Chapter 838: The Blight

Hessa sat down in the warm red grass inside Emberfall’s new line. She kept her hand over her eyes and told them what she saw.

"Seven," she said. "Seven lords. I’ve never seen so many moving at once. Nobody has."

Big D crouched in front of her. Rudra, Natalia and Kael stood close. The Warlord of Emberfall hovered at the edge of the group, listening.

"Where are they going?" Big D asked.

"Two toward the Door. One toward Greywatch. One toward us, here." Hessa’s voice was steady, but her free hand was gripping the grass hard. "Two are still far off in the east. I can’t tell where they’re headed yet."

"That’s six," Rudra said.

"The seventh is going to Brightwater." Hessa lowered her hand. Her face was gray. "It’s the closest of all of them. It’s moving fast. Much faster than the Lull ever moved."

Big D went very still.

"How long?"

"Tonight," Hessa said. "It reaches Brightwater tonight."

Nobody said anything for a moment.

"Two days," Kael said. "It’s two days to Brightwater from here. Even if I run the whole way, it’s two days."

"I know," Big D said.

"There has to be something."

"There isn’t." Big D stood up. His voice was very quiet, and his hands had closed into fists. "We can’t get there. They’ll have to hold it themselves."

"Almond’s there," Natalia said. "And Lily. And Ainen and Marcus and Clovelle. They’ve beaten worse."

"They’ve never beaten a lord without us," Rudra said.

Big D looked north. There was nothing to see but grass and the faint pale rings in the evening sky.

"Hessa," he said. "Can you watch it? Brightwater. The whole time."

"Yes."

"Then watch," Big D said. "And tell me everything. Even if there’s nothing we can do about it. I want to know."

In Brightwater, the leaves curled first.

Almond noticed it at sunset. He was crossing the main square on his way to the tower when he looked down at the little shoot in the old fountain. He stopped.

Its two small leaves, every color at once, had curled inward at the edges. They looked like hands closing.

He knelt beside it. He did not touch it.

"Lily," he said quietly.

She was beside him in a moment. She looked at the curled leaves, and her face went pale.

"Was it like that this morning?"

"No."

Behind them, someone shouted from the fields beyond the river. Then someone else. Almond stood up and looked across the water. The young wheat that the Greywatch volunteers had planted ten days ago had stopped moving in the wind. It was not dying. It was simply still. It had been green and growing that morning. Now every blade looked frozen in place.

Kayla came running across the square.

"Almond," she said. She was holding up her own hand. There was a long, shallow cut across the palm. "I did this cutting bread an hour ago. A little cut. Nothing. It should have closed by now. It hasn’t even started."

"Mend it."

"I tried." Her voice cracked. "I tried three times. It won’t take. Mend goes in, and nothing happens. It’s like pouring water on stone."

Almond looked at the curled leaves, and the frozen wheat, and the cut that would not close.

Then he looked at Lily.

She had both hands pressed flat against her stomach. She was staring at nothing.

"Kayla," Almond said. His voice came out very calm, which was how he knew he was frightened. "Check her. Now."

Kayla put her hands over Lily’s. She closed her eyes.

Mend.

It was a long time before she spoke.

"It’s there," she said at last. "It’s alive. It’s fine." She opened her eyes. They were wet. "But it isn’t growing. It was growing yesterday. I could feel it. Now it’s just... held. Like it’s waiting for something."

Lily made a small sound. It was not quite a word.

She opened her status with a shaking hand. The faint line at the bottom was still there.

[Soul Weight: 1]

"It still says one," she said. "It still says one."

"It’s alive," Kayla said again, firmly. "Something has stopped it growing. That’s all. It hasn’t hurt it. It’s just stopped it."

"For how long?" Lily whispered. "How long can something that small stop growing before..."

She did not finish. Nobody answered.

Almond turned around.

"Ainen," he said. "I need you."

Ainen came up from the kitchens with flour still on his arms. He took one look at Almond’s face and did not ask any questions. He stood in the middle of the square and closed his eyes.

Taste.

His face changed.

"Oh," he said. "Oh, I don’t like that at all."

"What is it?"

"It tastes like a clock that’s stopped," Ainen said slowly. "Like bread that won’t rise. Like something that was supposed to turn into something else, and never will." He opened his eyes. "It ends growth. That’s what it is. It ends growth."

"Where?"

Ainen turned slowly. He pointed east, across the river, past the frozen fields.

"Out there. Just past the line. It’s big. Very big. And it’s sitting right on the edge of the stones."

"A Blight," said a voice behind them.

It was one of the old men from Greywatch, the one who had walked north with a stick to see the city where his grandmother was born. He was standing at the edge of the square, staring east.

