Chapter 849: The Black Door

Corvin had seen the Door shine twice now.

The first time, he had been on the other side of it. He had walked out of that light into a field of gray grass with eleven thousand of his people behind him. Nobody had been waiting for them.

The second time, he had been standing at its foot with Big D beside him. He had watched Emberfall walk out into a ring of frosted stones and a fire that somebody had kept burning.

This was the third time. And this time, it was wrong.

The light came down the Door from somewhere far above, the way it always did. But it was not the color nobody had a name for. It was black. It was not dark, the way night was dark. It was black the way a hole is black, and it poured down the great Door like ink running down a wall.

Behind him, eleven thousand people of Frosthold had come out of their houses to watch. Nobody spoke.

"John," Corvin said, without turning his head.

"I see it," said John. He was standing at Corvin’s shoulder with his hands in his pockets. For once, he was not smiling.

"What is it?"

"I don’t know," John said.

Corvin turned and looked at him. In all the years he had known John Wicked, he had never once heard him say that.

The black light reached the ground.

Nobody walked out of it.

For a long time, there was nothing at all. The light pooled at the foot of the Door, thick and still. Corvin stood at the edge of it with his good hand clenched at his side and his frozen arm in its sling. He waited.

Then he heard the screaming.

It was very faint. It came from inside the black, from somewhere a very long way off. It was not one voice. It was hundreds of voices, thousands, all crying out at once, as if they were falling.

"Frosthold!" Corvin roared over his shoulder. "Spears! Ropes! Now!"

His people ran.

A figure stumbled out of the black light.

It was a woman in dark gray. She fell to her hands and knees on the frosted grass, gasping, the moment she came through. Then a man came, and another woman, and two more behind them. They were all in gray. They all fell the moment their feet touched the ground. They knelt there and shook as if they had carried a mountain across on their backs.

Corvin dropped to one knee beside the first woman and grabbed her shoulder.

"Where are you from?" he demanded. "Who are you?"

The woman lifted her head. Her face was gray with exhaustion. Her eyes were wide and blank.

"Duskspire," she whispered.

Duskspire. The fifth empire of the layer above. The empire of shadows, whose people kept to themselves and fought from places nobody could see.

"What’s happening in there?" Corvin asked. "Why is it black?"

"It’s too heavy," the woman said. Her voice cracked. "The crossing. It’s too heavy. She won’t put it down."

"Who won’t?"

"The Matriarch." The woman’s eyes filled with tears. "When the gatekeeper asked her what she’d carry, she said all of us. Everyone in Duskspire. Twelve thousand people." She swallowed. "And nobody else would help her."

Corvin stared at her.

"Why not?" he asked.

"Because that’s not how we live," the woman whispered. "In Duskspire, nobody carries anybody. Everyone keeps to their own shadow. That’s what we were taught. It’s what kept us alive for longer than anyone remembers." She began to sob. "The gatekeeper asked us one by one what we’d carry, and most of us said only ourselves. And now she’s carrying all of us alone. And she can’t. And people are falling off the road behind her and going back into the dark."

More of them were coming out now.

Only a few at a time. Each one fell the moment they came through, gasping and shaking. Frosthold’s people were running to them with blankets and water, hauling them clear of the black light.

But there were so few. Twenty. Thirty. A trickle.

And behind it, the screaming went on and on.

"How many are still in there?" Corvin asked the woman.

"I don’t know." She was shaking her head. "Thousands. Most of us. She’s at the front. She’s barely moving. And every time she slows down, more of them at the back slip away."

Corvin stood up.

He looked at the black light pouring down the Door. He thought about his own crossing, a month ago. He had named his people when the gatekeeper asked, all eleven thousand of them, and they had named him back. He remembered how heavy it had been even then, with all of them carrying each other.

He could not imagine carrying it alone.

"Hessa said the Door opens one way," he said aloud. "Nobody goes back through."

"That’s right," John said.

"So nobody can go in there and help them."

John was quiet for a moment.

"It opens one way for walking through," he said slowly. "It doesn’t say anything about reaching in."

He walked to the edge of the black light.

Corvin watched him go. Every Frosthold soldier on that field stopped what they were doing and watched too.

John stopped right where the black began. He looked at it for a long moment. Then he took his hands out of his pockets, and he put his right arm into the light, all the way up to the shoulder.

For a moment, nothing happened.

