Veyr Waystation

The Relais de Veyr appeared at the turn of a canyon, built on a green rock wall. Its exterior doors were open, but planks blocked the windows. A watchtower leaned towards the void. The Xil’Nrae coat of arms had been removed from the facade; only a lighter rectangle remained.

They had moored the boat to the ring of the relay, then had hidden it under a recess on the shore, out of sight from the tower. The chalk mark seen above the lake came back to their mind: someone may have followed their path until then. But going back would expose the injured as much as knocking on the door.

Zaelyra recognized the old map station. She didn't recognize what she had become.

When she was a child, her father took her to the canyon to show her the coat of arms of the House above the door. He had told her that every relay was a promise: a lit lantern meant that someone had kept the road passable.

Now, only a pale mark remained on the facade. The lanterns in the tower were off.

"Have you ever been there? Nym asked.

"Once."

"Did you hope to find the station as you left it?"

"I don't know how I hoped."

Nym nodded his head. "This is already a more useful answer than most."

Nym knocked three times, waited, then knocked once. A hatch opened above the door.

"Who's coming?" asked a voice.

"A cartographer who no longer has a map."

"This is a bad answer."

"So open for a better one."

The door unlocked. A duergar in a green coat signaled them to enter. Her name was Brakka, guardian of the relay, and knew the name of Nym. She examined the group without introducing herself further.

Once the door closed behind them, Zaelyra whispered: "The rhythm you just hit... is the one we heard in the conduit."

"An old shelter call, used in some relays. He does not give a name or guarantee."

"Do you think that's what the person behind the rock was trying to do?"

Nym shook his head. "It's possible. We answered, but nothing followed. I don't know if anyone was really trying to talk to us."

"The injured woman goes to the infirmary. The others stay in the courtyard until we know who accompanies you."

"There are six of us," says Zaelyra.

"I count seven."

Orl was the seventh. He had stood away, his face down. Zaelyra had counted the six for which she accepted responsibility. Orl walked with them, but had not yet revealed the whole reason for his trip to Veyr.

Brakka recognized him. "You had to arrive alone."

"The road has changed."

"The roads are changing. The agreements, no."

Brakka brought in Sszindi and Pell. The girl stayed close to Zaelyra. She always refused to say her name.

Brakka made them leave the weapons in a closet at the entrance. Rhylor protested, but she put her hand on the axe hanging from her belt.

"Here, no one points a blade at someone who sleeps."

"What if someone comes in with a blade?"

"Then we'll have time to wake up."

She did not speak like a sure guardian of her walls. She spoke like someone who had already seen these walls give way. Rhylor eventually put down his two daggers, but kept Dhal's plate around his neck.

Brakka led Zaelyra to the inner courtyard. A cistern collected the water that flowed from the canyon. The well was no longer fed, and the inhabitants rationed each tucket. In the old map room, beds had been installed on the tables. Chalk marks indicated the guard towers, reserves and areas that should not be used.

"Why keep this place if you lack everything? Zaelyra asked.

"Because people keep coming."

"And when you can no longer feed them?"

"So they will choose to leave or help us find something else."

Brakka pointed to the empty register. "We don't write down the names. Names travel faster than people."

Zaelyra looked at the improvised beds. She understood that the absence of a register was not a comfort rule. It was a way to make each inhabitant more difficult to find, even at the cost of never knowing how many they were.

The relay housed a dozen people: two drows families, a duergar merchant, three svirfneblins and a former soldier whose armor had been repainted. They were not a community. They only shared a roof, because no one had offered them better.

"How long can we stay? Zaelyra asked.

"It depends on what you bring."

"maps, arms and no certainty."

Brakka had a sneer. "The arms, I take. I check the maps. Certainties, keep them. They take up space."

Zaelyra showed him the statement of the official gallery. Brakka didn't touch him.

"This road is wrong."

"It is incomplete."

"Here, it's the same."

Nym intervened. "She led us here."

"So she was lucky."

"Or she looked where she put her feet."

Brakka observed Zaelyra. "What do you want?"

"A night for the wounded. Then, we will go back to the Marches de Lune."

"There are not enough provisions for a caravan."

"We are not a caravan."

"Not yet."

The word remained in suspense between them.

In the courtyard, a child brought water to Sszindi. Another handed a piece of bread to Pell. The girl observed the scene as if kindness were a foreign language of which she recognized some sounds.

Zaelyra understood why the relay had been kept despite the abandonment of the road. He wasn't sure. It was simply a place where you could choose not to close the door.

In the map room, Brakka had stopped in front of an alcove whose stone had been freshly plugged. She put her fingers on the mortar, without touching it at all.

