Chapter 129: The Prophecy

He went to sleep at a quarter past eight.

He always fights it. Every night, the same fight, the same way: he goes heavy and warm against your shoulder, and his eyes go slow, and then just at the edge he jerks his head up and looks at you, outraged, as if you've tried to steal something from him. And you walk him once more around the room. And once more. And Grandpa's goat song, the verse about the goat on the roof, because that's the one that works. And then he's gone, all at once, like a candle.

I put him down in his cot by the window with his blanket. The one with the gold thread in it.

Seraphina stood beside me and we watched him for a while. He sleeps with his arms up over his head, both fists open, the way she does. And after a minute or two, the way it always does when he's properly asleep, there it was. Very small. On the blanket, just under his chin. A flame the size of a thumbnail, gold all the way through, not burning anything. Not wanting anything. Just there.

Seraphina put her hand on my back.

"I know," she said. Before I'd said anything.

"When?"

"When Saba sang the second line." She didn't take her eyes off him. "I've carried the First Flame since I was born, Garrick. I know what the flame that was first means. I've been waiting all my life for somebody to say it out loud." Her hand pressed flat between my shoulder blades. "I just didn't think it would be about him."

* * *

We left Helena in the chair by the cot with her knitting, and Thor sitting outside the door on the floor of the passage with her back to the wall and her hammer across her knees, cracking walnuts very quietly, one at a time. Nobody asked her to. She'd simply been there when we came out of the Council, and had walked with us to the nursery, and sat down.

"Nephew," was all she said, when I looked at her. And went on cracking walnuts.

* * *

Carol was on the ninetieth step.

The north tower stair goes up and up, around and around, ninety-one steps from the bottom to the little round room at the top. And on the ninetieth, for as long as either of us can remember, is where we talk. Not the top. The one before it. Where you can still turn around.

She was sitting with her knees up and her back against the curved wall and her chin on her knees, the way she sat there when we were seven. Ignatius wasn't with her. She'd asked him to wait downstairs. I could tell, because she looked like someone who'd asked for something she didn't want.

I sat down on the step below her.

"I thought it was me," said Carol.

"I know."

"In the Council. When Iselle said the one who holds a gift of the gods. I thought: that's me. That's why he wants me. The lightning, the stream, all of it." She was very quiet. "And I was almost glad. Isn't that awful? I thought: good. Then it's me he wants, and not anyone else. And I'm the one who says no." She turned her head on her knees and looked at me. "And then Saba sang joined to the flame. And I looked at you. And your face."

"Was it that bad?"

"You looked like you'd just been handed something very heavy," said Carol, "and told not to drop it." She reached down the step and found my hand. "It isn't me. It's him. It's our little one. It always was."

"Yes."

"It's not fair," said Carol. Fiercely. Like when we were seven. "He's a baby. He can't even say please yet. He says ta."

"He says ta for everything," I said. "He said ta to the cat."

She laughed, once, cracked. And held my hand very hard. And we sat there, the two of us, on the ninetieth step, the way we always have, and didn't say anything else for a while, because we didn't need to.

Then, from the little round room at the top, three knocks. Very soft. On the inside of the door.

"Come in," said Carol, before I could. Which is backwards, of course; we were the ones outside. But the door opened anyway. And my father looked down at us from the top step with a lamp in his hand.

"She's ready," he said.

* * *

It's the smallest room in Greykeep that anyone ever goes into. Round, and high, with one plain table and four chairs, and a tall arched window on every side, the old wavy glass that makes the stars wobble. Nobody uses it. Iselle chose it, the day my father asked her what she wanted to be. Marra had chosen it tonight, when my father told her about it. Windows all around, he'd said. And the door opens from the inside.

My father had set the lamp on the table. He'd opened the east window, the one that looks out over the sea, and the cold came in, and the smell of salt.

Marra was sitting in one of the four chairs with her back to the open window and her hands in her lap. She'd changed out of Caitlin's blue dress into something plain and gray of Helena's, too big for her, with the sleeves turned back twice. She looked very small. She looked up as we came in, and her eyes went straight to me.

