Chapter 461: The King Comes Home

We waited for morning.

Aelune would not fly at night over the sea, and my grandfather could not have borne it if she had. He could barely sit up. He sat on the grass at the edge of the cliff with his mother's arm around him until the cold drove us inside, and then he sat in the old wooden chair by the lighthouse stove with a blanket over his knees and a cup of Bryn's tea in his hands, and he did not sleep.

Neither did Aurelia.

She sat on the floor beside his chair with her head against his knee, the way I imagined she might have sat beside his cradle once, and she did not let go of his hand.

I sat by the window.

I did not sleep either.

Near midnight, he spoke.

“The castle,” he said.

Aurelia lifted her head.

“Greykeep,” he said. “Is it still standing?”

“Yes,” Aurelia said.

“The walls. The towers. The gates.”

“All of them.”

He was quiet for a long time.

“He told me it burned,” he said. “The voice. Every few years. He told me Greykeep was ash. That the walls had fallen. That nobody lived there anymore.” He looked down at the cup in his hands. “He said there was nothing to go back to.”

“It burned,” I said from the window. “Part of it. And it stood empty for a long time. Weeds in the courtyard. Gates broken.”

He turned to look at me.

“And then?”

“And then two women kept it,” I said. “Mary and Melody. For years. Waiting for someone to come back and claim it.” I paused. “And someone did.”

He looked at me for a long moment.

“You,” he said.

“Me.”

He did not say anything for a while.

Then he asked, “The castle. The intelligence. The one in the walls.”

I went still.

“Castellan,” I said.

His face changed.

“You know his name.”

“He told me. The first day. When I walked into the courtyard.”

“He's still there?”

“He's still there.”

My grandfather closed his eyes.

“He was there when I was born,” he said quietly. “He used to sing to me. In the nursery. When my mother was away.” A faint, cracked smile. “He sang worse than I did.”

Aurelia made a small sound.

“He did,” she said. “He absolutely did.”

Aelune carried us south at dawn.

My grandfather rode between Aurelia and me, with his mother's arms around him from behind and my hand on his shoulder. He did not hold on to anything. He sat very still on the dragon's back with his face turned to the wind and his eyes open, looking down.

At the coast road.

At the thirty-four shelters, every lamp still burning in the gray morning light.

At the people standing beside them. Some of them waved. Bryn, at the lighthouse, with the lantern in both hands. The old man at the third shelter. The pair of sisters at the twelfth. The boy at the twenty-ninth, shouting something the wind took away.

My grandfather raised his hand.

Slowly. Stiffly. As though he had forgotten how.

He held it up until the coast road was out of sight.

Then the river country.

The farms. The villages. The roads.

Every road had lamps on it.

Not as many as the coast road. Not every shelter. But some. Here and there. A light in a window. A lantern hung at a crossroads. A lamp on a post outside a farmhouse door, burning in the middle of the morning for no reason anyone could have explained.

My grandfather stared at them.

“Why?” he asked.

Aurelia's arms tightened around him.

“Because people started remembering,” she said. “What roads are for.”

Greykeep came over the hills at midday.

I felt him go rigid.

He had been leaning back against his mother, half asleep, worn out by the cold and the height and the strangeness of everything. When the castle came into sight, he sat up so suddenly that Aelune tilted her head to look back at him.

He was staring at it.

The walls. Whole. Mended. The towers rising above them with banners flying. The gates standing open. The city spread out around the castle on every side, roofs and streets and chimneys and smoke.

And every window lit.

In the middle of the day.

Every one.

“They knew,” Aurelia whispered. “Saelis told them.”

My grandfather did not answer.

He could not.

Aelune landed in the courtyard.

Not on the battlements. Not in the field outside the walls. In the courtyard. The inner one. The one where I had stood the first day, with weeds growing between the stones and two women holding out a key and a deed.

There were no weeds now.

There were people.

The courtyard was full. Not crowded. Not pressing. Standing along the walls and the steps and the colonnades, quietly, the way people in Greykeep had learned to stand.

Holding lamps.

My grandfather did not move.

He sat on Aelune's back and looked at them.

Then a voice came from the walls.

Not a person. Not a god.

The castle.

“Your Majesty,” Castellan said.

He did not say it the way he said it to me. He said it the way you say something you have not said in a very long time and had stopped believing you would ever say again.

My grandfather went white.

“Castellan,” he whispered.

The lights in every window of the courtyard flickered.

“I looked for you,” the castle said. Its voice was not steady. In all the years I had known Castellan, I had never heard his voice unsteady. “After the fall. For years. Through every passage. Every gate. Every road I could reach.” A pause. “I could not find you. I thought you were dead.”

“I know,” my grandfather said. “I was told you were ash.”

