boy had turned into a mountain and swallowed five men and nearly swallowed him, and Fel had done the last stupid, glorious thing he’d ever do and set the sky on fire. And then he had woken here.

Did they get out? The question circled in him like a gull. Is the Sanctum still standing? Is Loria still breathing? Is Vili still counting?

He did not know. He could not know. The only thing he knew was that if the serpent had survived, it had gone looking for the next meal.

Tears ran into the corners of his mouth. He let them.

“Plan Z,” he whispered. “Whoever’s still standing gets the others out.”

He had been standing. He had not got anyone out.