Chapter 858: The Emperor’s List

Everyone at the fire looked at him. Corvin had already started shouting for his captains, and he stopped with his mouth open.

"It’s not coming in here," Big D said. "The stones keep out its body. They don’t keep out what it does." He looked around at the cook fires, at twenty thousand people eating their supper inside the ring.

"The Lull killed sixty thousand in Brightwater from outside the line. We meet it out there."

"Where?" asked Rudra.

"Between it and them." Big D nodded east. "Before it reaches the soup people."

Ainen did not go with them.

"Somebody has to keep the soup on," he said. He was already pulling pots off the cart. "They’re walking to a table. There has to be a table when they get here."

"You’ll be alone at the fire," said Almond.

"I won’t be alone," Ainen said. "I’ll have twenty thousand people and a ladle."

They went out at first light.

Clovelle could not fold a step, so they walked. Corvin came with three hundred of Frosthold in white furs, and the Wraith came with fifty of Duskspire who could fight in the dark.

Ivar walked at the front with his Dark Lamp in his pocket, in case the night caught them.

By midmorning they met the first of the walkers.

He was a young man in a dirty white coat. He came over a low rise in the grass, walking west with his eyes fixed on the Door. His boots were gone. His feet were bleeding.

He walked straight past Corvin without seeing him.

"Let him go," Big D said. "He’s going to dinner."

More came after him all day. They came one at a time, a hundred steps apart, sometimes a mile apart. They did not speak.

They did not look at each other. But they were all walking the same way, toward the far fire and the man with the ladle.

Hessa counted them as they went by.

"That’s the one," she said in the afternoon.

A small girl came over the rise. She wore a white coat so big the sleeves hung past her hands. Her face was gray with dust. She walked past the whole column of Frosthold soldiers without turning her head.

Corvin bent down and picked her up.

She did not fight him. She did not look at him either. She kept her face turned toward the Door, past his shoulder.

Corvin handed her to the biggest soldier he had.

"Take her to the cook," he said. "Carry her the whole way. If her feet touch the ground, I’ll hear about it."

The Emperor found them an hour before dusk.

He and Sevrand came out of the grass from the east, walking side by side. Each of them had his hand clamped around the other’s wrist.

Their faces were gray. They had walked for a day and a half without sleep, following the long low shape of the thing at a distance.

The Emperor stopped when he saw who was waiting.

His eyes went past Almond. Past Big D and Corvin. They stopped on Lily.

"Champion," he said.

Lily inclined her head. "Your Majesty."

"I put the ring crown on your head. In my own arena." His voice was rough. "You beat the man beside you in the final. My people cheered for an hour."

"I remember."

"I did not know you were here." He swayed a little on his feet. Sevrand held his wrist tighter. "I would have listened."

"You’ll listen now," said Lily.

The Emperor looked at her. Then he nodded once.

"It is following the ones who turned back," he said. "Only those. The ones walking every other way, it leaves alone. Why?"

"Because they’re going somewhere together," Big D said. "Same table. Same fire." He jerked his head east. "It doesn’t like that."

Hessa pressed her hand over her eyes.

"It’s over the next rise," she said. "Walking. It’ll be here before the light’s gone."

Lily walked out into the grass in front of them all.

She stopped about forty steps out. She looked left and right along the open ground, measuring it. Then she held out her hand, and Almond took it.

"Don’t let go," she said.

"I won’t."

Turnback.

A line ran out from her free hand across the grass. It was pale and thin, like a drawn thread.

It ran a quarter mile to the north and a quarter mile to the south, and the grass on either side of it bent a little, the way grass bends when the wind changes.

Kayla stood behind her with one hand on her back.

Mend.

"Fine," Kayla said. "Both fine. I’m checking again in a minute."

The Sunder came over the rise at sunset.

It walked slowly, with its blunt head swinging. It was bigger than Almond had pictured from Hessa’s words. The grass growing out of its back was as tall as a man. It walked like something that had never once needed to hurry.

Then the pull hit them.

It was quiet and gentle. Almond felt it in his chest first, a soft wish to be somewhere else. He looked at the people around him, and for a moment they were only faces.

Big D was a broad shape with a book. Corvin was a loud old man. Lily’s hand in his was a hand.

A Frosthold soldier laid down his spear and walked north.

Then another. Then six of Duskspire’s fifty walked away into the dusk, each in a different direction.

"Helm," Rudra said through his teeth.

True Heading.

He planted himself facing east, facing the Sunder.

"That way," he said. "Everybody behind me. That way, and nowhere else."

The soldiers who had not yet walked stopped. Their feet turned back east, behind Rudra. They could not be turned from the heading he had chosen. Their faces were still blank, but they stood.

The Sunder reached Lily’s line.

It stepped over it.

And it turned around.

Its whole body swung, mid-step, and walked back the way it had come. It took three steps east before it understood. Then it stopped, and turned, and came at the line again.

It crossed. It turned back.

It crossed. It turned back.

"It can’t get through," Corvin said.

"It doesn’t need to," said Big D.

The pull was coming across the line in waves now, stronger every time the Sunder pressed against it. The parting it sent out was crossing the line too.

Then the parting turned back.

Almond saw it happen. The pull went out across the pale thread, and the thread sent it home again, back into the Sunder.

The Sunder shuddered.

A clod of dry earth fell off its side and rolled away into the grass. Then another. The tall grass on its back leaned apart, each stalk away from the next.

