Ch. 205 The Threshold

Chapter 205 The Threshold

Maelin found me outside the nursery.

I had been sent to fetch Garrick’s boat. It was beneath a chair in the adjoining room, where he had left it after supper.

She waited until I had picked it up.

“You’re very close,” she said.

“To what?”

“Apotheosis.”

I looked at the boat in my hand.

Garrick had chewed one side of its bow despite all the care we had taken smoothing it.

“How close?”

“I can’t give you a day. But you’re standing at the edge of it now. I felt what happened when you held the storm.”

“Veyra said I managed to let go.”

“You did. You also touched a storm beyond the hills and made it answer.”

I turned the boat over.

“Does Aurelia know?”

“Yes.”

We went to find her.

Aurelia was in the western observation room with Veyra. They had spread weather maps across the old table.

“She told me,” I said.

Aurelia set down the page she held.

“I meant to speak with you tonight.”

“Were you going to say it the same way?”

“That you’re close? Yes.”

I sat.

The room looked as it had the night I answered Othellos. The wooden platform still stood at its center. Rain had dried from the windows, and no voice waited beyond them.

“What happens if I do nothing?” I asked.

Aurelia drew out a chair.

“Your power will continue to grow. You may reach the threshold and remain there for some time.”

“How long?”

“I don’t know.”

“And if I decide to cross it?”

“We prepare. We learn what your own power requires. Then you choose whether to take that step.”

I had expected the answer to feel farther away.

It did not.

Veyra gathered her maps.

“I’ll leave you to talk.”

“Stay,” I said. “I want to know whether what you told me about winter changes once I ascend.”

She sat again.

“The reach of it may change.”

“Could I protect Greykeep?”

“Yes.”

“The wards?”

Aurelia answered.

“You could give them strength they do not have now. The castle already knows your power. It would still need careful work to receive more.”

“And Othellos?”

“He could still call you,” Maelin said. “He could still threaten us. He would have a harder time treating you as someone whose place he can assign.”

I looked at the empty platform.

“He may have other ways.”

“He does,” Aurelia said.

Nobody offered me a simple answer.

I trusted them more for it.

Evelyn listened that evening while I told her what Maelin had said.

We were in our room. Carol slept in the nursery beyond the open door. Garrick was still awake, arguing quietly with his boat.

“You’ve made a decision,” my wife said.

“Not yet.”

“You know which one you want.”

I sat beside her.

“I think I do.”

“Tell me.”

I looked toward the nursery.

“I want to ascend.”

She took my hand.

I had expected questions at once. She waited instead.

“I want to be strong enough to keep this place safe,” I said. “And I want Othellos to know that sitting at his table was never the price of becoming stronger.”

“Is that the only reason?”

“No.”

I thought of the storm passing over the fields.

“I want to find out what I can do with it when no one else is choosing for me.”

Evelyn rested our joined hands on her knee.

“Do you want to do it soon?”

“I don’t know what soon means.”

“Neither do I.”

“I want to speak with you properly before I tell Aurelia yes.”

“You are speaking with me.”

“I want your mother and father here. Mary and Melody too.”

My wife raised an eyebrow.

“That is a large conversation.”

“It concerns the children. The castle. Everyone who depends on the wards.”

“And you.”

“Yes.”

She leaned against me.

“Then ask them.”

Helena arrived first the next morning.

Garrick came from the lower yard with sawdust on his sleeve. He brushed it away before sitting beside her.

Mary brought her book.

Melody brought no book and took the chair nearest the door.

Evelyn and I sat together at the table.

“I’d like to ascend,” I said.

For once, Mary did not begin writing.

Helena looked at me, then at her daughter.

“Is this what you want?” she asked Evelyn.

“It’s Uriah’s choice. I want to understand what it will mean for us.”

“That makes two of us,” Garrick said.

Melody folded her arms.

“Three.”

Mary opened her book.

“Four.”

I told them what Aurelia knew and what she did not.

The wards might be strengthened. I might be able to shelter the roads when severe weather came. I might also hear more people calling than I could answer.

“Othellos could still come after you,” Melody said.

“Yes.”

“But he would have less reason to think he could command you.”

“That is what Maelin believes.”

Garrick studied my face.

“Have you asked what happens to Aurelia?”

“I will.”

“Ask before you decide when.”

“I intend to.”

Helena looked toward the window.

“The twins are changing quickly.”

“They are.”

“Will your change affect theirs?”

“We don’t know,” Evelyn said.

“Then that question belongs with the others.”

Mary wrote it down.

We spoke for most of the morning.

Melody wanted to know who would hold the wards if I could not attend to them. Mary asked whether a change in my power could disturb the work Evelyn and I already supplied.

Garrick asked if a wall strengthened by a god could still be repaired by the Castellan.

“That is a builder’s question,” Melody told him.

“It is the sort I know how to ask.”

Helena asked what I would do if I heard Garrick call from another room while ten people called from beyond Greykeep.

I had no answer ready.

“I’d come to him,” I said at last.

“You might have to choose,” she replied.

“Yes.”

She held my gaze.

“I needed to hear that you understood.”

When everyone had spoken, Mary put down her pen.

“What do you want from us today?”

“I want you to know I intend to do this. I want you to tell me what I may have missed.”

“We’ve begun,” she said. “We will continue.”

Melody leaned forward.

“You aren’t asking for a vote?”

“No.”

“Good. I would have argued with the question.”

Evelyn smiled.

Mary turned to a fresh page.

“We do need a plan for Greykeep while you prepare. The watch, the building work, the chapel. None of it should depend on your being available every hour.”

