Ceth eyed him as if he suspected he was being misled. The old man returned the stare.
“You’re not going to ask why we’re here?” Iyana asked.
“He’s here because you’re here,” he said without hesitating. “As for why you’re here, no.”
“No?”
“No. Why, Iyana Ve’Ran, would I ask a question I already know the answer to?”
Iyana was dumbstruck for the moment, until she thought of all the ways he might know her name. It seemed less magical and more obvious the longer she thought on it. Luna could have told him. Likely did tell him to expect her. Of course, there were other ways, she knew.
His eyes took on a mischievous glint as he watched the wheels turning.
He sighed as she held herself from playing along. He bent to retrieve his stone bowl as the smell of the burning roots filled the chamber. Thankfully, they burned smokeless, else Iyana feared it might have been the death of them. He carried the bowl over to Ceth, surprising her once again, and motioned for him to drink it. The Northman flatly refused without saying as much.
“What is it?” Iyana asked for him.
“Something for him to follow along.” The old man shrugged as Ceth made no move to take him up on his offer.
Iyana made as if to speak once more, but came up wanting. She felt a tightness in her chest. Those brilliant green eyes shifted toward her as if on cue. They lit with greenfire, so bright Iyana could not see their centers. It was mesmerizing to look upon, and Iyana held no doubt that he was examining her tether and everything else besides as easily as she marked the lines on his ancient face.
He nodded as his eyes began to dim once more.
“My name is Falkin,” he said. “I am both Weaver and Unweaver, as are you. I know why you are here even if you do not. You followed a need. A need based on what you have seen, and very recently.”
“And what have I seen?” Iyana asked, half in a dream. She felt those eyes drawing her in as only the Faey Mother’s could before.
“Not the World Apart,” he said without room for argument. “Though that is, I assume, what you believe you have come to learn about. No, Iyana Ve’Ran. You have seen the World Apart, but you have seen something else that is more important, more pertinent by far. You have seen the intent behind it. You have seen what drives it, though your mind has not the knowledge to give it function. To give it form.”
Iyana watched him, caught in his sway, and she didn’t know if it was the truth of his words or his power that had her so enraptured.
“The Dark Kind, the Night Lords. Even the Sages, Ray Valour chief among them. These are fleeting things in the scheme of things. There is something driving the collision between worlds. Something older than the Sages’ petty war. Something more violent. Something more ruinous.”
“The Sages aren’t drawing the World Apart,” Iyana breathed. “Their war is a separate thing.”
He shrugged as if he truly did not know. More so, as if it were irrelevant. “No doubt it is all tied together. Very much so. But a beginning does not always match an end, and I fear the end was always coming to this. It is the end of all things, here, at least. In this place and in this time. And it is coming on the back of a darkness we cannot hope to stop.”
Iyana swallowed, feeling his proclamation like a sentence.
“That is my fear,” he said. “But then,” he smiled, “I am not so young as you, nor so strong as your teacher, who was also mine, even if she called herself my student.”
“Then you have no answers for me,” Iyana said, ignoring the last. She felt despair, and anger that would be slow in sprouting. “You have nothing for me.”
“I have the right questions,” he said. “And I have a steady hand, in the place it matters most.”
His eyes did not look like defeat, though his words said as much.
Iyana regarded him steadily, uncertain how to proceed. He stood and moved to the back of the room once more, gathered a wooden ladle from a shelf and scooped a bit of the steaming sludge into a bowl she doubted had been washed. Ceth watched him, seeming about as confident in this strange, waddling old man as she was.
She took the proffered bowl, wincing at the heat, and set it between her legs.
“Give it a moment,” Falkin said, folding his hands in his lap.
“What is it?”
“Something to ease the journey.”
Iyana felt at a loss. She looked around the chamber, at the hanging pots, wood piles and shelves stacked with jars and stoppered vials, and felt crippling uncertainty.
“That’s it?”
Falkin blinked at her, tilted his head like a confused or worried dog.
