Chapter 447: Both Ways

The riders came down the slope at a gallop.

I did not watch them. I could not. I was standing beside the trough with my hands at my sides and my eyes on the crack hanging in the air above the water, and I did not look away from it, because Thor had said keep singing, and I was not singing, but someone had to watch the door.

Through it, the small stone room.

The lamp in the window.

The bent figure, turned from the window now, looking toward us.

Behind me, Teren was humming. The binding caught at every third note. He did not stop.

Lethan's lips moved with the words.

Nell and Bryony stood on either side of the cart. I did not know when they had started, but they were humming too. Very quietly. Their father's tune. The song he had sung so badly every night that their mother put a pillow over her head.

And across the road, on the far side, the hosts.

Marta Quill. Odric. Tam. The bakers and the masons and the water carriers, all holding their lamps up toward the north, and all of them humming. Not well. Not together. A ragged, uncertain sound, rising and falling, like a crowd of people who half remembered a song from childhood and were trying very hard to remember the rest.

The traveler's hymn.

The tune the soldiers had made slower and sadder.

Asking someone to keep the lamp lit for whoever was still walking.

I heard the first rod fire.

A crack like splitting ice. A flash of silver light from the slope.

Then Mjölnir.

I felt it more than heard it. A shock through the ground, through the soles of my boots, through the stone of the trough beneath Halemar's hands. The crack in the air above the water wavered.

“Hold,” Halemar gasped.

“Holding,” Brannoc said through his teeth.

His whole body was shaking. His bandaged forearms were rigid, his hands buried in the shimmer up to the wrists, gripping something I could not see. Blood had begun to seep through the linen.

He did not let go.

I risked one glance east.

The slope below the burned forest was chaos.

The riders had split. Half of them had come straight down the road toward Thor. The other half had swung wide, around the shelter, toward the slope where Bruni's giants stood among the rocks.

Toward the serpent.

Jörmungandr had not moved. He lay stretched along the road with his head at Thor's feet, his torn body trailing back into the dark. His golden eyes were open. He was watching the riders come.

Thor stood over him.

She had struck once. The first rider who reached her was lying in the road, his horse bolting back up the slope riderless. The rod he had carried was a twisted lump of molten silver beside him.

The others had slowed.

They were spreading out. Circling. Looking for an angle.

One of them raised a net.

Silver wire glinted in the firelight as it spun out over Thor's head, toward the serpent's coils behind her.

An arrow took it in midair.

From the ridge above the narrow cut. Kaedra.

The net snapped. Fell in a tangle of broken wire onto the road.

Another rider raised another net.

Another arrow.

Bruni's giants had not moved.

They stood in their gray line among the rocks below the shelter, nine of them, and when the riders who had swung wide came at them, they did not lift their clubs. They did not charge.

They simply stood.

Skarn was at the center. He stood with his huge gray hands hanging empty at his sides and looked at the riders coming toward him across the slope.

The lead rider reined in.

He looked up at Skarn.

Skarn looked down at him.

“Move,” the rider said.

Skarn did not understand the word. I knew that. He did not speak our language.

But he understood the tone.

He shook his head. Slowly.

The rider raised his rod.

Bruni stepped in front of Skarn.

He did not raise his metal hands either. He only stood there, between the rod and the giant who had carried Corra home in a timber sack, and looked down at the rider.

“Bruni,” he said. “Of the bridge.”

The rider hesitated.

Then he fired.

The silver light struck Bruni full in the chest.

He staggered.

Did not fall.

The light crawled across him. Silver threads, reaching for his limbs. Trying to bind.

Skarn made a sound. Low and terrible. The sound a mountain might make if a mountain could be angry.

He stepped around Bruni.

He reached down.

He took the rod out of the rider's hand. Not roughly. The way you take a knife away from a child. And he held it up in front of his own face and looked at it for a long moment.

Then he closed his fist.

The rod crumpled like paper.

The silver threads crawling over Bruni's chest went dark and fell away.

The rider stared up at Skarn.

Skarn opened his fist. Let the crumpled rod fall to the ground.

Then he pointed. Back up the slope. Toward the burned forest.

The rider looked at the pointing finger.

At the eight other giants rising from the rocks behind Skarn.

At Bruni, straightening, the last of the silver light flaking off him like frost.

