Chapter 235
Both ships moored at the jetty under the tower: the Marka, and the Upp Igen with a long gash in her bow and Jeppson already measuring it. The lighthouse rising white above them, 212 steps, the Beam paling as the sun comes up.
Standing on it, bolt upright as a mast-step, an enormous old man: 2.15 m, a yellow oilskin gone amber, a thick salt-stiff jumper, a beard like sea-foam, white hair blown back, a ring of brass lamp-keys at his belt, and a soot-black rag in his hand, wiping a brass lamp-fitting that's already clean. His eyes narrowed to slits against a light nobody else can see.
HALLBARD · DRIFTING-1 · K-IV SHAPED · Scalelist #1,312 (unmoved in four hundred years)
turning his whole body toward the crews as they climb onto the jetty, the way a lamp turns.
bounding up to him, craning his neck.
sitting obediently on a bollard. Hallbard does not sit.
already asleep at the foot of the lighthouse stairs, curled on the bottom step. Hallbard looking down at him with naked, aching envy.
at the top of the jetty, barking up at the lantern room, where huge, pale, soft-winged moths flutter round the great lens in the dawn. They ignore him. He barks again.
scowling down at the dog, then digging in a pocket of his oilskin and producing a ship's biscuit, holding it out without looking.
(Mingus takes the biscuit. Then barks at the moths again.)
The two crews climbing the 212 steps behind Hallbard, round and round, the walls hung with logbooks: four hundred years of ships, every one written down. Drekk running his fingers along the spines in awe.
climbing, not out of breath, talking over his shoulder.
The lantern room at the top of Fyren: a colossal lens of cut crystal taller than three men, faceted like a cathedral window, turning slowly on a bed of quicksilver, a flame at its heart that has never gone out. Pale moths drifting round it like snow. Through the glass walls, the whole Current spread out under the morning, too-close horizons and all, and the Mouth's wall of mist.
And beside the lens, wiping it with his rag, a giant old man who hasn't sat down in four hundred years, his narrowed eyes catching the lamp's gold.
wiping the lens, not looking at Vigolas, his voice going softer.
very still.
his hand going to his coat pocket, to the locket Levla gave back: Hild's face. He holds it up to the old man's narrowed eyes.
laughing, eyes wet.
From below, at the tower's foot: shouting. Torches. The clank of hooked poles on stone.
Down at the foot of the lighthouse: a Wrecker raid, fifty of them under Rasp, swarming up the rocks with torches and crowbars toward the tower's door and toward the small white cottage beside it.
looking down at them, his face going grim and sad at once.
The crews running down the 212 steps, round and round, Vigolas leaping five at a time, Krydog behind him, Kompis and Perne with guns out.
The tower's foot.
Vigolas and Krydog bursting out of the tower door side by side into the Wreckers: "Race you!" "To WHAT?" "To the most!"
Smurjan and Roffe at the cottage door, holding it.
Rougeina Swapping onto the rocks behind the raiders, cutting their torches.
Kompis and Perne on the stair-windows above, five guns and a long rifle.
But there are too many, and a knot of Wreckers with oil-jars breaking through toward the cottage, about to fling burning oil at its white walls.
in the lantern room above, seeing them reach the cottage, and his whole face changing. Fury. Fear. Something he guards more than the lamp. He grabs the lens's brass handles in both enormous hands.
He turns the whole lamp down onto the rocks at the tower's foot, the full blinding force of it, not sweeping, aimed, a column of white-gold light slamming down onto the knot of Wreckers like a hammer of sun.
The Wreckers at the cottage door thrown back, blinded, oil-jars shattering harmlessly on the rocks, their torches snuffed by sheer light, the rest of the raid scattering back down to the sea, hands over their eyes.
turning the lens back to its sweep, slowly, his enormous hands shaking. He wipes his eyes with the soot-black rag, though it's only lamp-glare.
at the cottage door, breathing hard, looking at the white walls Hallbard just defended with the thing he hates most. The door ajar. A warm, steady light inside.
nosing the door open, trotting in, wagging, quiet, the way he goes into a room where someone is sleeping.
One small white room. A bed. In the bed, under a patchwork quilt, a girl, eighteen or nineteen, asleep, very still, her hair spread on the pillow, a faint warm glow round her like a candle seen through a window. On the table beside her, a small lamp, burning steadily, its wick trimmed perfectly. Dust nowhere. Nine years of someone keeping this room exactly as it is.
in the doorway, recognising her, his face opening in shock and something like joy. A white house. By a lighthouse. A dream, two sagas ago.