Chapter 839: Shared Ground

The roots came up out of the earth all around them.

They were thick as a man’s body, gray and cracked, and they moved slowly. But there were dozens of them, and they came from every side at once.

"Thread!" Maya shouted.

Silver lines snapped out from her hands and tied every one of them together. There were nineteen people on one line, the eight Spirit Lords and the eleven from Brightwater. Nobody could be dragged away now without dragging the rest.

The first root swept in low across the ground.

Noah jumped it. Kira did not get high enough. It caught her across the legs and threw her sideways, and the Thread went tight and stopped her before she hit the trunk.

She came up holding her shin. Her trouser leg was torn open, and there was a long red scrape down the skin underneath.

It did not bleed much. But it did not start to close, either. It simply sat there, open and raw, as if time had stopped inside it.

"Kira!" Noah shouted.

"I’m fine." Her voice was tight. "It’s just a scrape. It’s just..." She looked down at it. "It’s not going to stop, is it?"

"Not out here," Almond said. "Stay close. Don’t get hit again."

They pushed toward the trunk.

It was like walking through deep water. Every step took longer than it should. Every swing of a blade felt heavy and slow. Almond could feel the Blight’s ending pressing down on all of them, telling their bodies to stop, to stay, to never change again.

Saffa knelt and slammed both palms into the dirt.

Frost.

A sheet of ice spread across the ground in front of them. The roots that crossed it slid and slowed. It did not stop them, but it bought a few seconds.

Fraisea took one of the slowed roots in both hands.

Pressure.

She squeezed. The gray wood cracked down the middle and split open. The root jerked back.

Another came at Silvester from behind. Hiroshi pulled him clear, and took the blow himself across the ribs. He grunted and went down on one knee. When he got up, there was a deep gash across his side. Blood was running down it, slow and steady. It did not stop.

"Hiroshi!"

"It’s all right," Hiroshi said. He did not sound all right. He pressed his hand over the wound. "It’s all right. Keep going."

Silvester’s face had gone white.

"It won’t close," he said. "Almond, it won’t close. He’ll bleed out here. He’ll just keep bleeding until..."

"I know," Almond said.

He looked around at them all. At Kira’s open scrape. At Hiroshi’s blood dripping slowly into the dirt and not drying. At the roots coming in again, slow and endless. At the great gray trunk still fifty yards away.

They were not going to make it like this. The ending was too strong. It was going to grind them down one cut at a time.

He needed somewhere for them to stand. Somewhere the Blight’s rules did not reach.

He had built a deck for that once, for the inside of a body that would not let them stand. And when the decks were taken away, a part of it had stayed in him.

Shared Ground.

He reached for it raw.

It was like trying to lift a mountain with his bare hands. Almond had never used this imprint before. He did not know what it would cost. He only knew what it was for.

Where he stood, his people could stand.

He felt it take hold around his feet. It was a small circle, no wider than his own shadow. Inside it, his breath came easily. His fingers moved at the speed he told them to. The slowness was gone.

But it was so small. He could not push it any wider. It was all he had, and it was barely enough for one.

"It’s not big enough," he said through his teeth. "I can’t make it big enough."

"Master."

Alfred was beside him. All eight of them were.

"We carried your ground once," Alfred said. "On our shoulders. All the way down through the body, and all the way across the crossing."

"You don’t have decks anymore," Almond said. "You don’t have thrones. You’re just..."

"People," said Sylvia. "Yes. We know." She stepped out of the line and planted her spear in the dirt, three paces to his left. "Then let us stand where we stood before. And you put your ground between us."

Almond stared at her.

Then he understood.

"Spread out," he said. "All of you. A circle around me. Like the thrones."

They moved. Alfred went in front of him. Sylvia was on his left, and Benedict on his right. Galvaren, Meliora, Velkris, Nyssara and Ashkryon closed the ring behind. They stood in a wide circle around the eleven from Brightwater, each one planted in the dirt like a post.

Almond pushed.

Shared Ground.

It did not have to stretch on its own anymore. It ran out from him to each of the eight, the way it once had along the edges of their thrones. It caught on them the way a rope catches on a post, and it held. The circle between them filled.

It was wide enough for all of them.

Inside the ring, the Blight’s ending stopped.

It did not fade. It simply was not there. One moment the air was thick and heavy and slow. The next, it was only air.

Kira looked down at her leg.

The long red scrape began, very slowly, to close. It was not healing fast. Kayla was not there to Mend it. But it was healing the way a body heals, the way a body is supposed to. The edges drew together. The blood dried.

Hiroshi let out a breath. He took his hand away from his side. The blood had stopped running. It was only seeping now, and even that was slowing.

"It’s closing," he said. He sounded amazed. "It’s closing on its own."

"That’s what it’s supposed to do," Silvester said. His voice cracked. "That’s what it’s supposed to do, you idiot."

Almond was on his knees.

He had not meant to fall. Holding the ground raw, even with eight posts to hold it up, was the hardest thing he had ever done. It was harder than Deny against the Lull’s sleep. It was harder than the crossing.

"I can hold it," he said. "Not for long. Move the ring. Toward the trunk. Together."

The eight Spirit Lords stepped forward, all at once, one step.

The ring came with them.

They stepped again. Almond dragged himself forward on his knees in the middle, and the ground came with him, and the roots that swept into the ring slowed to nothing the moment they crossed into it. They lay there like ordinary dead wood. Noah cut them, and Kira cut them, and Fraisea crushed them, and the ring kept moving.

