Chapter 468: Six Days

Saelis flew at dawn.

He did not wait for the council to finish. He did not wait for Mary to write the messages down. He stood on the northern battlements in the gray light with his black coat over his shoulders and listened while Adriana told him what she needed.

Every shelter on the western road. Every keeper. Every village along it.

Six nights from now. At dusk.

Light the lamps. Stand beside them. Don't leave.

Saelis listened.

Then he said, “How many shelters?”

Mary answered from the stairs behind him.

“Sixty-three,” she said. “Between our northern gate and the top of the climb. Tobin counted them.” Her voice caught slightly on the name. “Before.”

Saelis looked at her.

“Sixty-three,” he repeated.

He changed. A black shape lifting into the morning sky.

“I'll be back by nightfall,” his voice said on the wind. “With answers.”

He was not the only one.

Elyan went west, along the river villages. Dunstan and Maud took their carts north, stopping at every farmhouse and crossroads. Hesketh went back to his shelter with Hollis and sent word up and down the road through the trough.

Ishkar rode south on Lantern, to the farms along the lower road where the giants were working, to ask whether any of them would stand with us.

Skarn was the first to say yes.

He said it before Ishkar finished asking. He put down the foundation stone he was carrying and stood up very straight, and he said a single word in the giant's tongue, and Bruni, standing beside him, did not need to translate.

Adriana did not rest.

Evelyn told her to. Aurelia told her to. Thor told her to, with considerably less patience than the others.

Adriana thanked them all.

Then she went to the northern gate and stood in the road with her hands at her sides and looked north.

At the first shelter.

A mile out from the walls. A small stone building with a carved lantern above the door and a lamp burning inside it. Kept by a farmer's wife named Brisa, who had lit it on the night of the longest night and never let it go out.

“I've never tried it outside the city,” Adriana said quietly, when I came to stand beside her. “The wall. It's always been here. Around Greykeep. Around people who chose to enter.”

“I know.”

“I don't know how far it goes.”

“Then find out,” I said.

She raised her hands.

Silver light rose around her fingers. Not the blaze. Not the thread. The wall. The one I had seen the day her power first woke, when she stood on the battlements and refused anything that would harm the people inside.

I felt it go up.

Around the city. Around the walls. Around everyone inside them.

Then I felt it push.

North. Along the road. Out past the gate. Slowly. The way water spreads across a floor.

Toward the first shelter.

Adriana's face had gone white.

Her hands were shaking.

The wall stretched. Thinner. Fainter. A quarter mile. A half.

Three quarters.

It stopped.

Short of the shelter. Short of Brisa's lamp.

Adriana dropped her hands.

The silver light went out.

She swayed.

I caught her.

“Three quarters of a mile,” she whispered. “Not even to the first one.”

“It's the first day.”

“There are sixty-three shelters,” Adriana said. “Three hundred miles.” Her voice cracked. “I couldn't reach one.”

Brisa came to the gate that afternoon.

Nobody sent for her. She walked down the road from her shelter with a basket over her arm and her shawl around her shoulders, and she stopped in front of Adriana, who was sitting on the low wall beside the gate with her head in her hands.

“You're the queen,” Brisa said.

Adriana looked up.

“One of them.”

“The one who refuses,” Brisa said. “Saelis came by my shelter this morning. Told me what you're planning.” She set the basket down. “Told me you tried to reach my lamp and couldn't.”

Adriana did not answer.

Brisa looked at her for a long moment.

“I've kept that lamp lit for two months,” she said. “Every night. Since the longest night. My husband thinks I'm mad. My children think it's a game.” She shrugged. “I don't know why I do it. I just do.”

“Thank you,” Adriana said quietly.

“I didn't come for thanks,” Brisa said.

She sat down on the wall beside Adriana.

“Try again,” she said. “Tomorrow. And this time, I'll be standing beside my lamp. With my hand on the wall of my shelter. Waiting.” She looked at Adriana. “Maybe it's easier to reach someone who's reaching back.”

Saelis came back at nightfall.

He landed on the battlements and changed and stood there breathing hard, and his face was very strange.

“Forty-one,” he said.

I looked at him.

“Forty-one of sixty-three,” Saelis said. “Said yes. They'll light their lamps. They'll stand beside them. Six nights from now.”

“And the others?”

Saelis was quiet for a moment.

“Eleven said they'd think about it,” he said. “Seven said no. They're afraid.” He looked down at his hands. “And four didn't answer.”

“Didn't answer?”

“Their shelters were dark,” Saelis said. “The lamps out. Nobody there.” A pause. “Nobody in the villages either. Doors locked. Shutters closed.”

