Chapter 253: Sunny Vale, Growing Lily

Chapter 253: Chapter 253: Sunny Vale, Growing Lily

The Tower let them go quietly.

They had slept through the night on the green hillside of floor 40, wrapped in blankets beside a fire that Barney’s little elemental tended with enormous dignity. Seraphina’s water spirit had spent the small hours drifting between the sleepers, washing the last of the day’s bruises from their skin. At some point in the dark, Rowan woke and found the earth elemental kneeling in the grass at the edge of the camp, one broad hand resting on the soil, and the whole hillside around it knee-deep in new clover.

By dawn, the squad had eaten, repacked, and said what needed saying. No one wanted to leave. No one wanted to stay either.

"Eleven days," said Seraphina, glancing at the small notebook in which she had been keeping the count. "Eleven days since we walked through the gate at the foot of the Tower. Nine floors, four hard fights, and two bosses." She closed the notebook. "I believe we have earned a bath."

"A real bath," said Barney, with feeling. "With a door."

"I would settle for a bed," said Caelen.

"I’d settle for a kitchen," said Mirei, and her wind spirit spun a happy little circle around her head.

Rowan laughed. He rolled his shoulders, tilted the brim of his Enchanted Straw Hat, and looked once more across the green valley, at the bones of the old plaza and the soft, wild flowers rising where the drum had stood. Then he turned, and at the far edge of the hillside, he saw it.

A pale arch of light had unfolded in the air, tall and narrow, like a doorway into a morning that had not yet happened. It shimmered gently, and through it he could see, faintly, a stretch of gray stone, a worn flight of steps, and the cold, clean air of the world outside.

"Our ride," said Caelen.

"It certainly took its time," said Seraphina.

The five of them gathered at the foot of the arch. No one spoke for a moment. Behind them, the valley breathed in the gold light, and the elementals, one by one, looked up at their summoners with a kind of solemn, patient affection.

"Next time," said Rowan, at last, "we go higher."

"Next time," Barney agreed.

They stepped through together.

The cold hit them first.

It was a clean, sharp, honest cold, the kind that smelled of frost on fallen leaves and wood smoke from a distant chimney. After eleven days of spirit-light and stone and stale air, it felt like a drink of water. Rowan stood on the worn steps at the foot of the Tower, breathed it in, and laughed out loud.

Beyond the arch of the great gate, the plain stretched away in a pale November haze. The pilgrim road wound across it like a ribbon. Far off, small and gray against the horizon, the walls of Sol Aethel Academy stood in the morning sun, and above them, a thin banner of smoke rose straight into the still air.

It was a quiet, ordinary morning. It was the most beautiful thing Rowan had ever seen.

"We’re back," said Mirei, in a small, awed voice.

"We are," said Seraphina.

"I’m going to kiss the ground."

"Please don’t."

She kissed the ground.

The climbers at the base of the Tower, a scattering of guild parties and wary solo travelers, had stopped what they were doing and were staring. A murmur ran through them, and then a cheer, thin at first and growing. Someone shouted a name. Someone else began to clap. A small, ragged crowd gathered at the foot of the steps, and Rowan felt his ears go warm.

"Oh no," he said.

"Here we go," said Barney, delighted.

"We’re not doing this."

"Boss, we are absolutely doing this." Barney threw an arm around his shoulders. "You cleared floor forty. You broke a drum. You turned a shaman’s graveyard into a flower bed. People are going to tell stories about this."

"I would rather they did not."

"That," said Caelen, gravely, "is exactly why they will."

Rowan sighed, pulled the brim of his hat low, and let himself be swept down the steps.

They parted at the crossroads.

It was easier than any of them had expected. Perhaps because they were tired, or perhaps because there was nothing left to say. They stood for a moment in the cold sunlight at the fork of the pilgrim road, with the academy to the north and the long road to Sunny Vale to the east, and then, without ceremony, they embraced, one by one.

"I’ll be at the forge," said Barney, thumping Rowan on the back hard enough to rattle his teeth. "Three days. Maybe four. I’m making you a hoe."

"I told you, I like my hoe."

"You’ll like mine more." He grinned, shifted his hammer, and strode off toward the academy road with his small, glowing companion trotting at his heels. "Don’t die!"

"I’ll try!"

Seraphina inclined her head, and her water spirit shimmered beside her. "I will expect a sample of every plant you have collected," she said crisply. "Catalogued. Labeled. Preferably before I have unpacked."

"Of course."

"And Rowan." She hesitated. "Rest. Truly. You do not stop, and it frightens me."

"I’ll rest."

"You will try to rest." She almost smiled. "That is not the same thing."

Mirei hugged him fiercely, one arm around his neck and her wind spirit whirling a gust of leaves around them both. "I’ll see you soon, boss," she said. "I’m going to sleep for a week."

"You’re going to eat for a week," said Caelen, dryly.

"That too."

Caelen was last. He said nothing. He only held out his hand, and when Rowan took it, he gripped it hard, the way a man grips a rope.

"Thank you," he said.

"For what?"

"For all of it."

Rowan squeezed back. Neither of them said anything more. Then the Thornes turned and walked away toward the gates of the academy, and the sun climbed a little higher, and the road was empty.

He stood alone at the crossroads for a long moment, listening to the earth.

