Chapter 67: Phoenix Memory

Serevan came back on the first clear day after the packs started walking the coast.

He landed on the rim of the fountain in the inner court at ten in the morning, exactly where he'd landed in the summer, the day little Uriah ate his feather. All gold and copper and deep red, his fire-feathers moving in the cold air like the flames in a grate, and his old black eyes looking at everything at once. The fountain water hissed where his tail touched it. Every child in the castle came running.

He bowed to the Castellan. He bowed to Helena, who'd come out of the little kitchen with flour on her hands. He bowed to me, precisely as far as he intended, which was a little farther than last time.

And then he said, "Garrick Grey. The eldest of the aeries would like to speak with you. She has a memory she has kept for a long time. She does not wish to keep it any longer."

* * *

"The eldest?" said my father, at lunch.

"Ashenne," said Serevan. He was standing on the back of an empty chair at the end of the long table, because phoenixes don't sit, and Helena had put a folded wet cloth on the seat underneath him in case of sparks. "She is the oldest of us. She has burned and risen more times than any phoenix living. Most of us remember a little, through the ash. A few lives back. She remembers all of hers." He turned his head, very slowly, the way birds do. "Since the Blackstack lamp, she has not slept. She says the sea is moving again in a way she knows. She says she must tell someone before she burns next. And she says it must be him." He looked at me. "The one who carries the seeds. And someone who can speak to the harbor-goddess."

"Benjamin," I said.

"If he will come," said Serevan. "Ashenne would like to ask him something."

My father looked at me across the table.

"The aeries," he said. "Nobody's been up to the aeries since the war. Not even me."

"I know."

"They don't let people up there. It's not a rule. It's just..." He shook his head. "It's theirs."

"She asked," I said.

My father was quiet for a moment. Then he nodded.

"Then go," he said. "And take her something. You don't go into somebody's house for the first time empty-handed." He thought about it. "Ask Helena. She'll know what a phoenix eats."

Helena did know. Of course she did. Phoenixes eat cinnamon bark and dried apricots and, on special occasions, very small amounts of black pepper. She had a tin of all three on the high shelf, labeled in her neat hand, For Birds, and had apparently had it for twenty years in case one came to tea.

* * *

The aeries are on the cliffs above Greymere.

I'd never known that. Almost nobody does. Greymere is the long cold lake forty miles north of Greykeep, in the hills, where Jörmungandr lives at the bottom and sulks because there are no roads in a lake. On its northern shore the hills come straight down into the water in a wall of red-brown rock, cracked and stepped and ledged, a thousand feet high. You can see it from the south shore on a clear day, if you know where to look. In the evenings, Benjamin told me once, if you watch long enough, you can see small lights moving along it, going in and out of the cracks, like sparks drifting up a chimney.

That's them.

Jörmungandr took us across. Benjamin and me, with Helena's tin in my coat pocket. He came up out of the black water at the south shore with the morning sun on his scales, so pleased to be asked that the whole lake rocked, and we sat behind his great gold head while he swam us across, and the cliffs came up out of the morning mist in front of us, red and gold and enormous.

Serevan was waiting on a ledge at the bottom, just above the water. He bowed. Then he lifted, in one long slow beat of his wings, and went up the face of the cliff ahead of us like a lamp being carried up a stair.

"Follow," he called down. "There is a path. It is steep. We do not usually have guests with feet."

* * *

It took us an hour to climb.

The path went up the cliff in zigzags, cut into the rock, worn smooth and black in places as if by fire. All the way up there were holes in the cliff face. Hundreds of them. Little caves and cracks and hollows, some big enough to stand in, some no bigger than a fist. And in nearly every one, there was a phoenix.

They watched us go by. Old ones, gold and dark red, with the fire low on their feathers like coals. Young ones, bright and restless, copper and orange, that hopped to the edges of their ledges to see better and had to be called back by the old ones in a sound like a kettle hissing. Tiny ones, all fluff and spark, which had to be very young and which stared at Benjamin with enormous black eyes.

Nobody spoke to us. But every phoenix we passed, old or young, bowed. A little. Precisely as far as they intended.

"They know who you are," said Serevan, from above. "The one who keeps the seeds. And the one who sings to the harbor. You are both known here."

