Vale’s Counsel

I went to Vale about Arcadia, because Vale is the person one goes to about Arcadia, and I came away with four things and a piece of advice I did not want.

The FIRST is that Æ has a map of the maze. He has had it this whole time. I nearly stood up. And then Vale added, with what I can only describe as timing: it does not look like a map.

I have been turning that over ever since. A map that does not look like a map is either a map in a form I have not learned to read, or it is not a map and someone is being poetic at me. Either way I want to see it, and I have written ASK Æ in the margin and underlined it, and I recognise the irony given what started this whole weekend.

The SECOND is the curse. Arcadia is a cursed place, and the curse is PARTICULAR. Not general, not indiscriminate — particular. It chooses. And if I went there it would attack me, and here Vale was careful to say that it might be the maze that attacks or it might be Arcadia, which are apparently two answers and not one.

And the attack would be experienced as MENTAL. Not a wound. Something that happens in the place where I keep my work.

I asked, I think reasonably, whether going anyway might help someone. Vale said it would not help anyone.

That is the piece of advice I did not want, and I have written it down without softening it, because a ledger that only records the encouragement is not a ledger.

The THIRD is practical and slightly humiliating: I am unlikely to get across at all. What one needs is a SHADOW WALK, which I do not have and cannot do, and so the actual next step in my great investigation is to go and ask Panlan to explain a thing to me. I have added it to the list. The list is getting long.

The FOURTH — and this is the one that mattered, though I did not know it yet — is that I should research with Professor Blythe at Terlotta, who is Professor of Folklore and Mythology, which is a title I would frankly accept as a gift.

And then, as I was gathering my things, Vale said one more thing. Almost in passing. Almost as if it were nothing.

The third stair is broken at the tower.

I did not know why that mattered. I had no context for it whatsoever. But I have learned that when a Lord of Chaos hands you a specific structural detail about a building you have not yet visited, you write it down, and I put a star beside it.

I want the record to show that I put the star there BEFORE I knew. Hours before. That star is the single most useful mark I have ever made.