Chapter 446: The Serpent in Flight

Eliza rode into the camp an hour after dawn.

She did not come alone. Rhenna was with her, and four of her scouts, and their horses were lathered to the shoulders and their faces were gray with the kind of tiredness that comes from riding through the night without stopping.

She did not dismount at the edge of the camp.

She rode straight through it, past the fires and the carts and the hosts from the basin just waking in their blankets, and did not stop until she reached the shelter where Thor and I were standing beside the trough.

Then she swung down from the saddle and handed Thor a bundle wrapped in oilcloth.

“Open it,” she said.

Thor opened it.

Inside was a gray coat.

Silver at the throat. Officer's insignia on the shoulder. The kind of coat Othellos's receiving officers wore in the basin, and his binding officers wore on the roads.

It was burned.

Not singed. Burned through. The whole back of it charred to black lace, and the silver chain at the throat melted into a single twisted lump.

Thor looked at it for a long time.

“Where?” she asked.

“East of the ford,” Eliza said. “A day's ride into the burned forest. One of Surtr's camps.” She looked at the coat. “There were thirty-one more like it.”

She told us standing beside the trough.

She did not sit. None of them did. Rhenna and the other scouts stood behind her with the reins still in their hands, as though they were not yet certain they would be allowed to stop.

Lexander had sent them across the ford four days ago. To watch Surtr's lines after the army pulled back. To see where it had gone, and why.

They had found the camp on the third day.

“It had been a supply depot,” Eliza said. “Wagons. Timber. Forges. The kind of place Surtr's giants and Othellos's officers shared. We'd seen a dozen like it from a distance.” She paused. “This one was ash.”

“Surtr burned it?” Thor asked.

“Surtr burned the officers,” Eliza said. “Only the officers. The giants' tents were untouched. The wagons were untouched. The timber was still stacked.” She looked at the coat in Thor's hands. “Every frame Othellos's people had set up was melted into slag. Every rod. Every net. And every officer who'd been holding one.”

Nobody spoke.

“The giants were gone,” Eliza said. “Not dead. Gone. Tracks leading east, deeper into the forest. Hundreds of them.” She paused. “But there were other tracks too. Leading west. Toward the river.” She looked at me. “Twenty or thirty, maybe. Moving fast.”

“Toward Bruni,” I said.

“Toward the ford,” Eliza agreed. “Bruni sent word two days ago that more giants had come to stand in the river. More than ever before. He didn't know why.”

Rhenna stepped forward.

She held out a second bundle. Smaller. Wrapped in a scrap of the same burned gray cloth.

“We found this in the depot,” she said. “In what was left of the officers' tent. Under a stone, as though someone had tried to hide it before the fire reached them.”

Thor unwrapped it.

Paper. A single sheet, folded twice, scorched at one corner.

Writing on it. Small and precise. The hand of a clerk.

Cael would have recognized it.

Thor read it.

Her face did not change.

She handed it to me.

It was a letter.

Unsigned. Addressed to no one by name. Only to the commander of the eastern depot.

It was short.

The terms of the arrangement have not been met. The house in the burned forest was lent in exchange for the serpent. The serpent has not been delivered. The autumn prisoner has been lost through the negligence of his guards. Our patience is not infinite.

You will deliver the serpent to the receiving hall within thirty days, or the officers attached to your forces will be instructed to bind those giants whose loyalty is in question.

Begin with the ones who stand in rivers.

I read it twice.

Then I looked up at Thor.

She was staring at the burned forest across the valley. At the broken-hook ridge, black against the morning sky.

“The serpent,” I said.

“Jörmungandr,” Thor said.

I had not heard her say that name in a long time.

Not since the road of black scales. Not since the tooth that would not stop scraping against Castellan's boundary, trying to go home. Not since we had walked into the north to bring back the children his road had taken, and found the road guarded by things made of him.

Thor said it the way she might have said the name of an old wound.

“Cael said the burned-forest house was lent to Surtr,” I said slowly. “In exchange for something. He never knew what.”

“Now we know,” Thor said.

“Othellos wanted Jörmungandr.”

“Othellos wants every god,” Thor said. “But he wanted that one especially.” She turned the burned coat over in her hands. “A god whose road only goes one way. Whose paths have no escape and always return to where they started.” Her jaw tightened. “Think what he could build with that.”

I thought about it.

The courtyard. The east wing. The doors that opened onto seven different places depending on the day.

A road you could not leave.

“And Surtr agreed,” I said.

