Chapter 851: Beside the Road

Almond spoke first.

"I’m coming," he said.

"No," said Ainen.

He said it before Almond had even finished. He said it gently, but there was nothing soft under it at all.

"Ainen..."

"No." Ainen turned around. The small gold thing sat at his feet beside the empty bowl, flickering in the light of the Door. "You promised Lily. On the tower. You said you’d come back and stay a while. I heard you say it, before we left Brightwater."

"You weren’t on the tower."

"I didn’t need to be," Ainen said. "You say it every time. And every time, you go somewhere else." He put his hand on Almond’s shoulder. "Not this time. This time you keep it."

Almond opened his mouth. Then he shut it again.

"Besides," Ainen said, a little more lightly. "Somebody has to be standing at this Door when I come back out. And I’d like it to be you."

"How many can you take?" Rudra asked John.

John had been standing a little apart. He thought about it honestly.

"Two," he said. "Maybe. Whoever’s holding on to me. I don’t know what happens if someone lets go."

"Then two," Rudra said. "Ainen. And me."

Ainen turned to him.

"I have Owed Back," Rudra said. "Whatever is taken from you or yours is remembered and owed. That gray thing has been eating the gatekeeper for weeks." He looked down at the little gold creature by the bowl. "And it’s yours. Your guest. That makes it mine."

The small gold thing lifted its head and looked up at him with its one old eye.

"Brother of the host," it said quietly.

"Something like that," said Rudra.

Saffa did not argue.

She walked up to her husband and took his face in both her hands, the way she had after the Blight. Fraisea and Clovelle came and stood on either side of her.

"I want to come," Saffa said.

"I know."

"All three of us want to come."

"I know." Ainen covered her hands with his. "But someone has to be home. That’s the whole thing, isn’t it? That’s what the Leaving got wrong. A home isn’t a house. It’s somebody there when you get back." He looked at the three of them. "So be there. Please. All three of you. And I’ll find my way back. I’ve got an orb for it now."

Clovelle laughed. It came out wet.

"Anyone who has eaten at your table can always find their way back to it," she said. "That’s not what it means, Ainen. It means other people find their way back to you."

"Then you’ll have to cook something," Ainen said. "And I’ll come running."

Saffa kissed him, very hard. Then she stepped back and did not cry.

They left from the foot of the Door an hour before dawn.

Twenty thousand people from Frosthold and Duskspire stood in the ring of frosted stones to watch them go. Nobody had told them to. They had simply come out of their tents in the dark and stood there in silence.

Corvin stood at the front with the Matriarch and the Wraith. Almond stood with Saffa, Fraisea and Clovelle. Marcus was beside him, and Hessa, with her hand already pressed over her eyes.

"I’ll watch as far as I can," she said. "I don’t know how far that is."

The small gold thing walked to the edge of the Door’s light. It turned and looked back at Ainen.

"I will go first," it said. "Follow my thread. It knows the way down."

It walked into the light and was gone.

John took his hands out of his pockets. Ainen took hold of his left arm, and Rudra took hold of his right.

"Don’t let go," John said. "Whatever you see. Whatever you feel. Don’t let go of me."

"We won’t," Rudra said.

John looked back once, at Almond. Something passed across his face. It might have been an apology, or it might have been a promise. Almond could not tell which.

Then the three of them walked into the light.

It was the crossing.

Rudra knew it at once. It was the same road of nothing he had walked nearly two months ago, with the whole weight of his crew on his back. It stretched away forever in both directions. At the far end there was a gap, very small.

But they were not on the road.

John had stepped off it. He had walked straight off the side, into the nothing beyond, and Rudra and Ainen had come with him because they were holding on.

There was nothing under them.

Rudra’s stomach dropped. Every part of him screamed that he was falling. He did not fall. His feet were on something. He could not see it, and he could not feel it, but it held him.

"Don’t look down," John said. "There isn’t a down, but don’t look at it."

"What are we standing on?" Ainen whispered.

John did not answer right away.

"Me," he said finally.

They walked.

There was nothing to see. The road ran along beside them, a faint pale line in the dark. Far ahead, the little gold creature flickered like a candle, leading the way. Ainen could feel its thread in his chest, very faint, pulling down.

Down was the only word for it. They were not walking downhill. But with every step, they went deeper.

Rudra did not let go of John’s arm. He did not even loosen his grip. But after a while, he started to notice something.

There were footprints.

They were faint, and they were very old. They pressed into the nothing ahead of them, as if someone had walked this exact way before, long ago. They were the size of John’s feet. They were the shape of John’s boots.

John stepped into them, one after another, without looking down.

Rudra looked at him.

