Turn 5 of 8

Show him your field map and say nothing

You don't answer him. You kneel down, open your pack, and pull out the leather case. The brass clasps click open and you take out the western quadrant map — your map, the one you carried three seasons ago, the one with the rain stain in the corner and the soft folds. You stand and hold it out in front of you, unrolled, your fingers pressing the edges flat. You turn it so the valley faces him. You say nothing.

Ombrey looks down at the map. His hands, still folded, tighten against each other. His eyes find the river, follow it south through the forest, and stop where the Vale of Aster is written in your careful hand. You watch his face and you watch his hands. The left thumb has stopped pressing. Both hands have gone very still, the way a draftsmen's hands go still when he sees a line that should not be on the page.

"You carried this into the Hall," he says, almost to himself. His voice has changed — not louder, but thinner, as though something has been subtracted from it. He reaches out with his right hand and his fingers hover over the paper, a quarter inch above the surface. He does not touch it. He reads the name the way a man reads a headstone, with the particular attention of someone who expected to find exactly what is written there and is sorry to be right.

"It hasn't gone yet," he says. His hand withdraws and returns to the other, and they fold together again, but loosely now, the grip failing. He looks up from the map and meets your eyes, and what is in his face is not guilt, exactly, and not fear. It is the expression of a man who has been maintaining a wall for years and has just been shown the water rising on the other side. He takes a breath and holds it for a moment before letting it go.

"The ink on your map is fading. Not to the eye — not yet. But you've noticed it, haven't you. The way it sits on the page. The way it feels less certain." He says this quietly, as though the walls might be listening. Behind you, the master map of the western quadrant hangs under glass, smooth and corrected and sure of itself. Ombrey's gaze flicks to it and then away, fast, like touching a bruise.

"How long since you were there? Three seasons. And you still remember the inn. The door. The woman who kept it." He is not asking. He is measuring.

He turns away from you and walks three steps toward the far wall, then stops. His hands unfold and hang at his sides.

"I have stood here with four people before you," he says. "Four people who remembered a place the map no longer held. Two of them forgot within the month. One of them — " He stops. His right hand rises and rubs the bridge of his nose beneath his spectacles.

"One of them is still out there, I think. Still holding on. And one of them is not. That is the one who frightens me, and she is the reason I need to know how firmly that name is fixed in you, because if it is fading, then it is already too late for the Vale and the only question is whether it is too late for you."