Scarecrow

There’s no dawn under a lid.

I found that out on the second morning. On the top terrace of Tor Isca, by the arch with nothing in it, with Mother asleep sitting up against the terrace wall and Merrit asleep against her, an old woman of a hundred and four with her head on Mother’s shoulder.

It just got less dark. Very slowly. A grey came into the black overhead, the way it comes into the inside of your eyelids when someone opens a curtain in the next room. Not light. Just less of the other thing.

And the Hill came up out of it. Terrace by terrace. Gardens. Steps. Water coming down the channels. The black where the Hands’ fire had been on the middle terraces. The burned trees at the foot of the Hill, where Alexander had put a hundred and twelve ships. And on every terrace, people. Sitting. Lying down. Asleep on the steps. One million, three hundred and ninety-one thousand old people from the bottom of the Hill, and all of us.

Nobody had gone anywhere.

Nobody could.

Tally counted at the dawn that wasn’t.

Because Wren couldn’t. Because there was no Wren under the lid, and no Dot, and no thread, and no Avalon. Just Tally, on the top terrace, with her notebook, which she’s only ever used for towers and pieces. Going down the terraces with Garnet at dawn and counting.

She read it out to Okafor. Very steady.

”One million, three hundred and eighty-four thousand, one hundred and six,” said Tally. ”Of the Iscans.” She didn’t look up. ”Six thousand, eight hundred and ninety-four. On the bottom terrace. Before Andraste got there. And on the fifth, where a Hand came down before Alexander could turn it.”

Okafor didn’t say anything.

”Three hundred and eleven of the Hyrrani,” said Tally. ”Nine of Hearth’s. Two of the wing.” She turned the page. ”And Odra’s second smith. The one at Hesk’s back.”

Hesk didn’t say anything either.

She was sitting at the foot of the arch with her hammer across her knees and her cold cup of tea on the stone beside her, and Roan beside her with his hands red from holding a frame with nothing in it all night. She didn’t say anything for a long time.

Then she picked up the tea and drank it. Cold.

And put the cup down by Roan’s foot. Empty.

The queen spoke at the dawn that wasn’t.

Through the Hill. Very quiet now. Not singing as loud as she could any more. Folding takes everything, she said; there wasn’t anything left over for loud.

Half, she said. I am half of what I was. My brood is folded. My song is folding. A pause. By the next dark I will be small enough to carry.

”If you’re not interrupted,” said Okafor.

If I am not interrupted, said the queen.

And then she said something else. Very quietly. To me.

They are gathering. To the east. In the long valley where the river runs. I can feel them on my roots. A pause. They are not coming in ones and tens any more. They have learned. They are coming as one.

I went to the east terrace and looked.

I’ll describe it once.

The long valley runs east from the foot of the Hill for nine miles. It’s wide, with a river down the middle of it, green and slow, and forest on both sides going up into the soft round hills. Merrit says the people of the Hill used to walk down it every spring to the lake at the far end, the whole Hill, in a long line, singing, and come back in summer with fish. She says she did it every year of her life until she was ninety.

The Hungry were in it.

All of it.

From the foot of the Hill to as far as I could see in the grey under the lid. The whole valley. The forests on both sides. The river. Nine miles. Not a swarm. Not a cloud. A tide. Grey-black. Moving. Very slowly. The way the sea moves before it comes in. All of it moving the same way at the same time.

Toward the Hill.

Everything hungry that had come through the lid in the night and not been ended. Everything that had come down on the forests round the Hill and been driven off the terraces by the Hyrrani and Hearth’s three and the wing. It hadn’t gone. It had gone east. Into the valley. And waited. And gathered.

And now it was coming.

As one.

”How many?” said Okafor. Beside me.

Asha answered. Her instruments were in the air over the east terrace, very high, reading the valley. She didn’t talk fast, for once.

Dot wasn’t there to give it to us. Asha said it herself. In our language. Which she’s been learning from Isolde, who’s been learning it from Mother.

”Too many,” said Asha. ”For counting.”

Okafor looked at the valley for a long time.

Then she looked at the Hill. At the terraces. At the old people asleep on every step. At the shaft going down into the hill, where Julius was still standing at the bottom with his cloak across it, because nobody had been able to persuade him to come up.