“Surtr agreed,” Thor said. “And then didn't deliver.” She looked at the letter in my hand. “And then Corra walked out of the house he'd been lent. Carried by his own giants. And more of his giants started standing in rivers.”

“And Othellos threatened to bind them.”

“And Surtr burned every officer within reach,” Thor said quietly. “Rather than let him.”

Eliza had not finished.

She looked at Rhenna.

Rhenna looked at the ground.

“There's more,” Eliza said.

Thor turned.

“The tracks leading west,” Eliza said. “Toward the river. Not all of them were giants.” She paused. “Some of them were horses. Gray-coated riders. Forty, perhaps fifty. Moving fast. Following something.”

“Following what?”

Eliza did not answer at once.

“We didn't see it,” she said. “Not clearly. We saw what it left behind.” She looked at Rhenna again. “Show them.”

Rhenna reached into her saddlebag.

She took out something wrapped in her own cloak.

She did not unwrap it. She held it out on her palms, and the cloak fell open on its own, as though whatever was inside it had moved.

A scale.

Black. Larger than my hand. Smooth and cold and faintly iridescent, like oil on water.

At its edge, it was cracked. Torn. As though it had been ripped loose in passing.

And from the crack, very slowly, something dark was seeping out. Not blood. Something thicker. Something that moved.

Thor took one step back.

It was the first time I had ever seen her step away from anything.

“We found a trail of them,” Rhenna said quietly. “Through the burned forest. Every hundred paces or so. Torn loose. As though something very large was moving very fast through trees it didn't fit between.”

“Which way?” I asked.

Rhenna looked at Eliza.

Eliza looked north.

Toward the broken-hook ridge.

Toward the basin.

Toward the western climb, and the road that ran down it, and the shelter where we stood.

“This way,” she said.

Nobody moved.

Around us, the camp was waking. The hosts from the basin were rising from their blankets and stirring the fires. Dunstan was feeding his mules. Marta Quill was unwrapping her basket of bread. Liora was helping Lethan sit up in the cart, and Teren was beside him with his daughters, and the three lamps hung from Perrin's iron hook, unlit in the morning light.

Halemar was sitting on the low wall beside the trough with Vaust. Neither of them had slept. They had been feeling for the fold all night.

Brannoc and Corra sat together by the nearest fire.

Aurelia sat alone on a log, looking north.

Tonight, at dusk, we were going to open a crease in a folded house and sing the Keeper's verse so whoever was inside could find their way out.

And somewhere between here and the burned forest, Jörmungandr was fleeing toward us with fifty of Othellos's riders at his back.

Thor spoke first.

“How far behind you?”

“A day,” Eliza said. “Perhaps less. The serpent moves faster than horses through open ground. Slower through forest.” She paused. “The riders are close. Very close. We saw their fires last night. They're not stopping.”

“And the serpent?”

“Wounded,” Rhenna said. “The scales. The trail.” She looked down at the black scale on her palms, still seeping. “Something's been hitting him. Nets, I think. Or rods. The scales are torn like the officers' wire caught them.”

Thor looked at the scale for a long time.

Then she turned and walked away.

Not quickly. Not far. Only to the edge of the shelter, where the old stone wall looked out over the valley toward the burned forest.

She stood there with her back to us and her hand on Mjölnir.

I followed her.

She did not look at me when I came up beside her.

“I've fought him three times,” she said.

I waited.

“Once in the old world. Before any of this. In a story everyone tells.” She was looking at the burned forest. “Once on the road of black scales. When we brought the children back.” Her jaw tightened. “Once in a place I don't talk about.”

“I know.”

“There's a prophecy,” Thor said. “Old. Older than me. That he and I will kill each other at the end of everything.” She laughed, very quietly. “I've spent a long time waiting for that day. Getting ready for it. Counting how many more times I'd have to face him before it came.”

“And now?”

Thor was silent for a long time.

“Now he's running,” she said. “Wounded. Toward me. With Othellos's riders at his back.” She looked down at the hammer in her hand. “Because Othellos wanted to put him in a cage and build roads out of him.”

“Yes.”

“And Surtr wouldn't hand him over.”

“Apparently not.”

Thor turned to look at me.

Her face was very strange. Not angry. Not frightened. Something I had not seen on it before.

“He made a road that took children,” she said. “He made guardians out of his own body to keep them from coming home. He stood with Surtr and Othellos for years.” Her voice was very steady. “I have every reason in the world to let those riders catch him.”