"What was there? Zaelyra asked.

"A register."

"Did you destroy it?"

"No. I moved it."

Brakka took a lamp and led it behind a row of beds. Under a removable slab, an iron box slept in a niche. She opened it with a key under her shirt. Inside, leather sheets were rolled around small copper plates. Some had dates, others marked in passage.

Zaelyra recognized the writing on the first plate. Fine, leaning to the right, with the "y" loop almost closed. His father had drawn the same letters in his first statements.

"Did he work here?"

"He helped to restore the relay, before you were born. He convinced the Houses to pay for maps that would not bear their coats of arms. Brakka half closed the box. "He said that a road was easier to keep open when no one could claim to own it."

Zaelyra touched the air above the plate. "My mother told me that he was drawing for the House."

"He also drew for those who could not pay. That's why he stopped coming."

"Is he dead?"

"I don't know. He left Veyr one morning, alone. He left me the key and asked me never to keep a register of the living. I didn't know if it was an instruction or a goodbye."

Brakka was not trying to give herself importance. His voice kept the dryness of a person who had repeated these facts to no one, precisely because she did not get any answer.

"Why show it to me? Zaelyra asked.

"Because you brought a map, not a coat of arms. I wanted to know if you understood the difference."

Zaelyra looked at the plates. "Do these marks indicate who has passed?"

"Only the groups that asked to remember their passage. The others remained nameless."

"And those who asked?"

"Some have come back. Some sent a message. For the others, the register does not claim anything."

Brakka showed him a plate split in half. Three lines were engraved on it, then covered with a deep notch.

"Is this Dhal's brand? Zaelyra asked.

"It's a brand that he copied. He never registered his own."

Rhylor had joined the entrance to the alcove. He did not advance.

"Did you see him? He asked.

"Once. He asked me if the north door could be opened without alerting the tower. I told her that she could, but that the passage behind was unstable."

"When?"

"It was eight years before his disappearance. He didn't come back to tell me if he had taken this door."

Rhylor's hand rested on his split plate. He didn't ask why Brakka hadn't spoken earlier. Perhaps he already knew that late answers had their reasons, even when they were not enough.

They waited for Brakka to leave them alone in the corridor. Rhylor sat at the foot of a column and put the plate on his knee. His thumb followed the notches as if he was checking the number.

"I taught Dhal to fight before teaching him to read a road," he says.

"Do you regret it?"

"I regret having believed that order could replace an explanation. He asked why some doors had to stay closed. I told him that a guard did not choose which ones."

"He chose anyway."

"Yes."

Rhylor brought the plate back into his palm. "The last time we spoke, he asked me if I would let him go if the House ordered him to stay. I said I wouldn't let him throw himself into the dark to prove he was free."

"You wanted to protect him."

"I wanted him to choose what I would have chosen."

The difference left them speechless. In the courtyard, someone moved a box; the wood rubbed on the stone and the noise resounded for a long time.

Zaelyra took out her notebook. She drew the plate on the ladder, marking the place where the metal had broken. She did not add the word "dead" or the word "disappeared". She only wrote: found on the road to Veyr; date unknown; testimony of Rhylor.

"You're not going to write what you think? He asked.

"I can believe it without engraving it on the map."

"It's a good distinction."

"Did I learn it from you?"

"No. Of your refusal to listen to my answers."

This time, his smile was real, although brief.

Zaelyra studied her father's traits, then those left by Dhal. They did not form an itinerary. These were the traces of two people who preferred to leave a possibility rather than a certainty.

"Do you keep these plates here, even if the relay falls? She asked.

"I'm taking them if I leave."

"What if you can't?"

"Then they will stay. A brand is not a life."

Zaelyra closed the box carefully. Her father's name had just joined that of Dhal in the margins of her map, but she had no more line to draw.

"Is there a corridor under the cistern? She asked.

Brakka stared at her. "Who told you that?"

"Nobody. The tower leans to the side of the canyon, but the foundations do not shoot in the same direction. There must be a drainage gallery."

Brakka had a brief smile. "Your father would have asked the same question."

"Then there is one."

"There was one. If it is still open, it leads to a narrow exit under the wall. Not on a road."

"An exit is enough to check."

"An exit is also enough to let someone in."

"You're right."

Brakka seemed to expect an argument. Zaelyra instead handed him her map.

"Show me where it opens. We will rate it as dangerous until we have inspected it together."

The duergar took the parchment. "That's a way to start."

Brakka granted them the night, on one condition: no name would be entered in the register. Even that of Zaelyra.

She accepted.

Above the relay, the watchtower creaked in the draft. In the distance, a burst of light signaled that we had seen the door open.