Chapter 845: Beside

Hessa screamed.

It was short and sharp, and then she folded forward over her knees with both hands pressed against her eyes. Big D caught her before she hit the ground.

"Hessa!"

"It’s hot," she gasped. "My orb, it’s... it’s so hot."

Almond was beside her in a moment. He could see a faint white glow coming from between her fingers, as if she had a lamp held against her face.

"Let go of it," he said. "Stop watching. Close it."

"I’m trying."

She shook. The white glow flared once, very bright. Then it went out all at once, and she sagged against Big D’s chest, breathing hard.

For a long moment, nobody moved.

"Hessa?" Orla said quietly.

Hessa lowered her hands slowly. Her eyes were red and wet, but they were her own eyes, and they could see.

"It’s gone," she whispered. "It looked at me, and it... it pushed. Like a hand on a door. And then the door was shut." She swallowed. "I can’t see the north anymore. I’ve tried. There’s just white. It closed the door on me."

"Can you see anything else?" Almond asked. "The Door? Brightwater?"

Hessa closed her eyes. After a moment, she nodded.

"Everything else is still there. Just not the north."

"And the two lords in the east?"

Hessa was quiet for a while. When she opened her eyes, her face had changed.

"They’re moving again," she said. "Both of them. And the one that ran from the Door." She frowned. "They’re going north. All three of them. Away from us. Back toward the mountain."

"Called home," Big D said.

"It sent seven," Rudra said slowly. "Four died. Now it’s calling the rest back."

"It was testing the lines," Big D said. "That’s all that was. It wanted to see if they’d hold."

Almond looked out at the dark north, past the glowing stones of Greywatch.

"Then it learned they do," he said.

They went north the next morning.

Clovelle could carry eight. She took Almond and Big D first, with Hessa, Rudra, Ainen, Marcus and Silvester. They folded hill to hill, the way they had done once before, with the morning sun on their backs.

At Emberfall’s line they stopped. The Warlord met them at the warm red stones. Behind him came the Empress of Skytheum, walking slowly beside Kael Vantress.

Kael was walking with a stick. He was still pale, but he was on his feet. He looked very pleased with himself about it.

"Look," he said.

"I see," said Almond.

"The Empress said I wasn’t allowed to stand up until tomorrow."

"And?"

"And it’s tomorrow somewhere," Kael said.

The Empress did not smile. But the corner of her mouth moved.

"He has been impossible," she said. "I hear you need two more to fill the fold."

Clovelle looked at the Empress, and at Kael on his stick.

"Can you hold on to a hand?" she asked him.

"I can hold on to anything," Kael said.

Brightwater was shining when they reached it.

The river shone silver under the afternoon sun. The fields were green and moving in the wind. The new young tree stood on its mound of dark earth outside the east gate, where the Blight had died. It was already taller than it had been.

Lily was waiting at the north gate.

She did not run to meet them. She stood very still with her hands folded in front of her. She looked at Almond first, the way she always did, and checked that he was whole.

Then she looked at Big D.

Her eyes went to his arm. To the long, pale mark running from his wrist to his elbow, gray like the scar a stone leaves in the earth.

Big D saw her see it.

"It doesn’t hurt," he said.

Lily walked up to him. She did not say anything. She took his scarred arm in both her hands and held it, very gently.

"You promised," she said quietly.

"I’m here."

"You were supposed to be careful."

"I was careful," Big D said. "For me, that was careful."

Lily laughed. It came out wet. She did not let go of his arm.

"That’s my line," she said.

"I know," Big D said. "I stole it."

That night, the Empress came to the tower again.

She did not climb the stairs slowly this time. She came straight up and stepped out onto the broken roof. Almond and Lily were sitting there, looking out over the lamplit city.

The Empress held out her hand. The gold seed lay in her palm, warm and glowing, with light moving inside it like clouds across a sky.

"Tomorrow," she said. "At dawn. Outside the south gate, as you said."

"You’re sure?" Lily asked.

"I watched Corvin plant his home beside a fire, for strangers," the Empress said. "I watched the Warlord plant his in the middle of the grass, so that people would never have to walk more than two days in the dark. And I watched an old man walk into the cold for my heir, when he could have stayed behind the stones."

She closed her hand around the seed.

"I have been first for a very long time," she said. "I would like to try beside."

They planted it at dawn.

Half of Brightwater came out to watch. All nine thousand of Skytheum stood in a great crowd on the grass outside the south gate. Kael stood at the front on his stick, with Vess beside him.

The Empress walked out alone to a spot just past the white stones. It was close enough that if she reached back, she could almost touch Brightwater’s line.

She knelt. She did not do it slowly, the way Corvin had. She knelt quickly and simply, like someone who had decided.