He turned his horse and rode.

The others did not.

Not all of them. Fifty riders, and only a handful had faced the giants. The rest were still coming. Down the road. Around the shelter. Toward the camp.

Toward the singing.

Thor could not hold them all.

She knew it. I saw her know it. She was turning, Mjölnir raised, trying to cover the road and the shelter and the serpent all at once, and there were too many of them, and they were spreading out too wide.

Three riders broke past her.

They came down the road toward the shelter at a gallop.

Toward the trough.

Toward the crack in the air.

Toward Brannoc, holding it open with both hands. Toward Halemar, kneeling gray and gasping. Toward Vaust, his staff raised, his bell silent.

Toward Lethan's cart.

I did not decide.

I put my hand on the road.

Not lightning. Not frost. Not the thaw I had found in the burned forest.

The road.

The old road. The western road. The road the Keeper had walked the first time, when she was lost, toward a lamp in a window.

I felt it answer.

Not like Greykeep. Not like Westmere Hold. Not like anything I had ever touched before.

It answered like a hand closing over mine.

“This road,” I said, “belongs to the people walking on it.”

The words were not mine. I had heard them before. On this road. From the Keeper. The night the masons stood across the top of the narrow cut.

I said them anyway.

And the road heard.

The three riders' horses stopped.

Not slowly. All at once. As though they had come to the edge of a cliff.

They stood in the road, thirty paces from the shelter, trembling. Their riders kicked them. Shouted. Lashed them with reins.

The horses would not move.

They stood with their heads lowered and their ears flat back and their hooves planted on the old stone of the road, and they would not take another step toward the shelter.

One of the riders swung down from his saddle.

He drew his sword.

He started forward on foot.

He took three steps.

Then he stopped too.

He looked down at his own feet.

At the road beneath them.

His face changed.

I knew that expression. I had seen it before. On the captain at the top of the narrow cut, the night the Keeper said she knew every rider's name.

“What is this?” the rider whispered.

I did not answer.

The road did.

The Keeper's voice came up through the stone.

Not to me. To him.

Loud enough that every rider on that road heard it. Every host holding up a lamp. Every giant on the slope.

“Dellan,” the Keeper said.

The rider went white.

“Dellan Marsh,” she said. “From the river villages south of the basin. Your mother's name was Hilla. She kept geese. You used to chase them when you were small, and they used to chase you back.”

The rider dropped his sword.

“You came to the basin when you were sixteen,” the Keeper said. “Looking for work. You walked up this road. This exact road. You stopped at this shelter and drank from this trough.” A pause. “Hesketh's grandmother was keeping it then. She gave you a cup of water and asked your name. You told her.”

The rider was shaking.

“I remember,” the Keeper of Roads said gently. “I've always remembered.”

He sat down in the road.

The other two riders stared at him.

Then at the shelter. At the trough. At the crack in the air above it, gold light pouring through.

At the hosts across the road, holding up their lamps, still humming.

One of them turned his horse around.

The other did not move.

He sat in his saddle and looked at the lamps for a long time.

Then he dismounted, very slowly, and sat down in the road beside Dellan.

Behind them, on the slope, the rest of the riders had regrouped.

Forty of them, perhaps. More. They had pulled back from Thor and the giants and were gathering at the edge of the burned forest, rods raised, nets ready.

Their captain was at the front.

I could see him even from the trough. A tall man in a gray coat with more silver at his throat than the others. He was looking down the slope at the road. At the serpent stretched along it. At Thor standing over him.

He raised his hand.

Every rod in the line came up together.

Aimed at Jörmungandr.

Thor saw it.

She turned. Raised Mjölnir.

She could not cover forty rods at once. Not alone.

Jörmungandr lifted his head.

For the first time since he had laid it down at Thor's feet, he moved.

Not to strike. Not to flee.

He looked at the riders on the slope. At the rods aimed at him. At Thor standing between them and him, alone.

Then he looked past her.

At the shelter. At the trough. At the crack in the air with gold light pouring through it.

At the hosts, holding up their lamps.

At Lethan's cart, with three lamps hanging from an iron hook.

His golden eyes closed.

And he began to coil.

I had seen him coil before.

On the road of black scales. Around the children's camp. A vast black ring closing in, trapping everyone inside it, a road that only went one way and always returned to where it started.

