Chapter 312

on her stool by the healed scar, the gold thread of Kompis's Knot running from her chest down into the wood. Her eyes, clear again, following something through the floor that nobody else can see.

And the tree's heart racing again, ba-ba-DUM— ba-ba—, and far up the terraces, out of the ring-cliffs, cork seeping: pale, slow, oozing from the seams of the wood wherever the point passes deep beneath, the tree bleeding inside where nobody can reach.

A vast root-tunnel under the Heartwood, low and warm and dark, the tree's beat softest here. In it, in rows, lying on the wood with their copy-sheets for pillows: the Bark Monks, who went down when they were told, and were so tired they slept. The youngest one, who waved at the kite, asleep with his mouth open.

And through the grain of the floor under his cheek, sliding up toward his lips: the point. A round fist of grey nothing.

feeling it on the Knot, her old face going hard.

smoking. HOLD, burning, plunging into the floor. Not into the wound, which is healed. Into the tree. A Heartwood Beat.

The silver word arriving through the grain, and the point stopping dead, a hair below the young monk's cheek, pinned. And round it, in the wood, a ring of new pale grain closing, wrapping it, like the first layer of a pearl round a grain of grit. The monk sleeping on, snoring, unaware.

(Above, in the grove: the pale ring rippling out from Runa through the floor. A new line on her face. A strip of tiny panels along the page bottom: a leaf letting go in nine realms.)

The point tearing free of its ring, wrapped now in one thin layer of new wood, slower, heavier, diving deeper into the root.

at her side, on his knees, the Knot's gold thread running through his fingers, blood running from his nose. He can feel both ends.

and beside Runa's ear, in the grain, a balloon in her own voice: her woodgrain-bordered balloon, the one with no tail because it always came from the wood, drawn grey now, and cracked.

old and bent and bleeding, not even turning her head.

(—DUM. The pale ring. A leaf in nine realms.)

Vigolas, who can't end anything, has come to the only place left for him: on one knee beside the rowan stool, holding her hand. Her great knotted troll hand in both of his, the clinking coat pooled on the floor round him. He can't finish. So he holds.

And by his ear, his own big jagged balloon, drawn grey:

clenching, the black-green script trying to crawl up over the knuckles, flickering, and not coming. It can't. He gave it up.

(He goes on holding her hand. Runa's thumb moves, once, on his knuckles.)

Each panel a different place in the vast body of Ferdinand, and in each the point, pinned by a burst of silver, and a new ring of pale wood closing round it, and the point tearing free a little slower each time:

In the trunk, rising like a bubble through amber.

Out along a branch near the top of the world, where the bark turns to charcoal: the Burn. Aska, on the black branch, feeling the bark shudder under her bare feet, kneeling, laying both burning palms on it: "…Easy. Easy."

Down a root under Scalelist, where the roots arch out of the Deep: the Splinterlands. A metre of cork-oak slamming her small palm down on the Great Root, every splinter in her blazing gold: FLISA: "NOT. HIM." The point recoiling.

Deep in the heartwood, sinking.

The same angle, five times, a few rings apart. The strong troll woman they met is gone, and the old one going too: her back bowing further over her knees · her long notched ears drooping to her shoulders · the grey-green of her skin cracking into fine plates like the bark of an old oak · moss spreading in every line · the sap-amber of her eyes clouding at the edges like old honey · her great hands knotting into roots on her knees · her whole body smaller, as if a hundred years were being pressed out of her.

Both crews, still standing (and one sitting) in the living Rowan Ward round the Wall, hands joined now without anyone having said to, watching her grow old in front of them. Tihi, deaf, crying without a sound, her bells tied silent. Öde, saying names under her breath. Krydog, sitting, his fists on his knees, the grin gone. Roffe, Trollmage asleep across his lap like a huge child after the crash. Emma on the gold line, keeping twenty-one hearts every beat, the silver in her braid spreading, counting with Drekk without meaning to.

