Chapter 102: Meriel Falls Silent

Once a month, on the night of the new moon, Carol goes to the chapel and says names.

I didn't know that until this autumn. Nobody did. She'd been doing it for years, she told me afterward, since before the ships came: going down alone after supper, sitting on the front bench in front of the plain stone table where Meriel's candles burn, and saying the names of every held god she could remember. Every one she'd ever heard of. The storms in the cellars and the gods in the ships and the ones Severin had mentioned once, in passing, at dinner, and never again.

"Why?" I'd asked her.

"Because somebody should," she'd said. "And because Meriel told me once that a naming needs two voices. And I thought, if they're over there with nobody saying their names at all, then at least on this side there's one."

* * *

This time, she asked if I'd come.

It was three nights after Halemar left. We'd had no word. He'd gone out from Westmere at first light in Tamar's best boat, a little blue-hulled lugger called the Patience, with the oilcloth packet inside his coat and Pim waving from the end of the north pier, and we'd watched him go west until the sail was a white speck and then nothing. Selvane said she could feel the boat for a day and a half. Then it went past the edge of anything she had.

So it was a strange, waiting sort of week. And Carol came and found me on the east wall after supper and said, "It's the new moon. I'm going to the chapel. Will you come? You can say no."

"Can I say a name?"

"You can say as many as you like," said Carol. "That's the point."

* * *

Meriel was already there.

That surprised Carol. I could feel it, through the middle. Meriel's candles burn in the chapel all the time, a whole table of them, low and steady, but Meriel herself is almost never there. She keeps them the way you'd keep a fire in a house you're not living in, so it'll be warm when someone comes back.

But tonight she was sitting on the front bench, in her long gray veil, alone, with her hands in her lap. She looked up when we came in.

"I heard you come down," she said. "Last month. And the month before. I've heard you every month for six years." She moved over on the bench. "I thought this time I'd be the second voice. If you'll have me."

Carol looked at her for a long moment.

"Yes," she said. "Please."

* * *

So we sat on the front bench, the three of us. Meriel in the middle. Carol on her left. Me on her right. And Soren came in a few minutes later and sat on the bench behind us, quietly, because wherever Meriel is, Soren generally is too.

The chapel at Greykeep is small and plain and very old. Gray stone, one bell, plain benches, a slate roof. No statues. No windows of colored glass. Just the long stone table at the front with Meriel's candles on it, two hundred of them, more or less, in a hundred different holders, all burning low and steady with almost no flicker at all.

Carol began.

* * *

"Sahrun," she said. "Who was held, and isn't."

"Heard," said Meriel.

A candle at the end of the table brightened, very slightly, and settled.

"Selvane," said Carol. "Who was held, and isn't."

"Heard."

"Teo. Who wasn't anyone's but his own."

"Heard," said Meriel, very gently. And a small candle near the front, in a chipped blue holder I think Elenos made, burned a little taller.

* * *

Then the ones still held.

Carol knew so many. More than I'd ever imagined. She said them slowly, one at a time, and Meriel said heard after each one, and I sat beside them and listened, and after a while I started to understand why she'd been doing this alone in the dark for six years.

"The eleven storms," said Carol. "Who were held in the cellars at Kethra. Ten still are."

"Heard."

"The god Severin called the Lantern-keeper of Orsk, who he said was very old and very tired."

"Heard."

"The gods in the ships. All of them. Whose names I don't know."

"Heard," said Meriel. "Unnamed is still heard."

"Oradne," said Carol. "Who kept the wells in the hill towns. Taveth, who was every bridge on the coast road. The god of school bells. The goddess of the first warm day of spring, in the third row."

"Heard," said Meriel. "Heard. Heard. Heard."

Her candles were all standing very straight.

* * *

"May I?" I said.

Meriel turned her veiled face toward me.

"The forty-one," I said. "From Shearwater. Who were taken off the coast. Thirty-four came home. Six are still out there." I swallowed. "And one more, who came home in a mask, and nodded when we asked if he wanted to see his son."

"Heard," said Meriel. Very quietly. "All forty-one."

And then I said the rest of them, the ones I'd been carrying since the deck of the Heron without knowing I was carrying them. The Hushed in the cages at Concordia, who'd been somebody's sons once. The one who'd escaped. Abel Sennet, by name, because he'd had one taken from him for so long. The four or five pursers still bought, up and down the coast. Kip, who'd been branded as a child.

Meriel said heard to every one.

* * *

It was Carol's turn again. She'd gone very quiet, the way she does when she's getting near the end of something that matters.

"There's one more," she said. "I've never said it here. I didn't know if it was allowed."

"Everything's allowed," said Meriel. "In this room."

Carol took a breath.

"Malachar," she said. "Who holds everything. And is holding on so hard he can't feel any of it."

The candles didn't move.

Meriel didn't say anything for a long moment. Then she turned her head, very slowly, under her veil, and looked at Carol.

