48. Alar #3
That was the first thing I noticed, after the squalor below, a clean spare room with a desk, a stove, and shelves of stoppered jars.
He looked at me for a long moment, at the mud on my knees and the way I held myself, and something in his face shifted, a recognition.
"I see that trouble found you on the way," he said. "But you made it."
"I did."
"Sit." He nodded me to a stool. He didn't ask my name, and I didn't offer it. "What do you need?"
"I'm hoping you can help me figure that out. My brother is suffering from a soldiers' affliction after a robbery, and I'm at my wits' end about how to help him. I heard that greycap offers a cure."
"Mm. A robbery, you say." He didn't believe that part of the story, but he believed the rest.
"I know how bad it is," he said. "I had what your brother's got."
So, he was a former soldier, just as I'd suspected. The last war Catonia had fought was before I was born, when Narevelle, the province to our north, rose up and tried to wrest control of the Council from Catonia by force.
"I came back from the northern border with it and relived my worst hour for over a year, until someone introduced me to greycap.
It's the only reason I'm sitting here instead of being dead.
" He stood, walked over to his stacked shelves, and took down a jar.
"I'll sell it to you. But I'm going to tell you the truth first. I don't want your brother's frayed brains on my conscience.
I tell everyone I sell to what they're getting themselves into, so it's their doing, not mine. "
I braced for him telling me about the addiction, and nodded, because I needed details. How much was too much? How much was safe?
"This can save him if used right, and ruin him if used wrong, and the line between the two is thin.
" He set the jar down but kept his hand on it.
"What's in here is not medicine you dose like a tonic.
It's a door. Each time he takes it, the door opens, and he walks back into that hour, only this time he can get all the way through it instead of being trapped at the threshold, and he comes out the far side with it behind him instead of in front of him.
But it takes more than the one walk. A few.
Spaced wide, never close together. And between them is where the real mending happens, not in the visions.
The visions just open the door. You'll have to do the rest."
"How many are a few?"
"Two are good enough for most. Three at the outside.
And then he never touches it again." He narrowed his eyes at me.
"The visions are sweet, see. A man walks back through his worst hour and comes out clean and weeping and lighter than he's been in years, and a piece of him wants to go back in, not to heal now, just to feel that high again.
And he tells himself once more it won't hurt.
And then once more. And the door that healed him starts needing him to come back, more each time for less each time, until there's nothing left of him but a ghost of who he used to be.
" He held my eyes. "Everyone thinks they can stop, but only a few are strong enough to actually do that.
You keep your brother to the few, and then you take this away from him, and you never let him touch it again. Best to destroy it."
"I will."
I expected him to name his price and hand over the jar, but he kept his hand over it.
"This is what you do. You prepare your brother first so the visions don't ambush him.
Explain what will happen once he takes it and make sure he wants to walk through the door it will open.
Put him somewhere safe and quiet and warm when the time comes, nothing bright, nothing sudden, nothing that sounds or smells like the road that broke him.
And stay with him the whole time, even if it takes hours.
He'll need a hand to hold that won't let go. "
It was, almost word for word, what I'd been doing with Arlen, so he wasn't telling me anything I didn't know. Only now there was an added hallucinated door he needed to walk through.
"You're his rope," Sivon said. "The greycap's nothing without the rope. If you can't be that for him, leave the jar on my shelf and go home, because you'll do more harm than the affliction ever did."
"I can be that," I said. "I am that."
He looked at me a moment longer, and then he nodded, and named a price that wasn't nearly as outrageous as I'd expected.
After I paid, he took the stuff out of the jar, prepared three measures, wrapped each one in waxed paper, then in a plain one. He put all three inside a paper bag, added the jar, which was nearly empty now, and handed me the parcel.
"A few, well spaced," he said. "Throw away what's left after he's back to himself." He smiled for the first time since I'd arrived. "And don't get tempted to try it yourself. There's enough in the jar for a fourth one, just in case your brother needs it. It's not for you."
I suspected that Sivon was hoping I would try the greycap and come back to him for more. After all, this was how he made his living, and most of the time, he wasn't a good man.