"My grandmother told stories about them," he said. "Blights. They’re lords. They can’t cross a line. But they don’t have to. The Lull didn’t have to either." He looked at the curled shoot. "A Blight sits outside, and nothing inside grows. Not crops. Not wounds. Not children." He swallowed. "Sooner or later, the line stops growing too. And then the stones go dark."

Almond looked down at the shoot. One of its two leaves had curled almost shut.

"How long?" he asked.

"My grandmother said a week," the old man said. "For a big line. Less for a small one."

Almond did not answer. He was already walking.

They gathered at the east gate in the last of the light.

Almond had chosen fast. Ainen, to taste the way. Marcus, to carry orders. Clovelle, rested at last, with her Short Road. Silvester and Hiroshi. Noah and Kira. Maya, with her Thread. Saffa and Fraisea, who would not be left behind.

And the eight.

Almond had not asked the Spirit Lords to come. He had not asked anything of them since the Door. They had their own bodies now, and their own lives. But when he reached the gate, all eight of them were already there, waiting in the dusk.

Alfred stepped forward.

"We heard," he said. "The child."

"I can’t ask you to..."

"You did not ask," Alfred said. "That is rather the point, Master. We are not in you anymore. We chose to come."

Sylvia stood beside him. She was holding a spear the way she had held one on the first night, as if she still was not sure what to do with it. But her face was very calm.

"We carried your ground once," she said. "Let us carry something else."

Almond looked at the eight of them for a long moment. His throat was tight.

"All right," he said.

Lily was not coming. She had not argued.

She stood at the east gate with Kayla beside her. She had both hands on her stomach.

"I know where I’m needed," she said. "And it’s not out there."

"I know," Almond said.

"But I’m not doing nothing, either." She looked back across the city, toward the square and the little curled shoot. "Turnback. What crosses the line goes back the way it came." She looked at him. "The Blight’s ending is crossing our line right now. Coming in. I can’t hold it off the whole city. It’s too big. But I can hold it off a small piece."

"Which piece?"

"The square," Lily said. "The shoot. If the line goes dark, everyone in Brightwater dies anyway. So I hold the shoot. I keep it growing for as long as I can." She tried to smile. "And I’ll be standing right on top of it. So whatever I keep growing, I keep growing for us, too."

Almond took her face in both his hands.

"You use the handle," he said. "Not the raw imprint."

"I use the handle."

"You stop if it hurts."

"I stop if it hurts him," Lily said. "Or her. Not me."

He kissed her forehead. Then he turned and walked out through the east gate into the dark.

The Blight was waiting on the far side of the frozen fields.

They saw it as they came over the last rise. It was as tall as Brightwater’s tallest tower. It looked like a tree that had died a thousand years ago and kept standing. Its trunk was gray and cracked. Its branches were bare and black and spread out against the rings of the sky. Its roots had pulled up out of the earth to make dozens of thick, crooked legs.

It stood right at the edge of the white stones, with its roots pressed up against the line.

Where it stood, nothing moved. The grass did not stir. The air did not stir. Even the dust under its roots hung in the air, as if it had forgotten how to fall.

Almond felt it the moment they got close.

It did not hurt. It was a kind of stopping. His breath went in, and it took far too long to come out again. He looked down at his hand and watched a scrape on his knuckle from the morning simply sit there, not bleeding and not healing.

"Don’t get cut," he said quietly. "Anyone. If you get cut out here, it won’t close."

"Wonderful," Silvester muttered. "My favorite kind of fight."

Behind them, back in the city, a soft light came up in the main square. It was not much. It was a ring of pale blue the size of a room. It sat right in the middle of Brightwater, around the old fountain.

Turnback.

Lily was holding.

"Natalia’s not here," Kira said. "How do we find its heart?"

"Ainen," Almond said.

Ainen closed his eyes.

Taste.

"Deep," he said. "Deep in the trunk. Right in the middle, where the roots come together. It tastes like the stopped part of a stopped thing." He opened his eyes. "I’d say the very center."

Almond looked up at the great dead trunk.

"Maya," he said. "Thread us all together. Nobody gets separated. Clovelle, can you put us at the base of the trunk?"

"I can see it," Clovelle said. "So I can get us there."

"Marcus. If I go down, you keep everyone moving."

"I always do," Marcus said.

Almond drew Ainen’s cleaver. His fingers felt slow and heavy on the handle, as if every movement had to push through cold syrup.

"All right," he said. "Let’s go and cut down a tree."

Short Road.

The world folded.

They landed among the roots of the Blight. And every root, all at once, began to move.