Chapter 470: What Lies Beneath the Hall

On the third morning, I went into the cell.

Thor did not want me to.

She stood in the doorway with Mjölnir in her hand and her body between me and the open door, and she looked at me the way she had looked at me on the western road the first time Sallow rode down it, when I took off my glove.

“He's death,” she said.

“I know.”

“He's captivity. He's the thing that whispered to your grandfather for two hundred and twenty-two years.” Her voice was very low. “He took Callan. And Aldous. And Tobin. And Oren.”

“I know.”

“Then why?”

I looked past her.

At the small room with no windows. At the grass growing up through the cracks in the stone floor, thicker now, greener, three days of it.

At the figure lying in the middle of it.

“Because the door's open,” I said. “And he hasn't walked through it. And nobody's asked him why.”

Thor looked at me for a long time.

Then she stepped aside.

“I'll be right here,” she said.

“I know,” I said.

The cell was colder than the corridor.

Not much. Not the cold at the bottom of a well anymore. Only the ordinary cold of a stone room with no fire and no light except what came through the open door.

Varrick lay on his back in the grass.

He was not smoke. Not quite solid either. Something in between. A man-shaped darkness with its edges very slightly blurred, the way a shape looks through rain.

His eyes were open.

He was looking at the grass.

He did not turn his head when I came in.

I sat down on the floor beside the door. Not close. Not far. Where he could see me if he looked.

He did not look.

We sat like that for a long time.

“You're the second,” he said finally.

I did not answer.

“Ansel sat outside a door like this,” Varrick said. “On a road. With a cup of water.” His voice was very quiet. Not mild. Not kind. Just tired. “The old woman gave it to him. And asked his name.”

“And he didn't remember,” I said.

“He didn't remember,” Varrick agreed. “Because I'd spent a thousand years making sure he forgot.”

He reached out with one dark hand and touched a blade of grass.

It did not wither.

He looked at it for a long time.

“You're going to ask me my name,” he said.

“No,” I said.

He turned his head then.

He looked at me.

“You told us your name,” I said. “In the basin. Before Ansel died. Varrick. Before that, Corlan. Before that, Maddoc.” I looked at him. “Before that, a voice.”

“Yes.”

“I'm not going to ask you which one is true.”

Varrick was quiet for a long time.

“Then what are you going to ask?” he said.

I thought about it.

About Dunstan, the first time I asked him. About Ansel at the northern gate. About my grandfather on the island.

“Why you keep things,” I said.

Varrick did not answer for a very long time.

He lay in the grass and looked at the ceiling, and his blurred edges shifted, and the cold in the room deepened very slightly and then eased again.

“Do you know what I was?” he said finally. “Before I was death? Before I was captivity?”

“No.”

“Neither do I,” Varrick said. “Not exactly. It was too long ago. Before the roads. Before the shelters. Before the old woman had a house in a valley.” He was quiet for a moment. “But I remember the first thing I ever felt.”

I waited.

“Someone was dying,” Varrick said. “Alone. In the dark. In a cave, I think. Or a hollow under a hill. A long time ago, before there were words for any of it.” His voice was very low. “And as they died, they were afraid.”

“Of death?”

“No,” Varrick said. “Of being forgotten. Of nobody knowing they'd been there. Of walking into the dark and having nothing left behind them but bones that nobody would ever find.”

He turned the blade of grass between his dark fingers.

“That fear,” he said. “That was the first thing I was.”

I did not say anything.

“I was born to remember,” Varrick said. “Every one. Every name. Every face. Every last breath. So that nobody would ever walk into the dark and be forgotten.” He looked at the grass. “That's all I ever wanted. To keep them. So nobody could lose them.”

“The Keeper remembers them too,” I said quietly.

“The Keeper walks them home,” Varrick said. A thin, bitter sound that might have been a laugh. “She holds up a lamp. Says their names. Walks with them to the end of the road. And then she lets them go.” His voice dropped. “Lets them go. Into whatever's past the end. Where she can't follow.”

He looked at me.

“I couldn't bear it,” he said. “Letting them go. So I built a wall. Across the road. And kept them. All of them. Every one. Where I could hold them. Where they'd never be lost.”

“And then you started keeping the living too.”

Varrick was silent.

“The living leave,” he said finally. “They walk away. They forget. They lose each other on roads in the dark and never find each other again.” His voice was very quiet. “I thought if I kept them, they wouldn't lose each other.”

