Chapter 146
The Marka sails out of Codexia. Trollmage sleeps on the deck with the Gluttony Codex asleep on his chest like a cat, the crown abandoned beside him.
watching the sky. Even now, a day later, a few last Codices are still streaking across the dawn like slow comets, trailing colour, looking for their souls.
A great montage of the waking, small panels arranged around a central image of seventy coloured comets fanning out across the realms:
A fisher-girl on Gate City's black sand, a crimson book open in her lap, crimson script up her arm, her mother staring.
An old Unwound baker on Urverket, a violet book on his flour-table, laughing as the dough rises by itself while he waits.
Ekorre, the fox-hatted Kit of Rävgrytet, a rose book in her grease-black hands, her reflection grinning back with someone else's face.
A Riser boy on Tyngden, a silver book at his feet, standing up straight, straight, for the first time in his life.
A Sentinel freed in the Breaking, kneeling in snow with an amber book, crying.
A Mosscap mushroom-child in Trinity holding a gold book, threads suddenly visible between every mushroom in the village.
A blind old fisherman on a market island, an emerald book in his hands, seeing the world glow by value for the first time.
And more, panel after panel, seventy faces startled by power. Seventy powers. Seventy rivals. Seventy stories.
waking just enough to look at the sky, the Gluttony Codex grumbling on his chest.
Smoke on the horizon. A small island in the Shallows, a village, and its roofs are burning in perfectly straight lines, crimson lines that cut across thatch and stone like a ruler drawn in fire.
third eye snapping open.
Villagers fleeing to the boats. In the square, a boy of about thirteen stands in a circle of scorched cobblestones, a crimson Codex clutched to his chest, crimson lines shooting out of his eyes wherever he looks, slicing through walls and roofs and carts with perfect, terrible precision. He's crying.
blazing crimson. Every glance a blade.
Out of a skiff leap Shelf-Wolves: wolf-pelt hoods, iron book-chains, nets. Five of them, heading for the boy.
landing on the dock, grinning dangerously.
The Wolves throw a net of iron book-chain at the boy. He looks at it, and a crimson line cuts it to pieces. He screams and looks at a Wolf, and a crimson line cuts the Wolf's crowbar in half an inch from his hand.
Vigolas and Drekk hit the Wolves from the flank, lightning and axe.
Rougeina Moth-Swaps with burning sparks to pull villagers out of collapsing houses.
Kompis ties the panicking villagers to each other so families can feel where their children are and find them in the smoke.
The Wolves fall back. But the boy is still burning everything he looks at, sobbing, eyes blazing, and the crew can't get near him without being cut.
stepping forward, alone, into the circle of scorched stone.
seeing the tall grey three-eyed man walking toward him with three shadows. Terrified. He looks at him.
A crimson line shoots from the boy's eyes straight at Smurjan's chest. Smurjan's own crimson line, the Sightline, meets it in mid-air, tip to tip, exactly: two lines of Wrath touching at one perfect point. Neither cuts. They hold.
walking along his own line toward the boy, slowly, step by perfect step, the two crimson lines pressing tip to tip between them.
eyes wide, staring at the single point where two lines of light meet and hold.
rising out of Smurjan's shadow, unusually gentle.
now right in front of the boy, kneeling to his height, the two crimson lines between them shortening to nothing.
eyes shaking, then slowly focusing, on a single falling ember in the air between them.
A single thin crimson line, tiny, from the boy's eye to the ember. The ember splits in two, perfectly. And nothing else burns.
gasping, the crimson in his eyes dimming to a calm glow.
The village, smoking but standing. Villagers creeping back. The boy sitting on the cobblestones with his Codex in his lap, his mother running to him. Smurjan standing over them, three shadows side by side.
eyes gold, watching the threads between mother and son tighten and glow.
On a pole in the middle stands an old cracked Scalelist board, and as they watch, the stone shudders. A new column carves itself down the right-hand side next to THE DEAD, in hard square letters:
CODEX
Under CODEX, the first names are already appearing, one by one, as the seventy are found by the board: — · WRATH · VOL. II · #? … and the boy's name, the ink still wet. Every board in every city, at the same moment, doing the same.