Chapter 113: The Lure

There were fifteen of us in the south solar at eight o'clock, and the fire, and the long table, and Helena's big brown teapot in the middle of it like a small fat god nobody had asked to sit down.

My father at the head. My mother and Adriana on either side of him. Aurelia by the fire, in the low chair she likes, with her hands in her lap. Carol and Ignatius. Seraphina and me. Iselle, with Roderic standing behind her chair as if he'd been told to and hadn't. Caitlin with her blue book. Loki on the windowsill with his knees up. Thor beside him, so that she could reach his ribs. Halemar, smelling of oil and rope.

And Ansel. In the chair nearest the door, of course. With his hands folded on his knees and his brown coat buttoned up to the chin, as if he were cold, or about to leave.

Faelan was not there. Faelan was in bed. He had asked to come, and Adriana had said no, and he'd said "That's very sensible. I hate it," and gone, and nobody laughed until the door was shut.

* * *

"Two things," said my father. "Tomorrow night. Ansel, would you tell it? From the start. Everybody here should hear it from you."

Ansel told it.

All of it. The lamp going out. The trough. Corvel's voice, calling Othellos. His doors, from the seabed, every one, humming in two gray dripping hands. One door. For her. From the rock to the palace. The garden with no gate. Who else in the whole Accord could open that wall from the inside?

And then, quite steadily, looking at the fire and not at any of us:

"And I want them. My doors. I want them more than I've wanted anything since I came back. I told Garrick at the stream. I told Faelan at the trough. I'm telling you now." He paused. "I'd like that written down. In case."

Mary wasn't there. Mary doesn't come to the south solar after eight; she says her pen gets tired. But Caitlin turned to a clean page in the blue book without a word and wrote it down, and turned the book around, and showed him.

Ansel read it. And nodded. And something in his shoulders let go.

* * *

Nobody said anything for a moment.

Then my mother said, very gently, "Thank you for telling us."

And Thor said, "Aye," gruffly, and looked out of the window.

And Iselle, who had been sitting with her hands open in her lap the whole time, palms up, the way she does now when she's frightened instead of making fists, said quietly: "I know what that's like. Wanting it back. When you've had something to hold for a very long time and then you haven't." She looked at Ansel. "It doesn't make you him."

Ansel looked at her for a long moment.

"No," he said. "I'm beginning to think it doesn't."

* * *

"So," said my father. "Two things."

He held up one finger.

"Blackstack. Carol, Garrick, Seraphina, Iselle, Loki, Caitlin. Halemar to carry home whatever we find. Whatever's being built on that rock, we go and look at it, and Carol asks it its name."

He held up a second finger.

"And the trough. Ansel goes and sits on the wall, and tells the Choir yes."

"And doesn't mean it," said Ansel.

"And doesn't mean it." My father put his hand down flat on the table. "Two things. On the same night. Three hundred miles north, and far out in the western sea." He looked around the table. "I'd like to hear what's wrong with that before anybody tells me what's right with it."

* * *

What was wrong with it took about forty minutes. Thor wanted to stand next to Ansel with a hammer. Ansel said, very politely, that the Choir would see a hammer from three hundred miles off and not come up out of the water at all.

Adriana said she didn't like the doors. "You'll have them in your hands," she said. "Every one. I've read what you were, Ansel. Not much, because there isn't much. But enough." She looked at him steadily. "When you hold them again, will they hold you back?"

Ansel didn't answer that for a long time.

"I don't know," he said at last. "I think they might try."

* * *

Iselle lifted her head.

"Then I'll be there," she said. "When they try."

Everybody looked at her.

"That's what I'm for," said Iselle. "Isn't it. Making holding let go." She looked down at her open hands. "If your doors close on you, Ansel, I'll open your hand. You won't even have to ask. Well. You will have to ask. But you can ask now, and I'll say yes now, and then it'll already be done." She swallowed. "That's how asking works here. I've been learning."

Ansel looked at her.

"May I?" he said. Very quietly. "If they close. Open my hand."

"Yes," said Iselle.

Behind her chair, Roderic put one hand on her shoulder, just for a moment, and took it away again.

* * *

"But Iselle's going to Blackstack," said Caitlin. She was frowning at her blue book, at two columns she'd ruled side by side. "She can't be at the trough and on the rock at once. Nobody can. That's what's wrong with it. It's two things." She tapped the page. "We haven't got enough of us for two things."