Paths encircled. Journeys without escape. The certainty of return.

His domain.

Thor knew it too. I saw her body go rigid. Saw her hand tighten on Mjölnir.

But he was not coiling around us.

He was coiling around the shelter.

His torn body slid along the road, around the trough, around the carts, around the fires and the lamps and the hosts and the singing. Behind the shelter. Across the road. Down the slope and back up again. A vast black ring of scales closing around everything.

Not inward.

Outward.

His head came to rest beside his own tail, on the far side of the road, facing the riders on the slope.

Facing out.

The riders fired.

Forty rods. Forty bolts of silver light, streaking down the slope toward the black ring.

They struck the scales.

And slid.

Around. Along. Following the curve of the ring the way water follows the curve of a riverbed. Around and around the coil, faster and faster, until the silver light was a blur racing along Jörmungandr's body.

Then, at the place where his head met his tail—

Out.

Back up the slope.

The way they had come.

The silver bolts struck the line of riders on the slope. Struck the rods in their hands. Struck the frames and nets they had brought.

Bound them.

Every rod. Every frame. Every net. Wrapped in its own silver light and locked into silence.

The riders stared at their useless weapons.

At the vast black ring of scales encircling the shelter.

At the golden eyes, open now, watching them.

“A road,” Jörmungandr said quietly, “that only goes one way.”

His voice carried. Low. Grinding. Like stone at the bottom of the sea.

“And always returns,” he said, “to where it started.”

Thor was staring at him.

She stood in the road inside the ring with Mjölnir lowered, staring at the serpent coiled around the people she had sworn to protect.

He did not look at her.

He was looking at the riders.

“I made this for him,” Jörmungandr said. “For years. Roads with no escape. Paths that only led one way. Rings that closed around whatever he wanted kept.” He shifted slightly. Ichor seeped from his wounds. “I never once asked what I was keeping out.”

Thor did not say anything.

“Now I know,” Jörmungandr said.

The riders broke.

Not all at once. A few at first. Turning their horses. Riding back into the burned forest. Then more.

The captain shouted after them.

They did not stop.

When the captain finally turned to follow, he was the last.

He looked back once, from the edge of the trees. At the ring of black scales. At the lamps inside it. At the three riders who had sat down in the road and were still sitting there, inside the coil, beside the shelter.

Then he was gone.

Behind me, Teren's humming had faltered.

I turned.

He was still standing beside the cart. Still holding Lethan's hand. But his face had gone white, and his lips were moving without sound.

The binding.

It had caught. Not at the third note. At every note. His voice was gone.

Lethan's eye was fixed on him.

Lethan's lips were moving too. Mouthing the words. Trying to sing.

Nothing was coming out.

The crack above the trough wavered.

Brannoc grunted. Tightened his grip.

“It's closing,” Halemar gasped. “The song stopped. It's closing.”

Nell was the one who sang.

I did not expect it. She was standing beside the cart with her sister, holding up a lamp she had taken from somewhere, and when her father's voice failed and Lethan's whisper died, she opened her mouth.

She did not sing well.

She sang the way her father had sung, before. Off-key. Too slow. Missing half the notes.

But she knew the words.

Every one. All the verses. The traveler's hymn, the way soldiers sang it in the camps, slow and sad. Asking someone to keep the lamp lit for whoever was still walking.

Bryony joined her on the second line.

Then Marta Quill, across the road. Then Tam. Then Odric and the masons. Then the bakers and the water carriers and Lys and Maud and Dunstan, and Hesketh with his blue lantern, and the three riders sitting in the road.

Not well. Not together.

All of them.

The crack steadied.

Brannoc let out a breath.

Through it, in the small stone room, the bent figure had stood up.

They were walking toward the crack. Slowly. Unsteadily. One hand on the wall. The other holding something.

A lamp.

Behind them, another figure.

Smaller.

Much smaller.

A child.

The hymn reached the last verse.

The hosts did not know it. Nobody knew it. Nobody had ever been supposed to know it.

Their voices faltered. Broke apart. Fell silent.

Nell stopped.

Bryony stopped.

The crack wavered again.

Then Lethan sang.

His voice was barely there.

A whisper. Cracked and broken and rough. Out of tune. The way he had sung it in the infirmary, the night the lamps turned gold.

