Chapter 857: Walking Apart

Sevrand had grabbed the Emperor’s arm without thinking.

It happened when the guards stood up. All twelve of them stood at once around the Emperor’s fire, and they did not look at him. They laid down their sticks and their cups and walked out into the dark, each in a different direction.

Sevrand had reached out to stop the nearest one. He caught the Emperor’s sleeve instead.

Now he could not remember why he was holding it.

He looked at the man beside him. Gray hair. Long white coat. A tired face lit orange by the fire. Sevrand had served this man for thirty years, and he looked at him now and felt nothing at all. He might have been a stranger at a market.

His hand stayed on the sleeve. His hand did not seem to know it should let go.

"Archon," the Emperor said. "Do you see it?"

Sevrand saw it.

It was walking through the middle of the camp, between the tents. It was long and low, the size of a cart, the color of dry earth. Its back was ridged with old grass that had grown up out of it while it lay in the field.

It had no face. Its head was a blunt, smooth lump that swung gently from side to side as it walked.

Nobody was running from it. Nobody was even looking at it.

They were walking away from each other.

A cook walked out of a tent and passed his own wife without turning his head. Two brothers who had shared a blanket every night of the march got up and went in opposite directions.

A guard put his spear down on the grass, neatly, the way he had been taught. Then he walked out of the firelight and did not look back.

Sevrand saw a woman set her little girl down. She set her down gently, on her feet. Then she straightened and walked east.

The girl stood still for a moment. Then she turned and walked west, alone, in her too-big white coat.

It was the girl from the soup line.

Sevrand’s stomach turned over. He did not know why it mattered. He did not know why anything mattered. But the sick feeling stayed.

The Emperor pulled his arm free.

He did not walk away. He took one step toward the fire, so the whole camp could see him, and he lifted his chin.

Order.

"Hold!"

The word went out across the camp like a slap. Every walking person stopped in mid-step. Fourteen thousand people stood frozen in the dark grass, facing every way at once.

Blood ran out of the Emperor’s nose.

He did not wipe it. He stood there with his teeth clenched and held them, and Sevrand could see what it cost. His whole body shook with it, like a man holding a door shut in a storm.

The long low thing in the middle of the camp stopped walking. Its blunt head turned toward the fire.

Then the Emperor’s knees bent, and the word ran out of him, and fourteen thousand people stepped forward again as if nothing had happened.

The Emperor caught himself on one hand. He was breathing hard.

"Names," he said. "They answer to names. That rude king at the Door did it on the road, with the thing that ate memory."

He got up and called them.

"Halden. Halden, come back here. Merrow. Ysolde. Captain Brask, you will turn around this instant."

He knew them all. Sevrand had always known that about him. He knew the cooks and the grooms and the children of the grooms. He called every name as if he were calling roll in a palace yard.

Not one of them turned.

Sevrand looked at the thing in the middle of the camp. It had lain down again. It lay in the trampled grass with its head on its front feet, like a dog by a fire. It was watching them.

He had fought for thirty years. He knew what a thing looked like when it was waiting for the fight to end on its own.

He let go of everything he was holding and stepped toward it.

At once, he wanted to walk away.

The pull was gentle. It was the feeling of the end of a long day, when the company is fine but you would rather be alone. East looked good. Anywhere looked good, so long as nobody was in it.

Sevrand set his feet and did not go.

He reached inside himself for the thing the voice had shown him on the road. Three words had been written under his weight. The first of them was the only one he understood.

Spear.

Light came into his hand. It was not the great spear he had thrown over Theravex, which could gut a warship. It was thin and white and shaking, and it hurt to hold. It felt like lifting a cart on his bare back.

He threw it anyway.

It flew straight, and it hit the thing behind the head, and it broke.

It broke into white dust on that dry-earth hide. It left a small pale scratch, no longer than a finger.

The blunt head lifted. It did not have eyes. Sevrand felt it look at him anyway.

The pull came again, much stronger.

His feet turned. He did not tell them to. He watched them turn east, and he felt himself take one step, and then another.

There was no one in the east. That was the good thing about it. He would walk until there was no one left to see.

A hand closed around his wrist.

It was hard and thin and cold. It held on.

"Archon," said the Emperor. "Stand still."

Sevrand stood still.

They stood together by the dying fire, the Emperor holding his wrist and Sevrand looking down at the hand. He still could not feel anything about the man.

But he could feel the hand. It was there, and it was holding on, and that was enough to keep his feet in place.

All around them, the camp emptied out into the dark.

In Brightwater, Ainen was on his feet before Hessa finished speaking.

He had gone pale. He stood with one hand pressed flat on his chest, over his heart, the way he had stood at the foot of the Door.

"They’re going," he said. "My guests. They’re all going."

Rudra was beside him. "The ones who ate the soup?"

"All of them. The threads are stretching." Ainen shut his eyes. "Thin. Like pulled dough. They’re going every way at once."

"How many ate?" asked Big D.