“I was very nearly,” Castellan said. “For a long time.” The lights flickered again. “And then your grandson walked through my gate and asked me my name.”

My grandfather turned his head and looked at me.

I did not say anything.

“Welcome home, Your Majesty,” Castellan said quietly. “I've kept your room.”

He climbed down from Aelune's back.

I helped him. So did Aurelia. He could stand, now, with someone on either side. He could walk a few steps.

He walked them.

Into the middle of the courtyard. Onto the stones where he had played as a boy, where he had been crowned, where he had stood the morning Greykeep fell and watched the smoke rise from the city.

He stopped.

He looked around.

At the walls. At the colonnades. At the people.

At the steps leading up to the great hall.

And at the people standing on them.

Evelyn was in front.

She was wearing the blue dress she wore for formal occasions, with her hair pinned up and her hands folded over her stomach. Adriana stood beside her with Roderic in her arms. Helena and Garrick Valewood behind them. Mirelle and Cassia and Julian.

And in front of all of them, standing on the bottom step with their hands joined, Carol and Garrick.

They were very serious.

They had been told, I learned later. Not all of it. Only that someone was coming. Someone very important. Someone who had been away for a very long time.

My grandfather looked at them.

At Garrick first. At his dark hair and his serious face and his wooden sword tucked under his arm the way Avarn had taught him to carry it.

Then at Carol.

He stopped breathing.

Carol was looking back at him.

She had grown again. She always had. She looked nearly six now, though she was three. Her dark hair was braided down her back. Her face was serious and curious and very still.

Her hands were clasped in front of her.

My grandfather stared at them.

At her hands.

His mother's hands.

Caroline's hands.

“Oh,” he said.

It was barely a sound.

Carol tilted her head.

Then she let go of Garrick's hand and came down off the step and walked across the courtyard toward him, alone, the way Lirien had walked toward her mother in the receiving hall, the way Ada had walked toward Teren in the road.

She stopped in front of him.

She looked up.

“Are you my great-grandfather?” she asked.

He could not answer.

He stood in the middle of the courtyard with Aurelia holding one arm and me holding the other, and he looked down at the little girl in front of him, and his face was doing something I could not bear to watch.

“Papa said you were,” Carol said. “He said you were the king before. A long time ago. And you were somewhere far away. Behind a door.”

He nodded.

He still could not speak.

Carol considered him.

“Did you get out?” she asked.

He nodded again.

“By yourself?”

He shook his head.

He looked at Aurelia. At me.

“They came,” he managed. His voice was ruined. “Your great-great-grandmother. And your father.”

Carol looked at me.

Then back at him.

“Papa always comes,” she said. “He promised. Every time.”

Garrick had come down off the step.

He walked across the courtyard with his wooden sword under his arm and stopped beside his sister.

He looked up at the man in the faded blue coat.

He did not ask anything.

He held out his hand.

Not to shake. The way Avarn held out his hand to someone who had fallen in the practice yard. Palm up. Fingers open.

“Name first,” Garrick said. “Then what you want.”

My grandfather stared at him.

At the small outstretched hand.

At the boy's serious face.

“That's the rule,” Garrick explained. “Rysa says. When you want something, you say your name first. Then what you want.” He waited. “What's your name?”

The courtyard went very quiet.

My grandfather looked down at the boy. At Carol beside him. At the hand held out.

He opened his mouth.

He closed it.

He looked at Aurelia.

She was crying silently. Tears running down her face. She did not wipe them away.

She nodded.

My grandfather looked back down at Garrick.

He told him.

I will not write it here. It belongs to him, and to the boy who asked for it, and to the castle that heard it spoken in its courtyard for the first time in two hundred and twenty-two years.

Garrick considered it.

“That's a good name,” he said seriously. “What do you want?”

My grandfather looked at him for a very long time.

“To come home,” he said.

Garrick nodded.

He took his great-grandfather's hand.

“Then come on,” he said.

He did.

Garrick on one side. Carol on the other. Aurelia and I behind them, close enough to catch him if he fell.

He did not fall.

He walked across the courtyard of the castle he had been born in, with his great-grandchildren holding his hands, toward the steps where everyone was waiting.

Evelyn came down to meet him.

She did not curtsey. She did not bow. She stopped in front of him and looked at his face for a long moment, at his thinness, at the way his legs were shaking.

Then she put her hand on his chest.

Gold and blue light rose around her fingers.

My grandfather went very still.

“You're very tired,” Evelyn said gently. “And very thin. And you haven't walked properly in a very long time.” The light brightened. “I'm going to help with that. If you'll let me.”

He looked at her.

“You're my grandson's wife,” he said.

“One of them,” Evelyn said. “Yes.”

