Chapter 875: Seeds on the Road

Big D counted at sunrise.

He did it the way he always did, walking the ring with the book under his arm and his eyes moving over every face.

It took him most of the morning. There were six kingdoms packed inside Frosthold’s line now, and Ainen’s fire was burning in the middle of all of them.

When he was done, he came back to the fire and sat down.

"Well?" said Corvin.

"Nobody," said Big D.

He did not open the book. He put it on his knee and left it shut.

Corvin looked at him for a while. Then he poured him a cup from the kettle, which had been stewing since midnight, and Big D drank it without complaining.

By noon, the leaders were sitting in the circle of flat stones again.

It looked different this time. Nobody was afraid. Everybody was tired. The Emperor had his coat off, which Almond had never seen. The Sovereign of Voidmere had fallen asleep against the wanderer’s shoulder and nobody had the heart to wake her.

"Four seeds," said Big D. "Still in pockets. Duskspire. Voidmere. Vaelmourn. Ravengard."

The Matriarch held up a small black seed between two fingers. It was the size of a cherry stone and as dark as a hole.

"I know where mine goes," she said.

"Where?"

She pointed at the ground beside her feet. Then she pointed across the walled fire at Corvin.

"Beside him," she said. "We crossed on his back. We’ll live next to him."

Corvin went red.

"There’s no room," he said. "The ring’s full."

"Not in your ring. Next to it." The Matriarch did not smile, but her voice was dry. "Like Skytheum and Brightwater. Lily told me. The stones hold hands."

Corvin opened his mouth. Then he shut it.

"Fine," he said. "But your people stop stealing my firewood."

"We haven’t been stealing your firewood."

"Then start," said Corvin. "So I’ve got something to complain about."

They planted it that afternoon.

The Matriarch walked out past the western stones with all of Duskspire behind her, nine thousand of them in gray and black. She did not go far. She stopped thirty steps past the line, where the frosted grass ended, and knelt.

"We kept to our own shadows," she said to the seed. "Every one of us, on our own, for longer than I’ve been alive. Be something else now."

She pressed it into the earth.

What came up was a deep soft dark, like the shade under a tree in summer. It ran out across the grass in a ring, and black stones rose up along it.

They were black all the way through, but warm to touch. Where they met Frosthold’s ring, the white stones and the black leaned together into one row.

Every stone in that row was gray. It was not the gray of the Sovereign’s quiet. It was the gray of a winter sky just before snow.

A shoot came up beside the Matriarch’s knee. It was black, with one leaf.

Corvin stood at the joined stones with his arms crossed and looked at the gray row for a long time.

"Ugly," he said.

"Yes," said the Matriarch.

"I like it."

The next morning, the other three kingdoms started north.

They went together, all of them in one long column on the road. Voidmere was in front, then Vaelmourn, then Ravengard at the back. Almond walked with them, with Big D and Rudra and Kael.

Corvin came, because Corvin said nobody else could be trusted to be rude to them on the way. Ivar came because Corvin told him to.

Lily did not come. She stood at the north stones of Frosthold’s line with Kayla beside her and watched them go.

"Clovelle’s taking me home today," she said to Almond. "Ainen and Kayla too. Then she comes back for you. Then you stay."

"Then I stay."

"I’ll be counting," said Lily. "I’m as bad as Big D now."

Voidmere planted first.

The Sovereign of Voidmere chose a low hill on the road between the Aurelian line and Greywatch. It was the only empty ground on that stretch, half a day’s walk each way from a sanctuary.

She walked up it barefoot, because the wanderer had told her it felt nice, and planted her seed at the top.

It was violet. It came up in a ring of white stones with violet light inside them, and the shoot was the color of a bruise.

"Pretty," said the wanderer, looking at his feet in the new grass.

"You think everything is pretty," said the Sovereign.

"Most things are."

Vaelmourn went on past Greywatch to the long empty stretch beyond it.

That was where the road was worst. It was two days from Greywatch to Emberfall’s line, and two more from Emberfall to Brightwater. Big D had always said the road needed a light every couple of days. Now it would have one.

The woman in dark green planted Vaelmourn’s seed on the morning of the second day, beside a stream, in the middle of the first long stretch.

She did not say anything to it. She knelt and pressed it in and stood up again, and watched the green-gold stones come up out of the ground. Then she turned to Almond.

"That’s one gap," she said. "Ravengard wants the other."

"Between Emberfall and Brightwater?"

"Yes." She looked back down the column. "Their lord says he wants the one closest to you. He says if he’s going to live in this layer, he wants to be near the people who know what they’re doing."

"We don’t know what we’re doing," said Almond.

"He doesn’t know that," she said. "Don’t tell him."

Ravengard’s lord was a heavy man with a black beard and big scarred hands. He did not talk much. He walked at the back of his people the whole way, and when anyone fell behind, he picked them up and carried them until they could walk again.