Then at the sky. Where the Hands were. Two hundred of them, still, going round very high under the lid like birds over a field. Waiting. For the tide to hit the Hill. So they could come down in the middle of it and go for the shafts.

”We can’t hold it,” said Okafor.

Nobody said anything.

”Not from the walls,” said Okafor. ”Not with the Hands waiting. If that comes up the Hill and they come down on top of it, we hold the walls and lose the shafts. Or we hold the shafts and lose the walls. And everyone on the bottom terraces with them.” She took the chalk out of her pocket. ”So we don’t hold it.”

She looked at me.

”We break it,” said Okafor. ”Before it gets here. In the valley.”

”With what?” I said.

Okafor looked at me for a long time. Then she looked past me. At the terrace behind.

Where my house was.

I want to explain this properly. Because people on Avalon say Lucas’s wives the way they say the Mom Squad or Hearth’s three, as if it’s one thing, and it is, but not the way they think.

There are five of them. Luna and Sera and Risa and Hana and Andraste. Five chairs at the long table in the kitchen of the house on the rise, with mine at the end. Five who knelt round Andraste in the snow on the ridge when she named the twins, so the children would know from the first day they had more than one mother.

We’ve never fought together.

Not all of us. Not as one. Risa flies the wing. Andraste leads the Hyrrani. Luna makes the roads and Sera makes the forge burn and Hana breathes for the long ward. They’ve been on the same worlds as me a hundred times. But each of them doing her own thing. In her own place. Where she was needed.

Never together.

Never as the house.

And Risa wasn’t there.

That’s the first thing I have to say. Risa was on the other side of the lid. On the red glass. With Kesh at her feet and Vessa on her chest. Flying nothing, because there was nothing she could reach.

Four of five.

They were sitting on the terrace wall behind me. All four. Where they’d sat down at the end of the night.

Andraste with her iron black from the forest and her blade across her knees, and a long cut down her left arm that she hadn’t let anyone look at. Luna with frost in her hair and her hands very white. Sera glowing faintly at the hands, the way she does after a long day at the forge, except she hadn’t been at the forge; she’d been on the fifth terrace all night where the Hand came down. Hana with the air going round her, slowly, the way it does when she’s tired. She’d been breathing for the whole fifth terrace, in the smoke. For hours.

And beside them, because they’d sat down there at the end of the night too, without asking, Dinraal and Isolde.

Okafor looked at the six of them.

”Together,” she said. ”All of you. As one.”

Andraste looked up. At Okafor. Then at me.

”We’ve never,” she said.

”I know,” said Okafor. ”That’s why they won’t see it coming.”

Dinraal stood up.

He didn’t say anything. He doesn’t, much. He just stood up off the terrace wall and looked at the valley for a long time. With his wrists out. With his father’s silver on them, plain and bright, the way it was on the plain the first day.

Then he looked at me.

And said something. And Isolde gave it to me, in our language, slowly, the way Mother taught her.

”He says,” said Isolde, ”that on Hearth, when a house goes to war, it goes as a house. Husband and wives and sons and daughters. Side by side.” She stood up beside her husband. With her bracelets very bright. ”He says he would be honoured to go with yours.”

So we went.

Seven of us. Down the east side of the Hill. Past the terraces. Past the old people waking up on the steps and watching us go. Past the bottom wall, where the Hyrrani were standing in a long line in iron, very straight, with their First Blade walking past them.

Over the wall.

Into the valley.

I’ll write each of them once. As they were. Then I’ll write what we did.

Andraste in front. Always. She doesn’t walk anywhere except in front. In her black iron with the long cut down her arm and her blade drawn and her short black hair still with grass in it from the north field, a few days and a world ago.

Luna to her left. In her coat, with the collar up, the way she wears it on the ice roads. With her hands out at her sides and the frost already coming off them onto the grass, white, spreading.

Sera to her right. Glowing. Not faintly any more. Sera burns as hot as a dying star and she’s been frightened of it her whole life, and since Bree sat her down on the grass by Brock’s beans and held out her hand, she isn’t. She walked down into the valley with her hands open and the air round her shaking with the heat of her.

Hana behind them. In the middle. Where she can reach everyone. With the air going round her faster now. Not tired any more.

Me.

