Chapter 456: The Last Road

The old man from the trough was dying.

Evelyn knew it the morning after the ford. She had been checking on everyone who came out of the hall, one at a time, the way she always did, and when she reached his bed in the long ward at the end of the infirmary corridor, she laid her hands on his chest and the gold and blue light rose and then faded and she did not lift her hands for a long time.

When she did, she looked at Liora.

Liora looked at the floor.

“How long?” I asked.

Evelyn did not answer at once.

“Days,” she said finally. “Perhaps less.”

“Can you—”

“No.” She shook her head slowly. “It isn't a wound. It isn't a binding. It's just time.” She looked down at him. “He's very old. Older than he looks. And he spent most of it in the dark.”

His name was Edmar.

He had told Hollis at the trough, the night the doors opened. He had told her and then wept with his hands in the water, and he had not said anything else for a long time.

He was awake now.

He lay in the infirmary bed with his white beard spread over the blanket and his eyes on the window, where Liora had drawn back the curtains so he could see the sky.

He turned his head when I sat down beside him.

“The king,” he said.

His voice was very thin.

“Uriah.”

He looked at me for a long moment.

“Forty-one years,” he said. “In the dark. Beneath the hall.” He looked back at the window. “Hollis said the sky was still there. I didn't believe her. Not until I saw it on the road.”

“It's still there.”

“It's very blue,” Edmar said. He sounded almost surprised. “I'd forgotten it was so blue.”

He had been a bookbinder.

In a town on the river that no longer existed. He had been taken because he bound a book that Ansel's officers did not want bound. He did not remember what was in it. He only remembered the smell of the glue and the weight of the boards and the feeling of the needle going through the spine.

“Forty-one years,” he said again. “I used to bind books in my head. In the dark. Every page. Every stitch.” He smiled faintly. “I must have bound ten thousand books down there. None of them real.”

He looked at me.

“I don't want to die inside,” he said.

I went very still.

“I know I'm dying,” Edmar said. “I'm not a fool. I can feel it. The way you feel a book coming to its last signature.” His thin hands moved on the blanket. “But I spent forty-one years inside. In a room. Behind a door.” His voice cracked. “I don't want to die in a room.”

I did not know what to say.

I sat beside him with the sunlight coming through the window, and I did not have an answer.

“The door,” Edmar said. “Downstairs. Beneath us.”

I looked at him sharply.

“The floor told me,” he said. “Last night. It said there was a door. His door. Beneath the infirmary.” He turned his face toward me. “It said he's waiting there. For everyone who dies in this castle.”

“Yes,” I said quietly.

Edmar closed his eyes.

“Then that's where I'll go,” he said. “When it's time. Through his door. Back into the dark.”

His thin hands tightened on the blanket.

“Forty-one years,” he whispered. “And then forever.”

I went to find Hollis.

Not through the gate. Not on Elyan's back. I went to the garden and knelt at the fountain and put my hand on the stone and said her name.

She answered.

Not the Keeper. Hollis. Her voice came up through the stone, cracked and thin and very far away, from a shelter on the western road three hundred miles north.

“Child,” she said.

“There's a man dying,” I said. “Edmar. The one who wept at your trough.”

Hollis was quiet.

“I know,” she said. “I could tell. When he came down the climb.” A pause. “He walked like someone who'd come to the last page.”

“He says he'll go through Varrick's door. When he dies.” My voice was not steady. “He says that's where everyone goes now. Into the dark. Forever.”

The silence on the other end was very long.

“Is it true?” I asked.

Hollis did not answer at once.

When she did, her voice had changed.

“Once,” she said slowly, “it wasn't.”

I waited.

“The road,” Hollis said. “Her road. The oldest one. The one she walked when she was lost.” A pause. “Do you know where it goes?”

“To your house.”

“It goes to my house,” Hollis agreed. “And past it. Beyond the valley. Beyond the basin. Beyond everything.” Her voice was very quiet. “It's the last road, child. The one everyone walks eventually. When the book's finished.”

My breath caught.

“The dead,” I said.

“The dead,” Hollis agreed. “She walked them home. A long time ago. Before the shelters had names. Before anyone built shrines beside gates.” A pause. “That was the first thing she ever did, after she stopped being lost. She walked the last road with whoever was on it, so nobody had to walk it alone.”

“And then?”

“And then someone took it,” Hollis said.

The fountain went cold beneath my hand.

Not the Keeper's warmth fading. Something else. The cold I had felt in the basin, when Varrick's shadow reached for me.

Memory.

“Varrick,” I said.

