Chapter 860: The Sovereign of Voidmere

Lily saw the light start on the Door at sunset.

She was sitting by Ainen’s fire with a bowl in her lap that Kayla had told her to finish. She looked up, and the great Door was brightening from the top down, slow and steady.

"Somebody’s early," Ainen said.

"Somebody’s always early." Lily put the bowl down. "Who’s here to meet them?"

Ainen looked around the fire. Corvin was half a day north with the Emperor and Almond. The Matriarch was asleep. Clovelle was lying on a blanket with her arm over her eyes, still too tired to fold a step.

"You," said Ainen. "And me. And Marcus."

"Then let’s go and be rude to them," said Lily. "Corvin would want us to."

They came through in the dark.

The first of them came through soon after the first stars. They walked slowly and quietly, in long loose lines, and nobody pushed.

Their robes were gray with a thread of violet at the edges. Many of them walked with their eyes half shut, as if they were listening for something.

Lily stood at the foot of the Door with Marcus beside her.

Voice.

"Welcome," Marcus said into all their heads. "You’re safe. You’re inside a line. Don’t walk out past the white stones. There’s food at the fire."

Some of them stopped and looked at him. Most of them nodded and kept walking, and sat down where they were told.

"Voidmere," Ainen said, when he saw the robes. "That’s Voidmere."

Lily knew the name. Second of the Six Empires, under Skytheum and over everyone else. Their ruler had a title instead of a name, the way the Emperor did.

She heard the title before she saw the ruler.

It went through the crowd of Frosthold and Duskspire soldiers around the ring like wind through grass. People were saying it to each other. Some of them stood up. One of Duskspire’s guards dropped his cup.

"Sovereign," they were saying. "It’s the Sovereign."

Lily turned around.

A woman was walking toward the fire. She was small and gray-haired, with a plain violet shawl over her gray robe. A dozen of her people walked a few steps behind her. She did not look like anything at all to be afraid of.

But every soldier in the ring who had lived in this layer for more than a month had heard rumors about the thing in the north. And every one of them had heard what it was called.

"Marcus," said Lily. "Tell them it’s a title. Before somebody throws a spear at her."

Marcus told them. Slowly, the soldiers sat back down.

The woman in the violet shawl stopped in front of Lily. She had heard all of it. She looked amused.

"I gather I have a bad name here," she said.

"You share it with something," said Lily. "We’ll explain."

"Please do. I have been called many things, but never a monster on the first night." She looked at Lily more closely. "You are Lily of Regalon. Aurelia’s champion."

"I was."

"Mine was Voidmere’s. He never hits anything, so nobody likes fighting him." The Sovereign of Voidmere turned her head. "Where is he? He was right behind me."

A thin man was sitting in the grass a little way off, with his boots in his hand. He was barefoot.

His robe was plain gray, without any violet in it at all. He had put the boots down to look at his own feet in the dirt, and he was smiling at them.

"There," said the Sovereign. "Your feet are fine. Come and meet the people who saved us a bowl."

The wanderer got up. He walked over and nodded to Lily as if they had met yesterday.

"I watched you fight Kael Vantress," he said. "You nearly had him. I’ve thought about it a lot."

"Everyone watched that fight," said Lily.

"Yes. But I was the one taking notes."

Ainen came over with bowls. The Sovereign took hers in both hands and did not eat yet.

"Before I sit at your fire," she said, "I need to ask you something. It’s been bothering me since the road."

"Ask," said Lily.

"Was it one of yours on the road? Who spoke to us?"

Lily went still. "Spoke to you?"

"In the nothing. Not the gatekeeper. The gatekeeper told us we would not walk alone, and that was kind." The Sovereign held the bowl carefully.

"There was another voice. Quieter. It spoke near the end, close to the gap. It said the safe ground was east of the Door, and that we should go there quickly, before the people at the Door took our seed."

Ainen had stopped moving.

"East," Lily said.

"East." The Sovereign looked from her face to Ainen’s. "So it wasn’t you."

"No," said Lily. "It wasn’t us."

Behind her, the wanderer looked down at his bare feet.

"The ground is moving," he said mildly.

Lily looked down.

Nothing moved. The frosted grass lay still under her boots. Then she felt it, faint, through the soles of her feet. It was the soft give of a mattress, or of a dock on the water. The ground was rocking.

"East," said the wanderer. He pointed with his boots.

Lily turned east.

At the eastern edge of the ring, the white stones stood in their long curve, glittering under the stars. Beyond them the open grass ran away into the dark.

Except it was not grass anymore. It was shining.

Water was coming up out of the ground. It was not running from anywhere. It was simply there, rising between the blades of grass, gray and flat. As she watched, the shine spread wider. The grass sank into it. The ground under it was gone.