And on my left, Dinraal. On my right, Isolde.

And the tide came up the valley to meet us.

It saw us.

I don’t know if the Hungry see. Asha says they don’t have eyes, exactly. But the whole of the tide, nine miles of it, from the foot of the Hill to the far end of the valley, felt seven people walk out into it from the Hill.

And turned.

All of it. At once. Toward us.

And came.

Dinraal’s silver went out.

I’ve seen it become armour. Draconic. Seamless. Throat to feet. I’ve seen it become a blade at his wrist and a shield at the other and a bridge a mile long across a canyon and roots through a plain and frost through a ship.

I had never seen it become a gun.

It came off his right arm all at once. Not a blade. Something long and heavy and silver, as long as he was tall, with a barrel as wide as my fist and a dozen others round it, turning. It locked onto his armour at the shoulder and the hip and braced itself into the ground with three silver legs that came out of his armour and went into the soil like roots.

And he looked at the tide.

And it fired.

I’d never heard anything like it. Nobody on Avalon has. Isolde says on Hearth they have a word for it that means the sound a door makes when it’s slammed by a god.

A line of silver light out of the turning barrels. Not a beam. Not fire. Rounds. Thousands of them. So fast they were a line. Down the valley. Into the tide. And the tide, where the line touched it, wasn’t there any more.

He moved the barrels. Very slowly. Left to right. Across the whole width of the valley.

And a quarter of a mile of the tide went away.

Then he let it go. And the gun went back into his armour like water into sand.

And something else came out.

Over his shoulders. Two of them. Long tubes, silver, with fins. Fourteen of them. Twenty. More. Rising off his back on silver arms like the spines of a dragon standing up. And he didn’t look at them. He looked at the far end of the valley, nine miles away, where the tide was thickest.

And they went.

Up. Very high. Under the lid. Twenty silver streaks going up into the grey and turning over at the top and coming down, nine miles off, all together.

The far end of the valley went white.

”He’s never done that,” said Isolde. Beside me. Very quietly. Watching her husband. ”Not like that. Not in front of anyone.”

She looked at me.

”Hearth’s silver can be anything,” she said. ”Anything you can think of. Every weapon there’s ever been. Every weapon there’s never been yet.” Her bracelets were very bright. ”Most of us only think of the ones we were taught.”

She put her hands out.

”Dinraal thinks of everything,” said Isolde.

And then she thought of something.

Isolde’s silver isn’t like her husband’s. It never has been. His is armour and dragon and plate. Hers is bracelets. Elegant. Light. It’s leaves on a bridge, climbing the edges, turning all together toward the house on the rise in the last of the light.

It came off her wrists like the leaves.

Hundreds of them. Silver. Small. Spinning up off her bracelets into the air round her, very light, the way leaves go up in an autumn wind. A cloud of them. Then thousands. Round her. Round all of us. Turning. Catching the grey light under the lid.

And then every one of them, all at once, unfolded.

I didn’t understand what they were until they fired.

Each leaf was a gun. A small one. Elegant. Silver. The size of a hand, with a barrel like a stem and a body like a leaf, and there were ten thousand of them in the air round Isolde, and they all turned at the same time, the way her leaves turned on the bridge, toward the tide.

And fired.

It sounded like rain. Like very heavy rain on a tin roof. Ten thousand small silver guns firing at once, again and again, and the tide coming at us across the valley stopped. Not ended. Stopped. A wall of it, half a mile wide, coming at us very fast, and the rain of Isolde’s leaves going into it, and it stopped coming. And came apart. And was gone.

She didn’t move her feet. She stood in the grass in the valley with her hands out and her dress moving in the wind of her own guns.

”Mother taught me to garden,” said Isolde. Very calm. ”On Hearth. When I was small. She said a garden is a thousand small things, all turning toward the light.”

And then the tide came round.

It came round both sides at once. Up the forest on the left and up the forest on the right. Fast. Faster than anything. Round Dinraal’s gun and Isolde’s leaves. To close behind us.

Luna put her hands down.

I’ve seen Luna’s ice roads a hundred times. On every world. From every door. Out of every tower. A road of white for the children to slide up, so wide and so fast that a whole ring of them can go up a hill in one rush.

She’s never made one for the Hungry.