Thor had come up the stairs behind me.

“Which shelters?” she asked.

Saelis told her.

The twelfth. The twenty-seventh. The thirty-third. The forty-eighth.

Thor looked at the map Mary had brought up.

She was quiet for a long time.

“Tarrow,” she said finally. “The twelfth is outside Tarrow. Where Sunniva was a weaver. The one who came down the climb the night the doors opened.” She traced the road with her finger. “The twenty-seventh is the crossroads at Hale. The thirty-third is the bridge at Mossford.”

“And the forty-eighth?” I asked.

Thor did not answer at once.

“Edmar's,” she said. “The oak by the stream. Near the relay station.” Her voice was very quiet. “Where we buried him. And Hrafn.”

“Keeper,” I said.

I had gone to the fountain. I knelt on the cold stone with my hand flat against it.

The warmth came. Faint. Tired.

“I know,” the Keeper said.

“The four shelters. Dark.”

“I know,” she said again. “I felt them go out. All four. Last night. While everyone was asleep.”

“Varrick?”

The Keeper was quiet for a long time.

“Not his doors,” she said. “He didn't take anyone. Not from those.” Her voice dropped. “He talked to them.”

I went still.

“In their sleep,” the Keeper said. “Every keeper on those four shelters. In their dreams. Very kindly. Very patiently.” A pause. “He told them that if they kept their lamps lit, he'd come for their children. The way he came for Callan. And Aldous. And Tobin.”

“And they believed him.”

“They put out their lamps,” the Keeper said softly. “And locked their doors. And pulled their children into their beds.” Her voice cracked. “I can't blame them, Uriah. I can't. They're frightened.”

“So am I,” I said.

“I know,” the Keeper said. “So am I.”

Adriana tried again on the second day.

Brisa was at her shelter. Standing in the doorway with her hand flat against the stone wall and her lamp burning on its hook above her head.

Adriana raised her hands.

The wall went up.

Around the city. Along the road.

A quarter mile. A half.

Three quarters.

It slowed.

It did not stop.

I felt it. Through the road beneath my feet. The silver pushing north, thin and faint and trembling.

And from the north, something pushing back.

Not resisting. Reaching.

A woman standing in a doorway with her hand on a wall, waiting for something she did not understand.

The two met.

I felt it the way you feel two hands clasp in the dark.

The wall reached Brisa's shelter.

And held.

Adriana dropped her hands.

She did not sway this time. She stood in the road outside the northern gate with her chest heaving and her face white, and she was staring north.

At the first shelter.

At the silver light, faint and steady, that now ran along the road from the gate to Brisa's door.

“One,” she whispered.

“One,” I agreed.

Adriana turned to look at me.

Her eyes were wet.

“She reached back,” she said. “Brisa. I felt her. Like a hand.”

“I know. I felt it too.”

Adriana looked back up the road.

“Sixty-two more,” she said.

On the third day, Varrick broke his promise.

Dunstan was on the north road.

He had been driving his cart from shelter to shelter since the first morning, stopping at every one, talking to every keeper. He had driven that road thirty years. He knew every farmhouse and crossroads and stream with opinions.

He was between the thirtieth and thirty-first shelters when the officers came.

Twelve of them. Gray coats. Silver at the throat. On foot, not mounted. Coming out of the trees on either side of the road.

They did not have rods.

They had torches.

Maud told us.

She came through the relay gate at midnight with her oil cart, and her arm was in a sling and her face was black with soot and her gray hair had come loose from its cap.

She did not sit down.

She stood in the receiving hall with Thor and me and Evelyn, and she told us.

“They burned his cart,” she said. “Dunstan's. Thirty years. They burned it in the road.” Her voice was shaking. “And they burned mine. I was behind him. I saw.”

“Is he—”

“Alive,” Maud said. “They didn't touch him. Not much. Knocked him down. Held him while they set the fire.” She swallowed. “Said it was a message.”

“From Varrick.”

“From Varrick,” Maud agreed. “They said: tell the storm king that every cart on this road carries lamp oil. And every cart can burn.”

“And Oren?” Thor asked.

Maud went very still.

I looked at Thor.

Thor was looking at Maud.

“Hesketh's boy,” Thor said quietly. “The one with the broom. He's been riding with Dunstan. Since the first day. Helping with the shelters.”

Maud did not answer.

Her hand had gone to her mouth.

“He was in the cart,” she whispered. “When they set the fire. He jumped out. He ran. Into the trees.” Her voice broke. “Toward the thirty-first shelter. To light the lamp. He said someone had to keep it lit.”