Loki, on the windowsill, made a small noise.

We all looked at him.

He'd been very quiet the whole time. Quiet for Loki, which means he'd only said four things, and three of them had been to Thor. He had his chin on his knees and his eyes half-closed, and he was looking at Ansel the way he looks at a lock somebody else has spent all day failing to pick.

"It isn't two things," said Loki.

* * *

"Say that again," said my father.

"It isn't two things." Loki unfolded himself from the windowsill. "Think about it. What do they want from Ansel? One door. From the rock to the palace." He held up a long finger. "From the rock. Where's he going to build it? He can't build a door to Blackstack from a horse trough in the north. He has to be standing on Blackstack to put a door in it." He looked at Ansel. "Don't you?"

"Yes," said Ansel slowly. "A door has to be built from one side. You stand on the threshold. You can't build one from a distance."

"So if he says yes," said Loki, "they have to take him there. To the rock. Tomorrow night. Through the trough, probably. They came up through the water like it was a door. They'll take him down the same way." He spread his hands. "And where are the rest of us going to be tomorrow night?"

There was a silence.

"On the rock," said Carol.

"On the rock," said Loki. "Waiting. Before he gets there." He smiled. It was not a nice smile, and it was not an unkind one either. "It isn't two things. It's one thing. With a door in the middle of it."

* * *

The room went very quiet.

Then my father began to laugh. The deep slow laugh he has when something is so obviously right that he's annoyed he didn't see it first.

"Somebody always has to think like the other side," said Loki. "It's usually me. I'd like it noted that I don't enjoy it."

"You enjoy it a great deal," said Thor.

* * *

After that it went quickly.

The Blackstack party would go early. Jörmungandr had thought about it, my father said, and had decided, sometime in the afternoon, by sending a single long swell up the river to Greykeep that slopped over the quay steps and soaked Helena's washing. That was yes. He'd come up the river at ten. He'd carry us out to sea the way he had once before, on the broad warm scales behind his head, and put us down on Blackstack an hour before midnight.

And then we'd hide. On a bare black rock a hundred feet high with nothing on it but steam and one lamp the Lockwarden had left.

"How," said Caitlin, "do you hide on a rock with nothing on it?"

Loki looked at her.

"You let me lie to it," he said.

* * *

"A good lie," said Loki, "has three rules. I've told some of you before. Garrick, you were there." He held up a finger. "One. It's mostly true. Two. The true parts do the work; the lie only has to stand very still in the middle with its shoes off." Another finger. "And three. It has to be something the other person wants to believe." He looked around the table. "What does that rock want?"

"To be visited," I said. I remembered. "It's very new. It's lonely. It said so."

"Then I'll tell it it isn't," said Loki. "I'll tell it we're nothing. Just more stone. Warm stone, with steam on it, sitting very still, keeping it company." He shrugged. "It'll want to believe that so badly it'll believe it for us. And anything that looks at the rock will see the rock believing it."

"That's horrible," said Caitlin.

"That's why it works," said Loki.

* * *

And Ansel.

Ansel would go north at sunset, the way he did every night, and light the three lamps, and sit on the wall, and wait. And when the Choir came up out of the trough, he'd say yes.

"Say it like you mean it," said Loki. "That's the only bit you need to lie about. Not even that, really. You do want them. Say that. All of that. Every true word of it. Let the true parts do the work." He looked at Ansel steadily. "And then, right in the middle, very still, with its shoes off: and I'll build your door."

Ansel nodded slowly.

"And when they take you down through the water," said my father, "you'll come up on Blackstack. And we'll be there."

"And I won't build anything," said Ansel.

"And you won't build anything."

"And then what?"

My father was quiet for a moment.

"And then we'll see what's on the rock," he said. "And who's waiting for it. And Carol will ask it its name."

* * *

"And Garrick," said Ansel.

I looked up.

"You said you'd be the one who knew which way I was walking. Before I set out." He looked at me across the table. "I'd like you on the hill. At the trough. Not on the rock. Not yet. I'd like you to see me go down. And then come after."

"I can fold to Blackstack," I said. "I've stood there."

"I know," said Ansel. "That's why I'm asking."

I looked at Seraphina.