“Potions and dried scrub?” Iyana said. She felt tears welling. “This is the great secret of the Valley Faey and their gifts of Sight? A different sort of brew made of the same plants I could get at the Lake?”
Falkin smiled in a gentle sort of way, as if allowing the rambling tantrums of a child. “What were you expecting?” he asked. “Something more … magical?”
Iyana felt as foolish as it sounded, but then she remembered Falkin making his way around Sen’s funeral pyre, wrapping threads that Luna said were the Landkist’s regrets incarnate—the life he had lived and all the choices he’d made. If that wasn’t magic, she didn’t know what was.
“Did the Faey Mother truly never teach you to see?” Falkin asked it tentatively.
“She mixed her poultices and mashed her roots,” Iyana said, sounding more bitter than she should and less bitter than the thickening bowl in her lap smelled.
“There is a bit more to it than that,” Falkin said. He held up his hand to stay her interjection.
“No,” Iyana said anyway. “She didn’t teach me the ways of the Faey Sight. She taught me to heal. To mend wounds and burn corruption out. All of those mean and simple things.”
Even as she spoke the words, she knew her anger was misplaced. Ninyeva had shown her the things her people had needed most from her. She had shown her how to read the feelings of others, to follow her impressions. Iyana had only begun to see the tethers clear in recent days, and wondered why the Faey Mother hadn’t told her of them before. Perhaps she had meant to. Perhaps she would have, had she more time.
“She never took me here,” Iyana breathed. She did not know if she was more disappointed in that fact or in the truth of the Faey, who seemed not so very different from the rest of them. A little lighter than the Emberfolk. A little thinner than the Rivermen. A little older than both combined. But very much the same, in pettiness and in all the goodly ways, near as she could tell.
“There is much to learn,” Falkin said. “And in many places.” He paused and lifted his still-steaming ladle up to his lips, taking a pull on the juice that had gathered in the basin. He nodded for Iyana to do the same, and she did without thinking, Ceth watching all the while, concern mounting.
It was still hot, but not painfully so, the heat doing the job of cutting some of the bitterness. Still, she wrinkled her nose and squeezed her eyes shut tight against the taste as the mix coated her throat and warmed her chest on the way down.
“I am sure Mother Ninyeva did the best she could,” Falkin said. “I do not say this to placate you, Iyana. I say it because of the things you have accomplished.”
Iyana took another swallow at his prompting and then set the bowl down on the ground.
“In truth, there is very little one Seer can show another.”
Iyana frowned. Ninyeva had shown her plenty when it came to the healing arts. She did not see why the same could not have been so for the greensight.
“Take me, for example,” Falkin said, pressing a hand to his chest. “My eyes shine brightly, and I have seen many things, but the mind can only stretch so far without fraying on the back of imagination alone. Experience follows discovery. Discovery prompts innovati
on. You have seen more of the wider world than any here among the Valley Faey,” he said. “That makes you strong in ways you cannot understand. It has opened new pathways to you because it has opened new questions.”
Iyana’s head was beginning to swim, though not in an unpleasant way. It reminded her a bit of the way the hotwine at Hearth had made her feel, swaying beneath the glowing yellow candles and their running wax. At the same time, she felt her nostrils flaring, her vision clearing. Everything smelled more immediate. Everything looked a little brighter and a little more vivid. Her mind began to race, but she retained it all. Every whizzing thought and streaking impression left slow-fading lines like scratches on parchment. She felt, in a word, clear.
“You may be wondering if I am simply saying this to placate you,” Falkin said. “Or, if I am telling the truth, how I could possibly know it.” He smiled wistfully. “It was Ninyeva herself who showed that to me. She showed us all during her time spent among us, though some of my fellows still refuse to acknowledge her wisdom.”
He sighed. “We are old things. Many of us. We change slowly.” He looked at them each in turn. “Not unlike the Sages.”
