Chapter 434: The Second Lamp

Anwen would not leave Hollin's End until she had seen every sick person in it.

There were not many. Nineteen people did not produce a great deal of illness, even in a country where the winters were long and the nearest healer had been three years behind a door that would not open.

But there was Tomas, whose roof Bram had rebuilt, and whose chest rattled every winter so badly that he slept sitting up.

There was a girl of eleven with a burn on her arm that had healed wrong.

There was Gwen, who said there was nothing wrong with her, and whose hands Anwen held for a long time in the firelight before saying gently that there was, and that it could be eased, though not cured.

Gwen did not argue.

She only looked down at her own swollen knuckles and said, “My grandmother's hands went the same way. She walked this road when she was eighty.”

“Then you'll walk it when you're eighty too,” Anwen said. “But you'll walk it with this.”

She gave Gwen a small jar of salve, mixed from herbs that grew in the forest and that Anwen had been asking Bram to bring her for three years without telling him why.

“You were making medicine,” Bram said, staring at the jar. “In there. All that time.”

“I was a healer before they took me,” Anwen said. “I didn't stop being one because someone sealed a door.”

We stayed two days.

Tavros spent them walking the road.

Not far. A mile or two in each direction from the forest's edge, then back. Over and over. I watched him from the shelter doorway on the first morning and did not understand what he was doing.

Kaedra explained.

“He's checking,” she said. “Whether it holds.”

“The road?”

“The fold.” She watched Tavros reach the second shelter, touch the lamp burning on its hook, and turn back. “He wants to be certain it won't come back the moment we leave.”

“Will it?”

Kaedra was quiet for a moment.

“He doesn't think so,” she said. “But he was lost for four hours on a road he thought he knew. He's not going to trust it until he's walked it twenty times.”

On the second evening, Tavros came back to the shelter and sat down beside the fire.

“It holds,” he said.

“You're certain?”

“As certain as I've ever been about a road.” He held his hands out to the fire. “Every lamp's still burning. The villagers have agreed to keep them lit. Two of the young ones have already asked whether they can walk to the river country in the spring and trade wool.”

He looked into the flames.

“Forty years,” he said. “Nobody's walked out of this valley in forty years. And in the spring, two boys are going to walk out with a cart full of wool, and they're going to find a whole world on the other side that they thought had ended.”

He was quiet for a moment.

“I'd like to go with them,” Tavros said. “If that's all right. Show them the passes. The good ones.”

“Not the Goat's Regret?”

Tavros almost smiled.

“Not the Goat's Regret,” he agreed.

Bram stayed.

He told us on the last night. He sat on the low wall outside the forty-first shelter with his axe across his knees, looking at the road where it ran out of the forest and away toward the mountains.

“Tomas's roof,” he said.

“Gwen mentioned it.”

“North side. Leaking.” He turned the axe in his hands. “And the well cover's rotting. And the sheepfold on the east side needs a new gate.” He looked at me. “Nobody else in Hollin's End can reach the high beams.”

“They'd be glad of you.”

“Gwen says so.”

“Do you believe her?”

Bram was quiet for a long time.

“I believe she believes it,” he said finally. “That's more than I've had in forty years.”

He looked down at his scarred palm. The mark had faded almost entirely now. Only a faint pale line remained, like an old cut that had healed clean.

“Anwen asked me to come,” he said. “Over the mountains. To Greykeep.”

I had not known that.

“What did you tell her?”

“That I'd come in the spring,” Bram said. “With the wool. With Tavros and the boys.” He looked at the road. “I want to see her daughter. I want to tell the girl I'm sorry.” His voice dropped. “But I want to fix the roof first. I want to have done one thing right before I go.”

Anwen said goodbye to him at dawn.

I did not hear what they said. They stood at the edge of the forest beside the forty-first shelter, a little apart from the rest of us, with the lamp burning on its hook between them. Anwen was holding the stone lantern. Bram was holding his axe.

They talked for a long time.

At the end of it, Anwen reached up and put her hand flat against his chest. Over his heart.

Bram covered it with his scarred palm.

Then she stepped back, and turned, and walked up the road toward the mountains without looking back.

