Chapter 862: Someone He Went Back For

Ainen set the bowl at the foot of the Door an hour after sunrise.

It was the same as last time. A plain wooden bowl, stew and a heel of bread, set on the frosted grass where the light fell. He knelt beside it and took out the brown orb.

Open Door.

"It’s me," he said into the light. "I’m sorry to call you up again so soon. We need to ask you something."

Almond stood behind him with Lily. Big D was there, and Corvin, and the Emperor, and the Sovereign of Voidmere in her violet shawl. Most of the ring had come to watch. Nobody spoke.

The light on the Door flickered.

The small gold thing came out of it at a walk. It was the size of a fox, as before, part animal and part flame. But it did not flicker now. It was solid and bright, and it walked across the grass like something that had slept well.

It bent its head to the bowl and ate. Then it looked up at Ainen with its one old eye.

"Host," it said. Its voice was still small, but it was clear. "You are well."

"I’m well. You look better."

"I am better. You saw to that." The eye moved over the crowd and stopped on the wet field of mud where the lake had been. "Something has happened here."

"A lot of things have happened here," said Ainen. "That’s why I called."

He told it. He told it plainly, the way he would tell someone what was in a pot. The Sunder lying in Aurelia’s way.

The Soother on the road. The thing in the east that ended the ground. The ring of them around the Door, placed miles out, like a net.

Then he told it about the voice.

The gatekeeper listened without moving. When he finished, it was quiet for so long that Corvin shifted his feet.

"No," it said. "Nothing speaks on my road but me."

"The Emperor heard it," Ainen said. "And the Sovereign. Two kingdoms."

"I believe them." The eye turned to the Emperor, and then to the Sovereign. "But it was not on my road. I know every step of my road. I would know."

"Then where was it?" asked Big D.

The gatekeeper looked at him.

"My road has two sides," it said. "Beside it, there is the nothing. I cannot see into the nothing. I never could. Nothing that is mine goes there."

It paused. "Something could stand beside my road and speak across the edge of it. If it spoke softly enough, the walkers would think it was me."

The crowd shifted. Somebody at the back said something under their breath.

"Who can stand in the nothing?" Lily asked.

"I know of one," said the gatekeeper. "The Walker."

Every head turned to Corvin. Corvin had gone red.

"Don’t," he said. "Don’t any of you look at me like that."

"Nobody said anything," said Almond.

"You were thinking it." Corvin jabbed his stiff white finger at the gatekeeper. "I’ve known that boy longer than you’ve all been alive. He steals my wine. He laughs at my arm. He’s the most annoying man in four layers."

He took a breath. "And he walked into a black door after Duskspire with nothing holding him but my hand on his belt. It’s not him. He’s never told anybody to hurry in his life."

The gatekeeper made the low rolling sound that was its laugh.

"I did not say it was the Walker," it said. "I said he is the one I know of."

It looked back at the light on the Door.

"He is not the only one who ever stepped off my road," it said. "He is only the one who came back."

Nobody said anything after that for a while.

"Clovelle," said Almond.

Clovelle had slept for most of two days. She was sitting up by the fire with a bowl in her lap. She put it down.

"Brightwater?" she said.

"Bring John."

"That’s three days there and back. Maybe a little less." She was already getting up. "I’ll take Marcus. If John won’t come, Marcus can shout at him."

The gatekeeper watched her go.

"Host," it said to Ainen. "Tell the Walker something for me."

"What?"

"Tell him I am sorry," it said. "I never knew where they went."

Then it turned and walked back into the light.

Big D took the south one while they waited.

He did not ask anyone. On the second morning, he got up, put the book in his coat, and picked out the people he wanted.

Corvin came, with his new orb. Sevrand came, and the wanderer, and sixty soldiers from four kingdoms who had asked. Kayla came, because Big D asked her to.

Almond did not come. Big D had looked at him once across the fire, and then at Lily, and that had been the end of it.

They found it at noon.

It lay in a low wide valley south of the Door. From the ridge, it looked like a field of gray bushes. They were low and thick and covered in long pale thorns, and they ran down the valley for half a mile.

"That’s it," Kayla said. Hessa had told her where to look. "The whole thing."

"What does it end?" asked Sevrand.

"Hessa couldn’t tell. It doesn’t move."

Big D looked at the bushes for a long time.

"Something’s lying in the middle," he said.

There were bones in the middle of the valley. Big D could see them from the ridge. They were old and white, a lot of them, scattered among the thorns.

"Nobody walks into thorns," said Corvin. "Not even a fool."

"They do if it doesn’t hurt," said Big D.

He went down first, alone, and stopped at the edge of the gray bushes. He reached out and put his hand on a thorn. He pushed until it went in.

He felt nothing.

