Chapter 394

The sun gone behind the trunk, the sky over the bowl going from gold to plum. The floor a broken map of bark and blank. At the centre, the ring of five round a stooped old man, the cord over his door glowing. And drifting out from him in every direction across the bowl on the evening wind, faint grey script, soft as smoke, arriving at every ear in the stands and on the floor.

A Brygdar troll's huge tufted ear. A Tidekant fishwife's, with a silver ring in it. A lamp-bearer girl's, under a woollen hat. And the grey words curling into each one, close and gentle, like someone sitting down beside you on a bench.

on the steps of the stands of the living, one of the ones who carried the Great Ring's coils up a mile of bridge on his back. His eyes red-rimmed from three nights awake. Looking down at the axe in his hands as if he doesn't know what it's for. Setting it down on the step, very carefully, the way you put down something heavy at the end of a long day.

People getting up. Not in panic: calmly, the way people leave a hall when the music's over. A fishwife folding her shawl. An old ex-Everlasting in white laying down his chain. A lamp-bearer girl setting her clay lamp on a step, still lit. And walking down the aisles toward the nearest white patch on the floor, faces peaceful, like people going home after a shift.

one boot planted inside the gold line, the other outside, lunging as the troll walks past him and grabbing him by the collar with one bandaged fist, and with the other fist grabbing the fishwife's shawl.

two people held in his fists and four more walking past, just out of reach. His planted boot. The line. He can't step off it.

(The troll gently pulls his collar out of Krydog's fist, and keeps walking.)

at the knot, as walkers file past the Ring's rope on their way to the floor. Reaching toward them over the gold line, her white braid swinging.

(They walk past. One of them smiles at her kindly.)

her hand falling. White in the face.

at the centre, his thread straining in the cord, eyes gold. Lust-sight across the floor: every walker trailing gold threads behind them, back up the steps, to people. He reaches out with one hand, not to anyone in reach. Thread-Pull. Tugging the troll's thread.

at the edge of a white patch, one foot lifted. Stopping. Turning his head as if someone called him from far away. On the steps behind, a little troll girl in a too-big helmet.

(He puts his foot down on bark. Turns round.)

rooted on her patch of new bark at the centre, eyes on the fishwife with the silver ear-ring, who has got loose from Krydog and is walking toward a white patch by the stands of the dead. A pinpoint of silver-rose in Rougeina's pupil.

Blink. The fishwife standing on the top step of the stands of the living, holding a bucket she doesn't remember picking up, and the bucket standing on the floor where she was, a step from the white. Rougeina's feet locked to the bark for a heartbeat, silver light at her ankles.

Lärka, small and barefoot, her cropped white hair, a pale stiletto at her belt, standing on a step with one hand raised. Below her, down the aisle, a cone of silence spreading: the walkers in it stopping, the grey words drifting at their ears and not arriving, the script going blank at the cone's edge. People blinking, looking at their empty hands.

her face strained. And behind her, outside the cone, a dozen people walking past her down the next aisle, the grey words curling into their ears. She can only face one way.

(Her balloon: none. Her lips pressed shut.)

Roffe at the top of the stands, as big as a door, beating his ladle on the rim of his cartwheel cauldron so hard the steam jumps.

A few walkers turning their heads at the bell, sniffing the amber steam, slowing. A few. The rest going on down. Roffe ladling as fast as two arms can, bowls going out hand to hand, and the line of people walking away from him a hundred times longer than the line walking toward him.

Tihi, bells jingling, cartwheeling down the steps and past Krydog and out onto the floor, skidding to a stop at the very edge of a white patch, small, freckled, fourteen, in a navy jacket three sizes too big, facing the white with her fists on her hips.

throwing her head back and laughing at it, on purpose, the way she laughs at funerals. Rose bubbles lettered tihi pouring out of her balloon toward the white. And at the edge of the white, each bubble cut in half: the near half there, the far half simply never having been.

(The rose dimple-marks on her cheeks flicker.)

laughing again, harder, forcing it.

And again.

Her face going completely still, the way the crew has learned to be afraid of. Her bells stopping.

at the line, roaring over the heads of the walkers.

(She doesn't move. She's still staring at the white where her laugh went.)

Kvar: an ordinary tired man of forty-five in a patched leather coat, ash in his hair, a short spade on his back, and round his neck the scarf of a hundred armies, scarves of dead regiments knotted end to end, a birch-green one on top. The grey words curling into his ear, closer than into anyone else's. As if they know his name.

sitting down on the step. Slowly. The way an old soldier sits at the end of a march. His heavy brown eyes, which age when he's tired, looking a thousand years old. Looking at the white.

sitting very still. A long panel. Walkers going past him on both sides, down toward the white. The cold clay pipe in his fingers. He turns it over once.

getting back up. Knees cracking. Putting the pipe away. Saying the thing he said once before, at the edge of an island the Null ate whole, to the same voice.

(He starts down the steps after the walkers. Not to join them. To stand at the bottom.)

Vigolas, shuffling in place on his patch of bark because he can't stand still, his thread blazing in the cord, rounding on the old man inside the loop.

A young man in an Order sailor's white coat gone grey with salt, the one who threw a white rope down into a lamp-boat because he didn't know why. One foot lifted over the white. And in front of his face, held up in a small shaking hand, a little clay lamp, its flame steady: a lamp-bearer boy of seven, standing between him and the blank, holding the lamp up to his face. In the flame, small, the sailor's happiest moment: a kitchen, a woman laughing, flour on her hands.

stepping back. Onto bark. Staring at his own boot: the toe of it gone, not cut, just never there, his stocking showing. He sits down hard beside the boy.

One saved. One lamp. And across the stands, still, a hundred walking. Daniel at the rail, counting under his breath and stopping.

where its last span leans against the Arena's rim. All the way down the spans below, allies still climbing, shouting to each other: and their balloons going blank, span by span, from the bottom up, as if a tide of quiet were rising up the bridge. Shouts with no words in them. A dropped bucket bouncing with no SFX.

Rising over the lip of the Arena against the plum sky: a hooded mountain. Bare grey feet like boulders. A robe of undyed felt layered like snowdrifts. A hood with nothing but shadow in it. Two enormous grey hands, cracked like dry clay, violet script running up the backs of them in ten bands, every band dim since the day he spent them. And in a widening ring round him, spreading down into the stands, every balloon on the page going empty: the walkers' sighs, Krydog's roar, Roffe's bell, all of it, emptied. Jorvand's grey script drifting up toward the rim, meeting the edge of the silence, and going blank mid-word: