Chapter 387

An avalanche of grey coming down the side of the world tree: thousands of the dead pouring down every aisle at once, grey-eyed, silent, the whole remaining half of a thousand rows emptying toward the floor.

outside the rope, bleeding. Trollmage still asleep on the bark. Smurjan hauling him up by the collar.

Drekk, hands flat on the wood, staring across the floor through the bell-rope mask at a broad old troll-mason coming down a near aisle, grey-eyed, a mason's mallet in his fist.

On the top rail, Svala, her black bird's eye fixed on an old woman with a cracked whistle on a cord, coming down, grey-eyed. A pale quiet woman with a basin at her feet, Lärka, both hands at her mouth, watching a broad grey-bearded man with scars over scars and a Registry collar come down a stair. Öde, the emerald names up her arms lighting one after another, a hundred and eleven of them, as a whole village comes down the steps toward the floor.

Orka standing up. A split figure, the half-cloak on one shoulder, her tunic ink-black and violet on one side, star-black and crimson on the other, both hands held open at her chest. The magenta light between her fingers guttering low, her face grey with distance from her star.

her lips moving, counting the stands in twos the way she counts everything. The hairline seam of starlight down her face beginning to glow. Then, aloud, two balloons joined by a small gold bridge:

at the rail, turning his head toward her as if he'd heard a verdict read.

rising, palms up, as if lifting something hot and heavy out of a fire. Both her eyes flaring the Dawnstar's colour: violet and crimson gone rose-violet magenta together.

A small newborn star at the border of two realms, magenta at its heart, violet and crimson at its two shores, dimming. Robed star-readers on its slopes looking up in alarm.

the light in her hands not guttering now. Pouring.

the troll-mason's grey foot coming down over the waist-high bark ridge at the foot of the stands, and stopping above it, pressed against nothing, the way Krydog was. Across the floor, the seal's letters flaring white in the bark:

NO ONE ENTERS.

at the rail, bandaged fists still raw from the wall, staring.

the clerk in him laying it out, low and precise.

outside the rope, bleeding, looking up at the cathedral of endings and starting to laugh.

the Arbiter writing it again, harder, the square letters cut deep enough to smoke:

(And nothing comes down.)

The dead on the last steps turning, one by one, and climbing back up the aisles, and sitting down in their seats. The grey shine going out of their eyes, back to plain dead grey. Each of them with a gold thread running to them across the floor.

Drekk at the front rail, and across the floor at the end of his thread, an old troll-mason sitting back down, his mallet across his knees, the shine gone out of his eyes. Looking at Drekk. Drekk lifting one hand.

(The troll-mason doesn't speak. The dead don't, here. But his thick fingers lift off the mallet, once.)

Svala on the top rail, and across the bowl an old woman lifting a cracked whistle on its cord, not blowing it, just showing it.

Lärka, her hands at her mouth, and a broad scarred man in a Registry collar standing again at his seat, the only one of the dead on his feet, one hand flat on the bark beside him, as if on a wall he's holding.

Kvar, hung with his thousands of cut threads, and across the floor a sergeant of the Birch Company lifting a hand to his brow along a gold thread.

Öde reading her arms aloud, name by name, to a hundred and eleven faces sitting in rows, every one of them turned toward her.

at the rail, following his own gold thread with his eyes, out across the floor, across the stands of the dead, up, and up, into the blank rows. Into an empty seat drawn in outline. Nobody at the end of it.

Roffe's hand coming down on his shoulder. And the grin coming back, wet, chipped tooth and all.

Rougeina sitting at the rope's edge, looking up at eight empty seats in a row, high at the back of the blank half. No gold thread runs to them. There is nobody in the stands of the living who is hers to bind them to, and nobody left in them to bind.

crouching outside the rope beside her, and reaching across it, and taking her hand. Mingus pushing his head in between them.

in the stands, her hands open and shaking, the gold "&" burning above the floor. And something going out of her throat, slowly, like warmth out of a stone at dusk. She knows what the star asks after a burn. One hard truth about herself, said aloud, while she still can:

closing. Her next balloon drawn empty, two small round shapes joined by a gold bridge, with nothing in either of them. Her voice is gone. Her hands stay open.

a Brygdar troll beside her pressing a cup into the crook of her open hand, careful not to close her fingers. She can't say thank you. She nods, twice, the way she does everything.

on his feet now, held up by Smurjan's fist in his collar, the crow pecking him awake, blinking at the gold threads strung over his head.

The Arbiter's face flickering, faster, over the stands, over the threads, over the gold "&". And then the whole vast figure turning: not its head, its whole weight, every frozen ending in it shifting like scree on a mountainside, toward the floor. Toward the five.

The five coming together. Not at compass points any more: Vigolas walking in from the east, Kompis from the south with his hand still warm from Rougeina's, Rougeina stepping back over the rope, Smurjan from the west half-carrying Trollmage. Side by side, for the first time on this floor. Mingus trotting out in front of them and sitting down, facing it.

wiping the blood off his mouth with his sleeve, the knot-mark on his brow, the black handprint cut open, the cubes clinking in his sash.

Five small figures and a dog, side by side on a floor of living bark, under a canopy of gold threads, facing a cathedral of every ending ever decided. Its face, the moment before an ending, giving each of them their own.