"Yes," she said. "Even him. Especially him, I think. I've never said it. Nobody's ever asked me to." She folded her hands in her lap. "I'll say it now. For you. Mal—"

* * *

And she stopped.

* * *

Not the way you stop when you've forgotten a word. Not the way you stop to take a breath. She stopped the way a clock stops. In the middle of a tick. Her mouth was still open on the beginning of his name, and her hands were still folded in her lap, and nothing came out.

And every candle on the table went out at once.

* * *

Not the way they'd gone out at Teo's burial. I'd been there. When Meriel said heard over Teo, all her candles had gone out together, softly, the way you'd blow out a lamp when the last guest has gone home. It had been beautiful.

This wasn't that.

This was like a door slamming in a wind. Two hundred flames, all at once, snuffed, and the smoke going up in two hundred thin gray threads in the sudden dark, and the smell of it, hot wax and burnt wick, so strong it caught in my throat.

And in the dark, very faintly, so faintly I wasn't sure I'd heard it at all, something sang.

One note. High and thin and hungry. Like a fingernail drawn down a pane of glass a very long way off.

And then nothing.

* * *

"Meriel?" said Carol.

Nothing.

"Meriel," said Soren, from the bench behind, and I heard him stand up so fast the bench went over.

I'd already lit my hand.

I didn't think about it. Seraphina's fire, a little thread of white-gold, enough to see by. I held it up. And in the light of it I saw Meriel, sitting exactly where she'd been sitting, with her hands folded in her lap and her face turned toward Carol and her mouth still open on the first syllable of his name.

She was looking at Carol. Her eyes were open. She could see us. I could see that she could see us.

But she couldn't speak.

* * *

Soren was on his knees in front of her. He had both her hands in his.

"Meriel," he said. "Meriel. Say something. Say heard. Say anything."

Her lips moved. Her throat moved. Nothing came out. Not a whisper. Not a breath. She looked down at Soren with her eyes very wide, and I watched her try, and try, and I watched her understand that she couldn't.

Then she did something I'll never forget.

She took one hand out of Soren's, very gently, and put it on his cheek. And looked at him. And smiled.

I'm still here, the smile said. As clearly as if she'd said it aloud.

Soren put his face in her lap and didn't move.

* * *

The Castellan had felt it. Of course it had. By the time I'd got my fire steady, the chapel door was open and my father was in it, in his socks, with Aurelia behind him, and behind her, Seraphina with her own hands lit, and Ilyra.

Ilyra came through all of them as if they weren't there.

She went straight to Meriel and knelt down beside Soren and put her small gray hand on Meriel's knee, and closed her eyes, and was very still for a long moment.

Then she opened them and looked up at my father.

"She's not leaving," said Ilyra.

She said it the way you'd say a fact you'd checked twice. Flat and certain.

"I'd know," said Ilyra. "I always know. And she isn't. Not tonight. Not ever, if I have anything to say about it." She looked at Meriel. "But something's gone. Something's been taken. I can feel the edge of where it was."

* * *

"Garrick," said my father. "Look."

I didn't want to. I'm going to be honest about that. I'd looked into Selvane and seen a house full of held doors, and that had been bad enough. I didn't want to look into Meriel, who'd been sitting at Council my whole life with her veil down and her candles steady, who'd stood up three days ago and said go and get them, and see whatever was in there now.

But my father asked. And Meriel was looking at me, with her mouth still a little open, and she nodded.

Yes.

So I knelt down on the other side of her from Soren and Ilyra, and put two fingers on her wrist, and asked, "Borrow? Just to look. Not to take."

She nodded again.

And I looked.

* * *

Meriel's house isn't like anyone else's.

It's a long, quiet room, like a chapel. Like this chapel, almost. Gray and plain and very old. And all down both sides, in niches in the walls, there are names. Thousands of them. Tens of thousands. Every god who's ever died in Avarra, and every person she's ever said heard over, written on little slips and set in the niches like candles, each one glowing very faintly, the way the gold light at Ansel's side glows.

That's what she is. That's her whole domain. She's the room where the names are kept, so that nobody who's gone is ever entirely gone.

And at the far end of the room, where the altar would be, there should have been something. I could feel where it should have been. The way you feel the place on your gum where a tooth was. Something that spoke. Something that took the names and said them aloud and made them heard.

It wasn't there.

There was just a hole. Ragged at the edges, as if something had reached in and torn it out. And it was cold. And it smelled of salt, and cold iron, and something else, something sour and hungry that I'd smelled once before, at Skellow, on the night the Hollow Choir came ashore and sang a whole village toward the sea.

* * *

I took my fingers off her wrist.

"It's the Choir," I said. My voice didn't sound like mine. "They've taken a piece of her. Not her name. A piece of her domain. The part that speaks. The part that says heard." I looked at Meriel. "The names are all still there. Every one. I saw them. But there's nobody to say them."

Soren made a sound I hope I never hear again.

"Where?" said my father. Very quietly. "Garrick. Where did it go?"