The last verse.

The Keeper's verse.

The answer.

Every word.

Lethan sang it lying in a cart on a road he had never walked, with his body still half-convinced it was held in a chamber it had left weeks ago. With a binding still faint in his flesh and frost on his skin and one eye that could still see.

He sang it badly.

He sang it all the way through.

And from inside the crack, from the small stone room, from the house folded out of the world—

Two voices answered.

One old. Cracked and thin and trembling, like a voice that had not been used in a very long time.

One young.

Very young.

A child's voice. High and clear and certain. Singing the Keeper's verse the way a child sings a song she has only just learned and loves more than anything.

Teren's hand went still in Lethan's.

His face changed.

He knew that voice.

They came through the crack together.

The old woman first. Bent nearly double. Wrapped in a shawl so faded it had no color left. Her hair was white and thin and her face was a map of lines, so many lines that I could not guess her age.

She was holding a lamp.

Small. Brass. Burning gold.

She stepped through the crack onto the edge of the trough, and stopped, and looked out at the road.

At the fires. At the lamps. At the hosts and the carters and the giants. At the vast black ring of scales encircling all of it.

At Aurelia, standing very still beside the shelter wall.

The old woman's face did not change.

She only looked.

Behind her, the child stepped through.

A girl. Perhaps ten. Thin and dark-haired, with a long jaw and a way of standing very still when she was frightened.

She was holding the old woman's other hand.

She looked out at the road.

At the cart. At the three lamps on Perrin's iron hook.

At the man standing beside the cart with his hand on the rail and his face white as snow.

“Papa?” Ada said.

Brannoc let go.

The crack closed behind them. Silently. The shimmer folded in on itself and was gone, and there was nothing above the trough but cold air.

Brannoc staggered back. Corra caught him.

Halemar slumped forward over the trough. Vaust caught him.

Nobody else moved.

Teren was staring at the girl standing beside the old woman at the edge of the trough.

His mouth opened.

Nothing came out.

He tried again.

Nothing.

The binding held his voice like a fist.

Ada let go of the old woman's hand.

She stepped down off the edge of the trough onto the road.

She walked toward the cart.

Slowly. One step at a time. Looking up at the man beside it.

She stopped in front of him.

“You sound wrong,” she said. “When you don't talk.”

Teren's face crumpled.

He dropped to his knees in the road.

Ada stepped into his arms.

Nell and Bryony were already there.

The four of them in the road beside the cart, wrapped around each other, nobody speaking. Teren could not. His daughters did not need to.

Lethan lay in the cart above them with his eye fixed on Teren's bowed head, and his hand, on the edge of the cart bed, reaching down.

Teren felt it.

He reached up without looking and took Lethan's hand and held it.

And did not let go.

The old woman had not moved.

She stood at the edge of the trough with her lamp held in both hands, looking out at the road.

At Aurelia.

Aurelia had come away from the shelter wall. She stood a few paces from the trough, in the firelight, with her hood pushed back and her silver hair loose and her hands pressed flat against her chest.

The old woman looked at her for a long time.

“You're the queen,” she said.

Her voice was cracked and thin. But clear.

Aurelia could not answer.

“Of Greykeep,” the old woman said. “The one who built shrines beside the gates.” She tilted her head. “She told me about you. Long ago. When she used to visit.”

Aurelia's breath caught.

“She told you?”

“Every time,” the old woman said. “She'd sit by the window and tell me about the roads. Who was walking them. Who'd built new shelters. Who'd lit lamps.” Her lined face moved. Something that might have been a smile. “She was very proud of you. She said you were the first person who ever asked her what she needed and then actually built it.”

The warmth came up through the road.

Through the trough. Through the stone of the shelter. Through every inch of the old western road, from the basin to the river and beyond.

I felt it in my bones.

So did everyone.

The hosts across the road lowered their lamps and looked down at their own feet. The giants on the slope went still. Jörmungandr, coiled around all of us, lifted his great head.

The old woman did not look down.

She closed her eyes.

“There you are,” she said softly.

And the Keeper of Roads spoke.

She did not speak loudly.

She did not need to.

Every person on that road heard her. But she was not speaking to any of us.

“Hollis,” she said.

The old woman's eyes stayed closed.

“Hello, child,” Hollis said.

