Chapter 399

The white pouring inward from every corner of the floor at once, off the Ring, out of the stands, across the bark, new pale wood creeping in behind it, all of it piling against the loop of five-coloured cord over Jorvand's door like a sea against a single mooring rope. The cord stretched taut as a hawser in a gale. The door in the old man's chest swinging wide.

each on their patch of bark, leaning back against the pull of their threads like sailors on a hauling line, faces strained, feet sliding. Mingus planted in the middle, every hair standing up, the grey stopping at his paws.

Across the new pale bark from the Ring, the rest of the Marka's crew running in: Drekk with his spyglass, the girl with no shadow, Ysel, at his side, Öde with grass springing up under each stride, Levla, Svala dropping out of the dark sky onto the floor. Running to stand with their crew.

on the rope of the Ring, lifting both boots off it, stepping down onto the floor outside the line for the first time in the war. Emma, at the knot, half rising.

The door in Jorvand's chest opening all the way, the old man's head thrown back, and the white not pushing at the cord any more but pouring through everyone inside it. Not a wave. Not a blow. For one long moment at the centre of the floor, everything simply isn't: the bark, the sound, the gold of the Beam (which can't reach in), the air. And in that moment the five, the dog, and the crew running to them are standing on nothing.

The whole crew falling. Not knocked down: dropped, like puppets with the strings cut, each one where they stood. Kompis. Rougeina. Smurjan, his three shadows folding over him. Trollmage, slowly, like a tree. Vigolas. Drekk, his spyglass rolling. Ysel. Öde. Levla. Svala. Lying on the new bark in a loose ring round the old man's feet, eyes closed, faces going pale at the edges the way a drawing fades when the ink runs out. Above them, the cord sagging, still whole: they fell where they stood.

Over each sleeper's head, a small soft-edged panel of what they're dreaming, the way dreams have been drawn since the white came: and every one of them going white, from the edges in. Drekk's Kettle. Öde's village. Kompis's lake. Svala's grandmother's whistle. The white eating them from the outside like frost eating a windowpane.

arriving at a run, and the white going through him too, and his own insets going white: a fishing jetty, a hand reaching out of grey, eight rejects round a raised ship at dawn, all of it fading. And Krydog standing. Not because he remembers why. His legs simply holding, the way they've held ten thousand times, muscle and bone remembering a motion.

(He never fell. So he's still up.)

on his back on the bark in the dark inside the white, where the Beam can't reach. His eyes half open. Afraid of the dark, and in it. His fist opening, slowly, on the warm thing it has held all day: a small ember, glowing.

pushing the ember across the bark, an inch, two inches, toward the golden dog standing over Kompis. The only word he can find. He doesn't know it's his first.

lowering his greying muzzle and taking the ember in his teeth, gently, the way he'd take an egg, or a pup, or a ball he means to give back. Not biting down. Looking at his fallen people. All of them. The whole crew.

a coal, a lamp, a fire, a ball of light too bright to look at, gold and white, held in a dog's mouth without hurting him. Nothing burns him. And the dog growing round it, his gold fur blazing, his legs lengthening like the trunks of trees, his shadow thrown huge across the white.

at the wolf's feet, the person half of his face lit gold, the grey half flinching from the sun. Looking up at it the way a man looks at a sunrise he forgot existed. Very quietly.

lowering its great head, the sun held low in its jaws so the light falls on the crew. On everyone it loves, lying on the bark. Standing in the sun. Their faces warm. And over their heads, the little dream-panels still going white at the edges: the sun can't reach inside a dream.

(The wolf's tail, the size of a mast, moves once. Thump.)

Out of the dark, on a horse made of shadow that breathes frost, its hooves ringing faintly like ice: Mörda. Drifting down from its back without landing, the way she never lands. Passing in under the wolf's chin as if into a house she's been invited to. Kneeling beside Kompis on the bark, her black hair floating, her red-rimmed eyes open.

lying down on the bark beside them all, her body going grey and gold-stitched: fine gold threads running off her into every sleeper's head. Not riding. A guest. And the only dream she has ever had, the one hour she was ever given, opening out of her like a book.

Gold threads running out of Mörda, out of the wolf's light, across the Arena, down a mile-high ladder of planks, out across the sea of starlight to every realm. And everywhere someone is asleep, the same dream opening over their heads, and the white stopping at its edges:

The lamp-bearer children asleep in a heap in the Great Ring. Lärka asleep at Emma's knee. Isa asleep sitting up.

