Chapter 419

The five coming up off the top span of the Bridge onto the rim, Mingus at Kompis's heel, Torva behind them with her mended horn. Below them, the bowl: both curves of stands empty in the sun, the living's and the dead's alike, bare bark seats and light. The floor healed, and at its centre, where an old man stood as a door, a wide round patch of new bark, pale as a peeled stick, where the Null withdrew. No ring, no stump, no door, no letters. In the corner of the blue sky, small, the empty black square balloon. And on the floor, at five points round its edge, five faint lights, like lanterns in daylight.

walking down the steps onto the bare floor.

Without deciding to, each of them walking to where they first stood, the day the Match was called: Vigolas east, Kompis south with the dog, Smurjan west, Rougeina north, Trollmage off to one side, south-east, as always. Each stopping on one of the five lights.

The five lights rising off the bark and unrolling up into the sky like five roads of light, the way Torva's roads unroll across the sea, each one different: to the east, white-gold, bright as noon; to the south, amber, warm, with snow beginning to fall along it; to the west, dark loam with gold flowers growing along its edges; to the north, starlight and silver glass; and off to one side, south-east, a road of pages, white and rustling, going up like a staircase made of a book.

at the rim, one hand on the horn's bound length, reading the roads the way she reads every road: where it goes, who walked it, how long ago.

Mingus leaning on his leg, looking up the amber road.

The five looking at each other across the bare bark of the Arena, from five points, with the same look on five faces.

at the foot of the amber road, stopping. Looking back over his shoulder at the other four roads, one after another, his nose working. Then trotting after Kompis, tail going, because that's where he goes.

(No balloon.)

A city of white towers under a white sky, where things happen a beat before their causes: a door swinging open before Vigolas reaches it; his footprints pressing into the white stone one step ahead of his boots; the towers ringing softly like struck bells. And out of every crack between the white stones, cork welling, pale and slow, the world tree bleeding here as everywhere. At the city's heart, a white hall, nine steps, and at the top of them an empty throne. And sitting on the throne, the way it sat there on the day of the bark, the shadow of a man in a long coat, already there.

at the foot of the nine steps, looking up at his own shadow on the throne, which got here first.

Vigolas not climbing. Sitting down instead on the bottom step, elbows on his knees. The shadow getting up off the throne and coming down the nine steps and sitting beside him, its shoulder against his. And the steps sinking, one by one, into the white floor, KLUNK, KLUNK, KLUNK, the throne coming down with them, until it stands on the floor beside him; and the welling cork gathering under it, the white stone turning to plain pale cork: no longer a throne. A chair.

sitting in it sideways, his legs over the arm, his coat clinking. All round him, the white towers of Helios putting out green leaves, cork-bark climbing their walls, the cork in the cracks between the stones stopping, drying, still.

(In Helios, his laugh arrives one beat before he laughs: a balloon, HA!, hanging in the air while his mouth is still shut. Then he catches up with it.)

The amber road running down out of the dark onto black water, snow beginning to fall along it, and in its hollow the cabin: one room of pine logs, smoke going straight up, the window gold. At the door, standing in the snow with snow on his flat dented head, a gaunt iron man with firelight in his rivet-eyes. Kompis and Mingus walking down the road toward him.

creaking, looking at the boy and the dog.

Nagel turning, and in mid-stride becoming a nail, and driving himself up into the square hole in the lintel above the door.

(A dented square nail-head in the lintel. Rust running from it like a nosebleed. Firelight glowing behind it.)

The fire. The rug with the dog's shape worn into it. Two bowls. The biscuit tin, full. And the cork that has been welling up between the floorboards gathering by the hearth into a plain pale cork chair. Mingus walking in first, turning twice, and lying down in his shape on the rug with a groan. Kompis sitting down in the chair by the fire, the door open behind him onto the snow.