"Why me?" said Benjamin. He was out of breath. Benjamin is very fit for a man who looks forty and is actually about two hundred and sixty, but it was a very steep cliff.

Serevan didn't answer. He just went up, ahead of us, a lamp on a stair.

* * *

Ashenne's ledge was at the very top.

It was a long, deep cave, high in the cliff, facing south over the whole of Greymere, so that the cold blue water of the lake lay spread out below it like a map, and beyond the lake the hills went away in long brown folds toward Greykeep. The floor of the cave was soft gray ash, deep as a carpet, warm under my boots. The walls were black and glassy, as if they'd been fired in a kiln. And at the back of the cave, on a low ledge of rock, curled up like a cat in front of a fire, was the oldest living thing I've ever seen.

She was small. Smaller than Serevan. Her feathers had gone almost entirely to ember, dull red and deep orange, with only a faint gold at the tips, the way a fire looks an hour before it goes out. Her eyes, when she opened them, were not black like Serevan's. They were white. Clouded. Like old milk glass.

"Garrick Grey," she said.

Her voice was very small and dry and crackling, like a log settling in a grate.

"Yes," I said. "Thank you for asking me."

"I can see you," she said. "Not with these." She blinked her white eyes. "With the fire. You are carrying a great deal of other people's warmth. Rivers and harvests and frost. And a little of the Flame, from your wife." She turned her head toward Benjamin. "And you. Aurelia's son. The one who sang to the island door."

"Yes," said Benjamin, very quietly.

"You sing to Selvane now."

"Every night."

The old phoenix was silent for a long time. Her feathers stirred, very faintly, though there was no wind.

"Then you are the one I must ask," she said. "Sit. Both of you. In the ash. It will not burn you. It is the ash of everything I have ever been."

We sat. It was like sitting in warm flour.

I took out Helena's tin and held it out. "Helena sent this. She said it was cinnamon bark and dried apricots. And a little pepper. For special occasions."

Ashenne turned her white eyes toward the tin for a long moment.

"Helena Valewood," she said. "Who buys the mutton. Who keeps a tin for birds." She made a small dry sound that might have been a laugh. "I have heard of her. Every creature in Avarra has heard of Helena Valewood." She bent her head and took one dried apricot out of the tin, very delicately, in the tip of her beak, and ate it. "Tell her it was the best I have had in four lives."

"I will."

"Now," said Ashenne. "Listen."

* * *

This is what she told us. I've written it down the way she said it, as near as I can. Mary says it's the most important thing in her book this winter, and she wasn't even there.

* * *

"Once," said Ashenne, "there were islands in the western sea.

"Not many. A string of them. Twelve, like beads on a thread, going out from the coast west of Westmere all the way across to the other side. Small islands, most of them. Black rock and red rock, warm in the middle, with hot springs and steam in the cracks. Like your Blackstack, but old. Very old. The fire in them had gone down to coals.

"We called them the Hearth Isles. Because that is what they were. Hearths. All the way across the sea. Warm places, one after another, a day's flight apart. And every spring, every phoenix in the world flew out along them to nest.

"You must understand. A phoenix egg is not like a hen's egg. It is a coal. It must be kept hot. Hotter than a forge. For a whole season. The mother sits on it, and burns, and the egg drinks her fire, and in the autumn it cracks, and there is a new one. And if the egg goes cold, even for an hour, it does not hatch. And if the egg goes into water..." She stopped. Her feathers dimmed. "If the egg goes into water, it is gone. Not dead. Gone. A phoenix who dies in fire rises from the ash. A phoenix egg that drowns does not rise from anything. There is no ash in the sea.

"The Hearth Isles were the only places hot enough, and far enough from everything, to nest. So we went there. Every spring. For longer than anybody can count. The sea between them was ours. We crossed it every day. Back and forth, back and forth, from Avarra to the other shore and back again. There was no sea that flying things did not cross. Not then.

"And then Draum noticed us."

* * *

Benjamin went very still beside me.