She dug a hole in the dark earth with her own hands.

"Skytheum," she said to the seed.

Her voice carried in the still dawn. Everyone could hear it.

"You were the first. For longer than anyone can remember. You were high and bright and beautiful, and everyone looked up at you." She paused. "And you were alone. Up there. All that time."

She held the seed over the hole.

"Not anymore," she said. "You’re going to grow right here, next to a family who argues all the time and feeds strangers and walks into the cold for people they hardly know. You’re going to be beside someone." Her voice wavered for the first time. "I think you’ll like it."

She put the seed into the earth and covered it over.

The ground grew warm and golden.

Light spread out from under her hands. It was the color of late afternoon, warm and soft and moving like clouds. It ran out across the grass in a wide circle. It grew wider and wider still, until it was as wide as Brightwater’s own line.

At the edge of the circle, white stones rose from the earth.

They came up one after another with a low, ringing sound like bells far away. Each one had a faint gold light deep inside it.

On the north side of the new ring, the rising stones reached Brightwater’s line.

Everyone held their breath.

Nobody knew what would happen when two lines touched. Nobody in Greywatch had known. Nobody in any story had known.

The gold stones reached the white ones. They did not stop. They did not push. They simply met, stone beside stone, and where they met, something happened that nobody had ever seen.

The stones joined.

Where the two rings touched, the white stones of Brightwater and the gold stones of Skytheum leaned together until they were one row. Every stone in that row glowed with both lights at once, white and gold, like dawn breaking through clouds.

The two rings were not two rings anymore. They were one shape, wide and strange, like two circles holding hands.

In the middle of the new ring, beside the Empress’s knees, a shoot came up out of the ground.

It was gold. It had small, bright leaves, and it caught the morning light and seemed to hold it.

And in the middle of Brightwater, in the old fountain in the main square, the little shoot with the leaves of every color moved.

People who were standing in the square saw it. They told the story for years afterward. It did not grow taller. It did not glow. It simply turned, slowly, until its small leaves were facing south.

Toward the gold shoot. Toward its new neighbor.

The Empress knelt on the warm earth for a long time.

Nobody went to her. Not Kael, not Vess, not anyone from Skytheum. They let her stay there with her hands in the dirt.

Finally, she stood up. She turned around and looked at the nine thousand people of her empire standing on the grass, and at the strange, joined line glowing around them.

"Well," she said. "Go on, then. Go home."

Skytheum walked into its new city.

They walked slowly at first. Then faster. Somewhere in the crowd, someone started laughing. Then someone else. Kael limped through the gold stones on his stick with Vess holding his arm, and he was grinning like a boy.

The Empress walked over to the joined stones on the north side, where the two lines met. Lily was standing on the Brightwater side.

The Empress stood on the Skytheum side.

Between them was a single row of stones, white and gold at once.

"Neighbors," Lily said.

"Neighbors," said the Empress.

She reached across the line and held out her hand. Lily took it. For a long moment, they just stood there like that, on either side of the joined stones, holding hands.

"I’m not first anymore," the Empress said softly. She sounded amazed. "I’m beside."

"How does it feel?" Lily asked.

The Empress thought about it.

"Warm," she said.

At sunset, a stranger walked up to the north gate of Brightwater.

He was alone. He was thin and sunburned, with a pack on his back and a spear in his hand, and he looked like he had been walking for a very long time. He stopped just outside the white stones and stared at the city. He looked at the river, and the towers, and the joined gold and white line running off to the south.

The guard at the gate called for Almond.

Almond came down from the tower with Big D. The stranger looked at them both. He looked at Big D’s scarred arm for a long moment.

"My name is Tarren," he said. His voice was hoarse. "I come from a sanctuary called Westhollow. It’s twelve days’ walk from here, toward the sunset."

"You walked twelve days alone?" Almond asked.

"Eleven. I was lucky." Tarren swallowed. "We heard a story. Out in the west. Hunters carry stories from line to line, and this one came very fast." He looked at the city again. "They said a kingdom came through a Door with forty thousand people at F. They said that kingdom walked into the Lull’s sleep and woke up again, and killed it, and took Brightwater back."

He looked at Almond.

"Is it true?"

"It’s true," Almond said.

"On the road, I heard more," Tarren said. "Every line I passed had a new story. A Forgetter. A Blight. Lords walking toward every sanctuary in the east at once." He looked at Big D’s arm again. "I didn’t believe half of it."

"Most of it’s true," Big D said.

Tarren let out a long breath. He leaned on his spear as if his legs had suddenly gone weak.

"Then I’ve come to ask for help," he said. "Because something has been sitting outside Westhollow’s line for forty days. And our stones are starting to go dark."