“Like Lirien and Anwen,” I said.

He did not answer.

“Like Teren and Maren,” I said. “Like my grandfather and his family.”

He did not answer.

“You kept them apart,” I said. “Not together. You took Lirien from her mother. You put my grandfather on an island and told him his family would die if he left.” My voice was not steady. “You didn't keep people from losing each other. You made sure they did.”

Varrick turned his face away.

Toward the wall.

Toward the grass growing up through the cracks.

“I know,” he said.

It was barely audible.

I sat very still.

“I know,” Varrick said again. “I've been lying here for three days. Watching this grass. Listening to them sing in the courtyard. Listening to the young man say names. Every one. All night.” His voice was very strange. “He remembers them too. Like I do. Every name.”

He touched the grass.

“And he lets them go,” Varrick said. “Every time one of them walks out. Up the climb. Toward the baker's oven.” He was quiet for a long moment. “He says their name and lets them go. And he doesn't forget them.”

He turned his head back toward me.

His dark eyes were very strange.

“I didn't know you could do both,” he said.

I did not know what to say.

I sat on the floor of the cell with my back against the wall beside the open door, and I looked at the god of captivity and death lying in the grass, and I did not have an answer.

So I said the truth.

“Neither did I,” I said. “Until I watched people do it.”

Varrick was silent.

“Hollis kept a lamp in a window for a thousand years,” I said. “For someone who'd stopped being lost. Who'd gone away to become something else. She never kept the Keeper there. She just left the light on.” I looked at him. “And when the Keeper came back, Hollis was still there. Still remembering.”

Varrick did not move.

“You can remember someone without keeping them,” I said. “That's what a lamp in a window is.”

He was quiet for a very long time.

Then he said, “There are more.”

I went still.

“Below,” Varrick said. “Under the hall. Under the courtyard. Under the cells.” He did not look at me. “Eighty-seven. The ones who didn't walk out. The ones I moved deeper. Past her floors. Past the young man's lanterns.”

“I know,” I said. “Cael counted.”

“The clerk,” Varrick said. Something like a smile. “Of course he did.”

“Where are they?”

Varrick turned his head and looked at me.

“Where I keep everything I can't bear to lose,” he said.

He did not say anything else.

He turned back to the grass.

I sat beside the door for a long time.

Then I stood up and walked out of the cell.

I did not close the door behind me.

Thor was waiting in the corridor.

She looked at my face.

“Well?” she said.

I told her.

All of it. The fear in the cave. The first thing he ever felt. Keeping so nothing would be forgotten. Building a wall across the road because he could not bear to let anyone go.

The eighty-seven.

Thor listened without speaking.

When I finished, she was quiet for a long time.

“He's not lying,” she said finally.

“I don't think so.”

“That's worse,” Thor said. “Isn't it? If he were lying, it'd be simple.”

“Yes.”

Thor looked past me at the open cell.

“He still has eighty-seven people,” she said. “Somewhere beneath this hall. In the dark.” Her jaw tightened. “Whatever he was. Whatever he wanted. He still has them.”

“I know.”

“And he hasn't let them go.”

“No,” I agreed. “Not yet.”

Cael came down from the top of the climb that afternoon.

He had come north on Aelune's back with Evelyn, two days ago, and had been sitting at Marta's oven ever since with the green ledger open on his knees and Sefa beside him.

He came down into the courtyard with the ledger under his arm.

He knelt beside Dellan at the forty-first lantern.

“The eighty-seven,” he said. “I have their names. All of them. From the receiving records. From the ledgers.” He opened the book. “The ones who went into the hall and were never recorded leaving.”

Dellan looked at the page.

At the column of names in Cael's careful hand.

“I've been saying them,” he said. His voice was barely a whisper. “Every night. All of them. Over and over.”

“I know,” Cael said. “I heard you. From the top of the climb.” He looked at the young man in the torn gray coat. “But they're too deep. Past the Keeper's floors. Past the lanterns. They can't hear you.”

“Then how—”

Cael did not answer.

He looked up at me.

“Where does he keep things he can't bear to lose?” Thor asked.

We were sitting at the forty-first lantern. All of us. Dellan and Cael. Marta and Odric. Thor with Mjölnir across her knees. Adriana, who had finally stopped holding the threshold when Evelyn made her, sitting with her back against the lantern and her eyes closed.

