Chapter 311

The sap-light of morning coming back down the bowl. At the end of the Rune Wall, the long black cut, cork pouring from it. Across its top, the line of grey faces pressed to the wood, cheek to cheek, and under their closed mouths a row of notches: half a bar, cut. More of the Finished crowding in behind to take their place.

seeing again, old, her back bent, her knotted hands pressed on the cut with the cork streaming between them. Her palms smoking and empty: HOLD spent for this beat, the next not come.

Vigolas, running across the grove through the forest of grey statues, coat clinking, shoving between them, emerald eyes ringing gold. His right fist coming up, black-green script crawling across the knuckles: the newest command, the one that sends things home.

her old head snapping round.

(He skids to a stop an arm's length from the Wall, the script flickering on his fist.)

The script dying on his knuckles. His fist opening. Looking at the grey faces pressed to the Wall. The notches. The cork. The old woman. Everything in him that is greedy wanting to take it all, now, at once. And knowing that the one thing he wants most, to finish it, is the one thing he can't have.

the grin arriving, enormous and terrible, the ∞−1 over his head glitching gold. The Minus One: name the one thing you give up, before the beat lands.

(And the word won't end. The last letters of his balloon trail off into nothing, unfinished, a sentence that can't reach its stop.)

His heart stopping. One beat. The price of every full burn. A flat green line along the bottom of the panel where his heartbeat should be.

inside that one stopped heartbeat, blazing emerald, every action in the world but one opening in front of him at once.

The cork pouring again. The sap-falls falling. And round the edge of the grove, a ring of grey statues lying peacefully on the floor, every one facing out, every one whole. The Wall clear. The row of notches across the cut half-finished, and stopped.

Vigolas on his knees at the foot of the Wall, his heart starting again with a huge gasping breath, green lightning crawling and fading on his Lichtenberg scar.

grinning up at Runa, blood in his teeth.

And the Finished getting up. Slowly. One, then ten, then all of them, creaking, rising off the floor, turning round, peaceful, and walking back toward the Wall. They said yes. They'll keep walking.

her old voice going out over the whole grove, every word a short troll sentence with no give in it.

Both crews running in from the gold line, between the rising grey statues, to the foot of the Wall, and spreading out round it and round Runa's stool in a ring, shoulder to shoulder, facing out at the grey tide walking back toward them.

Kompis, gold-eyed, nose bleeding: "Rowan."

Öde, scythe planted: "Rowan."

Levla, ten rings, very quietly: "Rowan." / Flexsnus beside him: "…Rowan, mate."

Daniel, square balloon, hand up out of habit: "Rowan."

Rougeina, no blades, bare hands, barefoot: "Rowan."

Smurjan, and three glyphs off one mouth in three voices: "Rowan." "ROWAN!" "…rowan…"

Isa, a beat late: "…Rowan."

who has walked over from where he was sitting just inside the gold line, looked at the ring of standing people, and sat down again, right in the gap between Roffe and Jeppson, cross-legged on the floor, facing the grey tide.

(A red-silver sprig burning off his lips and settling on the wood in front of his knees.)

deaf, in the ring between Emma and Perne, staring at everyone's moving mouths. Kompis, across the ring, signing it to her, slow and big: [R-O-W-A-N.] And Runa, at the centre, turning her old face toward Tihi and mouthing it, slowly, for her to read.

Tihi's lips copying the shape. She can't hear a thing. She says it anyway, aloud, at the top of her lungs, wildly off-key:

(The biggest red-silver glyph of all bursting off her lips, so bright it lights every face in the ring.)

Round the Rune Wall and Runa's stool, a ring of people, two crews of fools shoulder to shoulder (and one sitting), and at every pair of feet a burning red-silver rowan-sprig, the sprigs joining along the floor from foot to foot into one ring of red-silver light: a living Rowan Ward.

