Chapter 863: What She Used to Say

Nobody pushed him.

They sat around Ainen’s fire and waited. The Emperor sat with his hands on his knees. The Sovereign of Voidmere held her shawl closed at the throat. Big D had the book open on his lap and the pen in his hand, but he did not write anything.

John sat on his stone and looked at the fire for a long time.

"She was the oldest of us," he said at last.

Lily was sitting beside Almond. She did not move.

"There were a few of us who climbed together, back then. I told you that." John turned his hands over. "She was the one who kept us going. She carried the bag with the bread in it. She made us eat when we didn’t want to."

Ainen looked up from the pot.

"She was the one who said that," John went on. "Every time we came to a door, or a gate, or a crossing. ’Go quickly. Before they take what you carried.’"

"Who was going to take it?" Almond asked.

"Lots of people, back then." John’s mouth moved, not quite a smile.

"There were always people waiting at the doors. Waiting for climbers to come through tired and stupid, so they could take whatever they had. She’d seen it happen. So she always said it. Go quickly. Don’t stop. Don’t let anyone take it."

"She was right," said Corvin.

"Back then, she was."

The fire cracked. Ainen put another stick on it.

"She was the last one to fall," John said. "On the road. She was right behind me. We were nearly at the gap." He looked down at his hands. "I heard her go. She didn’t scream. She said my name, once, like she was surprised."

Lily reached over and put her hand on Almond’s arm. Almond did not think she knew she had done it.

"She was the closest," John said. "So I looked for her the longest."

"How long?" asked Rudra.

John did not answer that.

Big D spoke for the first time.

"Her name," he said.

John looked at him across the fire.

"I gave you mine," John said. "You can have hers when she’s found. Not before." He paused. "I don’t want it written down as one of the dead."

Big D closed the book.

"Fair," he said.

The Sovereign of Voidmere leaned forward.

"She sounded kind," she said. "On the road. I was not lying. She sounded like she wanted to help us."

"She does," said John. "She thinks she is."

"Then why east?" asked Lily. "Why send people into the grass? Into the Sunder. Into that hollow."

John was quiet.

"I don’t know," he said. "She wouldn’t know about any of that. She never came out of the nothing. She can’t have seen this layer at all."

"Then someone told her," said Lily.

Nobody answered. Hessa, sitting at the edge of the firelight, took her hand away from her eyes and looked north. She did not say anything either.

"The ring of them," Big D said. "All lying out there. Somebody put them there." He looked at John. "And somebody told her where the safe ground was."

"Maybe the same somebody," said Lily.

"Maybe." John stood up. "I’ll ask her."

They all looked at him.

"You’re going out there," Almond said.

"She’s out there. Near the gap. She talks to every kingdom that crosses." John put his hands in his pockets. "There are two kingdoms still to come. When the next one starts across, she’ll be there. And so will I."

"Not alone," said Corvin.

He stood up too. He did it slowly, the way an old man stands, with his white hand held against his chest.

"I held your belt last time," Corvin said. "Nobody else in this layer has done that. I know how it goes."

"Corvin..."

"Don’t Corvin me. You walked into a black door with nothing holding you but me." Corvin’s face had gone red again. "I’m not letting you walk into the dark after some old woman who calls you by your first name, with nobody on the end of you."

John looked at him for a long moment.

"All right," he said.

Corvin blinked.

"All right?"

"All right. Hold my belt." John turned his head. "One more. Two’s all I can take."

Almond got halfway up.

Lily’s hand was still on his arm. She did not pull it back. She did not hold on either. She left it there.

John saw it. He shook his head at Almond.

"You’ve got a promise to keep," he said. "Keep it."

Almond sat down again.

Ainen was already on his feet. He had a cloth bag in his hand, and he was putting bread into it, two loaves and the end of a third.

"Me," he said.

"Ainen," said Almond.

"She carried the bread." Ainen tied the bag shut. "She’s been out there longer than John looked for her. Longer than any of us can think about. Nobody’s fed her that whole time."

He looked at John. "You’ll need someone to hand it to her. I’m good at that."