Callan sat beside her with his cold stone lantern in his lap.

He had not lit it. He had not let anyone else light it either.

“When I get back to Greykeep,” he had said, when Marta offered him a taper. “I'll light it there. Where it belongs. Beside Pell.”

Nobody answered Thor's question.

Then Tobin spoke.

He was sitting a little apart from the others, with the green ledger Cael had given him open on his knees. His raw hands rested on the pages. He had not stopped looking at the names since Cael handed it to him.

“The valley,” he said.

Everyone turned.

Tobin did not look up from the ledger.

“The hall was built on the Keeper's house,” he said slowly. “And the Keeper's house was built in a valley. Before there was a basin. Before there was anything.” He touched a line on the page. “When Ansel built the hall, he built down. Not just up. Cellars. Vaults. Rooms beneath rooms.”

“How do you know?” Cael asked.

Tobin looked up at him.

“Because I was in one,” he said quietly. “For six days. With no windows.” His raw fingers tightened on the ledger. “And I could hear water. Below me. Running. Very deep.”

Halemar went white.

He had been sitting with Vaust at the edge of the courtyard. He had come up from Hesketh's shelter that morning with Hollis and the old woman's lamp.

“Water,” he said.

Tobin looked at him.

“The stream,” Halemar said slowly. “The one that ran through the valley. Before the basin. Before the hall.” He looked down at his hands. “When I folded the Keeper's house, it was beside a stream. I remember. I folded the stream too. A little of it. The part closest to the house.”

“And when Hollis came out?” Vaust asked.

“The house unfolded,” Halemar said. “Partly. Enough for the crease. Enough for her to walk out.” He shook his head. “But the stream—I never unfolded the stream. I didn't think it mattered.”

Nobody spoke.

“A folded stream,” Halemar said, “beneath a hall, beneath a courtyard, beneath everything.” His voice was barely audible. “Running in a place that isn't quite anywhere.”

“A place with no road,” Vaust said.

Halemar looked at him.

“A place with no road,” he agreed.

Hollis had been sitting beside the forty-first lantern with her lamp in her lap.

She looked down at it for a long time.

“The stream,” she said finally. “By my house. In the valley.” Her voice was very soft. “That's where she came from. The first time. Walking down the stream bed in the dark. Lost.” She looked up. “That was the road. Before there were roads. The stream.”

“The oldest road,” I said.

“The oldest road,” Hollis agreed. “Older than the western road. Older than anything.” She turned her lamp slowly in her lap. “The one she walked when she was lost. Before she knew what a road was.”

“And Varrick put the eighty-seven there,” Thor said.

Hollis looked at her.

“Where he keeps everything he can't bear to lose,” she said. “In the one place she's never been able to reach.” Her face was very still. “The road she walked before she was the Keeper.”

I went to the trough that evening.

Not Hesketh's. There was a trough in the courtyard now. Odric had carved it the second day, while Adriana held the threshold and Varrick lay in the grass. A stone basin, filled from the well at the edge of the outer settlement. Set beside the forty-first lantern.

I knelt beside it.

I put my hand on the stone.

“It's Uriah,” I said.

The warmth came at once.

“I heard,” the Keeper said.

Her voice was very strange. Not tired. Not faint. Something I had never heard in it before.

Afraid.

“The stream,” I said.

“The stream,” the Keeper agreed. “Beneath my house. Beneath everything.” A long pause. “The road I walked before I was anything. When I was only a woman who was lost.”

“Can you reach it?”

The Keeper did not answer at once.

“No,” she said finally. “I never could. Not since I became what I am. It's the one road I can't walk.” Her voice dropped. “It's the road that made me. You can't walk the road that made you. Not once you've reached the end of it.”

“And Varrick knew.”

“He knew,” the Keeper said. “He's always known. He was there, Uriah. In the dark. When I was walking down that stream bed, lost, afraid of being forgotten.” Her voice cracked. “He was the fear. The first thing he ever was. He walked beside me the whole way down. Whispering.”

I went cold.

“And then I saw Hollis's lamp,” the Keeper said. “And I knocked. And she opened the door. And I stopped being afraid.” A long pause. “And he lost me.”

I did not say anything for a long time.

The forty-first lantern burned beside me. Dellan knelt in front of it, his lips moving. Names. Over and over.

“He said he couldn't bear to lose them,” I said finally. “The dead. The living. Anyone.”