And the grey tide of the Finished walking up to it, and stopping. A grey knight's foot coming down a hand's breadth from Roffe's boot, and not crossing. Stopping. Standing there, peaceful, swaying a little, like a tide that has met a sea-wall.

and Krydog's, and Tihi's: on each, where the rune burned off their lips and down through them, a small silver scar in the shape of a rowan sprig, fresh, faintly smoking. Like Runa's palms, very small.

where Trollmage has been lying asleep since the night began. His eyes opening. Violet, and glowing, brighter than they have ever glowed: the light of a long wait.

Trollmage walking across the grove toward the Wall, slippers scuffing, the crow on his head. Not hurrying. Through the ring of fools, who let him through and close behind him. To his great-great-grandmother, old and bent and bleeding on her stool.

looking at him for a long beat with her clearing sap-amber eyes.

(Her palms smoking. The glyph burning in the air. HOLD. And instead of plunging into the floor, into the tree, it flies to him.)

The rune landing in it. Held. Whole. Burning silver inside a soft of amber, cupped in a big grey-green palm, like water held in the hands. No pale ring spreads from Runa through the floor. No leaf falls anywhere.

stepping out of the ring of fools to the Wall, his third eye opening, crimson-rimmed, his crimson script-scars blazing across his chest and arms.

at Runa's side, his eyes gold, his nose streaming blood, his fingers lifting a gold thread from the centre of her chest and drawing it, slowly, down into the black wood of the Wall beside the cut.

(The thread knotting into the grain. Runa's eyes widening. Kompis gasping, both hands to his chest: he feels both ends, and both ends are enormous.)

lifting, one finger writing in the air in glowing violet letters, slow and lazy and perfectly neat:

MACRO : HOLD = 1 SEASON

the violet blazing, and in them, for one heartbeat, every beat he banked lying asleep beside the Wall firing at once: his tempo, for that one beat, as many thousands as he waited.

And HOLD landing on the crimson point. And again. And again and again and again: a storm of silver glyphs pouring out of Trollmage's cupped hand down the crimson Sightline into one point at the bottom of the cut, faster than eyes can follow, a river of HOLD running into a hole the size of a thumbnail.

The cork slowing, then stopping, at the surface.

The edges of the cut drawing together, and new pale wood growing over it from the bottom up, ring over ring, the way a tree grows a lid over an old wound.

The half-cut bar of notches filling in, smoothing over, gone.

Under everyone's feet, the tree's heart: —DUM. · —DUM. · —DUM. Steady.

Runa, watching it close, untouched by it. Not one new line on her face.

Emma, on the gold line, her count stopping: every heart in her ring beating with the tree's again, and the tree's beat steady.

The violet going out of his eyes all at once like a snuffed lamp. His big face going slack and peaceful. And the crash: the burn cost of every big release, the body falling asleep where it stands, tipping forward like a felled tree—

Roffe, out of the ring of fools in two strides, catching him with both arms before he hits the floor.

Where the cut was: a long scar of new pale wood, smooth, closed, faintly ridged, like the oldest wound on the Great Root in the Splinterlands. Runa's knotted hand resting on it. The cork dried pale on her fingers.

(Round the grove, faces beginning to break into grins. Svala bouncing. Kali starting a cheer.)

Not cheering. His third eye still open, crimson-rimmed, staring at the new scar. THIRD-EYE POV: the scar as grey lines, closed, healed. And under it, deep in the grain beneath the new wood, a thing the diagram can't draw: a point of nothing, a perfectly round hole in the lines the size of a fist. Un-carved. Waiting.

(The cheer stopping.)

quietly.

Under the scar, under the grove, in the deep wood of the world-tree, the last stroke of END: a round point of grey nothing the size of a fist, moving. Not across the floor, where the rings of rowan lie, but down: sinking straight down out of the bottom of the healed cut into the deep wood under the grove, below any ring drawn on any floor, and away into the grain of the whole tree, the trunk, the branches, the roots, a world of wood with nine realms hanging from it, looking for one mouth.

And at the centre of the panel, high above it, Runa on her stool, the gold thread of the Knot running from her chest into the wood, feeling it go.