Forty yards. Thirty. Twenty.

The trunk rose up in front of them like a gray wall.

"Ainen," Almond gasped. "Where is it?"

Ainen had been walking right behind him the whole way. He closed his eyes.

Taste.

"Low," he said. "Right where the roots come together. A handspan inside the bark."

"Clovelle. Can you get him there?"

"It’s right in front of me," Clovelle said. "I don’t need to fold. I can walk him."

"Then walk him. Marcus, the ring moves with them. Everyone stays inside."

Keep moving, Marcus said, into every head on the line. One more step. One more. Stay with him.

The ring of Spirit Lords pressed forward until it was right up against the trunk. Almond dragged himself the last few feet and put his hand on the bark.

Sever.

His sight narrowed. The line was there, thin and pale, running down through the bark at the place Ainen had tasted. The cleaver had gone somewhere among the roots when he fell to his knees. Kira pressed her own blade into his hand without a word.

He cut.

The bark split open along the line. Inside, deep in the gray wood, something was beating.

It was small and hard and dark, like a seed that had never sprouted.

Ainen put his hand on it.

"I’ve been wondering what this one was for," Ainen said softly.

His imprint had sat unused since the night the voice had spoken. Host, Taste and Hearth he had used every day. The fourth one he had only looked at on his status, and wondered.

It had come from the deck that aged living things by centuries, until they turned brittle and fell apart.

Ripen.

"You end growth," he said to the dark, hard heart. "You stopped the wheat. You stopped the wounds. You stopped Lily’s baby." His voice was very quiet. "So grow."

He did it raw. He did not have a handle for it. He poured it in all at once.

A hundred years went into the Blight’s heart in a single breath. Then two hundred. Then a thousand.

The heart swelled. It cracked. Green burst out of it, pale and wild, a thousand years of growing it had never been allowed to do. Roots shot out of it in every direction, inside the trunk. Leaves forced their way out through the cracked gray bark.

The Blight shuddered from top to bottom.

Then it began to rot.

It went soft from the inside out. The gray bark peeled away in great sheets. The black branches sagged and drooped and fell. The crooked roots sank down into the earth and crumbled. A thousand years of life and death rushed through it in moments, and when it was done, there was nothing left standing.

There was only a long, low mound of dark, rich earth at the edge of Brightwater’s line. And growing out of the top of it, already as tall as a man, was a young green tree.

Ainen sat down hard on the mound.

He was gray in the face and shaking all over. Almond let go of Shared Ground. The eight Spirit Lords sagged where they stood.

For a long moment, nobody said anything.

Then Saffa knelt beside her husband and took his face in both hands.

"Never," she said. "Never do that raw again."

"I’ll try not to," Ainen said weakly. "It’s very hard. I don’t recommend it."

Beside the mound, in the soft new earth, lay a small, dark, hard thing. It was the very center of what had been the Blight’s heart. It had not rotted with the rest.

Ainen picked it up with trembling fingers.

Ripen.

It folded. It left an orb the color of ripe wheat.

[Power Orb: Long Harvest]

[Quality: C]

[What you touch, ripens. Bread rises. Wounds close. Seeds sprout.]

His status changed.

[Life Rank: C]

Ainen read it twice. Then he started to laugh, very weakly.

"I’m a cook," he said. "I’m a cook with an orb that makes bread rise."

"And closes wounds," Fraisea said. "And sprouts seeds. Ainen, you can feed a whole city with that."

"I know." His laugh turned into something wetter. He wiped his eyes. "That’s what I mean."

They walked back across the fields in the dark.

The wheat was moving again. It swayed in the wind, green and soft. The grass rustled under their feet. Hiroshi walked on his own, with Silvester holding his arm the whole way.

The main square was full of people. They were standing around the old fountain in silence, watching.

Lily was sitting on the stones beside the little shoot, with Kayla kneeling next to her. The pale blue ring of Turnback had gone out. Lily looked very tired. She looked up as Almond came through the crowd, and she did not get up.

He sat down beside her.

The shoot was standing straight. Both of its small leaves, every color at once, had opened all the way. There was a third leaf, too, very tiny, just beginning to unfold.

"It grew," Lily said. "When the Blight died. Just like that. I felt it."

"Kayla?" Almond said.

Kayla had both hands on Lily’s stomach. Her eyes were closed. When she opened them, she was smiling.

"Growing," she said. "Both of them. The shoot, and this one. Growing like nothing ever happened."

Lily opened her status. Her hand was shaking.

Almond leaned over to look.

Under her four imprints and her two orbs, the faint second block was still there. But the number had changed.

[Soul Weight: 2]

Lily stared at it.

"It’s heavier," she said. Her voice broke. "Almond, it got heavier."

Almond put his arms around her and did not say anything at all.

Two days to the south, in the warm red grass of Emberfall’s line, Hessa took her hand away from her eyes.

Big D had been sitting beside her all night. He had not slept.

"They did it," Hessa said. "The Blight is dead. The shoot’s growing. The child’s fine."

Big D let out a long, slow breath. He put his face in his hands for a moment, and his huge shoulders shook once.

Then he lifted his head.

"And the one coming here?" he asked. His voice was perfectly steady again. "To us?"

Hessa did not need to look.

She pointed south, past the edge of the warm white stones, into the gray light of dawn.

Something enormous was standing there, at the very edge of Emberfall’s line, looking in.