There were only four chairs. My father didn't take one. He never does. Carol and Seraphina sat. I sat beside Marra, where she could see my face and I could see her hands. My father stood behind Seraphina's chair, with one hand on its back.

"Before you tell us," he said to Marra. Gently. "There's something in this house. Something some of us know, and some of us chose not to. Iselle chose not to. So did others." He paused. "If you tell us the end of the saying, you'll see our faces when you do. And you're not a fool. You'll work it out. So you should get to choose first. Whether you want to know. You can say no."

I signed it for her. Slowly. Every word.

Marra looked at my father for a long time.

Then her hands moved. And I said it out loud, the way she'd asked me to in the gate square, so that she could hear her own words in someone's voice.

"She says: I kept seven names for eight years, with my fingers inside my sleeve, in a palace where nobody says anything. I can keep one more."

Her hands went on.

"She says: And I can't tell anybody anything anyway. I swore my voice to him. All I can ever say out loud is Kessavel's name." I swallowed. "She says: That makes me the safest place in the world to keep a secret."

My father's mouth moved, very slightly, at one corner.

"That," he said, "is very sensible."

"I hate it," said Seraphina. And then she leaned forward in her chair and took both of Marra's hands in hers.

* * *

I don't remember who told her. I think it was Seraphina. I think she just said it, plainly, the way she says everything that matters: that she carries the First Flame, and that I hold a gift of the gods, and that we were joined, and that there's a little boy asleep downstairs with a flame on his blanket that doesn't want anything and isn't half of anything at all.

I signed it. My hands were shaking.

Marra didn't move for a long time.

Then her eyes filled. And she pulled her hands out of Seraphina's, very gently, and turned them over, palm up, open, in her lap. And looked down at them. And her hands said, so small I almost missed it:

Oh. Oh, the poor little thing.

And then:

It's worse than you think.

* * *

She told it the way she'd seen it. That's what Marra does. She doesn't summarize; she tells it in order, so you can see what she saw. And I said it out loud, after her, line by line, so the others could follow.

The Temple of Oaths is at the bottom of the city. Under it. You go down a long way. There's no light except the brazier. There's a black stone in the floor in front of the first link, flat, about as big as a door lying down. You kneel on it. You put your face down on it. Your forehead on the cold. And you say the oath into the stone.

The words are carved all over the stone. Around and around, from the outside in. Like a snail shell. Very old letters. The scribe's hand. Most of us couldn't read the old hand. I could, a bit, because Corrick made me learn it for the mill ledgers. And my face was down on it. And I was twelve, and I was crying, and I didn't want to think about what I was saying. So I read it.

I started at the outside edge, where my left hand was. And I went around. And the beginning was the saying. The one my mother's friends sang at the looms. The one Saba sang today.

And then it went on.

* * *

She stopped. Her hands lay still in her lap.

Then she lifted them, and made the shapes very slowly and very clearly, one at a time, so I could not possibly get a single one wrong.

And I said it.

* * *

When the one who holds a gift of the gods

is joined to the flame that was first,

the half shall be made whole.

And the hand that holds it shall open;

and the one who will not knock

shall find no door.

* * *

Nobody said anything.

The wind came in through the open east window and moved the lamp flame, and the shadows of the four chairs went around the walls and came back.

And the one who will not knock shall find no door.

* * *

"Say it again," said my father.

I said it again. All six lines. Marra's hands moved with my voice, a half beat ahead, like someone singing along to make sure you've got the tune.

My father let go of the back of Seraphina's chair.

"He's never knocked," he said. Very quietly. Not to us. "That's what Aurelia said. In the chapel. About him. He stood in a doorway and asked me to come in. He's never once asked to be let in himself." He turned and looked out of the open window, at the sea, black under the stars, toward the east, toward Kethra. "And Iselle. He can't bear a room where anyone's asking. He can't bear an open hand. He's afraid of a knock on the door."