She put her hands flat on the grass. And the grass went white. Then the ground under it. Then the forest. On both sides of the valley. All at once. Out from her hands in a great widening ring, a mile, two, three, faster than the tide was coming round.

And it wasn’t a road.

It was a wall.

Up. Out of the ground. On both sides of the valley at once. Ice. Clear and blue and white, a hundred feet high, and then two hundred, and then higher, going up out of the forest on the left and the forest on the right, through the trees, so fast the trees inside it froze where they stood with their leaves still on.

And the Hungry coming round both sides of us went into it.

And stopped.

In the ice. Inside it. Thousands of them. Halfway up the wall, frozen, grey-black shapes in the clear blue, like flies in amber.

Luna stood up.

There was frost in her eyelashes. Her breath was white. She looked at the walls she’d made, two hundred feet high and three miles long, on both sides of the valley, and the Hungry frozen in them.

”Sera,” said Luna. ”Now.”

Sera stepped forward.

She’s been frightened of it her whole life. She told me on the roof, the first year. Cormac was the first person she ever saw burn from the inside. She’s been frightened of fire ever since, even her own. Especially her own.

She burns as hot as a dying star.

She stepped out in front of Andraste. Into the middle of the valley. Between Luna’s two walls of ice. With the tide coming at her down the middle of the valley, the only way it had left.

And opened her hands.

And let go.

I’ve never seen her let go. Not once. Not in all the time I’ve known her. Not at the forge, not on the roof, not on any world. She’s always held it. Small. Tight. In her hands, glowing faintly at the end of a long day.

She let it go.

It didn’t look like fire.

That’s the first thing. Fire is orange and red and gold, Bree’s colour. This was white. Then blue-white. Then a colour that isn’t a colour, that hurt to look at, that went out from Sera’s open hands in a line straight down the middle of the valley between the walls, and the air in front of it didn’t burn, it went away. The grass under it didn’t burn. It went to glass. The river in the middle of the valley didn’t boil. It was gone, all at once, a whole river, into nothing.

And the tide coming down the middle of the valley at her went into it.

And then the heat reached Luna’s walls.

Hana moved.

I didn’t see what she did. I felt it. The air. All of it. In the whole valley. Nine miles long, between two walls of ice. Hana took hold of it.

The way she takes hold of the air on the long ward when someone stops breathing, and moves it in and out of them, gently, until they remember how. She took hold of the whole valley’s air.

And turned it.

Sera’s heat hit Luna’s walls.

Two hundred feet of ice. Three miles long. On both sides. With the Hungry frozen in it.

And the ice went to steam. All at once. Both walls. In one breath.

And Hana turned the air.

I’ve tried to explain this to people on Avalon and I can’t. I’ll try once more.

When ice goes to steam that fast, it gets very big. All at once. Bigger than anything. If it had gone up, it would have hit the lid. If it had gone out, it would have hit the Hill.

Hana didn’t let it go up or out.

She turned it down the valley.

All of it. Every bit of steam from six miles of ice wall going to vapour in one breath. Turned. By Hana. Into one direction. Into a wind. Down the middle of the valley, between the places where the walls had been, toward the far end.

At the speed of a storm.

At the temperature of Sera.

The tide in the valley didn’t have anywhere to go.

It took about four seconds.

Asha says. Asha’s instruments saw it from above. She says she watched it four hundred times afterward, on the instruments, on the second night, when there was nothing else to do. She says it took about four seconds for the wind Hana made out of Sera’s fire and Luna’s ice to go from the near end of the valley to the far end.

Nine miles.

And when it got to the far end, there was nothing left in the valley.

Nothing at all.

We stood there.

Seven of us. In the middle of the long valley, on glass that had been grass. With the walls gone and the river gone and the forest gone on both sides, and the steam still going up, very high, toward the lid. White. Rising. Slowly.

Nobody said anything for a long time.

Then Sera closed her hands.

And the light went out of them. Not all of it. She’s always glowing faintly, at the end of a long day. But she closed her hands, and held it, small, the way she’s always held it.

And sat down. On the glass. Very suddenly.

And started to cry.

Luna sat down beside her. With frost in her eyelashes. And put her cold hand on Sera’s neck.

Hana sat down on her other side. And breathed for her. Without saying anything.