“I know,” I said.

“Then tell me why I shouldn't.”

I did not answer at once.

I thought about it honestly. The way Thor had taught me to think about things.

I thought about the road of black scales. The children walking it. Mila and her red strip of cloth. The names written on walls so the court would know where they belonged.

I thought about Skarn. Six years with Surtr because there was nobody bigger. Burning villages. Burning shelters. Then standing in a river carrying a goddess home in a timber sack.

I thought about Dorran. Bringing meals to the east wing for two years without asking anyone's name.

About Varne, laying his sword in the road.

About Sallow, who counted everything twice, riding down the western road behind a cart full of escaped prisoners because nobody had told him to count anyone out.

“I don't know if you should,” I said finally.

Thor stared at me.

“I don't know what he is now,” I said. “I don't know if he's changed. I don't know why Surtr wouldn't hand him over. I don't know whether he's running from Othellos or running toward something.” I looked at the burned forest. “I don't know anything about him except what he did.”

“That's enough,” Thor said.

“Is it?”

Thor did not answer.

“It was enough for Dorran,” I said. “Until he knocked on a door and saw who was behind it. It was enough for Bram. For Skarn. For Varne.” I looked at her. “It was enough for everyone who ever stood on the wrong side of a door. Until someone asked them what they would do if they were trying to get out.”

Thor was quiet for a very long time.

Then she said, “Loki.”

I looked at her.

“His father,” Thor said. “Loki. In Concordia.” She shook her head slowly. “He's been asking about Jörmungandr for months. Every council. Every time we talked about the north. Whether anyone had seen him. Whether he was still with Surtr.” She looked down at Mjölnir. “I always told him I didn't know. I always told him I didn't care.”

“Did you mean it?”

Thor did not answer.

She looked at the burned forest for a long time.

Then she said, “Fenrir.”

The great wolf was lying at the edge of the camp.

He had come with us from Greykeep without being asked, the way he had come to the infirmary garden the night Merek hung Harlon's lamp in the pear tree. He had walked beside Dunstan's cart the whole way, and slept beside it at night, and nobody had asked him why.

He lifted his head when Thor and I came across the camp toward him.

He looked at Thor's face.

Then at the black scale in Rhenna's hands, still seeping.

He went very still.

“Brother,” Fenrir said quietly.

Thor stopped in front of him.

She did not say anything for a long time.

Neither did Fenrir.

They looked at each other. The goddess of thunder and the wolf who had been prophesied to devour the world. Who had been chained for an age. Who had come out of Othellos's cage only weeks ago and lain in a garden for days afterward, learning how to stand.

“He's running,” Thor said.

“I know,” Fenrir said. “I can smell him. I've been smelling him since last night.” His great eyes went to the scale. “He's frightened.”

“He's never been frightened in his life.”

“He's frightened now,” Fenrir said. “I know what it smells like. I smelled it on myself for years.”

Thor looked down at him.

“Why?” she asked. “Why didn't Surtr hand him over?”

Fenrir was silent for a long moment.

“I don't know,” he said. “Surtr doesn't give things away. Not even to allies.” He paused. “Perhaps that's all it was. Pride. A bargain he regretted.”

“And perhaps not.”

“And perhaps not,” Fenrir agreed.

He looked at the burned forest.

“My brother did terrible things,” Fenrir said quietly. “So did I. Before the chain. Before Othellos.” He looked back at Thor. “You know what I did. You were there for some of it.”

“Yes.”

“And you sat with me in the garden,” Fenrir said. “After I came out. You sat with me for three days and didn't say anything. You only made sure I ate.”

Thor's jaw tightened.

“That was different.”

“Was it?”

Thor did not answer.

Aurelia had come up behind us.

I had not heard her. She was simply there, standing a little apart, with her hands folded in front of her cloak and her silver hair loose in the morning wind.

“Thor,” she said quietly.

Thor turned.

“A long time ago,” Aurelia said, “before my son was born, before Greykeep fell, I asked the Keeper why she wanted a shrine beside every gate. Why she wanted them built so they could never be closed against someone trying to go home.”

“What did she say?” Thor asked.

Aurelia looked north. Toward the basin. Toward the place where a house had been folded out of the world.

“She said she'd been lost once,” Aurelia said. “Badly. So badly she couldn't remember why. And someone had opened a door for her without asking who she was or what she'd done.” She looked back at Thor. “She said if they'd asked, she might not have told them the truth. And they might not have let her in.”