“I know.”

“He said you lost them. That you walked them to the end of the road and let them go.”

“I know.”

“Is that what it was?” I asked. “The first time? He walked beside you down the stream. And then you found Hollis's lamp. And you walked away from him.”

The Keeper was quiet for a very long time.

“Yes,” she said finally. “I walked away from him. Toward the lamp.” Her voice was barely a whisper. “And he's been trying to keep everyone from doing the same thing ever since.”

That night, the hall shook.

I was asleep. Sitting up against the forty-first lantern, beside Dellan. I had not meant to sleep. Nobody had. But it was the third night, and Marta had made bread, and Adriana had finally lain down with her head on Evelyn's lap, and the lanterns were warm.

I woke to the floor moving.

Not shaking. Not trembling.

Sinking.

The white paving stones of the courtyard were tilting.

Slowly. Toward the center. Toward the forty-first lantern. As though something beneath them had given way and the whole courtyard was settling into a hollow.

Dellan was on his feet. The clay lamp in his hands.

Thor was already running toward the east wing.

“The cell,” she shouted. “The cell—”

I ran after her.

The corridor was tilting too.

Down. Toward the end. Toward the four rooms where the keepers had been kept. The floor sloped so sharply that I had to put my hand on the wall to stay upright.

Thor reached the fourth cell first.

She stopped in the doorway.

I came up behind her.

The cell was empty.

The grass was still there. Thick and green. Growing up through the cracks in the stone floor in a rough oval where a man-shaped darkness had lain for three days.

But the darkness was gone.

The door was open, the way I had left it.

And in the middle of the floor, where Varrick had been lying, the stone had split.

A crack. Narrow. Black. Running from wall to wall.

And from it, very faint, very deep—

The sound of running water.

“He went through,” Thor said.

Her voice was very quiet.

“He went down,” I said.

“The door was open. Three days. He could have walked out. Into the corridor. Into the courtyard. Up the climb.” Thor's hand was white on Mjölnir. “And he went down instead.”

“Where he keeps things he can't bear to lose,” I said.

The floor lurched.

The crack widened.

Below us, very far below, I heard stone grinding. The sound of something very large shifting.

The sound of a fold, folding tighter.

Halemar was in the courtyard when we got back.

He was on his knees beside the forty-first lantern with both hands flat on the tilting paving stones and his face gray.

“He's folding it,” he gasped. “The stream. The valley. Everything under the hall.” His hands were shaking. “Tighter. Tighter than I ever did. He's taking the eighty-seven and folding himself in with them. Into the stream. Into the road she can't walk.”

“Can you stop it?”

“No,” Halemar said. “It's not my fold. It's his. He's using what I left. The part of the stream I folded and never unfolded.” He looked up at me. “He's building a house. Down there. With no road. With no door. With nobody to knock.”

“And the hall?”

Halemar looked up at the dark building rising above the courtyard.

The east wing. The long building. The inner hall with its doors.

All of it sitting on top of whatever was folding below.

“It's falling in,” Halemar whispered. “All of it. Into the fold. Everything he built on top of her house.”

Thor did not hesitate.

“Out,” she shouted. “Everyone. Up the climb. Now.”

Nobody argued.

The bakers ran. The masons ran. Marta grabbed Tam's arm, who had come down from the oven when the shaking started, and ran. Odric ran with a mason under each arm.

Callan ran with his cold lantern clutched to his chest. Aldous ran with him, humming very loudly. Tobin ran with the ledger. Oren ran with his broom.

Evelyn had Adriana's arm over her shoulder and was half-carrying her toward the inner gate.

Hollis would not run.

She walked. Slowly. With her lamp held in front of her. Toward the gate.

Halemar walked beside her.

Dellan did not move.

He was standing at the forty-first lantern with the clay lamp in his hands, staring down at the paving stones tilting beneath his feet.

“Dellan,” Thor said.

He did not look up.

“The eighty-seven,” he said. “I've been saying their names. Every night. All of them.” His voice was very quiet. “They're down there. In the dark. With him. In a place with no road.”

“I know,” Thor said. “Come on.”

“If I leave,” Dellan said, “nobody's saying their names.”

Thor stopped.

She looked at him.

At the young man in the torn gray coat with the clay lamp in his hands, standing at the center of a courtyard that was falling into a fold.

