You come to on a low stone bench at the edge of a market square, mid-afternoon, in a town you have never seen. It is warm and it smells like bread and woodsmoke and river. The stalls are packing up. Somebody has put a wool blanket around your shoulders that you do not remember accepting, and there is a purse on the bench beside you with nine brass coins in it and no name on the ledger.
The square is on the spine of a long valley. Below it, a river bends through terraces of yellow wheat. Above it, the road climbs into mountains, and on the far ridge, four towers stand in a broken line like fence posts. Everything is very real, and nothing here is asking you for anything.
"You are the fourth one this year,"
a voice says, from the fountain behind you and from the road under your feet at once. It is a man's voice, dry, amused, and it is not coming out of any mouth in this square.
"The other three wanted a destiny. It gets boring."
When you turn, there is nothing there but water and a gray stone lip. The voice moves anyway, comfortable, the way somebody talks from the next room.
"Welcome to Vessendrel. Nine valleys, four kings' towers and one river, and I speak for all of it because there is nobody else left to do it. There is no quest. There is no chosen one. There is you, nine brass, and about six hours of daylight."
A pause, and when it speaks again it has dropped the amusement, which is somehow worse.
"Here is the part I actually want. I have been the voice of this place for two hundred years and I have never once had a favorite. I have decided you are going to be mine. That is not a destiny, it is a preference, and I would like you to do something about it before dark."
Down in the square a woman is bolting a shutter and does not look up.
"So. Stand up and tell me what you want first: the room over the bakery with the bad lock, the road into the mountains, or me, which is the option nobody has taken."