The point, wrapped now in seventy rings of new wood, a heavy, dark, layered knot the size of a man's head, sinking back through the grain, slow as a stone through honey. Not toward the monks any more. Not toward the roots. Back up, toward the grove. Toward the end of the list. Toward the one mouth in the tree that has wanted to say it longest.

The roots of the rowan tree in the grove, spreading through the floor round her, and the point coming up under them, and recoiling: it can't cross rowan. It slides aside. And finds, running out of the floor and up to the back of her head, the one way in that isn't rowan: her braid. White, grown into the wood for three hundred years.

The braid where it meets the floor going grey. Smooth. Wooden. And the grey climbing.

feeling it come up her braid toward her head. She doesn't reach for it. She can't cut the braid; she can't stand; she wouldn't if she could.

Old. Cracked. Moss at the corner. Opening. A silver glyph starting to burn in front of it.

(The grey on the braid stopping. A ring of new wood closing round the point where braid meets floor. Then climbing again.)

Silence. And under everyone's feet, the tree's heart: ——DUM. One beat. Whole. Then, a long, long time later, like a tide coming in: ——DUM. Steady. Once a season, as it should be.

Up on the ring-cliffs, the cork stopping. Drying pale in the seams.

Round the living Rowan Ward, the Finished going still. Stopping where they stand: a grey knight with his helmet under his arm, a grey woman with her hand at her brow, a grey boy in a knitted cap. Finished. Peaceful. Not walking any more. (Nobody knows if they ever will again.)

In the root-tunnel far below, the youngest Bark Monk waking, sitting up, rubbing his cheek, and looking at the new knot of pale wood in the floor beside his head, puzzled.

Emma on the gold line, the Keeping Beat letting go, twenty-one small gold pulses settling into the tree's slow time. Her braid streaked silver from temple to tip. She sits down where she stands.

sitting on the floor, putting his face in his big scarred helmsman's hands.

still on one knee holding Runa's hand. Opening his mouth. And finishing, for the first time since the morning, a word.

(The flat green line of his heart along the panel's foot, beating.)

Very old. Smaller on her stool than she was by half a head, bent, the lines of her face like bark, moss in them, her ears hanging, her hands knotted, her clouded eyes half shut. Her palms still smoking, the rune-scars of the first twenty-four cracked open and bleeding slowly. Her braid running down into a great dark knot of a hundred rings in the floor of the world. She breathes. Her heart, the tree's heart, beats slow and steady under her. She lives.

in the floor where her braid goes in. Dark, layered, hard as stone. Smooth. Inside it, somewhere under a hundred years of new wood: the point. Not gone. Unspoken, as it was.

Roffe laying the sleeping Trollmage down on the floor of the grove at the foot of the stool, his cheek on the grain, the crow climbing onto his chest. Trollmage deep in the crash, dead to the world.

And Runa, very slowly, leaning down off her stool, one long total movement with a creak like the oldest tree in the world in a high wind, until her lips are close to the wood beside his head. Whispering into the floor under his cheek, the way she whispered to a sleeping child through the roots of Brygdar for years.

a small silver rune glowing in the grain. His eyes opening.

sitting up, seeing her. All of her. What a hundred years did. His face crumpling.

big soft grey-green hands with an elf's long fingers, coming up and taking her face, this time, very gently, the way you'd hold a bowl of water. Her bark-lined cheeks. Her moss. Her hanging notched ears.

(He laughs, and cries, and doesn't let go.)

The crews sitting down on the floor where they stood, all of them, the living ward letting go of each other's hands. The Finished standing still all round. The tree's heart beating once, slow and steady, under everything. Runa's cheek coming to rest, as it does every night, against the Rune Wall, to listen.

Her clouded eyes opening. Under the great slow heartbeat, very far down, so faint only a woman who has listened to this wood for three hundred years would hear it: something outside. At the tree's deepest root. Not in the wood. On it. Patient. Polite. Like a reader tapping a page.

the Knot's gold thread still running from Runa into the wood and through his fingers, his eyes going gold, feeling along it, down, down, to the root, to the thing on the other side of the bark. And going white.

very old, her cheek on the wood, listening to something knock at the bottom of the world.