Bram watched her go.

He did not follow.

He stood at the edge of the forest until she was out of sight. Then he turned around, picked up a bundle of shingles from the pile beside the shelter, and walked back through the trees toward Hollin's End.

Toward Tomas's roof.

The road home was shorter.

I do not mean that metaphorically. Halemar had said two hundred and eleven miles from the top of the pass to the house with the lamp, and two hundred and eleven miles was what it was. But on the way out, every mile had felt like three. On the way back, every mile felt like a mile.

Forty-one shelters.

Forty-one lamps, burning.

We passed every one, and at every one Anwen stopped.

She did not say her name. She did not kneel. She only stood in front of each shelter for a moment, holding Lirien's lantern, and looked at the lamp burning on its hook.

At the twentieth shelter, I asked her why.

She was quiet for a long moment.

“For three years,” she said, “I held up a lamp every night and didn't know if anyone could see it.” She looked at the lamp on its hook. “Now I want to see theirs.”

The climb was easier than the descent had been.

The eleven shelters on the western face of the mountains were still lit. I had not expected that. I had lit them with Lirien's lantern and a candle stub, and the candle had long since burned out.

But somebody had refilled them.

Tavros noticed first. He stopped at the third shelter on the climb and looked at the lamp burning on the slab and frowned.

“That's not our oil,” he said.

He was right. The lamp was new. Brass, not iron. Hung on a hook that had been driven into the stone recently, the metal still bright.

At the base of the slab, someone had left a small carved stone.

A lantern. Held out.

Tavros picked it up and turned it over.

On the back, someone had carved two letters.

O. O.

“Odric,” Tavros said slowly. “The mason from the basin.”

“How?”

Tavros looked down the mountain toward the river country. Toward Greykeep. Toward the basin far to the north.

“Someone told him,” he said. “About this road. About the shelters.” He turned the stone in his fingers. “And he came.”

We met him at the summit.

Not only him. There were six of them, camped in the lee of the cairn where we had huddled on the first night. Odric. Two of the other masons from the basin. A water carrier I recognized from the line at the top of the narrow cut. And two people I did not recognize at all: a young man and a young woman in Greykeep colors, carrying lamp oil in panniers on a pair of sturdy mountain ponies.

Odric stood up when he saw us coming.

He looked at Anwen.

At the stone lantern in her hands.

He did not say anything. He only nodded once, the way carters nodded to each other on the road.

“How?” I asked him.

“The Keeper,” Odric said. “She told Hesketh you'd gone east. Over the mountains. To a road nobody walked.” He shrugged. “Hesketh told me. I thought someone ought to keep the lamps lit behind you.”

“You came from the basin?”

“From Greykeep,” Odric said. “Through your gate. Then the river country. Then up.” He nodded toward the two young people in Greykeep colors. “Your Mary sent them with the oil. She said if anyone was going to be wandering about on mountains lighting lamps, they ought to be properly supplied.”

Melody laughed out loud.

Odric looked at her.

“She also said,” he added, “to tell you she's counting.”

Melody stopped laughing.

She put her hand inside her coat, where the folded list was.

“Tell her I'm coming back,” she said quietly.

“She knows,” Odric said. “She said that too.”

Saelis met us at the foot of the pass.

He was flying.

I saw him first as a black shape against the gray sky, circling high above the high meadow where the old sheepfold stood. Then he dropped, fast, and landed in the snow beside the stone wall, and changed, and stood there in his black coat with his arm still in a light splint and feathers in his hair.

“Two weeks,” he said, before anyone could speak. “Evelyn said two weeks. It's been sixteen days.”

“Did she clear you to fly?” I asked.

Saelis looked at me.

“She said if I fell out of the sky, she would personally put me back in the infirmary and tie me to the bed.” He paused. “I took that as a yes.”

Then he saw Anwen.

He went very still.

For a long moment, neither of them spoke.

“You're the one,” Anwen said slowly. “Who carried it.”

Saelis shook his head.

“I couldn't,” he said. “For three years. I felt you sending it. Every night. I couldn't find where to take it.” His voice dropped. “I'm sorry.”