“If you stay,” Thor said quietly, “you fall in with them.”

Dellan looked up at her.

“I know,” he said.

I did not decide.

I walked across the tilting courtyard to the forty-first lantern and knelt beside it, beside Dellan, and put my hand on the stone.

Thor stared at me.

“Uriah—”

“Go,” I said. “Get everyone up the climb.”

“Not without you.”

“I'll come,” I said. “I promised Evelyn. I always come back.”

Thor did not move.

“The road,” I said. “The western road. Jörmungandr's at the bottom of the climb. With Fenrir and Loki. Keeping it open.” I looked at her. “Get everyone to it. Tell him to be ready.”

“Ready for what?”

I looked down at the stone beneath my hand.

At the crack spreading across the paving. At the sound of water, running very deep.

“For someone coming up a road that doesn't exist yet,” I said.

Thor looked at me for a long moment.

Then she turned and ran.

The courtyard was empty except for Dellan and me.

And forty-one lanterns, still burning, tilting slowly toward the center as the ground beneath them sank.

Dellan knelt beside me.

He did not ask what I was doing.

He set the clay lamp on the paving stones between us.

He began to say names.

Not loudly. Not quickly. The way he had said them every night for six days. One at a time. Each one deliberate.

Eighty-seven.

I put both hands on the stone.

I had never tried to reach this far.

Not down. Not through a fold. Not into a place with no road.

I reached anyway.

Through the paving stones of the courtyard. Through the foundations of the hall. Through the cellars and vaults and rooms beneath rooms that Ansel had built.

Down.

Toward the sound of running water.

It was cold. Colder than the island. Colder than the causeway. Colder than anything.

It was dark.

It was folding.

I could feel it. The way Halemar felt distances. A space being pressed tighter and tighter, the way a letter is folded so many times it disappears into its own creases.

And in the middle of it, very small, very far away—

People.

Eighty-seven of them.

Huddled together in the dark beside a stream that ran nowhere.

And standing over them, very still, a shape made of the oldest fear in the world.

“Varrick,” I said.

He did not turn.

But I felt him hear me.

“You went down,” I said.

“I went home,” Varrick said.

His voice came up through the stone. Through the fold. Very faint. Very far away. Very tired.

“This is where I began,” he said. “Beside this stream. In the dark. Walking beside a lost woman who was afraid of being forgotten.” A pause. “Before she saw a lamp and walked away from me.”

“You're folding it.”

“I'm keeping it,” Varrick said. “The only thing I have left. The eighty-seven. The stream. The place where I was born.” His voice dropped. “Where nobody can reach. Not her. Not you. Not the young man with his names.”

“And then what?”

Varrick was silent.

“You'll be alone,” I said. “Down there. In the dark. Keeping eighty-seven people who don't want to be kept. Forever.”

“Yes,” Varrick said.

“That's what you were afraid of. In the cave. The first time.” My voice was shaking. “Being alone in the dark. Forgotten.”

Varrick did not answer.

“You're doing it to yourself,” I said.

The fold tightened.

I felt it. The space beneath the hall pressing inward. The stream running faster. The eighty-seven pressing closer together in the dark.

Above me, the courtyard lurched.

Three of the lanterns along the eastern colonnade tipped over and went out.

Dellan did not stop saying names.

“I can't let them go,” Varrick said.

His voice was barely there.

“If I let them go, they'll walk away. Up the climb. Toward the baker's oven. Toward the lamps.” A long pause. “And I'll be here. Beside the stream. Alone.” His voice cracked. “Like the first time.”

“You don't have to be.”

“Who would stay?” Varrick asked. “Who would stay with death? With captivity? With the thing that whispered to their king for two hundred years and took their keepers and burned their bakery?”

I did not answer.

I did not know.

Then Dellan stopped saying names.

He had reached the end of the list. Eighty-seven. All of them.

He looked down at the clay lamp on the paving stones between us.

Then he did something I did not expect.

He leaned close to the stone. The way Lirien did. The way Pell did. The way Hesketh leaned over the trough.

“Varrick,” he said.

The fold went very still.

“It's Dellan,” he said. “Dellan Marsh. From the river villages south of the basin. My mother kept geese.”

Silence.

“I rode for you,” Dellan said. “For Ansel. For years. I chased a serpent across a burned forest on your orders. I sat in a road when the Keeper said my mother's name.”

Silence.