“Varrick,” Hollis agreed. “He's death, child. He always has been. But death was never meant to be a door.” Her voice was very soft. “It was meant to be a road. One you walk. With someone keeping the lamp lit at the end of it.”

“And he made it a door.”

“He made it a door,” Hollis said. “He built a wall across the last road, and put a door in it, and stood behind the door. Waiting.” A pause. “Everyone who dies walks the road until they reach the wall. And then they have nowhere to go but through.”

“Into captivity.”

“Into him,” Hollis said. “That's what he is. Not just death. Death that keeps.”

I did not say anything for a long time.

Then I asked, “When?”

Hollis was quiet.

“The same night he whispered to Ansel for the first time,” she said finally. “The night Ansel reached through my window for the lamp.” Her voice cracked. “He wanted her house because her house was at the start of the last road. If he could fold it away, she'd lose her way to the dead. And they'd have no one to walk with.”

“And then she'd—”

“Then she'd only be the Keeper of the roads the living walk,” Hollis said. “And he'd be the only one at the end of the last one.”

I sat back from the fountain.

I looked up at the pear tree. At the blossoms. At the brazier at its foot, where Wenhild had kept a fire burning since the night Corra came home.

“But your house is unfolded now,” I said slowly.

Hollis did not answer.

“You came out,” I said. “Through the crease. Onto her road.” I looked down at the fountain. “Does that mean—”

“I don't know,” Hollis said. “I've been wondering since the night I came out.” A pause. “The wall's still there. His wall. Across the last road. I can feel it.” Her voice dropped. “But the road's not folded anymore. And there's a lamp at the start of it.” Another pause. “Three lamps, actually.”

Hesketh's. Hers.

And Ansel's.

I went to Adriana.

She was in the practice yard. Not practicing. Sitting on the low wall beside the shield Avarn used for his exercise, with Aurelia beside her and Vaust and Caldris standing in front of them.

Silver light was rising from her hands.

Not the wall. Not the defended boundary she had raised around the city when her power first woke. Something smaller. More focused. A thin bright line of silver between her palms, like a thread pulled taut.

Caldris was frowning at it.

“It's not a binding,” he said. “It's the opposite. It's an unbinding. Anything that tries to hold, it pushes away.”

“A refusal,” Vaust said.

“A refusal,” Caldris agreed. “Of being kept.” He looked at Adriana. “How does it feel?”

Adriana looked down at the silver thread between her hands.

“Like saying no,” she said. “Very firmly. To someone who won't listen.”

They looked up when I came into the yard.

I told them.

About Edmar. About the last road. About Varrick's wall across it, and the door he had built in the wall, and what Hollis had said.

When I finished, nobody spoke for a long time.

Aurelia had gone very pale.

“My son,” she said quietly.

I looked at her.

“He died in the throne room,” Aurelia said. “Holding the door. With Varrick whispering to him.” She pressed her hand against her chest. “He walked the last road.” Her voice broke. “And at the end of it, there was a wall.”

Nobody spoke.

“Four hundred years,” Aurelia whispered. “He's been on the other side of that door for four hundred years.”

Adriana stood up.

The silver thread between her hands had vanished. She looked at Aurelia. Then at me.

“Edmar,” she said.

“Yes.”

“He's going to die. Soon. In this castle.”

“Yes.”

“And when he does, he'll walk the last road. Until he reaches Varrick's wall.” Her jaw tightened. “And then he'll go through the door.”

“That's what Hollis said.”

Adriana looked down at her hands.

“Unless something refuses it,” she said.

Caldris was shaking his head.

“You can't stop death,” he said. “Nobody can. Not even Evelyn. Not even Aurelia.” He looked at Adriana. “If you try to refuse death itself, you'll break.”

“I'm not refusing death,” Adriana said.

“Then what—”

“I'm refusing the door,” Adriana said.

Caldris stopped.

“He's going to die,” Adriana said slowly. “I know that. I can't stop it. Nobody can.” She looked down at her hands. “But he doesn't have to be kept. Not after. Not forever.” Silver light rose around her fingers. “That's not death. That's captivity. And I can refuse that.”

Vaust spoke.

He had been very quiet. Leaning on his staff with both hands, staring at the ground. The staff had no bell on it now. He had left the bell at the base of Varrick's door.

“A wall across a road,” he said slowly. “With a door in it.”

Everyone looked at him.

“I built doors for Ansel,” Vaust said. “For years. Every kind. Every shape.” He lifted his head. “But a door is only a threshold. It's a place where one side becomes the other. It's not the wall.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“A wall is just stone,” Vaust said. “It keeps people out. It keeps people in. It doesn't decide anything.” He looked at Adriana. “But a door decides. A door is where someone chooses whether to let you through.”

