Chapter 300

The underside of the world tree's highest branch, a cliff of cork-grey bark rising out of the Current into the red-gold sky of Helios, rough, ancient, deep-furrowed where the fire never reached. Low in it, at the waterline, the door: the bark folded back in two great leaves like the doors of a cathedral, and behind them a long throat of pale wood running away into the branch, and far down it, deep in, a gold light, warm, beating, slow. Two ships stopped dead in the water before it: the Marka (cork-grey bark hull, the Kettle's brass bell on her bow, Lumen wicks burning in her rigging) and the Upp Igen (five bands of coloured planks, a bandaged fist for a figurehead).

Trollmage, standing on the coil of rope he slept on, wide awake for once in his life, crooked troll-iron crown on his head, the crow on his shoulder, a silver rune still fading on his cheek where it was pressed into the rail. Staring down the throat at the gold light.

(No answer. Only the light, beating.)

The sea there isn't lapping against the bark. It is flowing in, slow and glassy, carrying a few flakes of grey ash off the Burn with it, over the sill of the door and away down the pale throat toward the light.

Vigolas beside the brass bell: long midnight-green coat, windswept black-brown hair with a grey streak at the temple, both palms bandaged from the white-hot chains of the Burn, a black handprint burned into his wrist. Looking down the throat. A long way down.

The two ships gliding over the sill into the throat of pale wood, the inflowing Current carrying them, and behind them Helios's red-gold daylight shrinking to a doorway, then a slot, then a line, as the great leaves of bark fold shut behind the Upp Igen's stern.

Tihi, bells jingling, hanging over the rail looking back. And in the last sliver of daylight before the leaves close, slipping in through the gap on the current behind them: a tiny pilgrims' skiff from the Burn's line, one stub of candle in it, and a thin fisher-boy of about thirteen at the oars, salt-cracked hands, a too-big knitted cap, an empty ash-jar between his feet. He had his minute on the Burn. He looks as if he hasn't slept since.

(The boy lifts one hand, too tired to wave properly.)

Walls of pale wood, ribbed with grain like the inside of a whale, sliding past on either side close enough to touch. The gold light far ahead. And, as they watch, the light going down: the amber glow ahead ebbing, dimming, the pale walls going grey, then dark.

Nearly the whole panel black. Two tiny islands of light: the Lumen wicks in each ship's rigging, white flames with no heat. Around them, barely seen, the walls of grain, sliding past. Somewhere far behind, a third, tinier light: a stub of candle in a skiff.

in the dark, jaw tight, breath short. His bandaged hand going into his coat pocket, past the bottle caps, and coming out with Aska's ember: small, glowing, wrapped in its own curl of smoke like a little cloak. A dot of warm orange light in a cupped bandaged palm, against a dark the size of a tree.

beside him, hood half-up, a hand on his shoulder. Mingus pressed against his leg, warm.

Vigolas at the bow, eyes wide open in the dark, the ember in his fist, humming his mother's four notes under his breath, over and over.

Mingus's head on his boot.

Kompis sitting with his back to the bell, not sleeping, so Vigolas isn't the only one awake.

On the Upp Igen, Krydog in his hammock, eyes open, as every night.

Tihi at the Upp Igen's stern, waving every so often at the candle far behind, which never quite catches up and never falls back.

asleep again already, sitting against the Marka's mast, cheek on the wood. A faint silver glow under his cheek, a rune half-formed, and his lips moving in his sleep.

steering by the walls he can barely see, by the feel of the current under the keel. Not complaining. For once.

Ahead, the dark walls of grain opening, and a glow coming up from below like dawn coming up out of the sea: amber, warm, vast. The sap-light of morning.

the amber light reaching his face, his whole body letting go of a breath he has held all night. The ember going back into his pocket. Mingus's tail starting to go.

up on his hind legs with his front paws on the Marka's rail beside the bell, ears up, staring ahead at the light, and along the bottom of the panel his gold pulse line beating, ba-dum, ba-dum, in exactly the rhythm of the great slow gold glow ahead.

The ships moored side by side at the sap-pool's edge. Both crews stepping off onto the floor of the outermost terrace: pale wood, smooth as bone and warm as a hearth-stone, the grain flowing under their feet like still water. It smells of rain.

Jeppson on his knees, palm flat on the floor, goggles up, eyes wet: "…Fell. All of it. Nobody ever cut a thing in here."

Öde stepping down, and at her ankles a little grass growing out of the wood itself, as it grows wherever she stands. She looks at it, worried: "…Sorry."

Levla, ten rings on his fingers, looking round with a merchant's eye and finding nothing to price: "…Huh."

Roffe, sniffing the air: "…Rain and bread. My heart, it smells like a bakery after a storm."

And then the floor rises. The whole terrace, the sap-pool, both ships, the ribs of grain, the ceiling: everything swells like a chest breathing in, slow, enormous, a tide coming up under their feet, and holds, and settles.

Svala, who never stands still, knocked flat on her back, blinking.

Every lantern in both ships swinging at once.

Krydog flat on his face, WHUD, and then a thin panel: a doubled silver pulse, ba-BUMP · ba-BUMP, silver light through his bandages, and he's up in one arc. "…Does that COUNT?" / JEPPSON, not looking up: "It counts. That's one."

Smurjan's three shadows all flinching at once.