Anwen looked at him.

“You felt it,” she said. “Every night.”

“Yes.”

“For three years.”

“Yes.”

Anwen was quiet for a long time.

“Then I wasn't alone,” she said. “Was I? Someone heard.”

Saelis did not answer.

He did not need to.

He carried word ahead of us.

That was what he had come for. Not to fly us home. Serevan and Aelune were waiting at Ashfell for that. He had come to carry a message from Greykeep, and to carry one back.

The message from Greykeep was from Evelyn.

It was short.

Adriana is counting. So am I. Roderic has learned to roll over. Garrick is very offended that nobody asked his permission first.

Lirien has two lamps in her window now. She has not let either one go out.

Come home.

I read it three times.

Then I folded it and put it in my coat, next to Lethan's note.

“What do you want to send back?” Saelis asked.

I looked at Anwen.

She was standing at the edge of the high meadow, looking west. Toward the river country. Toward Greykeep. Toward a nursery window with two lamps in it.

She was holding the stone lantern in both hands.

“Ask her,” I said.

Saelis went to her.

They spoke quietly for a long time.

When he came back, his face had changed.

“What did she say?” I asked.

Saelis looked down at his splinted arm.

“She said to tell Lirien that the lamps worked,” he said. “All of them. Every one.” He paused. “And that she's walking as fast as she can.”

The dragons were waiting at Ashfell.

Serevan took Anwen and me. Aelune took the others. Tavros stayed behind to wait for the spring and the boys with their wool. Odric and the masons had already started back up the pass with fresh oil, to make certain the eleven shelters on the climb stayed lit.

Anwen had never flown before.

She held onto Serevan's back with both hands and the stone lantern tucked inside her coat, and she did not say anything for the first ten minutes.

Then she looked down.

At the river country unrolling beneath us. At the villages and farms and roads, all of them dusted with snow. At the lights beginning to come on in windows as the winter afternoon faded toward evening.

“So many,” she said quietly.

“Lamps?”

“Lamps.” She looked at me. “In Merrow Ford, before, there was one in every house on the longest night. For the Keeper. My mother said it was so travelers would know they were welcome.” She looked back down. “I didn't know anyone still did it.”

“They didn't,” I said. “Not for a long time.”

“And now?”

I looked down at the lights.

“Now they've started again,” I said.

Greykeep was lit when we came over the hills.

Every window.

I had seen it lit before. On the longest night. On the twins' birthday. But I had never seen it from the air, at dusk, coming home.

The city spread out below us like a scatter of embers. Every street. Every house. The castle rising above it all with lamps in every window of every tower.

And in one window, high on the eastern side, two lamps burning side by side.

Anwen saw it.

I did not have to point.

She leaned forward on Serevan's back, so far that I put a hand on her arm to steady her, and she stared down at that window with an expression I will not try to describe.

“Is that—”

“The nursery,” I said.

She could not answer.

Serevan banked, slowly, and began to descend.

The receiving hall was full.

I did not know who had told them. Saelis, probably, flying ahead. Or Castellan, who always seemed to know when someone was coming. Or the Keeper, through the floor.

It did not matter.

They were there.

Evelyn and Adriana, with Roderic in Adriana's arms. Mary and Thor. Helena and Garrick Valewood. Io and Lexander, with Ignatius and Seraphina. Vaust, leaning on his stick. Halemar beside him, standing on his own. Fenrir, lying across the far end of the hall. Liora. Corran and Aldous and Hilde, who had come through from Westmere.

Hesketh, with his blue lantern.

Marta Quill, in her red scarf, who had come down the climb from the basin that morning with a basket of honey bread over her arm because the Keeper had told her where to go.

And in front of all of them, standing very straight with her flour-sack blanket around her shoulders, Lirien.

Carol stood on her left.

Seraphina stood on her right.

Each of them held a lamp.

Lirien held nothing. Her hands were clenched at her sides, holding the corners of her blanket.

She was staring at the arch.

Anwen came through first.

I had stepped aside to let her. I stood beside the arch and watched her walk out of it into the receiving hall, holding the stone lantern in both hands.

She stopped.