He touched the empty iron ring at the top of his staff, where the bell had been.

“Varrick didn't build a wall across the last road,” he said slowly. “He built a door. Because he wants to be the one who decides. Who goes through. Who's kept.”

“And?”

Vaust looked at me.

“And every door has two sides,” he said. “I told you that a long time ago. Knowing how to enter doesn't make entering your decision.” He looked at the silver light around Adriana's hands. “And knowing how to keep doesn't make keeping his decision. Not if someone on the other side refuses.”

Edmar was awake when we came to the infirmary that evening.

He was weaker than he had been in the morning. His breathing was shallow. His thin hands lay still on the blanket.

But his eyes were open.

He looked at the people gathering around his bed.

Adriana. Aurelia. Vaust. Evelyn. Liora. Caldris.

Me.

“You've all come,” he said faintly. “That's very kind.”

Adriana sat down on the edge of the bed.

She took his thin hand in both of hers.

“Edmar,” she said. “You said you didn't want to die inside.”

“I did,” Edmar whispered.

“What if you didn't have to?”

He did not understand at first.

We explained it to him slowly. The last road. The Keeper. Varrick's wall and the door in it.

Adriana's refusal.

Edmar listened to all of it with his eyes on the window. When we finished, he was quiet for a very long time.

“You can't stop me dying,” he said finally.

“No,” Adriana said.

“But you can stop him keeping me.”

“I don't know,” Adriana said honestly. “I've never tried. I don't know if it will work.” Her hands tightened around his. “But I'd like to try. If you'll let me.”

Edmar turned his head and looked at her.

“Why?” he asked.

Adriana did not answer at once.

“Because my father died holding a bridge,” she said. “And he looked back at the end. To make sure we'd made it.” Her voice was very steady. “And because someone should be looking back at you.”

Edmar did not answer for a long time.

Then he smiled.

It was very faint. Very tired.

“Forty-one years,” he said. “Binding books in my head. Ten thousand of them.” He looked at Adriana. “Every one of them, I finished. Every one. I never left a book unbound.” His thin fingers moved in her hands. “I'd like to finish this one too. Properly.”

“Then let's finish it,” Adriana said.

He asked to be moved.

Not out of the castle. He was too weak for that. But out of the room. Out of the infirmary. Somewhere he could see the sky.

Evelyn said the garden.

So we carried him there. Brannoc carried him, very gently, the way he had carried Wenhild out of Carrow Tor. Down the stairs. Through the corridor. Out into the garden, where the pear tree was still blossoming and the brazier was still burning at its foot.

We laid him on the bed beneath the tree, where Corra had slept the first night she came home.

Edmar looked up.

At the blossoms. At the sky beyond them, turning purple with dusk.

At the first stars.

“Oh,” he said softly. “That's better.”

Hollis came.

Not in person. Through the fountain.

I had gone to it while Brannoc was carrying Edmar down the stairs, and I had knelt and said her name, and she had answered.

“I'm coming,” she said.

“You're three hundred miles away.”

“I'm on her road,” Hollis said. “The oldest one. The one that goes to the end.” Her voice was very steady. “Light a lamp, child. At the fountain. And keep it lit.”

I lit a lamp.

I set it on the edge of the fountain.

And through the water, from three hundred miles away, I felt Hollis's lamp answer.

Gold.

The others gathered.

Nobody told them to. They simply came. The way they had come to the corridor outside Lethan's room. To the road outside the northern gate.

Fenrir came and lay down at the edge of the garden. Corra came, and Brannoc, and Kaedra. Lethan came, leaning on Teren, walking the last few steps from the garden gate on his own feet. Ishkar came with Dun beside him, and Lantern behind them both. Wenhild came from the kitchen with her sleeves rolled up and sat in the chair by the brazier and began to hum.

Lirien came with her mother.

She did not ask anything. She walked to the edge of the bed where Edmar lay and looked down at him for a long time.

“Are you going on the road?” she asked.

Edmar looked at her.

“Yes,” he said.

“The floor says it's long.”

“It is.”

Lirien considered this.

“Then you should have a lamp,” she said.

She held out the stone lantern. The one from beside Varrick's door. Carol's lantern, with the crooked candle hollow.

“I took it,” Lirien said. “For a minute. Callan said it was all right. I'll bring it back after.”

Edmar looked at the small lantern.

At the girl holding it.

His eyes filled.