“I've been saying names for six nights,” Dellan said. “All of them. Every one. The two hundred and four. The hundred and seventeen. The eighty-seven.” His voice was very steady. “I remember every one. I'm not going to forget them.”

He paused.

“I remember yours too,” he said.

The fold did not move.

The stream did not stop.

But something changed.

I felt it. Through the stone. Through the fold. Through the dark.

A shape made of the oldest fear in the world, standing beside a stream that ran nowhere, very slowly turning its head.

“What?” Varrick whispered.

“Your name,” Dellan said. “Varrick. Corlan. Maddoc.” He paused. “The voice.”

Silence.

“I've been saying them too,” Dellan said. “Every night. After the eighty-seven. At the end of the list.” He looked down at the clay lamp. “I didn't know why. I just—I'd say all their names. And then I'd say yours.”

The fold was utterly still.

“So you wouldn't be forgotten,” Dellan said quietly. “Down there. Wherever you went.”

I do not know how long the silence lasted.

The courtyard had stopped tilting.

The lanterns still standing burned steady.

The sound of running water beneath us went on and on.

Then, from very far below, so faint I almost did not hear it—

A sound.

Not a voice. Not words.

The sound someone makes when they have been afraid of something for longer than anyone can remember, and have just been told, by a young man in a torn gray coat who used to ride for them, that it was never going to happen.

“Dellan,” Varrick said.

“I'm here,” Dellan said.

“You'd stay?” Varrick asked. “Up there? Saying my name?”

Dellan looked at the clay lamp.

At the forty-first lantern.

At me, kneeling beside him with my hands on the stone.

“I'll keep a lamp,” he said. “At the top of the stair. Wherever it comes out. Every night.” His voice was very quiet. “With your name. And theirs. All of them.”

A pause.

“You won't be forgotten,” Dellan said. “But you'll have to let them go.”

The fold shuddered.

I felt it. Beneath my hands. The space beneath the hall, pressed so tight it had nearly disappeared, trembling.

Not tightening.

Not loosening either.

Deciding.

“If I let them go,” Varrick said, “they'll walk away.”

“Yes,” Dellan said.

“Up the stream. Toward the light.”

“Yes.”

“And I'll be here.”

“Yes,” Dellan said. “And I'll be up here. With a lamp. Saying your name.”

A very long silence.

“That's not the same as staying,” Varrick whispered.

“No,” Dellan agreed. “It's not.” He paused. “But it's what a lamp in a window is.”

I felt the fold open.

Not all at once. Not violently. The way a fist opens when someone has been holding it closed for so long they have forgotten their hand can do anything else.

The stream ran.

Not nowhere.

Up.

Through the dark. Through the rooms beneath rooms. Through the foundations of the hall. Toward the courtyard.

Toward the sound of a young man saying names.

And in the dark beside it, eighty-seven people standing up.

Slowly. Uncertainly. The way the twelve had stood up in the east wing corridor the night the locks turned.

They did not know which way to go.

They could hear water.

And above it, very faint, a voice.

Saying their names.

“Dellan,” I said.

He looked at me.

“Keep going,” I said. “Don't stop. Say them again.”

He said them again.

All eighty-seven.

And beneath us, in the dark, I felt them start to walk.

Up the stream bed.

Toward his voice.

They came out of the crack in the floor of the fourth cell an hour before dawn.

Thor told me. She had not gone up the climb. She had gotten everyone else to the inner gate and then turned around and come back, and she had been standing in the corridor of the east wing, at the door of the cell, the whole time.

She saw the first one climb out.

An old man. Barefoot. Wet to the knees. Blinking in the light from the corridor.

He looked at Thor.

“The water,” he said. “We followed the water. And the voice.” He looked past her, toward the courtyard. “Someone was saying my name.”

Thor did not say anything.

She held out her hand.

The old man took it.

She helped him out of the crack.

Then she turned around for the next one.

Eighty-seven.

Tobin counted them.

He had come back down from the inner gate with the ledger under his arm, and he stood at the end of the corridor and counted every one as they walked past him into the courtyard.

He did not miss a single one.

When the last of them climbed out of the crack in the floor, he closed the ledger.

He looked down at it.

Then he looked at Dellan, still kneeling at the forty-first lantern with the clay lamp in front of him and his voice gone to almost nothing.

“Eighty-seven,” Tobin said.

Dellan looked up at him.

