Chapter 335
The black rock at the Mouth of the Current, the lighthouse 212 steps tall, the crystal lens turning on quicksilver, the Beam sweeping the Deep. The white keeper's cottage at the tower's foot, its door open so she can hear the sea. And the two ships coming in to the rock's little jetty, bark-hulled, battered, one of them weeping cork from every seam.
at the top of the 212 steps. A sea-foam-bearded giant at the lens with a rag in his hand, his eyes narrowed to slits, polishing a lens that doesn't need it. Hallbard. Not turning round.
Vigolas, Krydog, Kompis and Mingus climbing the spiral, Mingus bounding ahead, three steps at a time, biscuit-hopeful.
turning from the lens as Mingus arrives, pulling a biscuit from his coat without looking and dropping it exactly into the dog's mouth.
the Beam sweeping past behind him, lighting him gold for a moment, then gone.
at the lamp-room's window, looking out past the Mouth's wall of mist.
turning the great crank that turns the lens. The Beam swinging round to the Mouth, and through the mist, in its light, the Shallows beyond: the crescent of lanterns. The Order's last fleet.
Council of Four colours. Sentinel pennants. The last Bastion hulls, white. And among them, black-and-silver ships with no names, their decks crowded with figures in grey that don't move, don't talk, stand in perfect rows, like statues of soldiers.
letting the Beam swing on, past the fleet, back to the Deep. His face very old.
turning to them.
folding his bandaged arms.
very quiet.
The lamp-room at the top of Fyren: the crystal lens, the quicksilver, the Beam pouring out across two worlds. On one side of the rock, the Deep: two battered bark ships bleeding cork at a little jetty, islands drifting past. On the other side of the Mouth's mist-wall, the Shallows: a crescent of a hundred ships with lanterns lit, and among them black-and-silver hulls crowded with still grey figures.
And in the middle, between them, a giant sea-foam-bearded man with a rag in his hand who has stood in this room for four hundred years without sitting down, looking from one side to the other.
not listening for a moment. Turning. Looking down through the lamp-room window at the white cottage at the tower's foot. At the open door.
already moving for the stairs.
Kompis coming through the open door, Mingus at his heels. A small room. A bed. A lamp beside it, lit. And in the bed, a girl of about fifteen, asleep, a lantern-girl's coat folded at the foot, a small smile: Vaka.
kneeling by the bed, his eyes going gold. And above the sleeping girl, her dream: a soft panel, a ferry at night, a lantern held up, faces turning toward its light, and at the dream's edges, white, creeping in, like frost on a window.
climbing onto the foot of the bed, lying down across the girl's feet. And the white at the edge of her dream pausing, near the dog. Not retreating. Pausing.
in the doorway, huge, filling it, his slitted eyes seeing nothing in the dim room except where the lamp's glow falls. He's come down 212 steps for the first time in years.
not looking away from the dream.
his hand on the doorframe, the wood creaking under it.
looking up at him.
a long, long silence. Then very quietly.
in the doorway behind Hallbard, putting it together.
looking at the girl. At the lamp beside her. At the white creeping in at the edge of her dream.
A giant in a doorway. A boy on his knees by a bed. A dog on a girl's feet. A pirate behind. And a bandaged man pushing past the pirate into the small room, looking at the sleeping girl, then up at the giant.
folding his arms.
staring at him.
looking from Krydog to the Beam sweeping past the window to the crescent of lanterns beyond the Mouth. An idea arriving, the way a storm arrives where it already wanted to go.
turning to him.
the Beam passing behind him through the window, lighting him gold, and then gone, leaving him in the dark.