Chapter 844: What Sits in the North

Greywatch had lost six people in the night.

They had died in the gap, holding it with spears and farm tools against things that should never have been inside the line at all. Orla knew every one of them. She gave their names to Big D sitting on the grass by the restored stones, with her bad arm strapped to her chest.

Keeper of Names.

When she was done, Big D was quiet for a while.

"You held that gap all night," he said. "Four hundred of you. With what you had."

"It was ours," Orla said simply. "Where else would we be?"

Hessa walked the ring.

She went all the way around it, from the north side to the south and back again. She stopped at every one of the two hundred and six stones and laid her hand on it. The stones were all glowing now. The three that Rudra had called back were the brightest of all.

At the last one, she stopped and put her forehead against it, and stood there for a long time.

Then she walked back to the heap of baked clay and dust where the Gapmaker had fallen.

Its hands were lying in the grass where Big D had snapped them off. They were broken at the elbow, baked hard and pale by the Pyreking’s fire. They were the part of it that had touched the stones.

Hessa knelt and put her palms on one of them.

"It took the edges off," she said quietly, to nobody in particular. "That’s what it did. It took the edges off things, until they fell apart."

She had never shown anyone her imprints. Nobody had ever asked. She did not show them now. But Big D, watching from across the grass, saw the lips move on the one she reached for.

Keep.

The baked clay hand folded. It went in on itself slowly, the way the Lull’s eye had. The orb it left was white, with a faint glow inside it, like a line stone at night.

[Power Orb: Relight]

[Quality: C]

[Lay your hands on a line stone that has gone dark or broken, and it wakes again.]

Hessa read it once. Then she closed her eyes and let out a breath that sounded like twenty years leaving her all at once.

"Nothing gets taken from a line again," she said. "Not while I’m alive."

Corvin came up the road from the south at noon.

He had three hundred Frosthold soldiers behind him, and John walking at his side with his hands in his pockets. Corvin’s frozen arm was still in its sling, but he could move four fingers now. He was moving them, in fact, in a way that suggested he had been doing it all the way from the Door.

He stopped at the edge of the line and looked at the restored stones. He looked at the heap of dust where the Gapmaker had been, and the hunters sitting in the grass, and Big D.

"We came to help," he said.

"We’re done," said Big D.

Corvin looked deeply offended.

"We walked all night," he said.

"I know. Thank you."

"I was going to hit something."

"There’s a pile of baked clay over there," Big D said. "You can hit that if you like."

Corvin looked at the pile for a moment, as if he was actually considering it. Then he sniffed, and sat down beside Big D on the grass, and showed him his fingers.

"Four," he said.

"I see."

John did not sit down.

He walked slowly along the inside of the line, looking at the stones. He stopped at the three that Rudra had called back and looked at them for a long time.

Big D got up and went to stand beside him.

"Hessa saw what you did at the Door," Big D said quietly. "One lord dead. The other ran. She couldn’t see how."

"No," John said. "She wouldn’t have."

"What did you do?"

John was quiet for a moment.

"I asked it to leave," he said.

"It died."

"It didn’t listen." John smiled a little. "The other one did."

Big D looked at him for a long time.

"Who are you, John?" he asked.

John did not answer at once. He looked down at Big D’s left arm, at the long, pale mark running from the wrist to the elbow, faintly gray, like the scar a stone leaves in the earth.

"Someone who’s glad you remembered your name," he said.

Big D went very still.

He had not told anyone what he had said, there at the foot of the Gapmaker. Rudra had not heard it. Nobody had.

John only smiled again, and patted him on the shoulder, and walked away to find something to eat.

Almond arrived in the late afternoon.

He came out of nowhere, the way people did now when Clovelle was with them. One moment the hill to the north was empty. The next, five people were standing on top of it.

Almond, Clovelle, Ainen, Marcus and Silvester.

"I couldn’t sit still," Almond said, when Big D came out to meet him. "After the Blight. I kept thinking about the road. About all of you down here, with nobody to see what was coming." He looked at Clovelle. "She folded us to Emberfall’s line first. The Warlord told us about the Stillfrost. Kael told us you’d gone south. So we kept folding."

"Kael’s awake?"

"Awake and complaining. The Empress won’t let him stand up." Almond stopped. He had seen Big D’s arm.

"What happened?" he asked quietly.

"Something tried to take the edges off me," Big D said. "It didn’t work."

Almond reached out and touched the pale gray mark. It was cool under his fingers, like stone.

"Does it hurt?"

"No."