“Thank you,” he whispered.

Lirien set it on the bed beside his hand.

I lit it.

The small flame rose in the crooked hollow.

Edmar looked at it for a long time.

Then he looked at Adriana, still sitting beside him with his hand in hers.

“Is it time?” he asked.

Evelyn had her hand on his chest.

She looked at Adriana.

She nodded.

I will try to describe what happened next.

I do not think I will succeed.

Edmar's breathing slowed. Not suddenly. Gently. The way the tide goes out. Each breath a little shallower than the last.

His eyes stayed open. On the sky. On the blossoms. On the stars.

His hand stayed in Adriana's.

Silver light rose around her fingers.

Not the wall. Not the thread. Something between. A glow, wrapping around Edmar's thin hand, sinking into his skin.

Adriana's face was very still.

“I'm here,” she said quietly. “I'm looking back. You're not alone.”

Edmar's lips moved.

“Thank you,” he whispered.

He took one more breath.

Then he did not take another.

And beneath us, in the lower corridor beneath the infirmary, the bell rang.

Once.

Small and clear.

I felt it through the ground. Everyone did. Fenrir's head came up. Vaust's hands tightened on his staff.

Adriana did not move.

She sat on the edge of the bed with her eyes closed and Edmar's hand in hers, and the silver light around her fingers was burning so bright now that it lit the blossoms of the pear tree from beneath.

Her face had changed.

Not pain. Effort. The face of someone holding something very heavy. Or pushing against something that does not want to move.

“He's there,” she whispered. “At the door. I can feel it.”

Nobody breathed.

“Varrick's on the other side,” Adriana said. Her voice was very tight. “He's opening it. He's—”

She stopped.

The silver light flared.

“No,” Adriana said.

I felt it.

Through the ground. Through the stone of the fountain beneath my hand. Through the roots of the pear tree.

Something pushing.

Cold. Endless. The cold at the bottom of a well. Reaching for something that had just left Edmar's body and was walking, slowly, uncertainly, down a long dark road toward a wall.

And something pushing back.

Silver. Bright. Fierce.

A refusal.

Not of death.

Of being kept.

“Hollis,” I said.

“I see him,” Hollis said through the fountain. Her voice was very strong. Stronger than I had ever heard it. “I see him on the road. He's walking. He's carrying a lamp.” A pause. “A small one. With a crooked candle hollow.”

Lirien made a sound.

“He's at the wall,” Hollis said. “The door's opening. I can see the dark behind it.” Her voice wavered. “Varrick's there. Standing in the doorway. Holding out his hand.”

Adriana's whole body was shaking.

The silver light around her hands had gone white.

“No,” she said again. “No. You can't keep him.”

And then the Keeper spoke.

Not through the fountain. Not through the floor.

Through everything.

Through every stone in the garden. Every root of the pear tree. Every lamp burning in every window of Greykeep. Every shelter on every road.

“Edmar,” she said.

Her voice was very gentle.

“Edmar the bookbinder. From the river town. You bound ten thousand books in the dark and finished every one.” A pause. “You don't have to go through that door.”

The cold beneath us faltered.

“There's another way,” the Keeper said. “There always was. He built a wall across it and told everyone it was gone.” Her voice grew stronger. “It's not gone. It's just been dark. For a very long time.”

The lamps in the castle windows flared.

All of them.

Every one.

“Look to your left,” the Keeper said softly. “Past the wall. There's a road. Very old. Very overgrown.” A pause. “And at the end of it, someone's holding up a lamp.”

The bell rang again.

Not once.

It did not stop. It rang and rang and rang, small and clear, beneath the infirmary, at the base of Varrick's door.

Not because something was crossing.

Because something wasn't.

“He's turning,” Hollis whispered through the fountain. “Edmar. He's looking. He's—” Her voice broke. “He sees it. The lamp. Past the wall.”

Adriana's eyes were still closed.

Tears were running down her face.

“Go,” she whispered. “Go on. I've got the door. Go.”

The bell stopped.

The cold beneath us withdrew. Not gone. Pulled back. Like a hand snatched away from a flame.

The silver light around Adriana's hands faded.

Slowly.

Until it was only a faint glow between her fingers, and then nothing at all.

She opened her eyes.

She looked down at Edmar's hand in hers.

He was very still. His eyes were closed now. His face was peaceful. His white beard spread over the blanket.

The stone lantern beside his hand had gone out.

Nobody spoke for a long time.

Then Hollis said, through the fountain, very quietly:

“He's on the road.”

Adriana's breath caught.

