The ruin on the Greenway had been a watchtower once, in the days when the kings of Arnor still walked the North and the roads were safe and the dark was something that lived in the East and stayed there.
Now it was a broken tooth of stone on a hill no one remembered and the only thing that watched from it was Corym Vane, sitting on a fallen lintel with a coin in his hand and the taste of his own betrayal sour in the back of his throat.
The coin was silver and old.
Númenórean work, or the Enemy’s copy of Númenórean work, which was better than anything the mints of the South could produce.
Corvane had been taking the Enemy’s coin for six months and the coin was good and the work was easy and the work was killing him by inches in a way no blade ever had.
He did not let himself think about it.
Thinking about it was what had broken him in the first place, after the loss in the North that he didn’t name even to himself, and the breaking had left a hole he had been trying to fill with coin and drink and the particular satisfaction of knowing things other men didn’t know.
The hole was not filling.
The hole was getting bigger.
The go-between arrived at dusk, riding a horse that was too good for a traveller and wearing a face that was too ordinary for a spy.
The Enemy’s people were good at ordinary faces.
They had been practicing for a very long time and the practice showed in the way the go-between dismounted and walked up the broken stair without once looking behind him.
A man who didn’t look behind him was a man who already knew what was there.
“Corvane.” The go-between’s voice was flat and unhurried and carried an accent Corvane couldn’t place.
“You have news.”
“I have confirmation.” Corvane pocketed the coin and stood and didn’t offer his hand.
The go-between did not expect it.
Their meetings weren’t friendly and they weren’t hostile and they weren’t anything except business, and the business was eating him alive.
“The light is real.
It is not a rumour or a weather-pattern or a trick of the light in the Hills.
It is a person.
A recruit — young, green on the books, not green in the way he moves.
He did something on a slope in the Weather Hills that woke something old and the something has been kindling ever since.
I have seen it.
I have been close enough to feel it.
He carries a star, or something like a star, and the star is bright and getting brighter.”
“A name.” The go-between’s voice was still flat but there was a new note in it: the satisfaction of a man whose patient work was beginning to pay.
“You said you would have a name.”
“I do not have a name.” Corvane lied smoothly and the smoothness was the last of his old skill and the using of it for this purpose was another small death. This chapter was taken from novelping.com without permission.
“The Rangers do not use names around me.
I am tolerated because they need my barrow-lore and they do not trust me enough to give me a name I can sell.
I will have one.
I need time.”
“You need money.” The go-between’s eyes were the colour of old ice and they didn’t blink often enough.
“You have had money.
You have had six months of money and you have delivered three rumours and two weather-patterns and one dead scout whose death no one can confirm was anything but wolves.
The Watcher is patient but the Watcher is not paying for patience.
He is paying for results.”
“The Watcher is paying for a method and the method is working.” Corvane forced his voice to stay steady and the steadiness cost more than he wanted to admit.
“I have told you — I have told him — that the light is real.
That is the first piece.
The second piece is that the light is a recruit who is not as green as he looks.
The third piece is that the recruit is hungry.
He wants the song more than the watch.
I know the look.
I wore it.
A man who wants the song can be moved, and a man who can be moved can be tracked, and a man who can be tracked can be found.
I am giving you the method and the method delivers the man.
I only need time.”
The go-between was silent for a moment and the silence was colder than the night air.
Corvane had met the Pale Watcher once, once, in a tent on the other side of the Misty Mountains, before the Enemy’s search of the North had widened to include paid informants and broken Rangers.
The Watcher had been old and cold and patient in a way that made patience a weapon.
He had spoken of the North as a ledger, a map of irregularities, a thing to be read and filed and eventually acted upon.
He hadn’t raised his voice and he hadn’t threatened and the not-threatening had been the most threatening thing about him.
“One month,” the go-between said finally.
“The Watcher wants a name and a place and a pattern he can follow.
A living light, located and named and mapped.
You have one month.”
“One month.” Corvane took the new coin the go-between handed him and the coin was heavier than the last and the weight was the weight of a clock starting.
“Tell him — tell him it is real.
Whatever else I have sold him that was not — this is real.
There is a light in the North and it is kindling and I am sitting at the same fire with it.”
The go-between turned and walked back down the broken stair and the horse was already moving before he reached it.
Corvane sat down on the fallen lintel again and the coin was in his hand and the taste of his own betrayal was in his mouth and the face of the recruit was in his head.
Fenn.
He knew the name and he wasn’t giving it up, not yet, not until the price was right, not until the Watcher was desperate enough to pay what the name was worth.
Corvane was selling a light and the light was getting brighter and the brightness was a rising market.
A man who had sold everything else might as well sell at the top.
He didn’t let himself think about what Fenn would do if he knew.
He didn’t let himself think about the valley: the women and children, the last of the Dúnedain, the people who had trusted him once before the break and would have died before trusting him now.
He didn’t let himself think about the old loss, the thing that had broken him, the battle in the North where he had done everything right and still lost everything he was trying to save.
He pocketed the coin and rode back toward the patrol and told himself the same thing he told himself every time: he wasn’t selling the Shire.
He was not selling the refuge.
He was selling a phenomenon: a star, a light, a thing that was going to be found anyway whether he sold it or not.
The sell was the only smart move and the smart move was the only move left to a man who had stopped being brave a long time ago.
The lie was old and comfortable and he had told it so many times he almost believed it.
Almost.
The face of the recruit still haunted him and the recruit’s hunger still mirrored his own and the mirror was the worst part: the knowledge that he had been Fenn once, young and hungry and sure that the hunger could be mastered, and that the mastering had failed him and the failing had broken him and the breaking had led him, step by step, to a ruin on the Greenway and a coin in his hand and a go-between’s cold eyes counting the days until the sale was final.
Fenn was going to end the same way.
Corvane was almost sure of it.
The certainty was the only comfort he had left and the comfort was cold and thin and tasted of copper.
He rode back to the patrol before dawn and slipped into his bedroll with the silence of the old Ranger he had been and the new traitor he had become.
The coin was in his pocket.
The clock was running.
The recruit was sleeping twenty feet away with a star burning at the edge of his sight and no idea that the star had already been priced.