The Compost Fields: dark soil rolling to the horizon, mushrooms, a soft green light. Smurjan walking down the road of loam and gold flowers, and behind him, fifteen of the sixteen who walked out of the gold field (the sixteenth, Gunvor, stayed on the ship to sing). Passing a low hill with a white circle of salt on its top where nothing grows, and beside it a single white birch. Each of the fifteen stopping to lay a gold flower on the salt. Knee-high mushroom folk with caps for heads, tending a thin, pale woman lying in the soil.

a place in the Compost Fields where Trinity's dead come back up out of the soil, slightly altered. A woman climbing out of the black earth, confused, touching a face she doesn't quite recognise. Smurjan kneeling, giving her his hand, hauling her up.

(Beside the Gate, the cork welling out of the soil gathering into a plain pale cork chair.)

in her one hand, and out of its reflection, stepping, a man with Kali's face reversed, a long black braid, a coat of tiny mirror-scales, eyes like polished steel: Bali. The four of them standing together for once: Smurjan, Kali, Bakasura risen vast behind, Bali.

sitting in the cork chair by the Gate of Return. At his feet, four shadows, and the fourth no longer faint. And out of him, for the first time any of them can remember, the three voices laughing together, Kali sharp and fast, Bakasura slow as a rockfall, Smurjan quiet, and a fourth, soft, mirrored.

(Kali hits Bakasura. It's the worst joke in the world. It always was.)

A black sky of lantern-close stars; tower-sized mirrors floating in it, every one cracked; black panthers lifting their heads. Below, the Nettle Field, knee-deep and silver with frost-fine stinging hairs, between two great mirrors facing each other across it, one silver, one rose, both cracked from edge to edge. Rougeina walking barefoot through the nettles, her panther at her side. And among the nettles, straightening, a tall green-black woman covered in stinging hairs, red welts on everything she's touched. Nässla.

reaching out and touching the inside of Rougeina's wrist, where the two rings are. A red welt blooming. A red ring round each of Nässla's pale green irises.

between the two great cracked mirrors, seeing herself in both: silver and rose, cracked, all of her, the grey parts too. Not looking away. The cork welling between the nettle-roots gathering into a plain pale cork chair. And Rougeina, who has perched on masts and chimneys and statues her whole life and never sat where others sit, sitting down in it. The panther lying across her bare feet.

unfolding a worn paper from her bindings: the list. Names in her own hand, every one crossed off. At the bottom, in the same hand, she writes one more: ROUGEINA. And, gently, crosses it out. Then she says the eight aloud, lettered small, and the ninth thing that isn't a name.

INSET, soft-edged: far away, in a cabin in the snow, a boy in a hood by a fire, his lips moving at the same moment.

The Library: shelves going up out of sight, ladders, galleries, and on them seventy-seven lights, every one burning, none of them dead. At the centre, the Spire-Throne: a tall chair carved from a single great page of a single codex, curling at the top. Trollmage climbing up into it in his slippers, sitting, and sliding off, slowly, the way you slide off a page. Landing on his back at its foot. Beside him, the cork welling between the floor-stones gathering into a plain pale cork chair.

on the arm of the cork chair, its beak in Trollmage's pot of troll-coffee. Drinking. And taking off, as it always does after coffee, backwards, straight into a shelf.

(Trollmage, from the floor, lifts one ink-stained finger and writes in the air, slow and violet:)

MACRO : FORWARDS = THIRTEEN DAYS

The crow, mid-flight backwards, flipping round, and flying forwards, for the first time ever after coffee, in great screaming loops round and round the seventy-seven lights.

in the cork chair, the blank Sloth Codex on his knee, doing nothing at all. And on its first white page, slowly, violet letters writing themselves again:

DAY ONE.

He reaches up to the nearest shelf without looking, takes down a book (the first of the seventy-seven), opens it on top of the Codex, and settles in.

In each, at the same moment, the one in the chair looking up: because from far below, down all five roads at once, comes the sound of a brass bell at a ship's bow, swung hard by a giant laughing woman.

the two ships lashed at the foot of the tree, the Long Table laid across both decks. Roffe, setting out bowls at the near end of it for five people coming home down five roads, counting under his breath: one, two, three, four, five. And then, without a word, without looking up, setting down one more.

(No balloon.)