The silence that followed was the longest I had ever heard on any road.

Then the Keeper said, and her voice broke on every word:

“I came back. I came back to thank you. The house was empty. The lamp was out. I thought you were gone.”

“I know,” Hollis said gently. “I heard you knock. I couldn't answer.”

“Why?”

Hollis opened her eyes.

She looked out at the road. At all of us.

“Because someone had folded me away,” she said. “And a folded house can't open its door. Not even for the one it's waiting for.”

Halemar made a sound.

He was slumped against Vaust beside the trough, gray-faced, barely conscious. But he had heard.

He lifted his head.

“That wasn't,” he whispered. “That wasn't me. I folded it later. Much later. When he brought me.” His voice broke. “It was empty when—”

“It wasn't empty,” Hollis said.

She turned to look at him.

Her face was very kind.

“I was there,” she said. “I've been there a very long time. Long before you. Long before him.” She paused. “The first one who came for me wasn't him. It was someone older. Someone who wanted the Keeper to stop answering. Who thought if they took away the place she'd first been found, she'd forget how to find anyone else.”

“Who?” Thor asked.

She had come back through the ring. She stood a little apart, with Mjölnir lowered, watching.

Hollis looked at her for a long moment.

“It doesn't matter now,” she said. “They're long gone. Their name is gone. Nobody remembers it.” She looked down at the lamp in her hands. “That's the thing about people who try to make others forget. They're always the first ones forgotten.”

She looked back at Halemar.

“You folded an empty-looking house because you were told to,” she said gently. “But you folded it so tightly that the next one who came looking couldn't find it either.” Her lined face softened. “You kept me safe, child. You didn't know it. But you did.”

Halemar stared at her.

Then he put his face against Vaust's shoulder and wept.

“And the girl?” I asked.

Hollis turned to me.

“Ada,” I said. “How did she—”

Hollis smiled.

It changed her whole face. The lines rearranged themselves. For a moment she looked like a woman who had laughed with a great many people for a very long time.

“Children find cracks,” she said. “They always have. That's how the Keeper found me, the first time. She wasn't a child, but she was lost enough to be one.”

She looked at Ada, still wrapped in her father's arms in the road.

“She was in the cellar of the long building,” Hollis said. “Hiding. She'd been hiding for months. Ever since the men in gray coats brought her to the basin with her mother and then took her mother away.” Her voice dropped. “She'd found an old wall down there. Older than the hall. Older than anything. She used to sit against it at night and talk to it.”

“Like Lirien,” I said.

“Like Lirien,” Hollis agreed. “The floor answered Lirien. The wall answered Ada.” She smiled again. “Only it wasn't the Keeper who answered Ada. It was me.”

“Two weeks ago,” Hollis said, “the night the burned forest started budding. The night the pear tree blossomed out of season. Something shifted.” She looked at me. “I think it was you. I felt the thaw. Even folded away, I felt it.”

I did not say anything.

“There was a crack,” Hollis said. “Very small. In the oldest part of the fold. The part that had always fought hardest.” She looked down at the lamp in her hands. “I lit my lamp. I hadn't lit it in years. There didn't seem to be any point.” Her voice softened. “But I lit it. Just once. Just to see.”

“The match,” I said. “The Keeper felt it.”

“And Ada saw it,” Hollis said. “Through the crack. From the cellar of the long building. A little gold light in a wall where there shouldn't have been one.”

She looked at the girl in the road.

“She walked toward it,” Hollis said. “She didn't know what it was. She only knew it was a light, and someone had left it burning.” Her eyes were bright. “She knocked. And I opened the door.”

The Keeper had not spoken in a long time.

When she did, her voice was barely more than a whisper.

“The way you opened it for me.”

“The way I opened it for you,” Hollis agreed. “I didn't ask her who she was. I didn't ask what she'd done. I gave her soup and a blanket and let her sit by the window.” She smiled. “And on the second night, when she couldn't sleep, I sang to her.”

“My verse,” the Keeper said.

“Our verse,” Hollis said gently. “I taught it to you first. Remember?”

The Keeper did not answer.

“And she learned it,” Hollis said. “Faster than you did. She's very clever.” A pause. “She sang it with me every night. And last week, when a soldier with no voice sang it badly from very far away, she heard it before I did.”