Andraste didn’t sit down. Andraste doesn’t sit down in the middle of a field. She stood over the three of them with her blade out and the long cut down her arm and looked down the valley, very straight, at nothing.

But she put her free hand on Sera’s hair.

”I didn’t burn anyone,” said Sera. In the end. Very small. ”I let go and I didn’t burn anyone.”

”No,” said Luna.

”Cormac,” said Sera. ”I always thought if I let go, it’d be like Cormac. From the inside. And I’d never stop.” She looked at her hands. ”I stopped.”

”You stopped,” said Hana.

Sera looked up. At me.

”Risa would have done the sky,” she said.

That was when the Hands came down.

They’d been waiting. Two hundred of them, very high, under the lid, going round. Waiting for the tide to hit the Hill so they could come down in the middle of it.

The tide hadn’t hit the Hill.

The tide wasn’t anywhere.

So they came down on us.

Two hundred Hands. Out of the grey. Over the valley. All at once. With their fire lit and their ramps already opening.

On seven people sitting on glass in the middle of a valley.

And Risa wasn’t there to do the sky.

So I did.

I put my hand on the glass.

And found the valley. All of it. The glass Sera had made, nine miles of it. The ground under it. The rock under that. The hard sheets and the warm. Down. Into Isca. Old. Very old. As old as the queen. With her roots all through it, folding.

And I asked it to stand up.

It’s the thing I do that nobody else can do. Okafor says. A weapon, she said, at the long table, after the Hungry. The most effective weapon anyone could ever hope to have. I don’t think of myself that way. I think of myself as someone who asks things. Very politely. And they say yes.

I asked the valley to stand up.

And it said yes.

The glass came up off the ground in a sheet. Nine miles long. All at once. Under the Hands. Very fast. Not breaking. Rising. The way you’d lift a tablecloth by the middle.

And the Hands came down onto it.

Two hundred of them. Coming down out of the sky over the valley with their fire, and the whole floor of the valley coming up to meet them, a sheet of glass nine miles long and a mile thick.

Faster than they were falling.

Some of them turned. Some of them got out from under it. Forty. Fifty.

The rest didn’t.

I put it down again. Gently. Where it had been. Very slowly. So it wouldn’t shake the Hill.

And when it was down, the long valley was smooth again. Flat. Glass. And under the glass, very deep, where the light from the steam caught it, a long dark line. All the way down. Nine miles.

That was the Hands.

And then the fifty that had got out from under it came round.

Low. Fast. Out of the grey. At us. On the glass. With everything they had.

And Dinraal stood up.

He didn’t think of a gun this time.

He thought of a cannon.

It came out of his whole body. Not his arm. His armour opened at the back, at the shoulders, and the silver came out of it in a great rush and went up, and out, and locked together over his head into something I don’t have a word for. A barrel. Long. As long as a Hand. Silver. With his armour as the base of it and his feet planted on the glass and three silver legs going down into the valley floor like roots.

He looked up at the fifty Hands coming round.

And it fired once.

Isolde says the word on Hearth for that one means the sound the first star made.

It went through nine of them. In a line. Nose to tail. And kept going. Up. Into the lid.

And for one moment, one breath, where it hit the lid, there was a hole.

I saw it.

We all saw it. Seven of us, on the glass, looking up. A hole in the lid. Small. Round. The size of the full moon. Where Dinraal’s cannon had gone through the Ashen wave and out the other side.

And through the hole, for one breath, before it closed—

Stars.

And I reached.

I didn’t think. I reached. Up. Through the hole. The long way. For the thread.

And for one breath, before the lid closed over it again, I had it.

Avalon.

Very far. Very faint. The furthest I’ve ever been from it. But there. The red glass. The interceptor field. The arch, with Dory’s hands on it and every queen singing.

And Risa.

Standing on the red glass. With Vessa on her chest and Kesh in the basket at her feet. With her eyes open. Looking up. At nothing. At the sky over Avalon. With both her hands out.

And I felt her feel me.

Lucas, she said.

And the lid closed.

I was on my knees on the glass.

I don’t remember going down. Isolde says I went down the moment it closed, as if somebody had cut a string.

Andraste was holding me up. With her good arm. Luna’s cold hand was on my neck. Sera was very warm against my side. Hana was breathing for me.