"Next to you," she said. "On the hill first. Then the rock." She turned to Loki. "Can you lie to the birches too?"

"I can lie to anything," said Loki. "Birches are easy. Birches are very trusting."

* * *

And my father.

My father would not be on the rock. He said so, when Carol asked. He said, "If I come, it's a war. I said three days. I said not angry. If I stand on that rock and see what they've built out of you," and he looked at Carol, and didn't finish. "No. Not me."

"Then where?" said my mother.

"At the trough," said my father. "After he's gone down." He looked at Ansel. "Somebody has to keep the lamps lit. Until you come back up the road."

Ansel didn't say anything for a long moment.

Then he said, "Thank you," very quietly. And the gold at his side came up warm.

* * *

The next day was the longest day I can remember. Helena made enough food for a siege and then made more. Caitlin ruled so many columns in the blue book that Kip, who had come over from Orselle "for no reason," was sent out for a second one. Carol stood on the ninetieth step of the north tower for an hour, saying her name under her breath. Loki was found in the kitchen garden in the scarecrow's coat, looking at himself in a bucket of water. "Seeing what it looks like on somebody," he told Thor. "Before I see what it looks like on something."

* * *

Ansel came to the library at five, before he went north.

He knocked three times on the open door. Mary looked up from the black book. "Come in," she said. He came in, and stood beside her desk, and asked if he might write something. She gave him the pen without a word.

I didn't see what he wrote. Not then.

He gave her the pen back. And then he went down to the kitchen, and Helena gave him a cup of tea, which he drank standing up, and a honey biscuit wrapped in a cloth, which he put in his coat pocket. "For the road," said Helena. "There. Now you can find your way." Which is what Pim said to Selvane's lamp, and she knew it.

And then he went out of the north gate, on foot, in his brown coat. And Faelan was on the gatehouse stair, in his nightshirt and Roderic's blue scarf, though it was only five, and he called after him: "Write it down when you get back!"

Ansel turned and lifted his hand. Not a wave. An answer.

And then he was gone up the road.

* * *

At ten, the river came up the quay steps and stopped. And something enormous lay in it, all the way down to the sea, gray-green and patient, with one great golden eye just above the water by the bottom step, watching us.

"Hello," said Carol. "Thank you for coming. You can still say no."

The eye closed slowly. And opened.

That was yes.

I watched them go. Carol and Iselle and Loki and Caitlin and Halemar, climbing down onto the broad warm scales behind the head, one by one, with Roderic handing Iselle down and not letting go until she said "Roderic," and then letting go. Loki in the scarecrow's coat. Caitlin with both blue books. Halemar last, with a long canvas bag over his shoulder, the kind you'd carry sails in. Or pieces.

The serpent slid away down the river without a sound. And the quay steps were just steps again, wet to the top.

* * *

At eleven, Seraphina and I went up to the nook.

Loki had done the birches before he left. He'd put his hand on my shoulder and on Seraphina's, at the gate, and said something under his breath in a language I didn't know, and walked away. I didn't feel any different. Seraphina said she felt "slightly papery." Loki said that was right.

"May I?" I said. "To the hill. Then the rock."

"Yes," said Seraphina. "Next to you."

And I reached for the stand of birches above Hesketh's shelter, three hundred miles north, where I'd stood three nights ago and not gone down. And folded.

* * *

It was colder than before. Clear and very still, with stars. Our breath smoked and we didn't bother hiding it. Loki had said the birches would believe we were birches, and that birches breathe too, in winter, if you look closely enough, which nobody ever does.

Below us, the shelter. The hut. The trough, black and still.

Three lamps on their hooks. Hesketh's, yellow. Hollis's, white. Ansel's, gold.

And Ansel himself, on the low wall beside the trough, with his hands folded on his knees and his brown coat buttoned to the chin. Waiting.

He didn't look up at the birches. Not once. But I felt his light from the hill. Small and steady and gold. A lamp in a window seen from a long way down the road.

* * *

At a quarter past midnight, the third lamp went out.

Snuffed. All at once. As if a hand had come down over it. And came back gray-blue.

And the trough wasn't still anymore.

It rose out of the water the way it had before. Tall, thin, gray, faceless, in a long coat that wasn't its own, as if the trough were two feet deep on top and a mile deep underneath. It stood in the black water up to its knees with its long gray hands folded in front of it.