"He was not one of the Chained then," said Ashenne. "There were no Chained. There was no golden city. There was no emperor. There was only Kethra, a long way off, with its gods, and the sea, and Draum in it. A god of tides. The drowning tides, the ones that come in faster than a man can run. He was cruel the way the sea is cruel. Not for any reason. Because he could. He sank fishing boats for sport, on the other shore, and laughed when the wives came down to the water in the morning. He was proud. He was very strong. And one spring, he was bored."

She turned her white eyes toward the lake below, as if she could see it.

"It was nesting time. Every island had its mothers on it. Every hearth had its eggs. Thousands of us. I was an egg. On the seventh island. In a crack of red rock, near a hot spring, under my mother." Her voice went very small. "I remember the warm. I remember her fire. And then, one night, I remember the sound."

"What sound?" said Benjamin.

"The sea standing up," said Ashenne.

* * *

Thora said it, at the Council. If we go, the sea stands up. A gray wall, taller than the castle, from Westmere down the coast.

I'd thought she meant a wave. A big one.

I hadn't understood.

"He raised the tide," said Ashenne. "All of it. All at once. The whole sea, from shore to shore, stood up like a wall and walked across the Hearth Isles. One after another. The first island. The second. He did not hurry. He wanted us to see it coming. The mothers screamed. Some of them flew. Most did not. A phoenix mother does not leave her egg. Not for anything. Not even the sea." Her feathers had gone almost dark. "They stayed. And the wall walked over them. And the islands went under, one after another, all twelve, and the fire in them went out with a sound like the whole world sighing. And none of them ever came up again."

Nobody said anything for a long time.

"How did you live?" I said at last.

Ashenne turned her white eyes toward Benjamin.

"That is why I asked for him," she said.

* * *

"There was a harbor," she said. "On the other shore. At the end of the island string. A small harbor, for fishing boats. With a pier. And a lamp at the end of the pier. And every night, a small goddess came down to the end of that pier and lit that lamp, so the fishing boats could find their way home in the dark."

Benjamin made a sound. Very quiet.

"She saw the wall," said Ashenne. "From her pier. She saw it stand up out of the sea and walk across the islands. She saw the fires go out, one after another, all down the string. And she did not run. She took the lamp off the end of her pier. And she went out onto the water."

"On the water?"

"On the water. She was a harbor goddess. Harbors are the place where the sea is gentle. She took a little of that with her, I think. She walked out across the sea in the dark, with the lamp in her hands, toward the wall. And when she reached the seventh island, the wall was almost on it. And my mother was on the rock, screaming, with her wings spread over me. And the harbor goddess opened the little door of the lamp, and held it out."

Ashenne's feathers stirred.

"My mother understood," she said. "In an instant. She took me up in her beak, the coal I was, and she put me in the lamp. Into the flame. Where the oil burned. And the harbor goddess closed the little door. And my mother flew back down to the rock, to the other eggs she could not carry, and spread her wings over them. And the wall came."

"And Selvane?" said Benjamin. His voice cracked.

"She ran," said Ashenne. "Across the water. Away from the wall. With me in her lamp. And four other eggs, from four other mothers on four other islands, who had seen what my mother did and done the same. Five eggs, in one small lamp, in the hands of a small goddess, running across the sea in the dark with the whole tide standing up behind her." She was quiet for a moment. "She did not run back to her own harbor. She ran the other way. East. Toward Avarra. Because Draum's sea was behind her and she would not take us back into it. She ran all night. And in the morning, she reached your coast, and she climbed up out of the sea onto a beach, and she walked inland until she found a place with hot rock. And she put the lamp down on the rock, in a cave, in the cliffs above a cold lake. And she sat beside it, and kept it lit, for a whole season. Until we hatched."

She lifted her head and looked around the cave. At the black glassy walls. At the warm gray ash.

"This cave," she said. "This ledge. This is where she put the lamp."

* * *

Nobody said anything for a very long time.

Benjamin was crying. Not loudly. He just sat in the warm ash with his hands open on his knees and the tears running down into his short dark beard, looking at the back of the cave.

"She never told me," he said at last. "She never said."

