Chapter 856: The Name in the Book

The thing in the grass did not get up.

Hessa watched it all that day, while Clovelle folded the ground under them again and again. They stopped at Greywatch at noon and at Emberfall’s line by dark. Every time they stopped, Hessa sat down and put her hand over her eyes.

"They walked right past it," she said that night. "Two hundred steps away. It didn’t move."

"Did they see it?" asked Rudra.

"No. It’s under the grass. It looks like a low hill." She took her hand away. Her eyes were red from looking. "When the last row went past, it lifted its head."

Nobody said anything.

"It’s following them now," Hessa said. "Slowly. It stays a mile back. It lies down when they stop."

"What does it end?" Almond asked.

"I don’t know. Nothing’s happened yet." She rubbed her eyes. "I’ll keep looking."

They came into Brightwater at dusk the next day.

Clovelle folded the last stretch of road right up to the south gate. The ground came together under their feet, and there were the white stones.

Beside them stood Skytheum’s new line, with its gold light shining through the white. Past the gate was the square, with Regalon’s young tree in the middle of it, taller than a man now.

Lily was on the wall above the gate.

She did not come down the stairs. She watched Almond walk in under the arch, and she called down to him.

"You’re late."

"I was at the Door," Almond said. "The whole time. I didn’t go down."

"I know. You’d look worse if you had." Lily leaned her arms on the wall. "I’m still saying you’re late."

Then she came down the stairs, slower than she used to. She was wearing one of Almond’s coats now, because her own no longer closed, and she kept one hand on the rail. At the bottom she walked straight into him and stayed there.

"You kept it," she said into his coat.

"Ainen made me."

"Then I owe Ainen." She lifted her head and looked past him. "Ainen. I owe you."

"Soup," said Ainen. "Pay me in soup. Somebody else’s soup."

Kayla came across the square with her sleeves rolled up. She put her hand on Lily’s shoulder before she said hello to anybody.

Mend.

"Still fine," Kayla said. "Both of them. Growing like a weed."

Almond looked at Lily. Lily looked back at him, and then she tipped her head, so he would look at the air beside her.

He did.

[Name: not yet given]

[Soul Weight: 4]

"Four," Almond said.

"This morning," said Lily. "I wanted you to see it here, not hear about it."

Big D was waiting in the great hall.

He sat at the long table under the walls of names, with the book open in front of him. He had a pen in his hand.

He did not get up when they came in. He looked at each of them, one at a time, the way he counted people after a fight.

He stopped at Ainen.

"Well?" he said.

"It ate," said Ainen. "Both bowls. And the gatekeeper said thank you. For the bowl you sent."

Big D’s rasp was quiet.

"All of it?"

"Every bite."

"Good," said Big D. He looked back down at his book. "Sit. Food’s coming."

Ainen took the small gray seed out of his pocket. He walked to the big hearth at the end of the hall and found a clay dish on the shelf. He put the seed in the dish and set it on the warm stones beside the fire.

Big D watched him do it.

"That’s the thing?" he asked.

"What’s left of it."

"Warm?"

"Warm," said Ainen. "Warmer every day."

Big D looked at it a while longer. Then he wrote something in the margin of his book and did not say what.

Supper was bread and lentils and a pot of greens from Brightwater’s gardens. It was plain, and there was plenty of it. Saffa and Fraisea served without being asked. Clovelle sat down and put her head on the table and was asleep before the bread went around.

Hessa sat at the end of the bench. She ate with one hand and kept the other over her eyes.

"Still following?" Almond asked her.

"Still following. They’ve stopped for the night. No line, just tents and fires. They’ve put guards out in a ring." She was quiet. "It’s lying down a mile away. It hasn’t moved."

Lily had listened to all of it without a word. Now she turned to Almond.

"Aurelian," she said. "The Theravex people?"

"The same."

"And they still walked east on their own."

"Their Emperor says they aren’t like the others," Almond said.