John looked at the bag in Ainen’s hands.

"Yes," he said quietly. "She’d like you."

The Door brightened an hour after dark.

They all saw it start. The light came down from the top, slow and steady, the color nobody had a name for. All around the ring, people stood up from their fires to look.

"That’s the next one," said Big D.

"Then she’s there now," said John.

He walked to the foot of the Door. Corvin went with him, and Ainen, with the bag of bread over his shoulder.

Big D followed them. He stopped beside John at the edge of the light.

"Bring back her name," he said.

"I will."

"And bring back the cook. And the rude one." Big D’s rasp did not change. "I’m not writing any of you down."

John grinned at him then, quickly, the old grin.

"You’d run out of ink," he said.

Ainen took John’s left arm. Corvin took a fist full of John’s belt at the back, with his good hand, and wrapped the leather twice around his fingers.

"Don’t let go," John said. "Whatever you see, whatever you hear. If she says your name, you don’t answer."

"She doesn’t know my name," said Corvin.

"She’ll learn it," said John. "She’s quick."

They walked into the light.

It was the road again, and the nothing on both sides of it.

But this time the road was full.

Ainen saw them at once. They were people, thousands of them, walking along the pale line of the road toward the gap. They walked in tight groups.

They had their arms around each other’s shoulders, and their hands on each other’s backs. Someone had told them how to carry each other. Nobody was falling.

"The gatekeeper told them," Ainen breathed. "They won’t walk it alone."

"Good," said John. "Come on."

He stepped off the edge of the road.

Ainen’s stomach dropped. He did not fall. There was something under him that he could not see or feel, and it held. Beside him, Corvin made a sound like a man stepping into cold water and swore under his breath.

"Don’t look down," said John.

"There isn’t a down," said Corvin.

"That’s why you don’t look at it."

They walked alongside the road in the dark. The footprints were there again, faint and old, pressed into the nothing. John stepped into them. They were going the other way this time, toward the gap, and John’s feet fit them exactly.

The crowds on the road walked past them on their left. The people on the road did not see them. Ainen could see their faces, tired and frightened and set.

A man carrying a girl on his back. Two old women with their arms linked. A soldier helping a boy with a bandaged leg.

The gap came into sight ahead.

It was a narrow bright crack at the end of the road, the size of a door in a wall. Beyond it there was frosted grass and firelight. Ainen could see it from here. He could almost smell the stew.

Then he heard her.

The voice came from the dark ahead of them, off to the right of the road. It was soft. It was kind. It was tired in a way that made Ainen want to sit down and give it his chair.

"Go east, my loves," it said. "When you come out. Go east, and go quickly."

On the road, the walkers slowed.

They turned their heads. They could hear it. Ainen saw a woman stop and look out into the dark with a puzzled face, as if someone had called to her from another room.

"Before they take what you carried," the voice said gently. "They will take it, at the Door. I’ve seen them. Go east. There’s safe ground there."

Corvin’s hand was white on John’s belt.

"Oi!" he roared at the road. "Don’t listen to her! There’s soup!"

Nobody on the road heard him.

John did not shout. He kept walking. His feet found the old footprints one after another, faster now, and Ainen and Corvin hurried to keep up.

Then Ainen saw her.

She was sitting on the edge of the nothing, right beside the road, with her legs hanging over the dark. She was small.

She was gray all over, like the lost shapes they had seen from far off, and at her edges she was not quite there. She blurred, like a drawing that had been rubbed with a thumb.

There was a bag in her lap. Her hands were folded on it.

She leaned toward the walkers on the road, and called to them again.

"Go quickly," she said. "Don’t let anyone take it."

John stopped walking.

He stood a few steps behind her in the dark. Ainen felt his arm go stiff under his hand. He heard John take a breath, and then another, as if the first one had not been enough.

John said something. It was too quiet for Ainen to catch. It might have been a name.

The small gray figure went still.

Slowly, she turned her head. Her face was gray and blurred, and old, and her eyes were pale. She looked at John for a long time.

Then she smiled.

"Johnny?" she said.