She looked at Lethan in the cart.

“She said, 'Hollis, someone out there knows our song.'”

The warmth beneath the road pulsed.

Once. Strong.

Then the Keeper of Roads, who had waited up for thousands of years, who had kept the lamp lit for every traveler still walking, who had never once been sung to—

Laughed.

Not sadly. Not tiredly.

The way a child laughs when someone she loves has finally come home.

“Hollis,” she said. “You're out.”

“I'm out,” Hollis agreed.

“You're on my road.”

“I'm on your road.”

“The oldest one. The one I walked the first time.”

“I know,” Hollis said. “I watched you walk it. From the window. I saw you coming for three days before you reached my door.” Her voice was very soft. “I lit the lamp the first night I saw you. I never let it go out.”

The Keeper did not answer.

She could not.

The warmth beneath the road rose and rose until the stones themselves seemed to glow, until every lamp the hosts were holding flared gold, until the black scales of Jörmungandr's coils shone like polished jet in the firelight.

And then, very slowly, it settled.

Into something steady. Something warm.

Something like a room where someone has been sitting up all night, waiting, and has just heard the door.

I do not know how long we stood there.

Long enough for the fires to burn low.

Long enough for Teren to lift his head from his daughters' hair and look up at Lethan in the cart, and for Lethan to look back, and for something to pass between them that I will not try to describe.

Long enough for Ada to let go of her father at last and walk back to the trough and take Hollis's hand again, and for the two of them to stand there together at the edge of the water with the lamp held up between them.

Long enough for Aurelia to cross the last few paces and stop in front of Hollis and bow her head.

Hollis reached out and touched her silver hair.

“You did well,” she said. “Very well.”

Aurelia did not lift her head.

“I never knew,” she whispered. “I never knew whose shrines I was building.”

“You built them anyway,” Hollis said. “That was the point.”

Thor had walked to the edge of the ring.

She stood in front of Jörmungandr's great head where it rested beside his own tail, at the place where the coil closed.

He opened his golden eyes and looked at her.

She looked back.

Neither of them spoke for a long time.

“You could have let them catch me,” Jörmungandr said finally.

“Yes.”

“I'd have deserved it.”

“Maybe.”

“I made a road that took children.”

“Yes.”

Jörmungandr was silent.

“There's a child in this ring,” Thor said quietly. “Who walked out of a folded house tonight. Because someone left a lamp burning.” She looked down at the hammer in her hand. “You put your body around her. Around all of them. And turned his weapons back on him.”

Jörmungandr did not answer.

“Why?” Thor asked.

The serpent's golden eyes moved past her.

To the trough. To Hollis and Ada standing hand in hand with their lamp. To Teren and his daughters. To Lethan in the cart.

“Because I wanted to see a road that went both ways,” he said. “I told you.” A pause. “And when I saw one, I didn't want it broken.”

Thor was quiet for a long time.

Then she lowered Mjölnir.

All the way. Until its head rested on the road at her feet.

She let go of the handle.

She stood in front of the World Serpent with empty hands.

“There's a prophecy,” she said. “That you and I will kill each other at the end of everything.”

“I know,” Jörmungandr said.

“I've been getting ready for it,” Thor said. “For a very long time.”

“So have I.”

Thor looked at him.

“I don't think,” she said slowly, “that tonight is the end of everything.”

Jörmungandr's golden eyes held hers.

“No,” he agreed.

“Then I don't see why we have to do it tonight.”

The serpent was silent for a long moment.

Then something happened to his great scaled face that I would not have believed possible if I had not seen it.

He smiled.

Fenrir had come to the edge of the ring.

He stood beside Thor, his great gray head level with his brother's, and he did not say anything.

Jörmungandr looked at him.

“Brother,” he said.

“Brother,” Fenrir agreed.

“You're out.”

“I'm out.”

“He had you in a cage.”

“He did.”

Jörmungandr's eyes went to the black scale still seeping on the stone beside the trough. To the silver wire caught in his own wounds.

“He'd have had me in one too,” he said quietly.

“Yes,” Fenrir said. “He'd have built roads out of you. The way he built doors out of Vaust. And distances out of Halemar.” He paused. “The way he built cages out of everyone.”

Jörmungandr was silent.