“All of them,” Tobin said. His voice cracked. “Every name. They're all here.”

I stood up.

I walked back down the corridor to the fourth cell.

The crack in the floor was still there. Narrow. Black. Running from wall to wall.

But I could not hear water anymore.

I knelt beside it.

I put my hand on the stone.

“Varrick,” I said.

For a long time, nothing.

Then, very faint, very far away, from somewhere I could not imagine and could not reach—

“Storm king.”

“They're out,” I said. “All of them.”

“I know.”

“Dellan's still at the lantern.”

“I know,” Varrick said. “I can hear him.” A long pause. “He's saying my name.”

I did not say anything.

“Every name I ever had,” Varrick said quietly. “Varrick. Corlan. Maddoc.” His voice was very strange. “And at the end, he says, the voice. As though it's a name too.”

“Isn't it?”

Varrick was quiet for a long time.

“I suppose it is,” he said.

“Where are you?” I asked.

“Beside the stream,” Varrick said. “Where I began.” A pause. “It's very dark.”

“You could come up.”

“No,” Varrick said. “I can't. Not yet. Perhaps not ever.” His voice was barely there. “I'm still what I am. I'm still death. I'm still the thing that keeps.” A long silence. “If I came up, I'd want to keep them again. All of them. I know I would.”

“So you'll stay.”

“I'll stay,” Varrick agreed. “Down here. Beside the stream. Where nobody can reach.” A pause. “Where I can't reach anybody either.”

I closed my eyes.

“That's your choice,” I said.

“Yes,” Varrick said. “It is.”

He was silent for a very long time.

Then he said, very quietly, “Tell the young man.”

“Tell him what?”

“That I can hear him,” Varrick said. “Every night. And that it's—”

He stopped.

“It's warm,” he said finally. “Down here. When he says it. Like a lamp in a window.”

He did not say anything else.

I knelt beside the crack in the floor of the fourth cell for a long time.

Then I stood up and walked back to the courtyard.

Dellan was still at the forty-first lantern. Thor was beside him. The eighty-seven were standing in the courtyard in the gold light, wet to the knees, wrapped in blankets the bakers had brought down from the top of the climb.

Dellan looked up at me.

He saw my face.

“Is he—”

“He's beside the stream,” I said. “He's staying.”

Dellan looked down at the clay lamp.

“He said to tell you,” I said, “that he can hear you. Every night.”

Dellan did not move.

“And that it's warm,” I said. “When you say his name. Like a lamp in a window.”

Dellan did not say anything for a long time.

Then he picked up the clay lamp.

He walked across the courtyard. Into the east wing. Down the corridor. To the fourth cell.

He knelt beside the crack in the floor.

He set the lamp on the stone, right at the edge of the crack.

He lit it.

“Varrick,” he said quietly. “Corlan. Maddoc.” A pause. “The voice.”

Then he sat back on his heels with his hands in his lap.

And did not move.

We left at dawn.

The eighty-seven. The keepers. The bakers and the masons. Marta and Tam with their oven. Odric with his chisels.

Thor and Adriana and Evelyn.

Up the climb. To the top of the narrow cut. To Marta's oven, still burning. To the road.

At the bottom of the switchbacks, Jörmungandr was waiting with his head on the stone beside Hesketh's trough. Fenrir lay beside him. Loki stood between them.

Five lamps burned on the hooks above the shelter door.

Hesketh's blue. Hollis's brass. Ansel's clay. Dellan's.

And a fifth.

Oren saw it.

He stopped in the road with his broom in his hands and stared up at it.

Hesketh was sitting on the low wall beside the trough with his empty pipe in his hand.

He looked at the boy.

“Told you,” he said around the pipe. “For when you came back.”

Oren did not say anything.

He walked to the old man and sat down on the wall beside him.

Hesketh put his arm around his shoulders.

Neither of them spoke.

Dellan did not come with us.

He stayed in the hall. In the east wing. Beside the crack in the floor of the fourth cell, with his clay lamp burning at its edge.

Marta brought him bread every morning.

Odric carved him a stool.

And every night, the people at the top of the climb, and at Hesketh's shelter, and at every shelter on the western road, could hear him if they listened very carefully.

Saying names.

Two hundred and four. Then a hundred and seventeen. Then eighty-seven.

And at the end, very quietly, every night:

“Varrick. Corlan. Maddoc.”

A pause.

“The voice.”