"Ovaren," said Carol.

"Ovaren," said my father.

* * *

I understood it then. All of it. All at once, like a fold opening.

He hadn't cut the end out of the saying to keep it from Malachar. He'd cut it out because it was about him. Three hundred years ago, before Malachar was born, before Cerys was even a scribe's daughter copying deeds, somebody, some old woman at some old loom, had sung that a day would come when the hand that held the whole thing would open. And the one who would not knock would find no door. Anywhere. Ever again.

Not a door to stand in, asking. Not a door to hide behind. Not a door across the sea. Nowhere left to go.

And a god who had never once in his life asked to be let in anywhere had heard that song, and gone into every house in Kethra, and torn it out of the women's mouths and the treadles and the copies. Out of Odin's oldest memory. Out of everywhere.

Except one place. A stone in the dark under the city, where people kneel with their faces down and their eyes shut and swear their voices away. The one place in the world where nobody ever reads anything.

He'd missed one. Because he'd never imagined that anyone kneeling there would be brave enough to look.

A twelve-year-old girl from the Ilvane valley, I thought. Crying. Reading upside down. So she wouldn't have to think.

* * *

"And Malachar?" said Carol. "The hand that holds it shall open. Is that him?"

"I think it's anyone," said my father slowly. "Anyone who holds it. Who holds him." He didn't say our son's name. He didn't need to. "Malachar thinks if he can hold the gift and the flame, he'll be made whole. And he's right. Something will be. He just hasn't read the next line." He paused. "Whoever holds the whole thing, their hand opens. That's what it does. That's what he is. Ovaren must have known that. Three hundred years ago." He looked at Marra. "That's why it's worse than we think. Isn't it?"

Marra nodded.

And her hands said, and I said after them:

He doesn't want the little one to make anybody whole. He wants him so the last two lines never happen. If he can get him first. Before anyone's hand opens. Before anyone knocks.

He wants to hold him shut.

* * *

Seraphina stood up.

I've seen my wife angry. Not often. Once, really, properly: on the parade ground, when a Hushed caught her arm and she said You may not. Her eyes went deep white-gold, all the way through, and the air around her got very still and very hot.

They didn't, now.

Her eyes stayed exactly their own color. She stood up out of the chair and went to the open east window and put both hands flat on the cold stone sill and looked out at the sea. And when she spoke, her voice was completely ordinary.

"No," she said.

Just that.

To the window. To the sea. To whatever was on the far side of it, in the dark, that had never once in its life knocked on a door.

"No," said Seraphina. "Not him. Not ever. You may not."

And a long way off, across the water, I swear the stars over the east flickered. Just once. The way a candle flickers when somebody opens a door in another room.

* * *

My father went and stood beside her at the window.

He didn't touch her. He just stood there, very big, in his shirt and his bare feet, next to her, looking where she was looking.

"I said I'd stand in front," he said. "At the war council. In front of the sea. In front of all of it. I said they'd have to come through me." He was quiet for a moment. "I meant it then. I didn't know what I was standing in front of." He put his hands on the sill beside hers. Open. "I know now. It doesn't change anything. It just means I'll stand a bit closer to the nursery."

"You're always in the kitchen," said Seraphina. Not looking at him.

"The kitchen's on the way to the nursery," said my father. "I checked. Years ago. When Garrick was born." He paused. "And when Carol was born. And Caitlin. And Roderic. And all of them." He looked at her sideways. "Every one of my children has slept within forty steps of that kitchen. That wasn't Helena's idea. That was mine."

Seraphina laughed. It came out wet. And she leaned sideways until her shoulder was against his arm, the way little Uriah leans on him when he's tired.

"He's my father-in-law," she said to the window, to no one. "He froze the western sea. He has opinions about how far the kitchen is from the nursery."

"Forty steps," said my father. "I've walked it a thousand times. In the dark. I could walk it asleep." His voice went very low. "I have."

* * *

I looked at Carol.