And it called him, in Corvel's horn-call, long and low and curling over the water like fog.

"Othellos."

* * *

"That isn't my name," said Ansel.

But he said it differently this time. Tiredly. Like a man who's said a thing so many times he's stopped expecting anybody to hear it.

The hollow thing waited.

"You've thought about it," it called.

"Yes."

"And?"

Ansel looked at the water for a long time.

* * *

"I want them," he said.

He said it to the trough, quietly. Not to the hollow thing. To the water, the way he'd said it to the stream.

"I want them more than anything I've wanted since I came back. I can feel them. Right now. Down there. Every door I ever made. Some of them were beautiful. Some of them were so well made that the man who cut the plates cried." His voice didn't shake. "I've been sitting in a chair by a door for a very long time, being kind, and being careful, and being sorry, and not wanting anything. And it was a lie. I wanted them the whole time. I've never stopped."

Every word true. Every single one. I felt Seraphina's hand tighten on mine.

The true parts doing the work.

* * *

"And the garden," said Ansel. "Under the palace. Three hundred and eleven." He looked up at the hollow thing for the first time. "You were right. I could open it. Nobody else could. I've thought about nothing else for three nights. I want to walk them out myself. I want them to look at me when they go past." He paused. "I want to be thanked. Isn't that a small, stupid thing for a god to want."

"It isn't stupid," called the hollow thing, very gently. "It's yours. You can have it."

"Yes," said Ansel.

And then, right in the middle, very still, with its shoes off:

"I'll build your door."

* * *

The hollow thing went still.

For a long moment nothing moved. Not the water, not the lamps, not the stars. I felt Seraphina stop breathing beside me. I felt the birches all around us holding very still, believing they were only birches, believing we were too.

Then the hollow thing lifted its long gray hands out of the water.

And in them, cupped, dripping, humming like a hive: his doors.

"Take them," it called. "They're yours. They always were."

* * *

Ansel stood up.

He stepped down off the wall to the edge of the trough. He held out his hands. And the hollow thing tipped its own hands forward over his, slowly, the way you'd pour water from one bowl into another.

And his doors went into him.

* * *

I felt it from the hill. I think I'll feel it for the rest of my life.

It was like watching a man who'd been walking in the cold all night come into a warm room. And then watching the warm room close around him. Every door. Every threshold. Every one-way plate and long gray hall and quiet cell with a lamp in the window. Thousands of them, going into his hands, up his arms, into his chest, folding themselves back into the places they'd been cut out of a thousand years ago, as if they'd never left.

His back straightened. His shoulders went back. He grew, somehow, without getting any taller. The brown coat was the same brown coat. But the man inside it was suddenly very much larger than the coat.

The gold light at his side went out.

Not gray-blue. Out. Gone.

And Ansel, standing at the edge of the trough with his hands full of doors, lifted his face to the stars and laughed.

* * *

I was on my feet. I didn't decide to be. I just was.

Seraphina's hand was on my arm. Not holding me back. Just there. Next to me.

"His road," she whispered. But her voice was shaking.

Below us, Ansel stopped laughing.

He looked down at his hands. Full of doors. Humming. He turned them over, front and back, slowly, the way he had three nights ago. The way he had at the stream. The way he always did.

And then he closed them.

* * *

Into fists. Finger by finger. Slowly.

And the hollow thing in the trough bowed its faceless head, as if it had been waiting a thousand years to see exactly that.

"Othellos," it called softly. "Welcome back."

Ansel didn't answer.

He stood there with his fists closed and his light gone out and his doors humming in his hands, and he didn't say anything at all. Not that isn't my name. Not anything.

I couldn't breathe.

* * *

"Come," called the hollow thing. "She's waiting. On the rock. Build her door, and the garden is yours." It held out one long gray dripping hand, palm up. "Step down into the water. We'll take you there."

Ansel looked at the hand.

He looked at the trough. At the black water, two feet deep on top and a mile deep underneath.

And then, before he stepped down into it, he did a very small thing.

He opened one fist. Just one. His right. And he turned, and reached up, and knocked three times on the iron hook where his own lamp hung, burning gray-blue.

Three knocks. Soft and plain and steady.

Once is rude. Twice is nagging. Three times means the person inside knows it's someone who'll wait.