Almond did not let go of his arm for a long moment. Big D let him.

"Lily?" Big D asked.

"Fine. Growing. Both of them." Almond’s face softened. "She said to tell you that if you got yourself killed while she was busy being careful, she’d never forgive you."

Big D grunted.

"Fair," he said.

They held a council that night, by the fire in the middle of Greywatch’s square.

Almond and Big D. Rudra, Natalia, Ainen and Marcus. Hessa and Orla. Corvin, frowning, with John beside him. The Pyreking sat with his blistered hand wrapped in a wet cloth.

In the middle of the square stood the old stump. It was black and dead and hard as stone, exactly as Hessa had said. Someone’s home, planted three hundred years ago, and still holding the line.

"Seven lords," Big D said. "Let’s count them."

Hessa did.

"One at Brightwater. The Blight. Dead." She held up a finger. "One at Emberfall’s line. The Stillfrost. Dead. One here. The Gapmaker. Dead. Two at the Door. One dead." She glanced at John. "One ran."

"That’s six," Rudra said.

"The last two are still in the east. I’ve been watching them." Hessa frowned. "They stopped moving yesterday. Just stopped. They’ve been standing still ever since, like they’re waiting for something."

"Waiting for what?" Almond asked.

Hessa did not answer. She looked at the fire.

"I want to know what called them," Almond said.

Nobody spoke.

"Seven lords got up at the same time and walked toward every line we’d planted," he said. "That doesn’t happen on its own. Something told them to. And three of them weren’t the ordinary kind. A Stillfrost and a Blight, maybe. But a Gapmaker? Nobody’s ever heard of a thing that could break a line. Not in three hundred years. Not in any story."

He looked at Hessa.

"You’ve been watching the north," he said. "Ever since Brightwater. Haven’t you?"

Hessa looked up.

"How did you know?"

"Because I felt it," Almond said. "The night we killed the Lull. Something far away in the north, looking at me. Very big, and very patient." He paused. "I told Big D. Nobody else."

Hessa was quiet for a long time.

"Yes," she said at last. "I’ve been watching it."

"What is it?"

She did not answer right away. When she did, her voice was very low.

"I don’t know. I can’t see it. Not really." She pressed her hand over her eyes. "I can see where it is. Twenty days north, maybe more. There’s a mountain. There’s something sitting on top of it. But when I try to look at it, it’s like looking straight at the sun. My orb just... goes white."

"Sovereign," Orla said quietly.

Everyone turned to look at her.

"It’s an old story," Orla said. "Older than Greywatch. Older than Brightwater. The kind of story you tell children to make them stay inside the line."

She looked at the black stump in the middle of the square.

"There are Enders, and there are lords, and there are things above the lords. Nobody’s ever seen one and lived to say so. Nobody knows how many there are. The stories call them Sovereigns." She shrugged with her one good shoulder. "I always thought it was nonsense. Something to frighten children."

"And now?" Big D asked.

Orla looked at the restored stones glowing around the square. She looked at Big D’s scarred arm, and the heap of baked clay outside the line.

"Now I think it’s real," she said. "And I think it’s been watching you since the night you came through the Door."

Nobody said anything for a long time.

"So what do we do?" Marcus asked at last.

Almond looked at the fire.

"Not what it wants," he said. "Whatever that is." He thought for a moment. "It sent its lords after our lines. All of them at once. It wanted to see what we’d do. And we killed four of them, and made the fifth one run."

"It’ll send more," Rudra said.

"Probably." Almond nodded slowly. "So we get stronger. We finish the road. We plant Skytheum’s seed beside Brightwater, and we plant every seed that comes through that Door. Hessa keeps every line lit. We hunt, and we make orbs, and we climb."

"And then?" asked Big D.

Almond looked north, into the dark beyond the glowing stones.

"And then, one day, when we’re ready," he said, "we go and see what’s sitting on that mountain."

Hessa had been watching the north the whole time they talked. She had her hand over her eyes again, almost without thinking.

She made a small sound.

Everyone turned.

She had gone completely still. Her face was white. Her hand was pressed so hard against her eyes that her knuckles had gone pale.

"Hessa?" Almond said.

"It turned," Hessa whispered.

"What?"

"The thing on the mountain. I’ve been watching it for weeks. It never moved. Not once." Her voice was shaking. "It just turned around."

Big D was on his feet. "Toward what?"

Hessa lowered her hand very slowly. There were tears running down her face, and she did not seem to know they were there.

"Toward me," she said. "It’s looking right at me. It knows I’m watching."