Iyana was almost beyond the point of speaking. She came back to herself with effort, though she still felt the rhythmic swaying that preceded her greensight. That called the Between out in their presence, or else revealed its truth between them. The room took on an ethereal quality as the ruddy glow of the fire melded with the bright auras of Falkin and Ceth—one yellow-green and the other moon-white. Their tethers rose like twisting ribbons of sand underwater and merged into the uneven ceiling.
“You have a power to you, Iyana,” Falkin was saying. She had heard it before, and by more than one for different reasons. They told her she was strong when she mended wounds with nothing but her will. They told her the same when she seized upon the threads of others and bent them to her desire, as she had out on the sands. His next words gave her pause. “It is a power built on courage, and bolstered by a selflessness of desire. It is the power that allowed you to find your sister in the Deep Lands, beneath the raging River F’Rust, in the Valley’s darkest hour. It is why, I think, Ninyeva thought to guide your teachings more toward healing than seeing, as it has made those eyes stronger than mine could ever be.”
Iyana watched him.
“You seem to see plenty well enough,” she said. She spoke in a dreamy tone that sounded strange to her own ears and had Ceth looking at her out of the corners of his eyes.
“It’s all I’m good for, these days,” Falkin said without a hint of shame. “It has always done us well to know the goings-on in this Valley of ours.”
“Much good it did you,” Iyana said. “Much good it did us, in these long years of darkness.”
Falkin opened his mouth to speak, but seemed reluctant to provoke her further.
“You kept your people sheltered. You kept them safe here at the edge of the Valley, in the glowing Eastern Woods.”
“We have suffered plenty,” Falkin said. He did not inflect his tone with anything other than a flatness that suggested she should not press.
“Did you know?” she asked. “About the Sage, I mean. About the White Crest. Did you know of the darkness that had taken him, or did you think him lost, like the rest of us did?”
“Do you think we would not have told you, if we had known?” Falkin asked, and a shred of the hurt she might have expected found his tone and coated it in rough silver. Iyana blinked and felt her blood cooling, her heart slowing. She thought to apologize, but saw Falkin’s eyes glowing in tune with her own. He must know she hadn’t meant it. At least, that she regretted meaning it.
“Such a pall hung over those peaks,” Falkin said, his voice turning grave. “I fear, Iyana Ve’Ran, no matter what you expected of me—of us—that if Ninyeva could not breach that red-topped citadel with her Sight and learn the truth of it, there are none among us who could have.”
“Your power,” Ceth broke in. “It moves in so many ways. Healing wounds. Seeing … whatever it is you see.” Iyana looked directly at the Northman and saw him less as the man she knew and more now as the spirit of wind he truly was—the Skyr, his flickering white form and the suggestion of the wings that had borne his ancestors on the highest, strongest winds. Wings not unlike those Linn had seen in the depths of the White Crest’s memories. It was a beautiful image.
The glow began to fade as Iyana grew more accustomed to the ebb and flow of whatever altered, watchful daze Falkin’s mix had put her in, and the colors of the room began to take it back.
“How?” Ceth asked. “How does such power work?”
Falkin looked quite at a loss for how to answer Ceth. “Is it any less strange than how you summon the very weight in the air around you? In the way you ride the lightest gusts to the highest reaches as if your bones have grown suddenly hollow?”
“That is not the same,” Ceth said, shaking his head. He seemed certain of it. “What I can do,” he said, looking down at his hands. “What the Embers can do, or Landkist the world over. They are gifts of war. Weapons to be wielded. I cannot see these … tethers. I cannot grasp the life of another as if it is a string to be cut. I cannot mend wounds with my thoughts, or travel roads that do not exist to places I have never seen.”
“No,” Falkin said. “No, you cannot.”
“These are mighty gifts,” Ceth said. “And old.”
“Ah,” Falkin said. “But it seems you’ve come to it at last.” He smiled at Ceth and Iyana’s confused looks. “The powers of the Kin are tied to life,” he said. “And the tethers that make it up. There is an energy that each person possesses, just as each animal and plant does, and each mote of ash with clinging mold.”