* * *

"You don't need to knock," called the hollow thing. Almost amused. "There's nobody there."

"I always knock," said Ansel.

And he stepped down into the trough. Up to his knees. Up to his waist, in water that was two feet deep. Up to his chest. The hollow thing put its gray hand on his shoulder. He didn't shake it off.

He didn't look up at the birches.

But just before his head went under, the lamp on the third hook, the one he'd knocked on, the one that had gone gray, caught.

Gold. Small and steady. A lamp in a window, seen from a long way down the road.

And Ansel was gone, and the hollow thing was gone, and the trough was just a trough. And on the third hook, his lamp burned gold, all on its own.

* * *

"Garrick," said Seraphina.

I was crying. I hadn't noticed. I wiped my face with the back of my hand.

"He knocked," I said. "Did you see? He knocked on his own lamp."

"I saw."

"He told us which way he was walking." I could hardly get the words out. "That's what it was. He knew we were watching. He couldn't look at us. So he knocked on his lamp. And it lit." I looked at the third hook. "He's walking our way, Sera. Whatever his hands are doing. He's walking our way."

Seraphina took my face in both her hands. Her palms were warm. The First Flame, just a little.

"Then let's be there," she said, "when he comes up."

* * *

Down on the road, there was a man coming.

Tall and broad, in an old coat and boots that had been down to the sea that week and still smelled of it. He'd come through the little gate at Sedge and walked the last mile, up the old road from the south, the way a man walks when he's come a long way and doesn't mind.

My father.

He didn't look up at the birches either. He walked to the shelter, and knocked three times on the door of the empty hut, and waited, and then sat down on the low wall beside the trough, under three lamps that were all burning, in Ansel's place. And folded his big hands on his knees.

Keeping the lamps lit. Until somebody came back up the road.

* * *

"May I?" I said. "To the rock."

"Yes," said Seraphina. "Next to you."

And I reached for Blackstack. The one place in the western sea I'd ever stood. Black and hot and young and lonely, with steam coming out of it, and one lamp on the ledge.

And folded.

* * *

We came out on warm black stone, in the dark, in a gust of sulfur and steam.

And I felt Loki's lie close over us at once, like a blanket somebody had been holding open: you're stone, you're only stone, warm stone, keeping it company. And the rock, under my boots, believing it. Gladly. The way you believe a friend who tells you you're not alone.

Carol was beside me in the dark. I felt her through the middle before I saw her. Iselle, a little way off, hands open. Caitlin crouched against a fold of rock with a blue book on her knees. Halemar flat on the stone like a seal. And Loki, in the scarecrow's coat, sitting perfectly still on a ledge with his eyes closed and his lips moving.

None of them looked at us. They were stone. So were we.

But Carol's hand found mine. And held it.

And she turned my head, very gently, with her other hand, so that I was looking where she was looking.

* * *

Up on the high ledge, the flat one where the Lockwarden had sat a whole afternoon, the lamp he'd left was burning.

And beside it, in the lamplight, looking out to sea, was someone standing.

Not tall. Not short. My sister's height, exactly. In a crooked coat that wasn't hers, with a hole in the left elbow that Loki had put there on purpose a long time ago. With dark hair to the shoulders, cut the way Carol had cut hers that winter. With her hands at her sides. Perfectly still.

Waiting. For a door.

It turned its head a little, as if it had heard something in the steam. And in the light of the Lockwarden's lamp, I saw its face.

It was Carol's face.

And there was no one behind it at all.

* * *

Mary's book. She wrote it that evening, after we'd all gone, and I didn't read it until the morning after, when everything was over. I'll put it here, because this is where it belongs.

Night four.

Everyone went.

Uriah to the trough. Carol, Iselle, Loki, Caitlin, Halemar on Jörmungandr. Garrick and Seraphina on the hill, then the rock.

Faelan on the gatehouse stair. "Write it down when you get back."

Helena gave Ansel a honey biscuit. "There. Now you can find your way."

And at the bottom of the page, where he'd left room for her to write above it, in a plain, careful, very upright hand, written at five o'clock in the afternoon, before he walked north up the old road to tell a hollow god a lie with its shoes off:

Ansel. Walking north, then west. I told everyone which way. If my hands close, Iselle has said yes. If my light goes out, look at the lamp.