"I don't know," I said. "It's torn. Not held. It's not like Selvane's doors. Nobody's holding it shut." I tried to feel past the ragged edge, the way I'd followed Malachar's voice through the link, the way I'd followed the hand over the village's eyes. "It's been carried off. Somewhere. Like a bird with a piece of bread."

"Can you follow it?"

I tried.

It was very faint. A thread. Thinner than a thread. The memory of a smell. Salt and iron and that sour hungry singing. Going west, I thought. Or south. Or both. And then it was gone, the way a smell goes when the wind changes.

"Not from here," I said. "Not tonight. It's too faint. I'd have to be closer."

* * *

Carol hadn't moved.

She was still sitting on the bench where she'd been sitting when it happened. In the dark beyond my fire, with the two hundred threads of smoke still going up from the dead candles. She was staring at Meriel.

"She was saying his name," said Carol. "For me. I asked her to." Her voice was very small. "I asked her to say his name, and she started, and…"

"No," said Seraphina.

She'd come and sat down on the bench beside Carol, with her own hands still faintly lit, and put an arm around her.

"No," she said again. "Don't. I know what you're doing and don't. You didn't do this. The thing that tore her did this. It was waiting. It'd have happened if she'd been saying Teo." She held Carol tighter. "Garrick felt it at the feast. A gutter in her light. A week ago. Before any of us came down here. Didn't you, Garrick?"

I looked at Carol.

"Yes," I said. "At Westmere. On the wall. I felt her light dip. I said it was a draft." I swallowed. "It wasn't a draft. It was the beginning of this. Someone was already pulling."

Carol looked at me for a long time.

"You should have said," she said.

"I know."

"You should have knocked."

"I know," I said. "I know. Ansel told me. Every door. Even when it's open." I looked at Meriel. "I didn't."

* * *

Meriel stood up.

We all went quiet. Soren lifted his head out of her lap. She stood up slowly, a tall gray woman in a long gray veil, in the dark chapel full of smoke, and looked down at all of us.

Then she put her veil back.

And she walked to the stone table, past the dead candles, and found the tinderbox that's always kept at the end of it, under the cloth, for the rare times a candle goes out on its own. And she struck it. Three times. Four. Her hands were shaking. But she struck it.

And she lit one candle.

The one in the chipped blue holder that Elenos made. Teo's.

It caught. It burned. Not tall, not white, not the way her candles usually burn. Just a little flame, in a little holder, flickering in the draft from the open door.

She stood looking at it for a long time.

Then she turned around and looked at Carol. And she couldn't say anything, but she didn't need to. I knew what she meant. We all did.

I can still light them. I just can't say the names.

So someone else will have to.

* * *

Carol stood up.

She went to the table. She stood beside Meriel, in front of the one candle in the chipped blue holder. And she took Meriel's hand, and held it.

"Teo," said Carol. "Who wasn't anyone's but his own."

And then, after a moment, because a naming needs two voices, I stood up too, and went and stood on Meriel's other side, and said it.

"Heard."

The little flame in the blue holder steadied.

Meriel's eyes filled. She didn't make a sound. But she squeezed both our hands, so hard it hurt.

* * *

My father went to the door of the chapel and stood looking out at the dark inner court for a long time.

"Thor's at Concordia," he said at last, without turning around. "I'll send for her tonight." He paused. "Garrick. You said you'd have to be closer."

"Yes."

"Then you'll go," said my father. "With Thor. In the morning. You'll find where it went." He turned around. "And you'll bring it back."

"Yes," I said.

"Not alone."

"Not alone."

He looked at Meriel, standing by the one lit candle with her hands in ours.

"She stays here," he said. "In this house. Where the Castellan can find her and Ilyra can sit with her and Soren can hold her hand." He looked at Ilyra. "And nobody, nobody, says she's fading. Because she isn't."

"She isn't," said Ilyra. "I've checked."

* * *

Mary wrote it at four in the morning. She'd come down to the chapel in her nightgown and her reading glasses at half past one, and she'd sat on the back bench ever since, writing by the light of the one candle.

New moon. Carol has said the names of the held gods in the chapel every new moon for six years. Nobody knew.

Tonight Meriel came. She said: I'll be the second voice.

Carol said Malachar's name. She said: who is holding on so hard he can't feel any of it. Meriel said: even him. Especially him. And started to say it.

She stopped in the middle. Every candle went out at once. Something sang. One note. Far off.

Meriel cannot speak. She can see, she can hear, she can light a candle. She cannot say heard.

Garrick looked. The Hollow Choir has torn out the part of her that speaks the names. The names are all still there. There is no one to say them. It was carried off. West, or south. He felt her light gutter at the feast and said it was a draft.

Ilyra: she is not leaving. I've checked.

Meriel lit Teo's candle. Carol said the name. Garrick said heard. Two voices.

Garrick and Thor go in the morning to find it.

And under that, in a long, thin, gray hand none of us had ever seen before, very slow, as if every letter were a weight:

Meriel. I am still here. Say them for me until I can.