Ceth shook his head. Iyana wanted to shake hers as well, though she knew it to be true, saw it even now.
“These tethers are tied to Her,” Falkin continued. “To the world and all its many children. And we,” he pressed a hand to his chest and bowed as if in reverence before extending the hand toward Iyana, “are her humble shepherds.”
Ceth followed his hand to Iyana and judged the truth of it for himself.
“At least,” Falkin withdrew his hand and shrugged nonchalantly, “that has always been my interpretation. I’ve had a long time to think about it. Too long, some might say. Ninyeva always did …”
“You speak of the world as if it—as if She—is alive,” Iyana said. Seeing Falkin’s expression, she hated how callous it sounded. She had heard elders say it her whole life. Had even heard her fellows address Her casually, offhand, though they never seemed to mean it in any literal sense. Seeing the way Falkin looked at her now, she felt a fool for even daring to suggest that it might not be the case.
“Ah, but She is,” Falkin said. “And not in any,” he made strange, meaningless gestures with both hands, “fluid, smoky way. She is alive, Iyana and Ceth, and always has been. This I know.” He paused and took a swallow from a cup that had been sitting there before they had come. “The ancients called it the Soul of the World,” he said. “Others, I have been told, called it the Heart of the very same. The tethers come from her, as her life flows in us. We are a smaller part of a larger whole. We come from one, and someday, no matter the lives we’ve lived, we will return to it.”
He swallowed as he said the last and Iyana saw a flash of uncertainty pass across his face, as if he didn’t quite believe it to be true but wanted desperately to. He recovered quickly enough.
“You have no doubt heard tell that the gifts of the Landkist come from the world?” They each nodded. “This is true.” He smiled fondly at Ceth. “You, my boy, are Her unfurled wings. The Embers are her beating rage, railing against all the hurt that makes life up. The Rockbled are her stony resolve. Each an aspect of a larger truth, like shards of a mirror of impossible beauty.”
“And we are Her shepherds,” Iyana said. “To tend her flock.” It fel
t as if she were quoting something known and something written down, though not by her. Something that might be buried in the deserts, inscribed in the Valley and carved into stone tablets beneath the towers in the west.
“But,” Iyana frowned. “But what of the Sight? What of the Between?”
Falkin’s smile grew less wide, but his eyes became rapturous, even hungry. “It is not a place,” he said. “It is as much a place as the thoughts of another. No. It is a way built of intent. It is the tether that binds them all. It is—”
“Her mind.”
Iyana breathed it out, feeling it as the truth, though she couldn’t know it for certain. She blinked and saw that Falkin was leaning forward in his chair, gripping the rests. “Her mind,” he nodded. “Yes, Iyana. The Kin of Faeyr have one gift, and that is to see and to interact with the tethers others cannot know. We can seize upon them and gather the thoughts of those who carry them. We can see what they see. Know what they know. To a point.”
He leaned back and breathed out an exultant sigh. “When we enter the Between, we see what She sees. We feel what she feels. We go where she takes us. Hers is the web into which all tethers feed. Time has no meaning, there. At least, not as we understand it. The world as we know it appears differently, as if it exists in all times before, melding with memories of itself and projections of what it could become.”
Iyana remembered entering the Between on three occasions, all of them in recent days, and none with the blessing of the Faey Mother. She had followed a tether down into the mind of Braden Taldis and been trapped there by a Rockbled far stronger than she could have imagined. She had braved its uncertain ways with a hungry desperation as she had searched for her sister, following ethereal winds and half whispers that were more suggestions down through rocks that ran for leagues underground until she had embodied the form of a firefly.
And then, at the edge of all reason and with all other choices lost to her, she had shifted into that realm as she witnessed a battle between Sages on the melted glass that had been the desert’s floor. She had followed it to the tether of one who kept it jealously guarded, and with him, she had careened on violent winds and passed over the edges of a world unlike anything she could have imagined.
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