Thor did not move.

“The officers went after him,” Maud said. “Four of them. Into the trees.” She shook her head. “Dunstan tried to follow. They held him down.”

“And?”

Maud looked up at her.

“And then there was a door,” she said. “In the trunk of an old oak. Where there hadn't been one.”

Nobody spoke.

“A door,” Maud said again. “In a tree. With a mark burned into the bark. A closed door. No line.” She pressed her hand harder against her mouth. “Oren ran right past it. He didn't see it. He was looking at the shelter.”

“And something reached through,” I said.

Maud nodded.

She could not speak.

Thor turned and walked out of the receiving hall.

I followed her.

She did not stop until she reached the northern battlements. She stood at the parapet with Mjölnir on her shoulder, looking north, and her whole body was rigid.

“He said seven days,” she said.

“I know.”

“Seven days. Three keepers. Then three more.” Her hand was white on Mjölnir's handle. “He took Oren on the third day. On the road. Between shelters. Where nobody was keeping anything.”

“I know.”

“He lied.”

“He's the god of captivity,” I said. “He lies to keep people. That's all he's ever done.”

Thor turned to look at me.

“Then why did we believe him?” she asked.

I did not have an answer.

Hesketh came through the relay gate at dawn.

He did not go to the receiving hall. He did not ask for anyone. He walked straight through the city to the northern gate and stood in the road outside it, looking north, with his empty pipe in his hand.

I found him there.

He did not look at me when I came up beside him.

“Two,” he said.

I did not say anything.

“Aldous,” Hesketh said. “And now Oren.” He turned the pipe over in his fingers. “My grandson. And the boy who swept my shelter. Who learned to fix pipe. Who gave his coat to Selda Varne the night she walked out.”

“I'm sorry.”

“Don't be sorry,” Hesketh said. “Be useful.”

He finally looked at me.

His face was gray. His eyes were red. He looked older than I had ever seen him.

“Four keepers,” he said. “Two of them mine. In the dark. Behind his doors.” His voice cracked. “And three days from now, your queen walks up to his gate.”

“With her wall.”

“With her wall,” Hesketh agreed. “That reaches one shelter.” He looked north. “One. Of sixty-three.”

Adriana tried again that afternoon.

She reached the second shelter. Then the third.

At the fourth, the wall faltered.

She tried again.

At the fourth, it held.

She sat down in the road outside the northern gate afterward with her head between her knees, and Evelyn knelt beside her with her hand on her back, and neither of them said anything for a long time.

“Four,” Adriana said finally.

“Four,” Evelyn agreed.

“Fifty-nine more.”

“I know.”

Adriana lifted her head.

“And he's taking keepers off the road,” she said. “Between shelters. Where the wall doesn't reach.” Her voice was very flat. “Every shelter I reach, he'll take someone from the next one.”

Evelyn did not answer.

She did not need to.

On the fourth day, Varrick came for Dellan.

Marta told us.

Through the trough at Hesketh's shelter, through the Keeper, through the fountain in the garden. Her voice came up through the water rough and breathless and furious.

She had gone down into the courtyard the night before. With Odric. With two of the bakers. To take a shift. To keep the lanterns lit while Dellan slept.

He had not slept in four days.

He had knelt in front of the forty-first lantern every night, saying names. All the names Cael had given him. All two hundred and four. Then the hundred and seventeen who had walked out, so they would know he remembered them too. Then the eighty-seven who had not.

Over and over.

Until his voice was gone.

Marta had found him asleep in front of the lantern. Sitting up. His head bowed. The clay lamp in his hands.

She had put a blanket over him.

She had knelt beside him and taken up the names where he left off.

And the courtyard door had opened.

“Not a new door,” Marta said. “Ansel's. The one from the east wing. The one Dellan went through to light the lanterns.” Her voice was shaking. “It just opened. On its own. And he was standing in it.”

“Varrick.”

“Varrick,” Marta agreed. “Like smoke. Like a man made of smoke. Standing in the doorway with the lantern light not quite touching him.”

Nobody at the fountain breathed.

“He looked at Dellan,” Marta said. “Asleep. With the lamp in his hands.” Her voice dropped. “And he smiled.”

“What did he do?”

Marta did not answer at once.

“He talked,” she said finally. “To me. To Odric. To the bakers.” She swallowed. “He said a shelter needs a keeper. Someone awake. Someone choosing. He said Dellan was asleep. He said a sleeping man isn't choosing anything.”

My hands had gone cold on the stone.

“He said,” Marta whispered, “that the courtyard wasn't a shelter while Dellan slept. Only a courtyard. With lanterns. And a young man in his old coat, lying in it.”