“A saint,” he said. “Castellan told Aurelia. Aurelia told me. On the dragon.”

“Some people say that.”

He looked at her for a long moment.

“My wife was a healer,” he said quietly. “Caitlin. Not like you. Not with light. With herbs. With her hands.” His voice cracked. “She'd have liked you.”

Evelyn's eyes filled.

“I'd have liked her,” she said.

Adriana came next.

She stood in front of him with Roderic in her arms.

My grandfather looked at the baby.

At the dark hair. At the small fist curled against Adriana's collarbone. At the frown, faint, even in sleep.

“Who is this?” he asked.

“Roderic,” Adriana said. “Roderic Aurelius Grey.”

My grandfather went very still.

“Aurelius,” he repeated.

He looked at Aurelia.

Aurelia nodded.

“After his great-great-grandmother,” Adriana said. “And Roderic after my father. He held a bridge. So we could get away.”

My grandfather looked at her for a long time.

“I held a door,” he said quietly.

“I know,” Adriana said. “Uriah told me.”

“For two hundred and twenty-two years.”

“I know.”

He looked down at the baby.

“May I?” he asked.

Adriana held Roderic out.

My grandfather took him.

His arms were shaking. He held his great-great-grandson as though he weighed nothing and everything at once, the way Brannoc had held Wenhild out of Carrow Tor.

Roderic woke.

He looked up at the strange man holding him.

He frowned.

Then he yawned. Enormously. His whole face disappearing into it.

My grandfather laughed.

It broke halfway through.

They took him to his room.

The one Castellan had kept. In the east tower. With windows facing the city and the road beyond it.

I had never been inside it. Neither had anyone else, in all the years I had lived in Greykeep. Castellan had never opened it. Mary had asked once, early on, and Castellan had said only that the room belonged to someone, and that it would remain as it was until that someone came back or until the castle itself fell.

Now the door was open.

Inside, a bed. A desk. Shelves of books. A window seat with faded cushions.

A cradle.

Small. Wooden. Carved with leaves.

My grandfather stopped in the doorway.

He stared at the cradle.

“Caroline's,” he said.

“Yes,” Castellan said quietly. “And your son's, before he was born. You and Caitlin carved it together. The winter before the fall.”

My grandfather walked to the cradle.

He put his hand on the carved wood.

He did not say anything.

He stood there for a long time.

Then he sat down on the floor beside it, slowly, and leaned his head against its edge, and closed his eyes.

Aurelia stayed with him.

Everyone else left. Evelyn, after she had laid her hands on him again and given him what strength she could. Adriana. The children, who had to be persuaded and only went when Aurelia promised that their great-grandfather would still be there in the morning.

I stayed in the doorway.

I did not go in. I did not leave.

After a long time, my grandfather opened his eyes.

He looked at me.

“Come in,” he said.

I came in.

I sat down on the floor across from him, on the other side of the cradle.

He looked at me for a long time.

“You're the king,” he said.

“Yes.”

“My grandson. Caroline's brother. My son's son.” He shook his head slowly. “And the king of Greykeep.”

“Yes.”

He was quiet.

“I was the king,” he said. “Once.”

“I know.”

“For two years. Before the fall.” A faint smile. “I wasn't very good at it. I laughed too loudly at supper. I couldn't remember the names of half the lords. I used to sneak down to the barracks at night to listen to the soldiers sing.” He looked at the cradle. “My mother despaired of me.”

“I did not despair,” Aurelia said from beside him.

“You despaired a little.”

“A little,” Aurelia admitted.

He looked back at me.

“Castellan tells me you've been king for some years,” he said. “Tells me you mended the walls. Opened the gates. Built a city where people come to be safe.” He looked out the window. At the lamps. “Tells me you made peace with dragons. And giants. And the World Serpent.”

“I had help.”

“You always have help,” he said. “The old woman at the lighthouse said that. She said you never do anything alone.” He smiled. “That's a good kind of king.”

I did not answer.

“I'm not going to take it back,” he said.

I looked at him.

“The crown,” my grandfather said. “The throne. Any of it.” He shook his head slowly. “I held a door for two hundred and twenty-two years. You held a kingdom.” He looked down at his own thin hands. “Mine was the easier job.”

“It wasn't,” I said.

He looked at me.

“It wasn't easier,” I said. “Holding a door alone. In the dark. Believing that if you let go, everyone you loved would die.” I swallowed. “I don't think I could have done it.”

My grandfather was quiet for a long time.

“You'd have done it,” he said finally. “You're my grandson. You'd have done it.” He looked at me. “And then someone would have come and told you that you could stop.”

He fell asleep near dusk.

On the floor. Against the cradle. With his mother's hand in his and his head on her shoulder.

Aurelia did not move.