A crack ran down its flank. The pieces of it were trying to walk away from each other.

It made its first sound then. It was a long, low groan like a heavy door opening.

Lily’s hand was shaking in Almond’s.

"Kayla," Almond said.

"Fine," said Kayla. "She’s tired. The baby’s fine. Keep going."

The Sunder stopped pushing at the line. It stood still on the far side and lowered its head, and the pull changed.

It was not a wave anymore. It was one thin, hard thread, and it was aimed at Almond.

Almond felt his fingers loosen on Lily’s hand.

He did not tell them to. He looked down at the hand in his and did not know whose it was. East looked good. The open grass on the other side of the line looked empty and clean, and nobody would be in it.

His hand opened.

Lily’s slipped out of it.

"Almond Emberthrone Requiem," said Big D.

Keeper of Names.

The rasp was right behind him. It was quiet and flat, the way Big D read the names on the wall.

"Lily’s husband," Big D said. "Father of the one that isn’t born yet. Brightwater’s. Mine."

Almond knew who he was.

He came back into himself all at once, like a man waking from a fall. He was standing in the grass. His hand was empty. Lily was looking at him from a step away, and her face was white.

"Hold her hand," Big D said. "Then go cut that thing."

Almond took Lily’s hand again. He held it hard.

Then he looked across the line at the Sunder.

There was a scratch behind its head. It was small and pale and no longer than a finger. Something had marked it once.

"Sevrand," said Almond. "That yours?"

"Mine," said Sevrand.

Almond could not cross the line. He did not need to. The line ran a quarter mile to the north, and the Sunder stood ten steps from it, pressed close to keep its pull going.

He let go of Lily’s hand one last time.

"Big D."

"I have you," said Big D. "Go."

Almond ran north along the line. He felt the pull reach for him and he heard Big D say his name again, low and steady, every few steps. He came around the end of the line and turned south, and the Sunder’s blunt head swung to find him.

Quiet Edge.

Sever.

He did not make a sound. The cut gave no warning. Almond’s hand came down on the pale scratch behind its head, and Sever went into the old mark and through it, and through everything that held the Sunder together.

It came apart.

It did not fall. Every piece of it walked away from every other piece. The earth went one way and the grass went another, and its head rolled away into the dusk by itself. After a moment, there was nothing left standing but a heap of dry soil.

In the middle of the soil lay a small round stone, gray and smooth. It was warm.

The pull was gone.

Sevrand walked over the line and bent down and picked up the stone. He looked at Almond.

"Keep it," Almond said. "You marked it first."

Out in the dark, the Frosthold soldier who had walked north stopped. He turned around, looked at the empty grass, and shouted for his captain.

Lily sat down in the grass. Kayla went down beside her with both hands on her.

"Fine," Kayla said. Her voice cracked on it. "Both of you. Fine."

Almond knelt in front of Lily and put his forehead against hers.

"You let go," Lily said.

"Big D didn’t."

"No," said Lily. "He doesn’t."

The Emperor was standing at the line with Sevrand. He had let go of the Archon’s wrist at last. He looked out east, into the dark, where ten thousand of his people were scattered alone across miles of grass.

"They are free of it now," he said. "But they are alone, in the dark, with no idea where anyone is."

"Marcus," said Almond.

Marcus stepped forward. "Tell me what to say."

The Emperor turned to him. Then he looked at Big D, at the book under his arm.

"I know their names," the Emperor said. "All of them. Every soldier and every cook. I have read the rolls every morning for forty years."

"Read them," Big D said. "I’ll say them after you. Then none of them forget whose they are."

Voice.

The Emperor read the first name.

Marcus carried each name out into the dark, into the head of the one it belonged to. And Big D said each one again after the Emperor, slowly, in his flat rasp.

"Come to the fire," the Emperor told each of them. "Walk west. Someone is waiting."

They read all night. Corvin built a fire on the spot so the walkers would have a light to walk toward. One by one, out of the dark, the Aurelians came in.

By the third day, they had found all of them they were going to find.

Thirteen thousand and twelve came back to the Door. Nine hundred and eighty-eight did not. Most had been found by other Enders in the first night, alone in the grass. A few were never found at all.

Big D wrote them down. The Emperor read the names to him himself.

When it was done, the Emperor came to the foot of the Door. Ainen was still at the fire. He looked as if he had not slept since Brightwater.

The Emperor held out his hand for a bowl.

Ainen filled it. The Emperor ate it standing up. Then he set the bowl down and took the seed out of his coat. It was white and gold and the size of an egg.

"Where is the nearest gap in your road?" he asked.

Corvin made a noise.

"Everybody’s road," he said.

"Everybody’s road," the Emperor agreed. "Where?"

That night Hessa sat up on the white stones with her hand over her eyes. She said she wanted to look east one more time, to be sure no one was left.

She was quiet for a long time. Then Almond heard her breath catch.

"Almond."

He came and sat beside her. "What is it?"

"I went wider," Hessa said. "Past where the Aurelians walked. I wanted to see what else is out there." Her hand was shaking. "There are more."

"More Sunders?"

"I don’t know what they are. They’re lying in the grass. The grass has grown over all of them." "One to the north. One to the south. One far out to the west. One in the east, past the river."

She lowered her hand. Her eyes were wet from looking.

"They’re in a ring, Almond. Miles out. All the way around the Door."

Almond looked up at the great dark Door above them. Four kingdoms were still waiting on the other side of it.

"Somebody put them there," Hessa said.