Then John leaned back, and pulled.

A young man came out of the black light with John’s hand closed around his wrist. He tumbled onto the frosted grass and lay there, gasping. He had not been walking. He had been lying on the road inside, too tired to take another step. John had reached in and found him.

The whole field was silent.

John looked down at the young man on the grass. Then he looked back at Corvin.

"Corvin," he said. "Hold my belt."

"What?"

"I’m going in a little further." John’s voice was calm, but his face was very serious. "I don’t know how far I can go before the Door decides I’m walking through instead of reaching. So hold my belt. And if I start to go, pull."

Corvin stared at him. Then he marched across the grass and grabbed the back of John’s belt with his good hand.

"If you get yourself lost in there," he said, "I am never going to forgive you."

"I know," said John, and stepped into the black.

Corvin went in up to his elbow.

He had not meant to. John had taken one step, then two, and Corvin’s arm had gone in after him. It went into the black light up to the elbow, and then up to the shoulder.

It was cold. It was the cold of being completely alone.

Behind him, someone grabbed his furs. It was Ivar, the pale-haired boy with the stubborn chin. And behind Ivar, someone grabbed Ivar’s belt, and someone grabbed theirs. Frosthold soldiers were running from all across the field, and the chain grew longer and longer, stretching back from the Door.

"Hold on to me!" Corvin roared. "Everyone, hold on!"

He went in.

Inside, there was nothing to see.

That was the first thing. It was black, the way a hole is black. There was no light anywhere. He could feel John’s belt in his fist and Ivar’s hand on his back. He could hear screaming from somewhere ahead. But he could not see anything at all.

"I can’t see!" Ivar shouted behind him.

"Then fix it, boy!" Corvin roared back. "You made an orb for this!"

There was a short, startled silence.

Then Ivar laughed. It was a high, nervous, half-mad laugh.

Dark Lamp.

A small gold light bloomed in the boy’s hand.

It was not much. It was the size of a candle flame. But Ivar’s orb did not care how dark it was. You and those beside you can see in any darkness. And the boy was standing beside Corvin, and Corvin was standing beside John.

They could see.

It was the crossing.

Corvin knew it at once. It was the same road he had walked a month ago. It was made of nothing, stretching away toward a gap that was impossibly far off.

But it was not the road he remembered.

When Frosthold had crossed, the road had been full of people walking, slowly, bent under the weight, but walking. This road was full of people lying down.

They were everywhere. Thousands of people in dark gray lay on their faces on the road of nothing, or curled up on their sides, or on their knees with their heads bowed. Some of them were trying to crawl. Most were not moving at all.

And at the edges of the road, where the nothing began, some of them were sliding.

Slowly, one at a time, they were sliding backward off the road. They went into the dark behind, and they did not come back.

"No," Corvin breathed.

Far ahead, near the middle of the road, one figure was still upright.

She was on her knees. She was bent almost double, with her forehead nearly touching the nothing under her. But she was still upright, and she was still moving. She was dragging herself forward one knee at a time, a few inches at a time.

She was a small woman, old and thin, in black robes.

"The Matriarch," John said quietly.

Beside her, another figure was crouched on the road. It was a lean woman in gray, with her hand on the Matriarch’s back. She was not carrying anything. She was only there, beside her, watching her crawl.

The Wraith. Duskspire’s champion.

She looked up as the little gold light of Ivar’s lamp came toward them. Her eyes went wide.

"Frosthold?" she said. "What are you doing here?"

Corvin did not answer her. He let go of John’s belt and walked forward on the road of nothing, with Ivar’s light behind him and the chain of his people stretching back to the Door. He walked until he was standing over the small old woman on her knees.

The Matriarch of Duskspire lifted her head.

Her face was gray and wet with sweat. Her eyes were the eyes of someone who had been carrying twelve thousand people on her back for far too long.

"King Corvin," she said hoarsely. "Of all the people. Why are you here?"

Corvin looked down at her.

"Because when I came through," he said, "nobody was waiting for me."

He knelt down on the road beside her.

"And I swore," he said, "that nobody else was going to walk out of that Door to find nothing there."

He took a breath. He thought about Big D, and about the story Big D had told him by a fire at the Door. It was about a whole kingdom on this same road, saying one word to each other until the weight was shared.

"Everyone," Corvin said.

The weight came down on him like a falling mountain.