Chapter 190: What Burns in the Lamps

The Lampwrights’ Hall was the oldest building on the inner face of the Wall.

Encrid had walked past it hundreds of times. It was a squat stone building with a low roof and narrow windows, set against the back of the Wall at the fifth mile. It had its own well. Its door was always closed.

He had never been inside.

Vire opened the door and stood aside to let him in.

The Hall was one long room. It was lined with shelves, and the shelves were full of lamps. Hundreds of them. Brass lamps and iron lamps and lamps of blue glass. Some were new. Some were so old that their metal had turned black.

None of them were lit.

At the far end of the room was the well.

It was not like any well Encrid had ever seen. It was a wide round opening in the stone floor, ringed by a low wall of black granite. And from deep inside it, far below, came a faint blue light.

It was the same blue as the lamps on the Wall.

Encrid walked to the edge and looked down.

He could not see the bottom. The shaft went down and down, into the rock beneath the Wall, much farther than any well needed to go. And at the very bottom, so far down that it was barely a point of light, something was burning.

"When the Wall was built," Vire said behind him, "the builders dug the foundations deeper than anyone had ever dug before. They wanted the Wall to stand for a thousand years. So they dug down to the bedrock."

He came to stand beside Encrid at the edge of the well.

"And under the bedrock, they found that."

"What is it?"

"We don’t know." Vire’s voice was quiet. "The oldest records say that the deep-folk left it there. The same people who raised the Darwen Span before there was an Empire. But the records are very old, and the men who wrote them were guessing."

He looked down at the light.

"What we do know is this. The Roamers fear it. Not the great ones. But the small ones. The climbers. The Sumpers, the Grinners, the things that come in the night. They will not climb toward a blue flame if there is any other way to go."

Encrid thought about the Wall. Two hundred kilometers of stone. Nine Watches. Four hundred lamps, burning every night for two hundred years.

"That’s why the Wall has lasted," he said slowly. "Not only because of the stone. Because of the lamps too."

"The lamps keep the small things away at night," Vire said. "So the men on the Wall only have to fight the large things. It doesn’t sound like much. But it is the difference between a Wall that stands for two hundred years and one that falls in the first winter."

Encrid had no idea what that burning thing deep inside was. He had never encountered anything like it in the novel, nor did he remember any mention of a power that could make the roamers fear something so instinctively.

’A flame that the roamers fear.’

The thought alone was unsettling.

Encrid had a strong premonition that whatever this flame was, its source had to be important. In a novel, something powerful enough to terrify the creatures of the Great Green Forest was unlikely to exist without a reason. Its origin, its nature, and the person connected to it would almost certainly carry some significance to the story.

Whatever that fire was, Encrid suspected its source would have great narrative relevance.

And from everything Encrid knew about the novel, one thing was certain: everything had a price.

"And what’s the price of this power?" he asked.

"You’re a smart one, Watcher," Vire replied. "There is a price, of course."

He raised his left hand and turned it over, revealing a thin, pale scar on the inside of his wrist, just below the palm. It was an old wound, its edges long since faded.

"The fire needs to be fed," he said. "And we, the Lampwrights, are the ones who feed it."

Encrid looked at the scar.

"Every Lampwright, on the day they take the apron, comes to this well," Vire said. "They cut their wrist and let their blood fall into the flame. And the flame takes a little of them. Just a little. And in return, it lets them carry it up to the Wall."

"A little of what?"

"Of their years." Vire lowered his hand. "The flame burns on life. Not much. A Lampwright who gives himself to it lives a long time. We do not age the way other men do. But we do not live as long as we would have, either. We simply spend our years differently."

Seventy-one.

Bound.

"That’s why there’s no record of your appointment," Encrid said.

Vire almost smiled.

"When a Master of the Lampwrights grows too old to carry the flame, he comes to this well one last time. And he does not come back out." Vire looked down into the light. "He gives it everything. And the lamps burn for a generation on what he gave."

"The previous Master-"

"Is down there," Vire said simply. "Twenty-two years ago. He was my teacher."

Encrid did not say anything.

He did not know what he could say.

"The Empire does not know of this," Vire continued. "The Lord commander does not know this. Only the first Lord commander and the leaders of Lampwrights are aware of it. The flame is never to leave the Wall. Never. Not a single lamp. My teacher said that a thing which burns on human life should not be allowed to spread."

"Because men would use it."

"Because men would use it," Vire agreed. "And because of what it does when a Lampwright takes all of it at once."

Vire turned away from the well and walked back along the shelves of lamps.

"There is a duty that every Lampwright swears when they take the apron," he said. "Most of them never have to keep it. In two hundred years, no Lampwright has ever had to keep it."

"What duty?"

"The Last Lamp."

He stopped beside a shelf of old blue-glass lamps and ran one finger along the edge of it.

"If the Wall is ever lost," Vire said, "the Lampwrights are the last to leave it. And we do not leave it. We go to the lamps, all of us, and we give the flame everything. Everything."

He turned back to Encrid.

"And for a few hours, the flame gives it back."

Encrid felt something cold move down his spine.

"What do you mean it gives back?"

"In simple terms, we’ll burn," Vire said. "We do not feel pain. We do not feel fear. We feel only the flame, and the flame is very old and very angry at the things that come out of the forest. A Lampwright who takes the Last Lamp fights like no one you have ever seen. But only for a few hours."

He paused.

"Until there is nothing left to burn."

The Hall was very quiet.

Far below, in the well, the blue light flickered.

"Why are you telling me this?" Encrid asked finally.

"Because someone should know," Vire said. "When the Wall is gone, someone should know why it stood as long as it did. Someone who asks what’s underneath a thing that works."

He took a small lamp down from the shelf. It was made of blue glass in a thin iron frame, no bigger than Encrid’s hand. It was empty. There was no wick in it, and no oil.

He held it out.

"The flame can’t leave the Wall," Vire said. "But the lamp can."

Encrid took it.

It was very light. It was cold.

"Keep it," Vire said. "So that someone remembers there was a light here."

He walked past Encrid to the door of the Hall and opened it. Outside, the inner road was filling with people. Wagons. Porters. Soldiers. The first of the column, beginning to move toward the Mouth.

Vire stood in the doorway and looked at them for a moment.

"Go and lead them, Watcher," he said. "We’ll hold the Wall."

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