Then he lifted the hoe onto his shoulder and started east.

Sunny Vale greeted him with the smell of bread.

He smelled it from the top of the last rise, a thick, warm, golden smell, rolling up the slope on the morning wind, and his stomach clenched with a hunger so sharp that it nearly doubled him over. The valley lay spread beneath him in the thin gold light, green and orderly and humming faintly in his bones. The terraces were thick with seedlings. The greenhouses gleamed. A thread of chimney smoke rose from the farmhouse, and from the courtyard came the sound of a dozen voices, laughing, calling, working.

He did not walk the last mile. He ran.

The farmhands saw him first. A shout went up from the yard, and then a cheer, and a half dozen people dropped what they were holding and came pelting down the road. Tobin was at the front, grinning from ear to ear, and Maren was behind him, walking, because she did not run for anyone. She stopped a respectable distance from Rowan, folded her arms, and looked him up and down.

"You’re thin," she said.

"I’m fine."

"You’re thin." She sniffed. "Did you eat?"

"Everything I could."

"Not enough." She turned on her heel. "Come on, lad. Before the girl burns down the kitchen."

The farmhouse door flew open before he reached the porch.

"Rowan!"

Sophia came out like a thrown stone, hair flying, flour on her cheek, an apron tied crookedly around her waist. She stopped dead at the top of the steps, and for a moment she seemed about to launch herself at him. Then she remembered herself, flushed bright red, and gave a small, stiff, entirely unnecessary bow.

"Welcome back," she said. "I mean, welcome home. I mean..."

"Sophia." He was grinning like a fool. "Breathe."

She breathed. Then she laughed, a shaky, bright, relieved sound, and flung her arms around his neck anyway.

"I kept everything running," she whispered into his shoulder. "Everything. The lilies are fine. The wheat’s fine. The fields took the rotation beautifully. Maren says I only made four mistakes."

"Four is excellent."

"She said it was three, but I felt like it was four."

He laughed and set her gently on her feet.

Behind her, in the doorway, two more figures had appeared.

Arthur stood with one shoulder against the frame and his arms crossed, looking, as always, like a man who had decided long ago that speeches were a waste of breath. But his eyes were bright, and he did not move until Rowan reached the top step. Then he pulled his son into a hug so fierce and brief that Rowan’s ribs creaked.

"Took you long enough," said Arthur, gruffly, into his hair.

"Sorry."

"Don’t be sorry. Be home."

"I’m home."

Martha was behind him.

She was thinner than he remembered, and paler, with shadows under her eyes. But she was standing, and she was smiling, and in her arms, wrapped in a blanket the color of spring grass, lay a small, warm, round-cheeked bundle with a tuft of dark hair and a very serious expression.

"Come here," said Martha, softly. "Come and meet her properly."

He came. He crossed the threshold, and the smell of bread and woodsmoke and warm skin closed around him, and he stood in the old, familiar kitchen with his mother’s hand on his arm and his sister in the crook of his elbow.

Lily looked up at him.

She had Martha’s eyes, wide and dark and unblinking, and for a long moment she simply stared, with the grave, searching attention of a very small person studying a very large mountain. Then her face crumpled, scrunched, and smoothed out, and she gave a tiny, wet, delighted sound.

A single green sprout pushed up through the planks of the kitchen floor, curled around his boot, and unfurled two small leaves.

"Oh," said Martha, softly. "She’s been doing that all week."

"Has she?"

"Every time she’s happy." Her voice wobbled. "Dr. Orlan’s cleric says it’ll settle as she grows. But I don’t think I want it to."

Rowan could not speak. He held his sister very carefully and watched the green shoot climb his ankle, and felt, all at once, every mile and every floor of the long climb fall away.

Behind him, with a slow, rumbling groan, a vast, gentle, flower-crowned shape ducked its head through the doorway, and the whole kitchen went silent.

"Mother," said Rowan. "Father. This is..." He stopped. "I haven’t named him yet."

Arthur stared. Martha stared. Sophia, in the doorway, had both hands clamped over her mouth.

The earth elemental regarded them with its faceless head, with great and solemn courtesy. Then, very slowly, it knelt and held out one enormous, careful finger toward the baby.

Lily laughed.

The sprout on the floor burst into a tiny white flower.

Later, when the others had been fed, and the elemental had been persuaded, with great diplomacy, to wait in the garden, Rowan sat alone on the porch with a cup of tea and the last of the afternoon sun on his face. Sophia had gone to the greenhouse. Maren was shouting at someone in the yard. The valley hummed around him, steady and warm and alive.

His device lay on the arm of the chair, dark and silent.

There were forty-three messages waiting. He knew it, because he had counted them at the crossroads. Eleven from the Emperor. Six from Elena. A dozen from Headmistress Elena’s students. A single, terse line from Dr. Orlan. And one, near the bottom, in a hand he did not recognize, that read only: The Eternity Guild requests a meeting.

He looked at it for a long time.

Tomorrow, he thought. All of it. Tomorrow.

He set the cup down, closed his eyes, and let the sun fall across his face. Somewhere in the house, his mother was humming. Somewhere in the garden, an earth elemental was carefully, solemnly, planting a row of beans.

For the first time in eleven days, he slept.