Fenrir lowered his head and pressed it, very gently, against his brother's.

“There's a garden,” Fenrir said. “In Greykeep. With a pear tree that blossoms in winter. Thor sat with me there for three days. She didn't say anything. She only made sure I ate.”

He lifted his head.

He looked at Thor.

Then back at his brother.

“It's a good garden,” Fenrir said. “You'd like it.”

Jörmungandr looked at Thor for a long time.

Thor looked back.

Then she bent and picked up Mjölnir and put it on her shoulder.

“It's too small for you,” she said.

“Everything is,” Jörmungandr said.

“You'll break something.”

“Probably.”

Thor considered this.

“Mireth will want to look at those wounds,” she said. “And Caldris will want to take the wire out. And Wenhild will want to feed you, though I don't know what.” She paused. “And Loki will want to see you. He's been asking about you for months.”

Jörmungandr went very still.

“He has?”

“Every council,” Thor said. “Every time we talked about the north.” She looked at him. “I always told him I didn't know where you were. I always told him I didn't care.”

“And now?”

Thor turned away.

She looked out at the road. At the fires burning low. At the lamps still held up across the road. At Hollis and Ada at the trough, and Teren with his three daughters, and Lethan in his cart, and Aurelia with her head still bowed.

At the old western road, warm beneath all of us.

Running both ways.

“Now I know where you are,” Thor said. “I'll tell him in the morning.”

We camped on the road that night.

Nobody wanted to leave it.

The hosts did not go back up the climb to the basin. They stayed by the fires on the far side of the road, and nobody told them they should go.

The three riders who had sat down in the road stayed too. Dellan Marsh sat beside Hesketh at the trough, and Hesketh gave him a cup of water and asked his name, and Dellan told him.

Jörmungandr did not uncoil.

He lay around all of us in his vast black ring, his head resting beside his tail at the edge of the road, his golden eyes half-closed. Mireth and Caldris knelt beside him by lamplight, working the silver wire out of his wounds one strand at a time.

He did not flinch.

Fenrir lay beside his head. Thor sat on the low wall nearby with Mjölnir across her knees. She did not sleep.

Neither did I.

Near dawn, Hollis came and sat beside me.

She moved very slowly. Ada helped her down onto the wall beside the trough and then went back to sit with her father and her sisters, curled up against Teren's side with Nell's arm around her.

Hollis watched her go.

Then she turned to me.

“You're the one,” she said. “Who made the forest bud.”

“I had help.”

“You always have help,” Hollis said. “That's what she says about you. That you never do anything alone.” She smiled. “She's very fond of you. Did you know?”

I did not know what to say.

Hollis reached out and took my right hand.

She turned it over.

She looked at the Crown on my palm for a long time.

“She asked for this,” Hollis said quietly. “Did you know that too?”

I stared at her.

“The goddess who sent you,” Hollis said. “When you came to this world. When you asked for a place to call your own. For the power to protect your people.” She traced the mark with one lined finger. “She asked the Keeper where to send you. And the Keeper told her.”

“Where?”

Hollis looked at me.

“Greykeep,” she said. “Aurelia's castle. The one with a shrine beside every gate.” She smiled. “The Keeper said it was the only place left in the world that still knew how to wait up for someone.”

I did not say anything for a very long time.

Hollis held my hand.

The sky over the broken-hook ridge began to gray.

The lamps along the road paled one by one in the dawn light.

Hollis's lamp did not.

It sat on the wall between us, small and brass and burning gold, the way it had burned in a window in a folded house for longer than anyone could remember.

“What will you do now?” I asked finally.

Hollis looked at the lamp.

Then at the road. At the trough. At the shelter.

At Hesketh, asleep against the wall with his pipe in his hand and his blue lantern burning above him.

“I think,” she said, “I'd like to keep a shelter. A small one. With a window that faces the road.” She smiled. “I'm told this one's well kept. But the old man looks tired.”

“He'd be glad of the help.”

“I know,” Hollis said. “She told me.” She picked up her lamp. “She tells me everything. She always has.” Her eyes were very bright. “It's been a long time since anyone told me anything.”

She stood up slowly.

She carried her lamp to the shelter doorway and hung it on the hook beside Hesketh's blue lantern.

Two lamps.

Side by side.

On the oldest road in the world.

Facing both ways.