Lily picked up a piece of bread and tore it in half.

"Everybody says that," she said. "Right up until they are."

Big D had not looked up from his plate.

"How many?" he asked.

"Fourteen thousand."

Big D put down his spoon. He opened the book to a clean page near the back, and he looked at it for a while. Then he closed it again without writing anything.

"Not yet," he said.

When the plates were empty, everybody looked at John.

He had been sitting at the far end of the table with his hands around a cup of hot water.

He looked up and saw them all looking.

"Right," he said. "I did say."

"You did," said Rudra.

John put the cup down. He got up from the bench and walked the whole length of the table, past all of them, to where Big D sat with his book. He stood beside him for a moment.

Then he leaned down and said something into Big D’s ear.

It was short. It was only a name. Nobody else at the table heard it, and nobody tried to.

Big D’s pen did not move for a long time.

Then he wrote it in the book. He wrote it slowly, in his biggest and most careful letters, on a page by itself. When he was done, he closed the book and put his hand flat on the cover.

"Not on the wall," he said.

"No," said John. "Not on the wall. Just there."

"I have it."

"I know," said John. "That’s why I gave it to you."

He went back to his seat and sat down. He picked up the cup of water again. Lily was watching him, and so was Almond. John looked more tired than Almond had ever seen him.

"The first time I came through that Door," John said, "there wasn’t a road."

Nobody moved.

"There was the gap at the far end. And the nothing in between. That was all."

He turned the cup in his hands.

"We didn’t know you had to carry anybody. Nobody had ever told us. So we walked it the way you’d walk a bridge. Each of us on our own feet."

"Who’s we?" Lily asked.

"The ones I came up with." John did not look at her. "A few of us. Not many."

"And they fell," said Rudra.

"One at a time. I heard every one of them go." John’s voice stayed calm. "I didn’t fall. I don’t know why. I kept thinking that if I stopped, I’d forget which way was forward. So I didn’t stop."

Ainen had put his hand over his mouth.

"The gray thing was there," John said. "It was small then. About the size of a cat. It sat beside the road and watched me walk."

"Did it speak to you?" asked Almond.

"Once. It asked me if I would go back for them." John looked down at the water. "I said yes. So I did. I stepped off the road and went out into the nothing to look."

"The footprints," Rudra said quietly.

"That’s where they’re from." John nodded. "I looked for a long time. Longer than this town has had walls. I never found any of them."

He put the cup down.

"But I learned that the nothing holds you, if you know where you’re going. And I learned to hear people when they fall. So when Duskspire started falling, I knew what to do."

The hall had gone quiet. The fire cracked at the far end, beside the clay dish.

Big D spoke first.

"And then?" he said. "When you stopped looking. Where’d you come out?"

John was quiet for a while.

"Not here," he said.

Almond leaned forward.

"What do you mean, not here? The Door only goes one way. It goes here."

"It does now," said John.

Hessa made a sound at the end of the bench.

It was a small sound, a breath pulled in hard. Everybody turned. She had both hands pressed over her eyes now, and her knuckles had gone white.

"It’s up," she said.

Almond was on his feet.

"The thing in the grass?"

"It got up. It walked into their camp. Right past the guards." Hessa’s voice was shaking. "Nobody stopped it. Nobody even looked at it. They’re..."

She stopped.

"Hessa," said Lily. "What are they doing?"

"They’re getting up," Hessa said. "All of them. They’re leaving their tents and walking out of the camp. Every one of them is walking a different way. Out into the dark, on their own." "Nobody is looking at anybody. Mothers are walking away from their children."

Big D had stood up. He had the book under his arm.

"The Emperor?" he asked.

"He’s the only one who isn’t walking. He’s standing in the middle of the camp with his hand on his coat, over the seed." Hessa’s hands were trembling. "He’s calling them by name. One after another. Sevrand’s holding on to his arm. They’re both shouting."

She took a breath.

"And none of them are turning around."