"Four thousand. A little more." Ainen opened his eyes. "Not enough."

"It’s four thousand," Big D said. "Start there."

Ainen looked down the long table at the warm hearth. The clay dish sat on the stones beside the fire, and the small gray seed sat in it.

He took out the brown orb.

Open Door.

Anyone who has eaten at your table can always find their way back to it, wherever they are.

He did not raise his voice. He spoke the way he spoke over a pot.

"You left your bowls," he said. "The soup’s still on. Come back to the table."

Nothing happened that anyone in the hall could see.

Then Hessa sat up straight on the bench.

"Some of them are stopping," she said. "In the grass. Here and there. They’re stopping, and they’re turning around."

"Which way?" asked Almond.

"West." Hessa’s hand was white over her eyes. "Toward the Door. Toward the fire where the soup was. They’re still walking alone. They aren’t looking at each other. But they’re all walking the same way now."

Ainen sat down hard on the bench. Saffa put her hand on his back.

"The little girl," Hessa said. "In the white coat. She was already going west. She hasn’t stopped."

Nobody said anything for a moment.

"The rest?" Lily asked.

"Still walking out. East, north, south. Every way but back." Hessa took a long breath. "The Emperor’s watching his people walk past him toward the Door. The ones who ate. He’s still holding the Archon’s wrist."

"Does he know why they turned?"

"I think so," Hessa said. "He’s stopped calling names."

Lily pushed her bench back and stood up.

Almond knew what she was going to say before she said it. He saw it in the way she put her hand on the table.

"No," he said.

"Turnback," Lily said. "Draw a line. What crosses it goes back the way it came." She looked at him steadily. "They’re all walking outward, Almond. Out across a line. And every one of them comes back."

"You promised Kayla you’d use the orb and not the raw imprint."

"It is the orb."

"You promised me you’d be careful."

"I am being careful. I’m asking first." Lily did not raise her voice. "And you promised to stay with me. You can keep that one. Stay with me. I’m going."

Almond opened his mouth, then shut it again.

Kayla had stood up too. She was rolling down her sleeves.

"Then I’m going," she said. "I’m checking her every hour. If I say she stops, she stops."

"Agreed," said Lily.

Big D closed his book. He put it under his arm and stood.

"I’m going," he said.

Lily looked at him. "Of course you are."

"You told Kayla I’d follow you around for nine months." Big D tucked the book tighter under his arm. "I’m following."

"Clovelle," Almond said.

Clovelle had lifted her head off the table. Her eyes were still half shut, and there was a line on her cheek from the wood.

"I heard," she said. "I can be at the Door by dark tomorrow if I don’t stop. I’ll fall over after."

"Then we’ll carry you."

They left at first light. There were nine hands in the chain: Clovelle at the front, then Almond with Lily’s hand in his, Big D, Kayla, Rudra, Ainen, Hessa and Marcus.

John walked them to the south gate.

"I’ll mind the fire," he said. "And the dish."

"You’re not coming?" Rudra asked.

"Not this time." John looked east, past the white stones. "Things out there don’t like coming near me. You want this one to come near you."

Clovelle folded the ground all day and did not stop. She folded at Emberfall’s line without slowing down, and at Greywatch she only stopped long enough to drink. By late afternoon she was gray in the face, and Almond and Rudra were holding her up between them.

Hessa watched east the whole way.

"The ones going west are spread out over miles," she said. "Some have walked all day. They don’t stop to eat. They don’t look at each other." She was quiet. "Two of them didn’t get up this morning. Something found them in the night."

Big D said nothing. He opened the book on his knee at the next stop and wrote down what she could see of their faces.

They came over the last rise at dusk, and the Door stood ahead of them, huge and dark against the sky. Frosthold’s white stones glittered in a ring around its foot.

Clovelle folded them one last time, to the edge of the line. Then her knees went, and Rudra caught her.

Corvin was already walking out to meet them. He looked at Clovelle, and at Lily, and at the book under Big D’s arm.

"Who died?" he asked.

"Nobody yet," said Almond. "Not many."

"Then why do you all look like that?"

Almond told him. Corvin listened with his arms crossed. When Almond finished, Corvin turned and looked east into the dark grass.

"Nobody’s ever been east," he said quietly. "I told him."

Hessa made a sound behind them.

She was standing with her hand over her eyes. She was not looking at the far camp anymore. She was looking at something much closer.

"It’s up," she said.

Almond turned. "The thing in the grass?"

"Greywatch has an old story about one like it. A thing that lies by the road and parts people." Hessa did not lower her hand. "They called it the Sunder."

"Where is it?"

"It got up an hour ago," she said. "It isn’t staying with the ones who walked east. It’s following the ones walking west." She lowered her hand and looked at him. "It’s coming after the ones who turned back."

"How far?"

"A day behind them. Maybe less." Hessa’s voice dropped. "Almond, they’re walking to the Door. Ainen called them here."

She looked past him, at the ring of white stones, at twenty thousand people around their cook fires.

"It’s coming here too."