"You’ve been here," he said quietly.

John kept walking.

"A long time ago," he said.

"How long?"

"Longer than you’d believe." John’s voice was very calm. "Don’t ask me the rest yet, Rudra. Not here. Here, I need to remember where I’m putting my feet."

Rudra looked at the old footprints in the nothing. Then at the man walking in them.

He did not ask again.

They walked for what felt like a very long time.

There was no day, and there was no night. There was only the pale line of the road beside them and the gold flicker far ahead, and John’s arm under Rudra’s hand.

Every so often, something moved out in the dark.

Rudra never saw it clearly. Once it was something huge, sliding past far off, like a whale passing under a boat. Once it was a sound, like whispering, coming from everywhere and nowhere. Once it was a face. It hung in the dark just at the edge of sight, pale and blank and watching. When Rudra looked straight at it, it was gone.

"What are those?" Ainen breathed.

"Things that fell off the road," John said quietly. "A long time ago. Before anyone was carrying anyone."

Ainen went pale. He thought of Duskspire’s people sliding into the dark, two thousand six hundred of them, only a few days ago.

"Are they..."

"No," John said. "Not those. These are much, much older." He was quiet for a step. "The ones from Duskspire, I brought back as many as I could reach. The rest are farther out than I can go."

Ainen did not say anything after that for a long time.

The thread grew stronger.

Ainen felt it first. It was a warmth in his chest, pulling harder now, the way a fishing line pulls when there is something big on the end. Far ahead, the little gold creature had stopped flickering. It was standing still, waiting.

"We’re close," Ainen said.

The nothing began to change.

It got warmer. Then it got darker, but not the dark of the nothing. It was a red dark, a living dark. And underneath it, very slowly, something was beating.

Rudra counted without meaning to. He had counted it before, a lifetime ago, in a heart at the bottom of the world.

One beat.

Then nothing. Then nothing. Then nothing, for a long, long time.

Then another beat.

"Fifteen," Rudra said. His voice had gone very quiet. "That’s fifteen seconds."

"I know," said Ainen.

They came out of the nothing into the heart.

It was the same place. Rudra knew it at once. The great hollow of dark flesh, so vast that its walls were lost in the red gloom. The huge golden body hanging in the middle of it, too big to see all at once.

But it was not the same.

When they had last stood here, the gatekeeper had been bright gold, and its heart had been beating slow and deep and steady. It had been breathing easy, after a long sickness.

Now it was dim. The gold had gone dull, like old brass. Its great eye was closed. Its huge body hung in the dark and did not move, and every fifteen seconds the slow beat shook through the whole hollow. Each time, it was a little weaker than the time before.

The little gold creature walked out across the dark flesh toward the great golden body. It went into it the way a raindrop goes into a lake, and it was gone.

Very slowly, the great eye opened.

"Host," said the gatekeeper.

Its voice was everywhere at once, the way it had always been. But it was faint now. It was like a great bell heard from very far away.

"You came," it said.

"I said I would," said Ainen.

John let go of their arms.

Rudra almost grabbed him back. Then he realized he was standing on something solid. It was the floor of the heart, soft and dark and warm. They were inside again. They were standing on ground.

He looked around the hollow.

He was looking for gray threads, the way there had been before. Hundreds of them, pinning the gatekeeper down like a fly in a web, all running back to a hard gray knot at the center.

There were no threads.

There was no knot. The great golden body hung in the dark, dull and tired, and there was nothing on it at all.

"Where is it?" Rudra said. "Where’s the gray thing?"

"Inside," said the gatekeeper faintly. "Deep inside. Where I cannot reach."

"Then show us."

The gatekeeper was quiet for a long moment.

"It has learned," it said at last. "It learned from you. Last time, it sat out in the open, and spun its threads where anyone could see them. And you came inside, and found it, and cut it out." The great eye looked at them, very tired. "This time, it is careful. It does not spin threads. It does not show itself."

Ainen had gone very still.

Taste.

He closed his eyes and stood in the middle of the dark, warm hollow, tasting the air.

He tasted the gatekeeper. Old and gold and very, very tired. He tasted the heart around him, warm and slow.

And underneath it all, so faint he almost missed it, he tasted something else.

It was gray. It was patient. It did not taste like anything he had ever cooked.

And it was everywhere.

Ainen opened his eyes. His face had gone white.

"It isn’t in one place," he whispered. "Rudra, it isn’t in one place at all. It’s spread out. Through all of it. Every part of the gatekeeper. Like salt dissolved in water."

He looked up at the great dull golden body hanging in the dark.

"There’s nothing to cut," he said. "It’s in everything."