Almond liked him at once.

They reached the middle of the last stretch late on the third day.

There was a low rocky rise beside the road there, with a few bent trees on top of it. It was the obvious place. It was high ground, close to water, and the right distance from both lines.

Hessa had come out from Brightwater with Clovelle at noon to meet them. She stood at the bottom of the rise with her hand over her eyes.

"Wait," she said.

Everybody stopped.

"There’s something on the top. On the big rock, under the trees." Hessa’s voice was calm. "It’s round and black. It’s sitting still."

Almond knew it before she said it.

"A Dimmer," said Corvin. "Of course it’s a Dimmer. The one thing nobody’s got a counter for."

"I’ve got a counter for it," said Ivar.

Everyone looked at the pale-haired boy.

"Dark Lamp," Ivar said. He held up his orb. "You and those beside you can see in any darkness. I’ve done it before. On the march with you."

"That was a small one," said Big D.

"Then I’ll need to stand closer."

The light was already going.

It was not the sunset. Almond felt it at once. The day was going out like a lamp being turned down, from the top of the rise outward, and the color went out of everything first.

The trees turned gray. The grass went black. Then the sky above them dimmed, and the column on the road went dark, and someone in Ravengard’s ranks cried out.

There were sounds in the dark. They were small and quick, a lot of them, the tapping of many legs on rock.

"Hunters," said Hessa. "Thirty. Coming down the rise."

Dark Lamp.

Almond could see.

Everything was gray and flat, as if drawn in charcoal. But he could see the rise, and the trees, and the round black thing on the rock at the top.

And he could see the hunters coming down the slope toward the road. They were low and fast, with too many legs and no eyes at all.

Ivar was standing beside him with his orb held up. His face was white.

"Everyone near me," Ivar said. "As near as you can. It doesn’t reach far."

They crowded in. Almond, Kael, Big D, Rudra, Corvin. Ravengard’s lord pushed through his own people to stand with them.

The hunters hit them in the dark.

Quickstep.

Kael went out six steps and back, and two of them lay still on the rocks. Big D caught one by the legs and swung it into another. Corvin’s soldiers held a line beside him with their guard up, and nothing got through it.

Ravengard’s lord did not have an orb. Almond saw him look at the hunters coming, and look at his own big empty hands.

Then he made fists.

Almond did not know what imprint he used. He never said. But the man’s fists went hard and gray, like old iron, and he met the next hunter with one of them and broke it in half.

"Up the hill," said Big D. "The Dimmer. Before it gets darker."

"It can’t get darker," said Corvin.

"It can," said Hessa.

They went up the rise in a tight knot around Ivar.

The Dimmer did not move. It sat on its rock under the trees, round and black and smooth as a lamp with no flame.

Up close, Almond could see that it was breathing. Each time it breathed in, the dark got deeper, and the edges of Ivar’s gray sight grew thinner.

"I can’t hold this much longer," Ivar said through his teeth.

"You don’t have to," said Almond.

Quiet Edge.

Sever.

He reached the rock in three steps and cut.

The Dimmer split.

It split down the middle like a clay pot, without a sound, and light came pouring out of it.

It was every bit of light it had ever taken, for who knew how long, all coming out at once. Almond threw his arm over his eyes.

When he lowered it, the sun was setting.

It was a plain orange sunset over the low hills, with the trees black against it. The column on the road was cheering. Ivar sat down on a rock with his orb in his lap and put his head between his knees.

Ravengard’s lord was standing beside the split Dimmer, looking down at it. His fists had gone back to ordinary skin.

He took a seed out of his coat. It was rough and brown, like a walnut.

"Here," he said. It was the first word Almond had heard him say all day. "This is the place."

He knelt beside the dead Dimmer and pressed the seed into a crack in the rock.

The line came up out of the stone. The new stones were white, with a warm brown light in them like a hearth seen through a window.

They ran around the whole rise and down the slope to the road. Inside the ring, the dark grass turned green in the last of the sun.

A shoot came up out of the crack. It was brown and tough, and it had two leaves.

Ravengard’s lord stood up and dusted off his knees. He looked down the road to the north.

"Brightwater?" he asked.

"Two days," said Almond. "One, if Clovelle takes us."

"Good," said the man. "Close enough to borrow a cup of salt."

He walked back down the hill to his people.

Hessa was still standing at the bottom of the rise with her hand over her eyes. She had not come up. Almond went down to her.

"It’s done," he said. "Every seed’s planted."

"I know." She did not lower her hand. "I’m looking at Brightwater."

Something in her voice made him stop.

"What is it?"

"Ainen’s in the hall," Hessa said slowly. "At the hearth. He came home with us yesterday." She was quiet. "He’s kneeling by the fire. He’s got the clay dish in his hands."

"The gray seed?"

"It’s split open," Hessa said. "Something’s coming out of it."