He looks at the floor. Sniffs it. Turns round twice. Lies down, chin on his paws, flat against the warm wood.

Along the bottom border of the panel, his golden pulse line (ba-dum. ba-dum.), and running beneath it, slow and vast, a second pulse line in amber, almost flat, one great swell. As we watch, the small gold beat shifts, by a hair, until its peaks sit exactly under the great amber one. In step.

Everyone staring at the dog. And up through the floor, from very far below, a voice: deep, quiet, grainy, the voice of a building talking. Its balloon has a woodgrain border and no tail; it comes from the wood.

the grain-lines brightening faintly, as if someone has turned up a lamp under the wood.

Both crews, as one, wiping their feet on the floor of a world-tree: Krydog very thoroughly; Rougeina without looking, barefoot, one sole then the other; Daniel neatly; Bakasura's huge shadow-jaw scraping the wood once; Mingus, still lying down, thumping his tail.

asleep sitting against the Marka's gangplank, jerking awake so hard the crow falls off his belly. His violet eyes wide, his long ears straight up.

Trollmage at the lip of the terrace, looking down: ring below ring below ring, a stair cut into each ring-cliff, thousands of steps winding down toward the tiny red-berried glow at the bottom.

(the crews watching from the first ring's edge).

Trollmage on the ring-stair in his slippers, very slowly.

Trollmage lying on his back in a sap-fall, being carried down a terrace by the amber current like a log, crow riding his belly, hands folded.

Trollmage asleep on a landing; a Bark Monk stepping politely over him.

Perne, flat on her front at the ring's edge, rifle Fjärran across her arms, the patch on her left eye, the right eye glowing crimson as she takes the Long Look: "He's at the bottom. Grove. One tree. Somebody sitting under it. Big. Very big. She's not standing up."

Under the rowan, on a stool of raw, unbarked rowan wood that has sprouted a few green leaves, sits a Brygdar troll woman, huge even seated, broad and stone-heavy, with hands like spades. Grey-green troll skin with moss in the deepest creases; a long face with a heavy brow, strong and only lightly lined, a woman in the full prime of a long troll life. Long troll ears with seven notches along each rim. Her hair is pure white only because it has lived in sap-light for three hundred years: one great braid that runs down her back, across the floor and into the wood, grown into the grain like a white root. Her eyes are fresh sap, amber, pupil-less, glowing. Silver runes are inlaid along both forearms like silver wire set in wood. Her palms are covered in black, shiny, burned-in rune-scars. A robe of cork shavings and rowan leaves layered like scales. A black flint burin worn to the shape of her thumb in one hand.

Under her, carved in bark instead of drawn in light:

RUNA · RÖNNKVIST-1 · refuses rank (older than the ladder)

stopping at the edge of the grove, hat-crown in his hands, slippers together. A big shy troll, very small.

In each, the same two shapes, the huge seated troll and the slouching one, and the light in the grove shifting a little, panel to panel, as an hour goes by.

RUNA: "Three hundred years I whisper through the roots. You sleep in libraries you are not allowed in."

RUNA: "You snore in runes. Badly."

RUNA: "You let the Order write K-two on you. In ink."

RUNA: "Slippers. In snow. I heard."

RUNA: "A crown. You hate it. Good. Kings should."

Trollmage asleep standing up mid-scold; Runa rapping his forehead with the flint burin: tok.

RUNA: "You do not floss your tusks." / TROLLMAGE: "How do you KNOW that?" / RUNA: "Roots."

Up on the first ring, far above: both crews sitting along the edge with their legs dangling, passing round Roffe's bread, listening to Perne's running report. KALI: "I like her."

RUNA: "Your Codex. Still half-eaten. Still hungry. I can hear it from here."

RUNA, last panel, quieter: "…So angry how lazy you are."

the hour over, looking at him with her sap-bright eyes. Her great hands resting on her knees.

His long ears drooping. He doesn't look away.

Runa, very still. And far away, out in the world, a single cork-oak leaf letting go of a twig and drifting down: over the carved troll faces of the Brygdar Pass · over the black sand of Gate City · over the Burn, where Aska catches it on her palm and it doesn't burn · over the dock at Tidekant, where Njord looks up, three days early, and nods.

Runa leaning forward off her stool for the first time in the chapter, one slow total movement with a creak in it, like a tree in wind, and taking her great-great-grandson's face in both scarred hands.

The crews on the edge, quiet now, watching. Mingus lifting his head off his paws, ears up, looking not down at the grove but sideways, into the mouth of a dark side-gallery off the first ring, where a little candle glows.

Ribs of grain, a stub of candle, an empty skiff pulled up on the wood. The fisher-boy, alone, sitting against a column of grain with his empty jar in his lap, his knitted cap over his eyes, so tired his hands have stopped holding the jar. And beside his head, the grain of the wood is going smooth and grey, a groove of nothing sliding along the column toward his ear, the grain-lines bending away round it like water round a stone.

A balloon by his ear: his own small, tired voice, but the balloon drawn grey, with a hairline crack across it, and no tail. It comes out of the wood.

The boy's chin coming down, nodding, slow, heavy, yes— and from off-panel, sharp and loud:

—and his head half-turning toward the bark. And in that same panel he is wood: grey, smooth, finished, peaceful, mid-nod, his face half-turned toward the sound, his mouth a little open as if about to say "…dog?" The candle still burning beside a boy who isn't there any more.