Re-Awakening: I Ascend with a Legendary class

Lily was waiting at the north gate.

She did not ask where John was. She had watched it all from the wall with Hessa beside her. She looked at Almond’s face, and then at Big D, and then she took Almond’s hand.

”It reached us,” she said. ”Up there. When he let it out.”

”The quiet?”

”The whole wall sat down. Silvester. Kayla. Me.” Her grip tightened. ”Everything on my status went gray. Hush. Turnback. My rank. All of it.”

”It came back.”

”I know. When he pulled it in.” She was quiet for a moment. Then she said, ”The baby’s didn’t.”

Almond looked at her.

”Its line,” Lily said. ”Under mine. The one that says its weight. Everything else went gray, and that one stayed lit.” She put her hand on her stomach. ”It didn’t even flicker.”

Almond did not know what that meant. Neither did she. But Lily did not let go of his hand all the way back to the hall.

They left at first light the next morning.

There were ten in the chain. Clovelle was at the front, rested for the first time in a week. Then Almond, with Lily’s hand in his, then Kayla, Big D, Rudra, Kael, Ainen, Natalia and Hessa.

Lily had not asked to come. She had simply been standing at the south gate with her coat on when they got there.

”You promised to stay with me,” she said, when Almond opened his mouth. ”So stay with me. The Door’s where you’re going.”

Kayla had looked at her, and then at Almond, and shrugged.

”I’m going too,” Kayla said. ”So it’s fine.”

Silvester stayed. So did the Empress. They stood together at the south gate as the ground folded, with Saffa and Fraisea behind them.

”We’ll keep the lights on,” the Empress said.

Clovelle folded the ground.

They came into Emberfall’s line at noon.

The Warlord met them at the stones. He had heard. Everyone on the road had heard, somehow, the way news traveled from line to line. He looked at their faces and did not ask the questions he wanted to ask.

”It went past us in the night,” he said. ”A mile west. We saw it in the dark, like a gray river. It didn’t come any closer.”

He shook his head. ”The Pyreking stood at the stones all night with his fire lit. He said he wanted it to see that someone was awake.”

”Was there a man with it?” asked Ainen. ”Walking in the middle?”

”I couldn’t see. Hessa could tell you.”

Hessa had her hand over her eyes.

”I can’t see him,” she said. ”There’s too much around him. They’re packed in close, like a crowd around a fire.” She lowered her hand. ”But it’s going south. Slow. It’s keeping a mile out from everything, the way he said.”

”How long to the Door?”

”Four days. Maybe five.” She looked at Big D. ”He really isn’t in a hurry.”

They stopped at Greywatch the next morning, long enough to tell Orla. Then they folded on.

The Strayers came at dusk, between Greywatch and the Aurelian line.

They were not part of the tide. Hessa said so afterward. They were a loose pack of six, cut off from the rest when it went west.

They came up out of a dip in the road as the light failed, long-legged and quick, with heads like bent lanterns.

Almond knew what they ended before the first one reached him.

The road turned under his feet. Nothing moved, but every direction felt the same. North and south went soft. He could not tell which way the Door was, or Greywatch, or anything.

Lily’s hand was in his. He held on.

Helm.

True Heading.

”South,” Rudra said flatly. ”That way. Everyone on me. South.”

The road came back. Almond felt it settle under his boots like a deck after a wave. South was south again.

The Strayers came in on both sides.

Mark.

Natalia lit them up red. Kael went out of the chain to the left in six fast steps and took the first one through the neck. Big D caught the second in both arms as it leaped and broke its back across his knee.

Almond let go of Lily’s hand, only for a moment.

Quiet Edge.

The third Strayer dropped without a sound.

The other three stopped. They stood on the road with their lantern heads turning, looking at the dead. Then they turned around and went back into the dark the way they had come.

Almond took Lily’s hand again. She had not moved a step.

”Kayla,” he said.

”Fine,” Kayla said. ”Both. Keep walking.”