“And?” Thor said.

Her voice was very quiet.

Marta drew a breath.

“And I stood up,” she said.

Nobody spoke.

“I stood up,” Marta said again. “Between Dellan and the door. With dough on my hands. I'd brought it down to bake in the morning.” Her voice was very steady now. “And I said, I'm awake. I'm choosing. I'm keeping this courtyard.”

The fountain was utterly silent.

“And Odric stood up beside me,” Marta said. “And said, I'm awake. I carved these lanterns. I'm keeping them.” A pause. “And the bakers stood up. And said their names. And said they were keeping it too.”

“And Varrick?”

“He stood in the doorway for a very long time,” Marta said. “Looking at us. Four people with dough and chisels. Standing over a sleeping boy.” She was quiet for a moment. “Then he said, very softly, how long can you stay awake?”

I went cold.

“He's going to wait,” I said.

“He's going to wait,” Marta agreed. “Until we're all asleep at once. Until nobody's keeping it.” Her voice cracked. “Then he'll walk in and take Dellan. And whoever else is lying there.”

“How long can you stay awake?” Thor asked.

Marta laughed. It was not a happy sound.

“I'm a baker,” she said. “I get up at three every morning. I can stay awake a long time.” A pause. “But not forever.”

Thor went down that night.

Into the basin. Into the courtyard.

She did not ask anyone. She did not wait for a council. She took Elyan and flew north on his light, and by midnight she was standing in the courtyard of the hall with Mjölnir on her shoulder and the forty-one lanterns burning around her.

Marta told us later.

Thor walked into the courtyard and looked at Dellan asleep in front of the forty-first lantern. At Marta and Odric and the bakers, gray with exhaustion, standing over him.

At the door to the east wing.

Open.

Varrick standing in it.

Thor did not raise her hammer.

She walked to the middle of the courtyard, to the forty-first lantern, and she sat down beside Dellan on the white paving stones.

She looked up at Varrick.

“I'm awake,” she said. “I'm the goddess of thunder. I've stayed awake through wars that lasted longer than your officers have been alive.” She set Mjölnir across her knees. “I'm keeping this courtyard.”

Varrick looked at her for a long time.

“You can't stay forever,” he said.

“No,” Thor agreed. “But I can stay three more days.”

On the fifth day, Adriana reached the twelfth shelter.

Tarrow.

The one that had gone dark.

She reached it because the keeper came back.

Sunniva. The weaver. The one who had come down the climb barefoot the night Ansel opened the doors, wrapped in a torn blanket, saying the floor had told her which way to go.

She had heard. That the keeper of the twelfth shelter had put out his lamp and locked his door. That he was frightened for his children. That Varrick had come to him in his dreams.

She walked from Greykeep to Tarrow in a day and a half.

She knocked on the keeper's door.

He did not answer.

She sat down on his doorstep and waited.

On the second morning, he opened the door.

He was a young man. A farmer. He had two little girls who hid behind his legs and stared at the thin woman sitting on his step.

“I can't,” he said. “He'll take them. He said so.”

“He said a lot of things,” Sunniva said. “To me. For three years. In a cell beneath his hall.” She looked up at him. “He said nobody would ever come. That the floor wasn't real. That I'd die in the dark and nobody would remember my name.”

The young man stared at her.

“I'm sitting on your step,” Sunniva said. “I walked out. The floor was real. Someone remembered.” She held out her hand. “You don't have to light it alone. I'll stand beside you. All night. Every night. Until it's over.”

The young man lit his lamp that afternoon.

Sunniva stood beside him.

And Adriana, standing in the road outside the northern gate of Greykeep with her hands raised and silver light pouring from her fingers, felt the twelfth shelter reach back.

The wall stretched.

Twelve.

Thirteen.

Fourteen.

By the end of the fifth day, she had reached nineteen.

She sat in the road afterward with her back against the gate post and her eyes closed, and she was shaking so badly that Evelyn would not let her stand.

“Nineteen,” Evelyn said quietly. “That's nineteen more than four days ago.”

“Forty-four left,” Adriana said.

“I know.”

“I won't make it.”

“I know.”

Adriana opened her eyes.

She looked at Evelyn.

“You know?”

“I know you won't make it,” Evelyn said. “Not alone. Not like this.” She took Adriana's hand. “You were never going to.”

Adriana stared at her.

“Then why—”

“Because every shelter you reach,” Evelyn said, “is a shelter he can't take a keeper from. Nineteen shelters. Nineteen keepers. Safe.” Her hand tightened. “That's not failing, Adriana. That's nineteen people who'll sleep tonight without him in their dreams.”

