Chapter 308
bleeding, cork welling through her fingers. Above them the glyph HOLD, four strokes, a door-frame with joined hands, blazing silver outside any balloon.
And it does not sink into the wound.
It goes down. Into the floor. Into the tree.
as the glyph plunges into it: silver light running out through the grain in every direction at once, along every line of the wood, faster than sap, faster than sound, a thousand silver threads racing outward from the heart like cracks in ice, except they are not cracks. They are one word, everywhere.
The floor still stuttering, ba-ba-ba-ba—, the crack of light still open across it. Everyone on their knees. And under all of it, the silver racing outward.
Then: the tree's heart, which has been trying to beat every beat it has left at once, landing on one.
The crack of light in the floor closing, like a mouth shutting.
The cork at the wound stopping: still bulging between Runa's fingers, but no longer welling.
Kompis's gold pulse line along the panel border finding its rhythm again. ba-dum. ba-dum.
Smurjan's three shadows sliding back into step, one, two, three. Kali: "…oh thank the—"
Krydog, braced for another fall, not falling, looking down at his own boots as if they'd done it.
And her price. Out from her body through the floor of the grove spreads a single faint ring of pale light, like a ripple in still water, widening, widening, fading. And on her face, in the same instant: one new line at the corner of her eye. A crease deepening by her mouth. The grey-green of her skin a shade greyer. One growth ring: a year of her life, gone in the beat.
at the edge of the firelight, small and wiry, watching her. His mouth moving before he knows it. He counts things. He always counts things: heads on a deck, knots on a rope, the crew every morning.
(Nobody asked him to. From now on, nobody needs to.)
The whole of Ferdinand, seen as no one has ever seen him: a cutaway of the world-tree from root to crown, colossal, the nine realms hanging from him like lanterns, the Current winding among his branches.
At his very heart, a tiny grove with a tiny red rowan, and from it, one rune of silver light racing outward through the whole tree at once: out through every ring of the Heartwood, up the vast trunk, out along every branch to the very tips (at the top, the black charcoal tip of the Burn, flickering), and down through every root, down and out into every realm the roots touch, the silver running along them like fire along fuses.
In small round insets around the edge, sleepers lying on roots in the realms, waking all at once with the same word on their lips: a troll child asleep on a root in the Brygdar Pass, sitting up · a root fox in the Splinterlands lifting its head · an old ferryman asleep on a root-dock in Thanatos, opening his eyes · a drunk asleep on a root in Gate City's harbour, blinking.
Scalelist, the Splinterlands: a leaf landing on the nose of Flisa, a metre of cork-oak sitting on the Great Root. She goes very still. Her knot-eyes widening.
Scalelist, Lumen: Iskall on the steps of the dark seventh tower, catching the leaf in her small hands beside her clay lamp.
Heartbeat, Tidekant: the leaf drifting down onto the dock. Sill picking it up and holding it out to Njord.
Helios, the Burn: the leaf falling into Aska's open palm beside Ivo's pilgrim fire. It doesn't burn.
Codexia: a Brygdar troll guarding the Library's spiral stair, a leaf settling on his halberd.
Astralis: in a field of mirrors, three black panthers lifting their heads at a leaf turning over in the starlight.
Trinity: the Compost Fields, a leaf landing among mushrooms, where something new will grow from it.
Thanatos: a leaf coming to rest on a name cut low on the black stone of the Pillar of Names.
The Null's edge: a leaf falling into the grey, and gone, without a sound, as if it had never fallen at all.
Calm. The cork still. The heart beating slow and vast under them again, one great tide. Everyone breathing, sitting up, looking at each other. Emma moving among them, kneeling to every one, two fingers to every throat, counting.
hands still pressed on the cut, eyes still milky but with a glow coming back behind the white. Her voice going out to all of them, hard.
on his feet, coat clinking.
stepping up beside Vigolas, a hand on his arm.
(Kompis signing it to Tihi, who is staring round at everyone's faces: [Away from the wall. All of us.] Tihi signing back: [Not HER?] Kompis: [Not her.])
Down the ring-stair from the high terrace, stumbling, slippers flapping, crown over one eye, the crow flapping after him: Trollmage, running for the first time in the saga, like a boulder rolling, skidding to a stop at the edge of the grove, staring at her bleeding hands.
not turning her head.
Looking at her hands. The blood running out of the scars of the first twenty-four runes. The cork. His long ears drooping all the way down. Every muscle in him wanting to do something.
on Trollmage's shoulder, turning him away gently toward the edge of the grove, toward the others. Trollmage looking back over his shoulder twice. Three times.
under Runa's palms. And pushing. The wood on either side of the cut groaning outward, the cork bulging between her fingers again, and under the floor the grey groove pressing up against the wound from beneath like a fist against a door.
And the floor beginning to stutter again.
her palms smoking. The glyph again. HOLD, burning.
(The faint ring of pale light spreading out from her through the floor. A second line at her other eye. Out in nine realms, a strip of tiny panels: nine more leaves letting go.)
eyes gold, watching the threads of the tree.
HOLD. —DUM. The pale ring. A crease deepening. Moss in the new line by her mouth, as if a year had grown there.
(At the grove's edge, Trollmage lying down on the oldest ring with his cheek on the wood because she asked, eyes wide open, tears running sideways into the grain. Then, because she asked, closing them.)
In the dark, the hundreds of grey statues. And one by one, moving. A Finished knight's foot scraping forward on the wood. A Finished woman lowering the hand from her brow. A Finished child, mid-yawn, taking a step. Grey wood creaking like a ship in a swell, hundreds of statues turning, slowly, all the same way: toward the ring-stairs. Down.
flat on her belly at the grove's edge, Fjärran across her arms, her open eye glowing crimson on the Long Look, a crimson tear running.
hood down, no shadow, looking up the bowl.
the grin gone completely, which is how the crew knows it's bad.
(Vigolas's fists opening. Closing. Opening.)
And the next stutter coming. Not a stumble this time: a heave, the whole floor of the grove lifting and dropping like a ship's deck in a storm, the sap-falls on every ring breaking at once, the cork bursting out between Runa's fingers in a great pale gout. And the stutter, through everything, louder than it has ever been:
Vigolas dropping to one knee, hand on his chest, his heart missing.
Kompis's gold pulse line going flat for a frame.
Smurjan's three shadows falling in three directions.
Svala on her back. Isa on her side. Daniel's hand going to his chest, his face grey.
Krydog, WHUD, the doubled pulse beginning, ba-BUMP—
And Runa, slower now, three years older than an hour ago, her palms smoking, the glyph not coming fast enough.
on her knees on the heaving floor, one hand pressed flat to her own chest, her heart stumbling with the tree's like everyone else's. Her staff fallen beside her. Her gold-flecked eyes going past the people, past the fire, to the edge of the grove.
The dark line where the pale wood of the grove ends and the next terrace begins: the edge of the oldest ring, the tree's first year, a low cliff of latewood running round the grove in a perfect, closed, unbroken curve. A circle. Drawn long before anyone was born. Waiting.
Emma's hand closing round her staff, the white-iron ring at its tip. Her face very calm.