Chapter 334
Two ships sailing under one trembling star, with islands drifting all round them the same way like leaves on a current: villages, rafts, a lighthouse-rock, a forest floating on its own roots. And the sea flickering: for a panel-corner's width, the black water simply not there, then there again.
on the masthead, blinking at the sea.
Its flame flickering the same way: there, not there, there. Not wind. The lantern blinking out of being and back.
a hand on his chest.
Most of the crew asleep in heaps by the fire: Isa, Öde, Levla, Ysel, Tihi across the gap on the Upp Igen. And Trollmage, flat on his back on a coil of rope with his hat over his face, as always.
under the hat. And his dream, drawn as a soft thought-panel above him: the Library, warm, shelves, a cat, a macro half written in violet light.
and its edges going white. Not burning. Not fading to black. Whitening, like paper bleached in the sun, the shelves losing their colour, the cat losing its outline, the macro's violet letters going pale.
all white. Nothing in it. Not even a border.
(Under the hat, Trollmage doesn't move.)
asleep by the fire, and her dream-panel above her the same: her mother's three-day smile, going white.
on the Upp Igen, asleep, her dream-panel above her: Lo the clown, laughing, and the laugh going white, the paint going white, the clown going white.
on watch, seeing it: every sleeper's thread on both decks thinning, going pale at the dreaming end.
Kompis shaking Isa, Svala dropping off the mast onto Levla, Krydog on the Upp Igen pulling Tihi up by the collar. The sleepers jerking awake one after another, gasping, blinking at a world with colour in it.
being shaken by Vigolas, lifting his hat. Blinking. Very slowly sitting up. Looking at his own hands.
lifting, two fingers out, the way he writes a macro. Tracing in the air: MACRO : LIGHT = … And the violet letters coming out pale, thin, and after the colon, nothing. No amount. A blank where the waiting should be.
The two ships on the flickering black sea under one star, both crews awake and staring at each other in the firelight. And above every one of them, drawn as soft panels hanging in the air, their last dreams: every one of them white. Trollmage's Library. Isa's mother. Tihi's clown. Öde's village. Levla's kite. Isa's whale. Blank, bleached, empty frames floating over two ships like a gallery of paintings someone stole the pictures out of.
And in the middle of the gallery, one frame that isn't white: a cabin, a fire, snow outside, a golden dog: the dream of the only one still asleep.
(Mingus, asleep on Kompis's feet, twitching, chasing something.)
looking up at Mingus's dream, the only one with colour.
staring at his blank macro, a hand over his mouth. Something nobody has ever seen on his face: fear.
coming across the gap from the Upp Igen with her ash staff and a stick of chalk.
Emma drawing a circle on the Marka's deck round the rope-coil where Trollmage lies, one walk, the ends meeting. The circle waking.
lying back down inside the chalk circle, very carefully, as if into cold water. Hat over his face. Emma sitting cross-legged on the line beside him.
rising again: the Library, the cat, the warm shelves. And at its edges, the white creeping in, and stopping at a faint chalk line drawn round the dream itself, the way it stops round a sleeper.
holding. Colour inside the chalk line. White outside it, pressing, not getting in.
Emma's crew already moving: chalk circles on both ships, round every sleeping-place, Jeppson drawing the lines Emma can't reach (hands shaking), a ring of rope laid round the Upp Igen's hammocks.
(Krydog, who never sleeps, says this with great authority.)
waking an hour later inside the circle. Lifting two fingers. Writing: MACRO : LIGHT = 1 HOUR in bright violet, the amount glowing, real.
at the rail, looking into her blade. Her reflection back in it, for a second, then gone, then back, flickering like the lantern.
The ships coming out of the drift of islands into open water, the trembling star overhead, and ahead on the horizon, growing, a light that isn't a star: a Beam, sweeping, turning, enormous.
passing over them, silver, and in its light, for one moment, everything solid: the flickering sea steady, the lantern steady, every reflection in every blade back.
The black rock at the Mouth of the Current, the 212-step tower, the crystal lens turning on quicksilver, the white keeper's cottage at its foot. And past the rock, the Mouth, closed: the wall of mist at the Current's edge.
on the Upp Igen's masthead, Fjärran at her eye, a crimson tear starting, looking past the Mouth, through the mist, into the Shallows on the other side.
The Shallows beyond the Mouth, and across them, from horizon to horizon, lanterns. Hundreds. Ships of the Order: the Council of Four's colours, Sentinel pennants, the white hulls of the last Bastion fleet, the black-and-silver of something new, ships with no names on their bows, waiting. Anchored in a great crescent round the Mouth.
lowering the scope, the crimson tear running down.