She saw Lirien.

Neither of them moved.

The hall was utterly silent.

Lirien looked at her mother for a very long time. At her face. At her thin shoulders and her gray dress and the gray coming into her dark hair at the temples.

At the stone lantern in her hands.

Lirien's chin began to tremble.

“You came,” she said.

Anwen could not speak.

She knelt down on the stone floor of the receiving hall. Slowly. Carefully. The way you kneel in front of something you are afraid will disappear.

She set the stone lantern on the floor in front of her.

Then she held out her arms.

Lirien did not run.

She walked. One step at a time. Across the receiving hall, past Carol and Seraphina, past all the people who had come to watch. Holding the corners of her flour-sack blanket so tightly her knuckles were white.

She stopped in front of her mother.

She looked down at the stone lantern on the floor.

“The floor carried it,” Lirien said. “The two words.”

“I know,” Anwen whispered. “I heard.”

“And you said two back.”

“I did.”

Lirien looked up at her mother.

“You said I'm coming,” she said.

“I did.”

“And you came.”

Anwen's face broke.

“I came,” she said. “Lirien. I came.”

Lirien let go of her blanket.

It fell to the floor behind her.

She stepped into her mother's arms.

I do not know how long they stayed there.

Long enough that Adriana sat down on a bench and put her face against Roderic's head. Long enough that Thor turned around and looked very hard at the far wall. Long enough that Marta Quill, standing at the back of the hall with her basket, set it down on the floor and covered her mouth with both hands.

Carol and Seraphina had not moved.

They stood exactly where they had been, each holding her lamp, watching.

After a while, Carol bent down and picked up the flour-sack blanket from the floor where Lirien had dropped it.

She held one corner.

Seraphina took the other.

They did not bring it to Lirien. They only held it, between them, waiting. In case she needed it again.

Lirien looked up eventually.

She did not let go of her mother. She turned her head, still pressed against Anwen's shoulder, and looked across the hall at Carol and Seraphina.

At the blanket held between them.

At the two lamps in their hands.

“Mama,” she said. “Those are mine. They lit the lamps. In the window.”

Anwen looked up.

She looked at the two girls for a long time.

“Thank you,” she said.

Carol shook her head.

“Everybody did,” she said. “The whole city.”

“But you did hers,” Anwen said.

Carol considered this.

Then she nodded.

“We did hers,” she agreed.

Evelyn found me by the arch.

She did not say anything. She put her arms around me and held on, and I held on back, and neither of us let go for a long time.

“You're thinner,” she said finally, against my shoulder.

“Mountains.”

“You're cold.”

“Mountains.”

“You smell like snow and wolf.”

“That's Merek.”

Evelyn laughed, a little unsteadily.

She stepped back and looked at my face.

“You brought her home,” she said.

“Bram brought her home. He opened the door. And Gwen walked the road. And Tavros. And Odric and the masons kept the lamps lit behind us.” I shook my head. “I carried a lantern.”

“You carried a lantern two hundred and eleven miles,” Evelyn said. “Without lighting it. So you'd have it when you got there.”

I did not answer.

She took my face in her hands.

“That's what you do,” she said quietly. “That's always what you do.”

Adriana did not say anything at all.

She crossed the hall with Roderic in her arms and stopped in front of me and held him out.

I took him.

He was heavier. I had been gone sixteen days, and he was heavier. His face had filled out. His hair had grown. His eyes, when he opened them and looked up at me, were not quite so unfocused as they had been.

He looked at me for a long time.

Then he frowned.

Adriana's frown. Unmistakable.

“He doesn't know who I am,” I said.

“He knows,” Adriana said. “He's annoyed with you.”

“For leaving?”

“For coming back cold.” She put her hand over mine where it rested on his back. Silver light rose faintly around her fingers. The refusal she had given me before I left. Sinking back into her skin.

“I counted,” she said quietly. “Sixteen days.”

“I know.”

“You came back.”

“You wouldn't let me do anything else.”

Adriana's eyes filled.

“No,” she said. “I wouldn't.”

Roderic, between us, decided that he had been ignored for long enough and expressed his opinion about it loudly.