She was still sitting in her chair, very straight, with her hands folded in her lap. And she was looking at me. And I knew exactly what she was thinking, because I was thinking it too, because we've thought the same thing since before we could talk.

He's the wall. He said so himself. Walls only hold.

It's us. In the end. It's always going to be us.

She didn't say it. Neither did I. We just looked at each other across the little round room at the top of the north tower, ninety-one steps up, with the sea wind coming in through the open window, and our father standing at it with our son's mother, holding the sill with his open hands.

Heard, said Carol's face.

Heard, said mine.

* * *

Marra touched my sleeve.

I looked down. Her hands were moving again, small, just for me.

Can I see him?

I looked at Seraphina. She'd turned from the window. She'd seen.

"Yes," said Seraphina. "Come on."

* * *

So at midnight we all went down the north tower stair together, all ninety-one steps, and along the long passage past the library, where Thor was still sitting on the floor outside the nursery door with a little pile of walnut shells beside her and her hammer across her knees. She looked up. She looked at all our faces.

"Ah," said Thor softly. "So that's what the end says."

"How do you know?"

"You've all got the same face," said Thor. "It's the one people get before a war." She stood up. And stepped aside from the door. "Go on. He's warm. I checked."

* * *

Helena had fallen asleep in the chair by the cot with her knitting in her lap. We didn't wake her.

The little flame was still there on his blanket. Gold all the way through. Under his chin.

Marra stood at the foot of the cot for a long time, in Helena's gray dress with the sleeves turned back, looking at him. She didn't move. She didn't make any shapes. Her hands hung open at her sides.

And then, very slowly, she held one out. Over the cot. Open. Palm up. Not touching. The way you'd hold your hand out over a fire on a cold night.

And in his sleep, my son reached up out of his blanket and caught her finger.

Just one finger. In his whole fist. The way babies do. The way, nineteen years ago, in a weaver's house at the end of a lane in the Ilvane valley, a newborn girl reached up and caught the finger of a god with a closed hand bent over her cradle, and that god's whole hand opened.

Marra's hand didn't need opening. It was already open.

She just stood there, very still, with my son holding her finger, and cried without any sound at all.

* * *

I don't know how long we stood there. All of us. My father in the doorway. No; not in the doorway. He'd come all the way in and was standing beside me, with his shoulder against mine. Next to you, he said, once, a long time ago. Not in a doorway.

After a while, little Uriah let go of Marra's finger, and rolled over, and put his thumb in his mouth, and the flame on the blanket went with him, the way it does, settling under his chin again like a cat.

"The hand that holds it shall open," I said. Very quietly.

My father looked down at me.

"Yours already does," he said. "You were born that way. So was Carol. So is Seraphina. Every single hand in this house that's ever held him." He put his arm around my shoulders. "That's the thing Ovaren never understood. You can't hold him shut. Not here. There isn't a closed hand in this house to do it with."

"There's Helena's," I said. "When she's got the jam spoon."

"Helena's is the most open hand in the world," said my father. "She just likes you to think otherwise."

From the chair by the cot, without opening her eyes, Helena said, "I heard that."

* * *

Mary's book. One o'clock in the morning. She was waiting at the bottom of the nursery stair with it open and her pen ready, the way she is when something's happened, and she doesn't know what, but she knows it's something.

My father wrote this one himself. In pencil, because Mary's pen was out of ink. Standing up, on the newel post, in his big square hand.

Friday night. North tower, top room. Marra told us the end of the saying. Six lines.

Not writing them down. Not here. Not anywhere. They are in four heads and one pair of hands, and that's enough.

Seraphina said no to the sea. The stars flickered.

Thor sat outside the nursery door from nine until one. She ate about forty walnuts. She will be there again tomorrow.

So will I.

And under that, in a hand Mary had never seen in her book before, though she'd seen it a thousand times on notes left on the kitchen table, white-gold at the edges where the pen had gotten hot:

Seraphina. Nobody is holding my son. He's holding Marra's finger. That's different. I'd like it noted.