Thor did not say anything.

“She said that's why there was no lock on the inside,” Aurelia said. “Not because everyone deserves a shelter. Because nobody can tell, from outside, who does.”

Thor stood very still for a long time.

The camp had gone quiet around us. People had stopped what they were doing to watch. Dunstan with his hand on a mule's neck. Marta Quill with a loaf of bread in her hands. Brannoc and Corra by the fire. Halemar and Vaust on the wall.

Lethan in his cart, propped on his cushions, with his eye fixed on Thor.

Thor looked down at the hammer in her hand.

Then she looked at me.

“If he's being chased by fifty of Othellos's riders,” she said slowly, “and he's running toward this road, then those riders are going to reach this road too.”

“Yes.”

“Tonight.”

“Probably.”

“While we're opening a crease in a folded house and singing a hymn to a goddess.”

“Yes.”

Thor closed her eyes.

“Then it doesn't matter what I think of him,” she said. “Not tonight. Tonight those riders are coming to this road, and this road is full of people who came to bring someone home.” She opened her eyes. “Whatever he is, whatever he's done, I'm not letting Othellos's riders ride through Hesketh's shelter.”

“And the serpent?” Fenrir asked quietly.

Thor looked at him for a long moment.

“I'll decide when I see him,” she said.

We spent the day preparing.

Not for a battle. Thor was very clear about that.

“We're not here to fight,” she told everyone, standing on the low wall beside the trough so they could all hear. The hosts. The carters. The Unbound. Lethan's cart and Halemar's and the whole ring of fires around the shelter. “We're here to bring someone home. That hasn't changed.”

She looked out at them.

“But there may be riders tonight,” she said. “Othellos's. Chasing something.” She paused. “If they come, nobody here is going to stand in their way. Not the hosts. Not the carters. Not anyone who came here to sing.”

“Then who stands in their way?” Odric asked.

Thor looked at him.

“Us,” she said. “The ones who came here to hold the road.”

Avarn took the narrow cut above the quarry.

The same place the masons had stood, the night the twelve guests came out of the east wing. He stood there with his sword sheathed and his hands at his sides, looking up toward the basin, and he did not move.

Kaedra took the ridge above him with her bow.

Nyxa disappeared into the burned forest to the east, toward the trail of black scales. She did not say when she would be back.

Ishkar took Lantern, the black mare with the white blaze, and rode south along the road toward the relay station. To watch the approach from that direction, he said. In case the riders circled.

Bruni had come from the ford at noon with Skarn and seven other giants who had been standing in the river when Eliza's message reached them. They took the slope below the shelter, between the road and the burned forest, and sat down in a long gray line among the rocks, like boulders that had decided to rest.

Thor took the road itself.

She stood in the middle of it, just above the shelter, with Mjölnir on her shoulder and her face turned toward the east.

And I stood beside the trough.

With Halemar. And Vaust. And Brannoc, whose bandaged arms were folded across his chest. And Corra beside him, holding a red leaf between her fingers.

And Lethan in his cart, and Teren beside him, and Nell and Bryony, and three unlit lamps hanging from an iron hook.

The sun went down behind the broken-hook ridge.

The sky turned gold, then red, then the deep blue of a winter dusk.

Hesketh stood up from the wall.

He took a taper from his pocket and lit it from the nearest fire.

He walked to the shelter doorway and lit the blue lantern on its hook.

Then he turned to the cart.

He did not ask. He simply reached up and lit the first of the three lamps hanging from Perrin's iron hook.

Teren's.

Then Lethan's.

Then Ada's.

He stepped back.

Across the road, on the far side, the hosts from the basin were lighting their own lamps. Marta Quill. Odric. Tam. The bakers and the water carriers and Lys's cousin. One after another, small lights appearing in the dusk, held up.

Out.

Toward the north.

Toward the place where a house had been folded out of the world.

Halemar knelt at the trough.

He put his hands flat on the cold stone beside the water.

He closed his eyes.

The water began to turn.

“The first crease,” Halemar whispered. “The one closest to the road.” His face was already gray with effort. “Vaust.”

Vaust stepped forward.

He raised his staff.

He did not shake it yet. He held it up, the small bell hanging silent from its iron ring, and he looked at the empty air above the trough where Halemar's hands were reaching.

“Every crease is a threshold,” Vaust said quietly. “Every threshold can be a door.”

He shook the staff.

The bell rang.

One small clear note in the cold dusk air.