They came to the Door at dusk on the second day.

Corvin was standing at the north stones. He had been standing there, the Frosthold guards said later, since noon. He watched the ground fold up the road toward him, and he counted the people as they came out of it.

He counted again.

”Where’s little John?” he said.

Almond told him.

He told him all of it, standing at the edge of the frosted ring with the Door huge and dark behind them. The man in the field. The quiet. The old woman walking out alone. John going over the wall. The deal.

Corvin did not say a word the whole time.

When Almond finished, Corvin stood still. His white hand was pressed against his chest.

”He said that?” Corvin asked at last. ”Put the kettle on?”

”Yes.”

Corvin was quiet for a long moment. Then something moved in his face, and Almond could not tell if it was anger or something else.

”He said that to me once,” Corvin said. ”A long time ago, up on the rim. We were fighting over the same stretch of the rim, and I was losing, and he was losing worse.”

He looked down at his hand. ”He walked off into the dark to make a deal with something I didn’t like the look of. He said, ’Put the kettle on, Corvin. I’ll be back for tea.’”

”Was he?” asked Lily.

”He was,” said Corvin. ”And the thing he made the deal with wasn’t.”

Nobody said anything.

Corvin turned around and shouted for his captains.

”Kettles!” he roared. ”Every kettle in this ring! I want water boiling at the foot of that Door by midnight, and I don’t care if nobody drinks it!”

The word went around the ring fast. By the time the stars came out, the Emperor of the Aurelian Empire had come to the walled fire with Sevrand, and the Sovereign of Voidmere with the wanderer, and the Matriarch with the Wraith.

”Tell us where to stand,” the Emperor said to Big D.

”Nowhere yet,” said Big D. ”It’s four days out.”

”Then tell us in four days.” The Emperor sat down on a flat stone and did not leave.

Big D sat by the fire with the book open on his knee. He had turned to the front pages. Almond saw him look at one line for a long time without writing anything.

Corvin saw it too. He came and stood over Big D’s shoulder.

”That his?” Corvin asked.

”It’s his.”

”Let me see it.”

Big D closed the book.

”It’s his,” he said again. ”He gave it to me. Not to you.”

Corvin stood there with his kettle. For once, he did not argue.

”Does it suit him?” he asked at last.

Big D thought about it.

”Yes,” he said.

That night, Ainen sat at the walled fire at the foot of the Door with a bowl of stew going cold in his hands.

He was not eating it. He had one hand pressed flat against his chest, the way he had at Brightwater when the Aurelians walked away. Almond sat across from him and watched his face.

”Something’s wrong,” Ainen said.

”With the tide?”

”With the gatekeeper.” Ainen shut his eyes. ”The thread. It’s pulling. Not thin, like before. Tight. Like somebody’s leaning on the other end of it.”

Lily sat up beside Almond.

The Door was dark above them. It had been dark and quiet since the last of Ravengard came through. But now, as Almond looked up at it, a thin line of light came down its middle. It was the color nobody had a name for.

The light moved. Something small came out of it.

The little gold gatekeeper walked out onto the frosted grass. It did not walk slowly this time. It came straight to Ainen at a run, and stopped at his feet, and looked up at him with its one old eye.

”Host,” it said. ”The Walker is beside my road.”

Ainen put his bowl down.

”Already?” Almond said. ”Hessa says the tide’s four days out.”

”The tide is four days out,” the gatekeeper said. ”They are not with it. They came the other way. Under. Along the edge of the nothing, where the Walker can go.”

Its small voice shook. ”The Walker is standing beside my road, near the gap. And the one who went first is standing with him.”

Big D had come up behind them. So had Corvin, with a steaming kettle in his good hand.

”What are they doing?” Big D asked.

The gatekeeper was quiet for a long moment.

”Only standing,” it said. ”The Walker is only standing.” It turned its eye up to the thin line of light on the Door. ”But the one who went first has put his hand on my road.”

Almond looked up.

The line of light on the Door was getting narrower.