“It doesn’t now,” Garrick said.

“Not entirely,” Mary replied. “I intend to make the rest clear.”

Afterward, Helena asked me to walk with her.

She led me into the nursery.

Garrick stood beside his cradle, attempting to put his boat inside it. It rose above the rail before he let go.

The boat fell onto the blanket.

He laughed.

Carol sat with the cloth book open. When Helena entered, she turned to the page with the house.

“Home,” she said.

Helena knelt beside her.

“Yes.”

Our daughter shut the little door and opened it again.

Helena looked at me.

“Whatever they become, they will need someone to tell them when it is time for bed.”

“They won’t like hearing it.”

“They don’t like hearing it now.”

Garrick lifted the boat over the rail again.

This time I caught it before it fell on his foot.

Nessa examined the twins that afternoon.

A week had not yet passed since her last visit, but Evelyn had asked her to come sooner.

Carol had outgrown a shirt Helena had altered only recently. Garrick could reach a shelf we had thought safe at the start of the month.

“They’re well,” Nessa said after watching them play. “They’re also growing quickly enough that I want you to keep telling me when something changes.”

“Could their power be causing it?” Evelyn asked.

“I don’t know.”

Garrick offered her his boat.

She inspected its bow.

“Still sound.”

“We’ve had practice checking it,” I said.

Carol lifted two blocks at once. One wobbled and came down on the rug.

Nessa watched.

“And they have been practicing too.”

Before supper, Eliza called me to the western gate.

Two more gods waited beneath the shelter.

One had come on horseback. The other had walked, leading the horse through the last stretch because its rider’s leg was stiff from an old injury.

They introduced themselves as Dorian and Sel.

Dorian had kept the beacons along dangerous roads. Sel had tended orchards through poor growing seasons.

“We heard Veyra came here,” Sel said.

“She did,” Eliza replied.

“Is she free to leave?”

“Yes.”

Sel looked at Dorian.

“Then we would like to speak with her.”

Eliza asked her usual questions before opening the gate.

They answered all of them.

Veyra came down to meet them.

She embraced Sel so suddenly that the horse startled.

Dorian took its reins.

“I told you to wait,” Veyra said.

“You told me where you were going,” Sel replied.

“That is different.”

“I know.”

They went through the examination with Aurelia and the Castellan. Afterward, Nara took them to find food.

I watched the western road for another moment.

More people might be coming.

We had built the shelter just in time for the ones who were already here.

That evening, Aurelia gathered the gods in the council chamber.

Maelin and Thesra had asked to return to the question of a new pantheon.

I joined them with Evelyn and Mary.

The table was crowded.

“We need to decide what it means to belong,” Maelin said.

Nathaniel looked at her.

“Does anyone have to?”

“No,” Aurelia replied.

“Then write that first,” he said.

Mary did.

Caldris suggested that each god remain free to refuse a request from another. Nara wanted mortal people to be able to speak against a god’s conduct without losing the care or shelter they received.

Sel leaned forward.

“How would they be heard?”

“We have not decided,” Thesra said.

“Then that belongs near the beginning too.”

Mary left space on the page.

I listened while they worked through the questions.

Who could join.

How someone could leave.

What happened when two domains touched the same village.

Whether a promise made in the pantheon’s name would require the agreement of those expected to keep it.

Dorian wanted the words made plain enough to read aloud at a roadside beacon.

“That may take longer to write,” Mary said.

“Then take longer.”

No one objected.

Aurelia had spoken only a little.

When Maelin asked what she thought, she looked around the table before answering.

“I want people to be able to come here without surrendering the freedom that brought them.”

Nathaniel nodded.

“So do I.”

I stayed after the others left.

Aurelia stood beside the window, looking toward the dark fields.

“I told Evelyn I want to ascend.”

She turned.

“I thought you might.”

“I told Helena, Garrick, Mary, and Melody too.”

“What did they say?”

“Many things. Mary wrote most of them down.”

“That sounds useful.”

“Garrick asked about you.”

Aurelia looked back at the window.

“He remembers what I told you.”

“You would lose some power.”

“Yes.”

“How much?”

“I cannot measure it in advance. I can tell you that I would still choose to help you everytime.”

“That wasn’t my question.”

“No,” she said.

I had used those words with her before.

She smiled faintly.

“You have more of your own power now,” I said. “Since you understood what forgiveness means for you.”

“I do.”

“Would my change take that from you?”

“No. What is mine will remain mine. The strength we share may change.”

“And if it hurts you?”

“Then I will tell you. We can stop while stopping is still possible.”

I studied her face.

“You promise?”

“Yes.”

I believed her.

There was another question I had delayed.

“Will it affect the children?”

“We’ll examine every connection before you cross the threshold,” she said. “I won’t guess when they are involved.”

That was the answer I had wanted.

When I returned to our rooms, Evelyn was writing in the twins’ books.

“What have they done now?”

“Carol said ‘home’ to my mother. Garrick lifted his boat over the cradle rail.”

“Did you write that he nearly dropped it on his foot?”

“I wrote that you caught it.”

“That seems generous.”

She put down the pen.

“How was Aurelia?”

“Honest.”

Evelyn held out her hand.

I sat beside her.

“I told her yes,” I said. “I want to prepare.”

“And the rest?”

“We’ll learn before I take the step.”

She leaned her head against mine.

Outside, the wind moved along the castle wall.

I could feel it if I paid attention.

I could also hear our children breathing in the next room.

For tonight, I listened to them.