"She would not," said Ashenne. "She does not think it was anything. She thinks she lit a lamp." The old phoenix made her small dry laughing sound again. "We have tried to thank her. Many times, over many lives. We could not reach her. We do not cross that sea. We have not crossed it since that night. We will not fly over Draum's water. Not ever." She turned her white eyes toward me. "That is what Serevan told you, in the summer. Nothing that flies crosses that sea. Now you know why."

"Five eggs," I said.

"Five eggs," said Ashenne. "And from five, every phoenix in Avarra. Every one you have ever seen. Serevan. The young ones on the cliff. The ones who carry warnings between the settlements. All of us." She bent her head toward Benjamin. "We are all her lamp."

* * *

"Why now?" I said, after a while. "Serevan said you couldn't sleep. Since the lamp on Blackstack."

Ashenne was quiet.

"Because he is moving again," she said. "Draum. I feel him. All of us feel him, the old ones. We have always felt him. A phoenix knows where the drowning water is, the way you know where a cold draft is coming from in a warm room. For three hundred years he has been quiet. Sinking a boat here and there. Nothing more. And then, this summer, he went still. Very still. As if someone had put a hand on his back and told him to be good."

"The fleet," I said. "He held the sea flat under the fleet."

"Yes," said Ashenne. "He has become one of them. One of the Chained. He wears a link now. He holds the sea flat for the emperor's ships, the way a man holds a table steady for someone writing on it." She lifted her head. "And that is what I wanted to tell you. That is the memory. Not the islands. Not the eggs. This."

She leaned toward me, her white eyes very close.

"When he raised the wall over the Hearth Isles," she said, "he had to let go of everything else. All the sea. Every other tide, everywhere. I remember. My mother told me, before. The whole sea, on every coast, went flat and still for one night, while he stood it up over us. He could only hold one thing at a time. The wall, or the rest. Never both." She sat back. "Do you understand? A hand that is holding a table steady cannot also strike. If he stands the sea up against your coast, he must let go of the fleet. Every ship. All at once. And the fleet will be sitting on a sea that is no longer being held."

I sat in the warm ash and thought about that for a long time.

"Thora said if we go, the sea stands up," I said slowly.

"Then if you go," said Ashenne, "and he stands it up, his own ships will be on water that is suddenly free. Wild. The real sea, that he has been holding flat since the summer." She closed her white eyes. "I do not tell you to go. I am old. I do not tell anyone anything. I only tell you what I remember. A hand that holds cannot also strike. That is all."

* * *

Before we left, Benjamin asked if he could sing.

Ashenne said yes.

So he knelt in the warm gray ash at the back of the cave, where a small harbor goddess had once set down a lamp with five eggs in it and kept it lit for a season, and took out the white storm-shell that Selvane had left him, and blew one long low note. And then he sang the soldiers' song, the first verse, softly, the way he does every night to the stone.

Nothing answered. She was too far away. The shell only calls her to the stone at Westmere.

But all along the cliff, in every crack and hollow and ledge, the phoenixes came to the edges of their caves to listen. Hundreds of them. Old ones and young ones and the tiny ones that were all fluff and spark. And when he finished, they all bowed. Every one. Not precisely as far as they intended.

All the way.

* * *

That night, at Westmere, Benjamin sang to the stone, and Selvane hummed back. And he told her. Everything. In the common tongue and his bad Kethran both, so she'd understand.

She was quiet for a long time.

Then she said something. Just a few words. And Benjamin sat by the washtub with his hand on the stone and wept again, and couldn't tell anyone what it was until the next morning.

"She said, I'm glad they hatched," he told me, at breakfast, in the little kitchen. "That's all. I'm glad they hatched. I always wondered."

Mary wrote it in the black book, at the scrubbed table, with her pen very slow.

The Hearth Isles. Twelve. Drowned by Draum in a single night, three hundred years ago, with every phoenix nest. Selvane carried five eggs across the sea in her harbor lamp and kept it lit in the aerie cave above Greymere until they hatched. Every phoenix in Avarra is from those five.

Ashenne: when Draum stands the sea up, he must let go of everything else. A hand that holds cannot also strike.

Selvane: I'm glad they hatched. I always wondered.

And Helena, when I told her what Ashenne had said about the apricots, didn't say anything at all. She just went to the high shelf, and took down the tin labeled For Birds, and filled it right up to the top, and put it back.