On the sixth day, the giants came.

Not to the gate. To the road.

I saw them from the northern battlements. Great gray shapes walking north along the road in a long line. Skarn at the front. Bruni beside him. The two who had survived the shadows at the river wall. The ones from the farms. The ones who had crossed the ford in the weeks since.

Thirty of them.

They did not stop at the shelters.

They stopped between them.

One giant every few miles. Standing in the road. In the gaps where Adriana's wall did not reach. Where Varrick's officers had burned Dunstan's cart. Where Oren had run past an oak tree and not seen the door in its trunk.

They stood there with their huge gray hands hanging empty at their sides.

Not fighting.

Holding.

Skarn told Bruni, and Bruni told me.

“He says giants hold bridges,” Bruni said. “And walls. And foundations against spring floods.” He looked down at his metal fingers. “He says a road is just a bridge that's lying down.”

“And the doors?” I asked. “Varrick can put a door in any tree. Any stone.”

Bruni was quiet for a moment.

“Skarn says,” he said slowly, “that he'd like to see Varrick try to put a door in a giant.”

At dusk on the sixth day, I stood on the northern battlements and looked north.

The road ran away from the gate into the gathering dark. Toward the relay station. Toward the quarry. Toward the climb and the basin and the hall.

Sixty-three shelters.

I could see the first ones from the battlements. Brisa's. The second. The third. Lamps burning in their doorways, small and gold in the dusk.

Further north, I could not see them.

But I could feel them.

Through the stone of the battlements. Through the road beneath the city. Through the Crown on my palm, clean now, with nothing beside it.

Some lit.

Some dark.

And between them, standing in the road like boulders that had decided to rest, giants.

Adriana was beside me.

She had come up the stairs without anyone helping her. She stood at the parapet with her hands resting on the cold stone, looking north.

She was very pale. Her hands were steady.

“Tomorrow,” she said.

“Tomorrow.”

“At dusk. At his gate.”

“Yes.”

Adriana was quiet for a long time.

“Nineteen,” she said finally. “I reached nineteen.”

“And the giants are standing in the gaps. And Thor's in the courtyard. And Sunniva's at the twelfth shelter. And Brisa's at the first.” I looked at her. “And Hesketh's at his trough. And Hollis. And Marta and Odric are down in the basin, keeping the lanterns with Thor.”

“It's not enough.”

“No,” I agreed.

Adriana turned to look at me.

“Then why does it feel like it might be?” she asked.

I did not answer.

I did not know.

Below us, in the city, every window was lit.

Every one.

Not because anyone asked. Because people had heard. Through the floors. Through the fountain. Through the trough at every shelter on the road.

That tomorrow, a queen would walk to the gate of the god of captivity, with her wall stretched as far as it would go.

And that every lamp lit along that road, and in that city, and in every window between here and the basin, was a hand reaching back.

That night, Pell came to find me.

I was in the lower corridor. Sitting on the floor beside Callan's stool, where Pell had sat every night since Callan was taken.

The lamp was burning.

The wall where the door had been was blank gray stone.

Pell sat down beside me.

He did not say anything for a long time.

Then he said, “Tomorrow, the queen's going to his gate.”

“Yes.”

“With her wall.”

“Yes.”

“Will Callan be there?”

I looked at him.

“Varrick said if she comes, he'll let them go,” Pell said. “Callan. And Aldous. And Tobin.” He paused. “He didn't say Oren.”

“No,” I said quietly. “He didn't.”

Pell was quiet.

“He lies,” he said finally. “Doesn't he?”

“Yes.”

“Then he won't let them go.”

I did not answer.

Pell looked at the lamp.

“Then why is she going?” he asked.

I thought about it for a long time.

“Because she's Roderic's daughter,” I said finally. “And Roderic held a bridge so his family could get away. And at the end, he looked back.” I paused. “Adriana's going so that when she gets to the gate, she can look back. And see every lamp on the road. Lit. All the way home.”

Pell was quiet.

“And then?” he asked.

I did not know.

I said so.

Pell looked at me for a long time.

Then he leaned close to the floor, the way Lirien did, the way he had every night since Callan was taken.

“It's Pell,” he said. “Tomorrow, the queen's coming. With all the lamps.” His voice was very small. “Don't be afraid.”

The floor was silent.

The Keeper could not reach that far.

But Pell said it anyway.

And then, from somewhere very deep, very far, beneath the city and the road and the basin and the hall, so faint that I was not certain I had heard it at all—

Someone knocked.

Three times.

Softly.

From the other side.