Adriana laughed through her tears and took him back.

“Garrick is going to tell you about the rolling over,” she warned me. “At length. He has a great many feelings about it.”

Anwen asked to see me that night.

She was in the nursery.

Of course she was. Nobody had suggested she sleep anywhere else, and Lirien would not have permitted it. Helena had found a cot and set it beside Lirien's bed, between Lirien's and Carol's, and Anwen was sitting on it in the lamplight with her daughter asleep against her side.

The two lamps burned in the window.

The stone lantern sat on the sill between them.

Carol and Seraphina were asleep too. So were Garrick and Ignatius, across the room. So was Pell Ardent, who had somehow been given a bed in the nursery as well, though nobody could quite remember when that had been decided.

I sat down on the floor beside Anwen's cot.

She did not speak for a while.

She was stroking Lirien's hair. The short, badly cut hair. Over and over.

“Who cut it?” she asked quietly.

“I don't know. It was like that when she came out.”

Anwen nodded slowly.

“I used to braid it,” she said. “Every morning. She'd sit on the floor in front of me and tell the floor about her dreams while I braided.” Her fingers stilled. “It'll grow back.”

“It will.”

She was silent for a long time.

Then she said, “There's something I need to tell you.”

I waited.

“They didn't take me east because I was a healer,” Anwen said. “Or not only because of that.” She looked down at her sleeping daughter. “They took me because of something I saw.”

The lamps flickered in the window.

“In Merrow Ford,” Anwen said. “Before they cleared it. A man came to me. Late at night. With a wound in his side that wouldn't close. He wore a plain cloak. He didn't give his name. He paid in silver.”

I went very still.

“I healed him,” Anwen said. “It took all night. The wound was—strange. It didn't bleed like a wound should. It bled light.” Her voice dropped. “When I finished, he looked at me for a long time. Then he thanked me. Very politely. And left.”

“And the next week—”

“The next week, the officers came,” Anwen said. “And Merrow Ford was cleared. And Lirien and I were put in a cart.” She looked at me. “I've had three years to think about it. In that house. I think he didn't want anyone to know he'd been wounded. Or where. Or how badly.”

“Othellos,” I said.

Anwen nodded.

“I've never seen his face since,” she said. “But I'd know it. I'd know the wound. I know exactly where it was. And I know—” She stopped.

“What?”

Anwen looked down at her sleeping daughter.

“I know it wasn't healed all the way,” she said quietly. “I did what I could. But there was something in it I couldn't reach. Something old. Something that wasn't his.” She looked back at me. “I've wondered ever since. Whether it's still there.”

I sat with that for a long time.

Anwen did not say anything else.

She stroked her daughter's hair, and the lamps burned in the window, and across the room Garrick murmured something in his sleep about horses.

Finally, I said, “The others. In the quiet houses. Vaust said there were several.”

Anwen nodded.

“I heard the officers talk,” she said. “When they brought me. They thought I was asleep in the cart.” She was quiet for a moment. “They said I was the fourth. The fourth house.”

“The fourth.”

“There were others,” Anwen said. “Before me. Other houses. On other roads nobody walked.” She looked at the window. At the two lamps burning side by side. “I don't know where. I don't know who's in them.”

She looked back at me.

“But I know what it's like,” she said quietly, “to hold up a lamp every night and not know if anyone can see it.”

I left her there, with her daughter.

On my way out, I stopped at the nursery window.

The two lamps were still burning. The stone lantern sat between them, its candle long since burned out.

I looked out over the city.

At all the lights.

At the roads leading out of Greykeep in every direction.

Somewhere out there, on other roads nobody walked, in other stone houses with doors that did not open from either side, three other people were holding up lamps.

I did not know where.

I did not know who.

But Saelis could feel messages that had nowhere to go.

And the Keeper could carry what people meant.

And there were forty-one lamps burning on a road over the eastern mountains that, two weeks ago, everyone had believed went nowhere.

I took a taper from my pocket.

I lit the stone lantern again.

Then I set it back on the sill, between the two lamps, and went to find Lethan.

I had promised to tell him about the road.

Including the boring parts.

Especially the boring parts.