And the air above the trough—

Changed.

Not much. A ripple. A shimmer. Like heat rising off summer stone.

A crack.

Thin as a hair. Tall as a man. Hanging in the empty air above the water, where nothing should have been.

Through it, very faintly, I could see light.

Lamplight.

Gold.

“Brannoc,” Halemar gasped.

Brannoc stepped forward.

He unfolded his bandaged arms.

He reached into the shimmer with both hands, the way he had reached into the iron brackets of the broken gate at Carrow Tor. His fingers found something I could not see.

He closed his grip.

His whole body went rigid.

“It's fighting,” he said through his teeth.

“I know,” Halemar whispered. “It always fights.”

“Good,” Brannoc said.

He held on.

The crack widened.

A finger's width. Then a hand's. The shimmer steadied into something firmer. An edge. A frame.

A door.

Through it, I could see a room. Small. Stone walls. A low ceiling. A window, with a lamp burning in it.

And beside the lamp, a figure.

I could not see their face. Only their shape. Small. Bent. Sitting very still beside the window, the way someone sits when they have been sitting in the same place for a very long time.

Aurelia made a sound behind me.

Lethan's eye had gone wide.

Teren's hand had found Lethan's on the edge of the cart.

“Now,” Corra said quietly. “Sing it now. Before it closes.”

Teren looked at Lethan.

Lethan looked back.

Teren began to hum.

And from the east, from the burned forest, from the dark beyond the broken-hook ridge, came a sound.

Not a voice. Not a horn.

Something enormous moving very fast through trees it did not fit between.

The ground shook.

Bruni's giants rose from the rocks below the shelter.

Thor turned toward the east.

And out of the burned forest, at the edge of the firelight, came Jörmungandr.

He was not what I remembered.

On the road of black scales, he had been vast. A shape so large it filled the horizon. A presence that bent the road itself around it.

Now he was smaller.

Not small. Still enormous. Longer than the shelter. Longer than the camp. His body came out of the trees in great black coils, glistening in the firelight.

But torn.

Everywhere. Scales ripped away in long ragged lines. Silver wire still caught in some of the wounds, glinting. Dark ichor seeping from a hundred places along his length.

He was dragging himself.

His great head came up over the edge of the road and stopped.

He looked at the fires. At the lamps held up across the road. At the giants rising from the rocks. At Thor, standing in the middle of the road with her hammer raised.

His eyes were the color of old gold.

He looked at Thor for a long time.

Then his head sank down onto the road in front of her.

He did not strike. He did not coil.

He lay there, his vast torn body stretched out along the road behind him into the dark, and he looked up at her.

And behind him, in the burned forest, I saw the fires of fifty riders.

Coming fast.

Thor did not lower her hammer.

She looked down at the serpent lying in the road at her feet.

At his golden eyes.

At the silver wire still glinting in his wounds.

“Why?” she said.

Jörmungandr's voice, when it came, was very low. Very tired. A voice like stone grinding against stone at the bottom of the sea.

“The road,” he said. “I could feel it. Lit. All the way from the forest.” His golden eyes moved past her. To the lamps. To the shelter. To the crack hanging in the air above the trough, with gold light pouring through it. “I made roads that only went one way. For him. For Surtr. For years.”

He looked back up at Thor.

“I wanted to see one,” Jörmungandr said, “that went both ways.”

Behind me, Teren was still humming.

The binding caught at every third note.

Lethan's lips were moving.

The crack above the trough was holding. Barely. Brannoc's whole body was shaking with the effort of it. Halemar was gray and gasping. Vaust held his staff up with trembling hands.

The figure in the little stone room had turned from the window.

Was looking toward the crack.

Toward us.

And the riders were coming out of the burned forest.

Fifty of them. Gray coats. Silver at the throat. Rods and nets and frames. Coming straight down the slope toward the road. Toward the serpent lying at Thor's feet.

Toward the shelter.

Toward the crack.

Toward everyone who had come to sing.

Thor looked at the riders.

Then down at Jörmungandr.

Then at me.

I looked back at her.

I did not say anything.

I did not need to.

She knew what I would say. She had taught it to me herself.

Remember why you're here.

Thor turned to face the riders.

She stepped over Jörmungandr's head, so that she was standing between the serpent and the burned forest. Between the riders and the road.

Between Othellos and everyone he wanted to put in a cage.

She raised Mjölnir.

“Sing,” she said over her shoulder. “Whatever happens. Keep singing.”