“The old road,” Hollis said. “Past the wall. The one she used to walk.” A pause. “He's walking. Slowly. He's not afraid.”

“Is anyone with him?” Aurelia whispered.

Hollis did not answer at once.

When she did, her voice was full of something I could not name.

“She is,” Hollis said. “The Keeper. She's walking with him.”

A long pause.

“She hasn't walked that road in a thousand years,” Hollis said. “She's crying. And laughing. Both at once.”

Adriana did not move.

She sat on the edge of the bed beneath the pear tree with Edmar's hand in hers, and she did not let go.

Evelyn knelt beside her.

She put her arms around her.

Adriana leaned into them.

She did not cry. Not out loud. She only sat there, with her eyes on Edmar's peaceful face and her sister-wife holding her, breathing very carefully.

“It worked,” she whispered.

“It worked,” Evelyn agreed.

“He's not kept.”

“He's not kept.”

Adriana closed her eyes.

“My father,” she said. “On the bridge. If I'd been there—”

She stopped.

Evelyn did not say anything. She only held her tighter.

Aurelia had not moved.

She stood at the foot of the bed with her hands pressed against her chest, staring at the stone lantern beside Edmar's hand.

At the crooked candle hollow. At the wick, burned out.

“Four hundred years,” she whispered.

Nobody answered.

Aurelia turned.

She looked at Adriana.

At the faint silver glow still lingering between her fingers.

“There are others,” Aurelia said. Her voice was barely audible. “Behind that door. Everyone who's died since he built it. Everyone who walked the last road and found the wall.” She swallowed. “Everyone he's kept.”

Adriana looked up at her.

“My son,” Aurelia said.

She did not say anything else.

She did not need to.

Lirien came forward.

She had been standing at the edge of the bed this whole time with her mother's hand on her shoulder. She had not said anything.

Now she reached out and picked up the stone lantern.

She looked at the burned-out wick for a long time.

Then she looked at me.

“Can I light it again?” she asked. “For the bad door? So Callan has it back?”

I took a taper from my pocket.

I handed it to her.

Lirien lit the lantern herself. Her small hands were very careful. The flame caught on the second try.

She held it up.

She looked at Edmar.

“Goodbye,” she said. “I hope the road's nice.”

Then she turned around and carried the lantern back inside, toward the lower corridor, toward the door beneath the infirmary where Callan was waiting on his stool.

I found Adriana on the battlements at midnight.

She was standing at the northern wall, looking out at the road. At the lamps along it. At the long dark line running away toward the basin.

She did not turn when I came up beside her.

“I felt him,” she said. “Varrick. When I refused.”

I waited.

“He was angry,” Adriana said. “So angry. Like something that's always gotten what it wanted and suddenly doesn't.” She looked down at her hands. “And underneath the anger, something else.”

“What?”

Adriana was quiet for a long moment.

“Afraid,” she said.

She turned to look at me.

“Surtr was right,” she said. “He hates it. More than anything. Someone looking him in the face and saying no.” She looked back at the road. “Not fighting. Not burning. Just refusing.”

“Can you do it again?”

Adriana did not answer at once.

“I don't know,” she said honestly. “It took everything I had. For one man. One door.” She looked at me. “There are thousands behind that wall. Maybe more. Everyone who's died in four hundred years.”

“Your great-great-grandfather-in-law,” I said quietly.

Adriana almost smiled.

“That's a terrible way to say it.”

“I know.”

She leaned against me.

“Aurelia's son,” she said. “Your great-grandfather.” She was quiet for a long moment. “He held a door. Like my father held a bridge. Like Ansel held Varrick.” Her voice dropped. “Everyone keeps holding doors. And Varrick keeps waiting on the other side.”

I did not say anything.

I stood beside my wife on the battlements of Greykeep with the lamps burning below us and the road stretching away north into the dark, and I thought about doors.

About walls across roads.

About a god who had stolen the last road and built a door in it and stood there for a thousand years, waiting for everyone who walked it.

About Edmar, turning to his left. Seeing a lamp past the wall. Walking toward it.

About the Keeper, walking beside him, crying and laughing at once.

“We have to take it back,” I said.

Adriana looked up at me.

“The last road,” I said. “The wall. The door. All of it.” I looked north. “Not just for Edmar. Not just one at a time. All of them.”

“How?”

I did not know.

I said so.

Adriana was quiet for a long time.

Then she put her hand over mine on the parapet.

Over the Crown. Over Aurelia's light, settled over the dark line beside it.

Silver light rose faintly from her fingers.

“One knock at a time,” she said.