And Dinraal was standing over all of us with his cannon going back into his armour like water into sand, very slowly, looking up at the place where the hole had been.

”Risa,” I said.

Nobody said anything.

”She’s there,” I said. ”She’s on the red glass. She’s looking up.” I put my hand flat on the glass of the valley. ”She’s got her hands out.”

”What was she doing?” said Andraste. Very quietly.

I didn’t know.

I didn’t know then.

The other fifty Hands didn’t come back.

The forty-one that were left after Dinraal’s cannon turned. All at once. Over the valley. And went up. Very fast. Into the lid. The way they’d come.

And didn’t come down again. Not that day.

We walked back up the Hill at noon.

Seven of us. Up the east side. Over the bottom wall. Past the Hyrrani, who didn’t say anything, but who went down on one knee, all of them, all along the wall, as their First Blade walked past.

Past the old people on the terraces. Who’d watched it all. From the east side of the Hill. Who’d seen the walls go up and the light go down the valley and the valley stand up.

Nobody said anything.

Then, on the fourth terrace, the old man Teshka had carried up the steps the first night got up off his bench by the water channel.

And bowed.

Very slowly. The way old men bow. With one hand on the bench.

And then the woman beside him. And the man beside her. And all of them. All the way up the Hill. On every terrace. Old people of Isca, standing up off the steps and bowing, very slowly, one after another, as seven people walked past them up the Hill.

Sera put her face in Luna’s shoulder.

Merrit was on the top terrace.

With Mother. Leaning on her arm. Looking down the long valley at the glass where her springs had been.

”We used to walk down it,” said Merrit. Isolde gave it to us, in our language, slowly. ”Every spring. To the lake. Singing.” She looked at it for a long time. ”I’ll never walk down it again.”

”No,” said Mother.

Merrit looked at the glass. Nine miles of it. Smooth. With the steam still going up off it, very slowly, toward the lid.

”It’s beautiful,” said Merrit. ”Isn’t it.”

”Yes,” said Mother.

The queen spoke at noon.

Through the Hill. Very quiet. Folding.

They are not interrupting me, she said.

That was all.

I’ll write the rest of the second day in the next pages. Because it didn’t stop at noon. Nothing stopped. The Hungry came again before dark, not as a tide, in ones and tens through the lid, the way they did the first night, and the Hands came again, and the Ashen, very high, held the lid closed over all of it.

And everyone on the Hill fought. Everyone. Hearth, all of it, every silver suit of it thinking of every weapon it had ever been taught and some it hadn’t. The Mom Squad. The wing. Bree and Roan. Brock and Saska. Okafor. All of it.

I’ll write all of it.

But I want to stop here for a moment first.

In the afternoon, when the Hungry were coming again, and the Hands, and everyone on the Hill was going back to the walls, Andraste stopped me on the steps.

With her blade on her back. With the long cut down her arm, which she still hadn’t let anyone look at.

”Risa,” she said.

”Yes.”

”You said she had her hands out.”

”Yes.”

Andraste looked up. At the lid. For a long time.

”Risa doesn’t put her hands out,” she said. ”Not when she’s flying. She shuts her eyes and flies with her head.” She looked back at me. ”She only puts her hands out when she’s going to do something with them.”

I didn’t say anything.

Andraste put her hand on my face. Her free one. Very briefly. The way she does on the ridge, before she draws.

”She’s coming,” said Andraste.

And went down the steps to the wall.

Days 4604–4605. The House on the Rise.

No dawn under a lid. Tally counted: 6,894 Iscans; 311 Hyrrani; nine of Hearth’s; two of the wing; Hesk’s second smith. The queen was half folded. The Hungry gathered in the long valley as one. Okafor: we break it. Four of five, and Dinraal and Isolde. Dinraal thought of guns. Isolde’s leaves were ten thousand of them. Luna made walls. Sera let go, and didn’t burn anyone. Hana turned the steam down the valley; four seconds; nine miles. I asked the valley to stand up under the Hands. Dinraal’s cannon made a hole in the lid and I had the thread for one breath. Risa, on the red glass, with her hands out. The Hill bowed. Merrit: it’s beautiful. Andraste: she only puts her hands out when she’s going to do something.