"Ainen," she said. "Get the old ones and the children to the west side of the ring. Now."

Ainen dropped the bowls and ran.

"Marcus."

"I’ve got it," said Marcus. Voice. "Everyone on the east side, get up and walk west. Walk, don’t run. Leave your things."

The shine reached the white stones.

It crept up to them and around them. Lily watched the nearest stone lean. It tilted, slow as a tree in a soft wind, and the gray water closed around its foot. The light inside it flickered.

"The line," said Kayla. She had come up behind Lily without a sound. "Lily, it’s sinking the line."

"I see it."

Out in the dark, beyond the shining water, something moved.

It was low and long and fast. It came across the flooded grass like a fish coming along the top of a pond, and where it passed, the gray water spread out in wide rings on either side.

Lily could not see its shape. She saw a back, broad and smooth and wet. Then it went under.

The ring of white stones was sinking. Two of them had tipped over now. The water had reached the first Frosthold tents.

Lily walked toward the east.

"Lily," said Kayla.

"Come with me. Hand on my back. Count."

Kayla came. Her hand went flat between Lily’s shoulders.

Mend.

"Both fine."

Lily stopped twenty steps short of the shining edge. The ground under her feet was still solid, but only just. She could feel it trembling.

She held out her hand.

Turnback.

The line ran out from her fingers along the ground. It was pale and thin. It ran north and south in front of the sinking stones, a quarter mile each way.

The water reached it.

The water crossed it.

It turned back.

The gray shine stopped at the line as if it had hit a wall. It sloshed and folded back on itself and went the way it had come. On Lily’s side, the frosted grass stayed grass. On the far side, the flood rolled back east, into the dark.

The white stones stopped leaning.

Something under the water out in the dark let out a long, low sound, like a heavy boat scraping on rocks.

Lily’s arm was shaking.

"Lily," said Kayla.

"How long?"

"Not long. Your heart’s going too fast. The baby’s fine, but you’re not." Kayla’s hand did not move from her back. "You’re holding a line half a mile wide against a lake."

"I know."

"Then let somebody hold the other half."

Lily looked around. There was nobody. Almond was half a day north. Rudra was with him. Big D was with him.

The wanderer was sitting down in the grass beside her, putting his boots on.

"I don’t stop things," he said. "I’ve never stopped anything in my life. But I can send things back." He tied his laces. "The voice gave me a word for it on the way in. I haven’t tried it yet."

"What word?" asked Lily.

"Return."

He stood up. He held out his hand, palm down, a foot above her line. He did not touch it.

"May I?" he asked.

Lily looked at him for a long moment.

"Don’t let go," she said.

"I don’t hold on to things either," he said. "But I’ll try."

Return.

He laid his hand on the air over her line. Lily felt it at once. Half the push came off her arm, the north half, and went into him. He swayed. He set his bare heels and swayed back.

The line held.

Lily drew a breath that went all the way down. The shaking in her arm eased.

"Better," said Kayla. "Not good. Better."

Out on the water, the long smooth back rose again.

It was much closer now. It was bigger, too, than Lily had thought. It rose and kept rising, and gray water poured off its sides.

It was as wide as a house. It had no eyes. On its front there was only a mouth, round and soft and opening slowly.

It did not come at the line.

It turned along it.

It swam north, fast, parallel to the pale thread, the whole length of the wanderer’s half. Then it slowed at the north end of the line, where the wanderer’s half ran out, and Lily understood what it was doing.

"It’s looking for the end," she said.

"Is there an end?" asked the wanderer.

"Every line has an end."

The thing found it.

It swam around the north end of the line, past the last of the light, and into the stretch of ring beyond. There, the white stones were still standing. But they leaned.

Lily could not stretch the line farther. She knew it in her arm and her chest. Kayla’s hand pressed hard against her back.

"No," Kayla said. "No more. That’s it."

The water spread inside the ring on the north side. A Frosthold tent tipped over and slid into it. Somebody screamed.

Then, from far up the north road, came a voice Lily knew.

It was hoarse and out of breath. It was the voice of a man who had run half a day in the dark, and was still running.

"Lily!"

She turned her head.

Down the north road came a long column at a run. In the front was Almond. Behind him came Big D, and Rudra, and Corvin with his arm held against his chest. Hessa ran among them with her hand still over her eyes, calling out the turns.

Rudra was already pulling off his coat as he ran.

"Is that water?" he shouted. "Tell me that’s water."

"It’s water," Lily called.

Rudra dropped his coat in the grass. He did not slow down.

"Good," he said. "I’ve been waiting all my life for one of these to be water."

He went straight off the road, into the flood, and under.