On Niva's field at the foot of the tree, Hedda and Vante asleep against a goat. The half-armed boy asleep against Drämmen's barnacled chest.

A baker asleep over his dough in Glasheim. A troll child in a hammock in Brygdar. A whale-singer on the ice of Stilla. A clerk asleep at a desk in Gate City under the great board.

In every one of them: a cabin. A fire. Snow at the windows. A golden dog asleep on the rug.

Inside the cabin. Low beams, a stone hearth, a fire, snow drifting past a small window, a rusted nail in the lintel over the door. And on the rug in front of the fire, all of them: the five and the crew, sitting up in the warm as if they'd only just come in out of the cold. A golden retriever asleep in the middle of the rug, his side going up and down. The firelight the exact gold of the sun in a wolf's jaws.

in the dream, sitting up, looking round the room. Touching the floorboards. His eyes filling.

(A soft knock at the door. Nobody needs to answer. It opens anyway, and a thin grey woman stands on the step in the snow, black hair floating, waiting to be asked in.)

in the doorway, a guest, not coming in until asked.

The crew in the dream-firelight. Rougeina lying down, properly, on her side, the way she only learned to sleep in the Heartwood. Smurjan with Kali's head on his shoulder and Bakasura's great jaw resting on the hearthstones like a dog's. Drekk and Ysel back to back. Öde reading her arms aloud to the fire. And Trollmage, asleep inside the dream, flat on his back by the hearth with his crow on his chest, snoring.

Trollmage on the bark under the Sun-Wolf, asleep, and on the back of his left hand the violet hourglass of his sin-mark brightening, slowly, the way it hasn't since dreams went white. The sleep counting. Banking.

(Over his head, his dream-panel: not white at all. Firelight all the way to the edge.)

on the rug, his back against Kompis's, looking at the fire with the ember-light in his eyes, the dark outside the window, and not afraid of it.

Krydog, standing beside it all night, alone, the only one awake inside the light, swaying, his memories pale at the edges, his eyes raw. And Mörda beside him, awake too, sitting on the bark with her knees drawn up: the two who never sleep.

The old keeper at his lamp, the Beam pinned across the whole dark Current to one place, his eyes running in the glare, still standing.

The sky over the trunk going grey, then rose, then gold. Over every sleeper in every realm, the dream fading like a fire going down to embers. The crew stirring on the bark under the wolf. Opening their eyes. And not getting up: too emptied, too far gone, their faces still pale at the edges, hands that won't close.

in the first light. Coming down an aisle like a shadow under water: a long, low, stooped shape, wet and grey, with no eyes, a smooth blank oval for a face, a sash of drowned rope knotted with small lost things, round mouths ringed with tiny teeth in both palms.

IGEL · FERDINAND-5 · unranked (Order threat class K-IV) · Scalelist: — (borrowing)

And all down the aisle, the dead holding out their hands to him (the freed dead too, back in their own rows since the rope): Sergeant Holt, Hild, the old bosun, Aldhrun standing, and a newly seated man in a patched coat. His palm-mouths fastening on each grey hand, softly. Drinking.

Igel flowing across the pale new bark to the wolf's paws, his burl glowing river-teal, full of borrowed beats; the Sun-Wolf lowering its head and letting him in. His palm-mouths opening over each of the fallen, the five first, and pouring: one borrowed heartbeat into each chest. And on his blank face, flickering like a reflection on moving water, Kvar's face, tired and kind. And Kvar's voice.

The five's eyes opening at once. A bandaged hand coming down to Vigolas. Krydog, swaying, grinning his chipped grin.

And the Sun-Wolf lowering the sun into Vigolas's palm, where it is a small warm ember again, and shrinking, gold fur settling, legs shortening, back down to eighty pounds of retriever padding round the ring licking faces, tail going like a flag.

The five on their feet, back in their places in a ring round the open door, the cord over it pulled taut again. And on their skin, rising off them like steam off a sea at dawn, script: emerald up Vigolas's arms, gold up Kompis's, crimson up Smurjan's, silver and rose braided up Rougeina's, violet and amber up Trollmage's, the sentences of every book they ever read lifting off the skin and moving toward their hearts.