He pulled his hand back and looked at it. A long thin line of blood ran down his palm. There was no sting. There was no ache. There was only the red line, and his hand, which felt like it always felt.

"Pain," Big D said. "It ends pain."

He came back up the slope.

"You walk in. You get scratched. You don’t feel it. You keep walking, because it doesn’t hurt." He held up his hand. "By the middle, you’re cut to pieces and bleeding out, and you don’t know it until you fall down."

"Then don’t go in," said Corvin.

"Wasn’t going to." Big D nodded at the wanderer. "It’s not going to come out, either. So we make it."

The wanderer looked at the thorns, and then at Big D.

"I don’t stop things," he said. "I’ve told everyone that."

"I know." Big D picked up a rock the size of his head. "I’m not asking you to stop anything."

He threw the rock into the bushes.

The thorns moved.

The whole field moved at once. Every bush whipped toward the place where the rock had landed, and a hundred long pale thorns drove into the ground there. Then they whipped out again.

The bushes rose up off the ground a little, all together, and Big D saw the body underneath them for the first time. It was gray and flat and wide, like a great crab, and the bushes grew out of its back.

It came up the slope at them.

It was fast. Its thorns lashed out ahead of it, long and thin as whips, and the first soldier it reached took one across the face and kept standing. He did not even blink. Blood ran down into his collar.

"Back!" Big D roared. "Everybody back! Kayla!"

Mend.

Kayla’s hand was on the soldier’s shoulder. "Cheek, to the bone. Get him up the hill."

The thorns lashed again. Corvin set his feet in front of the line.

Cold Shoulder.

"I don’t like you either," he told it.

The soldiers behind him held their ground. They did not run. Their guard stayed up, and their eyes stayed sharp. When the thorns came, they ducked.

The wanderer walked out in front of all of them.

He did not raise his hands. He did not brace. He stood there loosely, barefoot on the grass, while the whole thorn field came whipping up the slope at him.

Return.

The first thorn hit him.

It did not go in. It slid off him, and bent, and went back the way it had come, twice as fast. It drove into the gray body under the bushes, right up to the root.

The thing did not flinch. It could not feel it either.

More thorns came. The wanderer did not move. Each one that reached him went back into the thing that had thrown it. In a few seconds, the gray body was stuck full of its own thorns, and it was still coming. It still did not know.

Then its legs went.

It did not slow down first. It ran straight up the slope, full speed, full of its own spines, and its legs gave out under it all at once. It slid. It stopped at the wanderer’s feet.

Sevrand stepped past him.

Spear.

The thin white spear of light came into his hand. It was still weak. It was still the bare imprint, and his face went tight as he held it.

He drove it down into the gray body, right where the thorns grew thickest, right through the place where one of them had already opened the way.

The thing lay still.

The thorns on its back went slack and fell flat, one after another, until the bushes were only bushes.

Down in the valley, the old bones lay where they were.

"How many hurt?" Big D asked.

Kayla went down the line with her hands out.

"Nine," she said. "Two bad. The face, and a woman with a thorn through her thigh who’s been standing on it this whole time." She looked up. "Nobody dead."

Big D let out his breath.

He looked at the wanderer, who was sitting down in the grass again, picking a thorn out of his sleeve.

"You never block," Big D said.

"No."

"Why?"

The wanderer thought about it.

"Because then it’s my fight," he said. "This way it’s always theirs."

Clovelle came back with John on the third evening.

They came up the road in the last of the light, Clovelle and Marcus on either side, John in the middle with his hands in his pockets. He was carrying the clay dish under one arm with a cloth over it.

He handed the dish to Ainen.

"Still warm," he said. "Warmer, if anything. I kept the fire going."

"Thank you."

"Clovelle told me on the way." John looked around at the faces at the fire. "Something on the road. A voice."

The Sovereign of Voidmere stood up. She looked at him for a long moment, the way she had looked at everyone since she came out of the Door, as if she were listening for something.

"You’re the Walker," she said.

"Some days."

"Then you’ll want to know what it sounded like." She held her shawl closed. "It sounded kind. It sounded tired, as if it had walked a long way and was glad to see somebody. It sounded like somebody’s grandmother."

John’s hands had gone still in his pockets.

"What did it say?" he asked. "The exact words."

The Sovereign closed her eyes.

"’Go east,’" she said. "’Go quickly. Before they take what you carried.’"

John did not move.

Almond had seen John’s face do many things. He had seen it laugh at the end of the world. He had seen it grin at an Archon with a spear in his fingers. He had never seen it go blank.

"John," Ainen said gently. "The gatekeeper asked me to tell you something. It said it was sorry. It said it never knew where they went."

John sat down on the nearest stone.

He sat there for a long time with his elbows on his knees, looking at the fire.

"Who is it?" Lily asked.

John did not look up.

"Someone I went back for," he said.