She sat on the floor of her son's room with him asleep against her, and she looked out the window at the lamps, and she did not say anything.

I stood up to go.

At the door, I stopped.

“Aurelia,” I said quietly.

She looked up.

“The door,” I said. “Beneath the infirmary. Varrick's.”

“I know,” she said.

“He'll know. That we brought him home.”

“He already knows,” Aurelia said. “He was on the causeway. In the water. He felt it when the door opened.” She looked down at her sleeping son. “He'll be angry.”

“Yes.”

Aurelia was quiet for a long moment.

“Let him,” she said.

The bell rang that night.

I was in the lower corridor. I had gone down to check on Callan and the lamp, and found Lethan there, sitting on the floor with his back against the wall, and Teren beside him.

They had heard.

“Song,” Lethan said, when I asked why he had come. “Your grandfather. Sang it. Saelis said. On the causeway.” He looked at the door. “Wanted to. Hear him.”

“He's asleep.”

“Later,” Lethan said. “Can wait.”

So we sat. The three of us. With Callan on his stool and the stone lantern burning beside the door and the bell lying silent at its base.

Near midnight, it rang.

Once.

All four of us went still.

Then the voice came from the door.

“Storm king.”

It was not pleasant this time.

It was not mild. It was not kind.

It was cold. And thin. And very angry.

“You took him,” Varrick said.

I did not answer.

“Two hundred and twenty-two years,” Varrick said. “I kept him. The last king of Greykeep. The son of the goddess who built shrines beside every gate.” His voice was very low. “Do you know what he was to me? Do you know what it meant to hold him?”

Nobody spoke.

“Every night,” Varrick said, “he sang that song. Through the door. To no one. And every night, I listened. And every night, I knew that somewhere, the goddess who'd kept her lamp lit for everyone was grieving a son she couldn't reach.” His voice dropped. “That was mine. Her grief. His loneliness. Two hundred and twenty-two years of it.”

“And now it's not,” I said.

The door was silent.

Then, very quietly, Varrick laughed.

“You think you've won something,” he said. “You think bringing one king home from one island makes any difference.”

I did not answer.

“Let me tell you something, storm king,” Varrick said. “Something the little king never knew. Something I never told him.”

The cold came up through the floor.

“The door he thought he was holding,” Varrick said. “The passage. The one I told him would let the gods follow his family.” A pause. “It wasn't on the island.”

My heart had begun to pound.

“It was never on the island,” Varrick said softly. “I lied to him about that too. The island was only a house. A cage. A place to keep him.” His voice dropped to almost nothing. “The real door, the one at the end of the last road, the second house, the wall across the way everyone walks when the book's finished—”

He stopped.

He waited.

He wanted me to ask.

I did not.

Lethan did.

“Where?” he whispered.

Varrick laughed again.

“Where he fell,” he said. “Where he held the doors. Where I first whispered to him, while the city burned.”

The cold in the corridor deepened.

“The throne room of Greykeep,” Varrick said. “The old one. The one you sealed. The one you never go into because the stone is cracked and the windows are broken and it still smells like smoke.”

I could not move.

“I built the second house there,” Varrick said gently. “Two hundred and twenty-two years ago. In the ashes. Beneath the throne.” A pause. “Every soul I've kept since. Every soldier. Every child. Every king who held a door.” His voice was very soft. “They're under your feet, storm king. They always have been.”

The bell lay silent.

The lamp flickered.

“Why do you think,” Varrick said, “I could put my door in your wall so easily?”

He did not say anything else.

The cold withdrew. Slowly. Back into the stone. Back into the burned mark on the door.

The bell did not ring again.

I sat on the floor of the lower corridor with Lethan and Teren and Callan, and none of us spoke.

Above us, in the east tower, my grandfather was asleep on the floor beside a cradle he had carved with his wife the winter before the fall, with his mother's hand in his.

Below us—

I looked down at the stone.

At the floor of the corridor. At the foundations of Greykeep, laid four hundred years ago by masons who had known what they were doing.

At whatever was beneath them.

“The old throne room,” Teren said hoarsely. “Is it—”

“Sealed,” I said. “Since before I came. Castellan said it was too damaged to repair. The ceiling's cracked. Mary wanted to restore it once and Castellan said no.”

“Why?”

I did not answer.

I did not know.

“Castellan,” I said.

The lights in the corridor flickered.

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

“The old throne room.”

The castle was silent for a very long time.

“I cannot see into it,” Castellan said finally. His voice was very strange. “I have never been able to see into it. Not since the night of the fall.” A pause. “I always thought it was the damage. The fire. The broken stone.”

“And now?”

The lights dimmed.

“Now,” the castle said quietly, “I think it was never the damage at all.”