The Greykeep Chronicles

I heard a bird on my left at half past four on Wednesday morning.

I was lying in my bed at Greykeep with my eyes shut, not asleep, the way I hadn’t been asleep most nights for a week, and somewhere outside the window, in the ivy on the east wall, a wren started up. That loud, cross, rattling song wrens have, far too big for something so small.

And I heard it in my left ear.

Not much. Thin. Far off, as if it were coming through a wall, or from the bottom of a well. But there. A wren. On my left.

I lay there and didn’t move for a long time, in case it stopped.

* * *

My mother looked at it at six, after the yard.

In the kitchen at Greykeep, by the big window, where the light comes in flat and gray off the courtyard at that time of morning. She sat me on the end of the long table, the way she used to when I was small and had fallen out of something, and stood in front of me in her apron with her sleeves rolled up, and put her warm hands on either side of my face.

My father was there. Leaning in the doorway with his arms folded. Not saying anything. Carol was sitting on the bench with her knees up and her chin on them. Helena was at the stove, very carefully not watching, and burning the porridge.

My mother tipped my head to the light. Looked into my left eye for a long time. Then she put her thumb very lightly on my eyelid and closed it, and put her mouth near my left ear and said, very quietly, ”Garrick.”

”I heard that,” I said.

”I know you did,” said my mother. ”I saw your face.”

* * *

She took her hands away and stood back.

”The ear’s coming back,” she said. ”It started in the night. It’ll be most of the way by the end of the week. All of the way by the end of the month.”

My father let out a breath in the doorway that I don’t think he knew he’d been holding.

”And the eye,” said my mother.

She sat down on the bench beside Carol. Which she doesn’t do, when she’s telling someone something. She stands. She’s stood at sickbeds for twenty-five years. When my mother sits down, it means she wants to be level with you.

”The eye isn’t hurt,” she said. ”That’s the first thing. I’ve looked at it every day for a week and there’s nothing wrong with it. Nothing torn. Nothing burned. Aurelia looked at it on Monday and said the same. If it were hurt, she’d have healed it.”

”Then why can’t I see?”

”Because it’s spent,” said my mother.

* * *

”You folded seven dragons,” she said. ”And a red ship eighty miles. On nothing. With your sister holding you up from the inside. You took everything you had, and then you took things you didn’t have, and you spent them.” She looked at me steadily. ”A god’s power isn’t a muscle, Garrick. It’s a well. You can draw on it as hard as you like. But if you draw it all the way down to the bottom, past the water, into the mud, the well doesn’t break. It just goes dry. And you have to wait while it fills again. From the bottom. Slowly.”

”How slowly?”

”The ear went first, so it’s coming back first.” She reached over and put her thumb on my left eyebrow. Gently. ”The eye went deepest. That’s where you drew the last of it from. On the old dragon, I expect. The one you couldn’t fold.”

”Sabrenne.”

”Sabrenne.” My mother nodded. ”It’ll come back. I’m sure of that. But not this week. Not this month.” She was quiet a moment. ”Midwinter, perhaps. From the edges first. Like frost going off a window in the morning. Light, then shapes, then colors. You’ll wake up one day and see the corner of something you couldn’t see the day before.”

* * *

I sat on the end of the table for a while.

Midwinter. Three months. Three months of turning my head. Three months of Alistair’s sword on my left shoulder. Three months of not seeing who was coming on my blind side.

Carol uncurled from the bench and came and sat on the table beside me. On my left. And put her shoulder against mine. Where I couldn’t see her. Where I could only feel her.

”I’ll stand here, then,” she said. ”Till it comes back.”

”You can’t stand on my left for three months.”

”I’ve stood on your left for twenty-three years,” said Carol. ”You just never noticed, because you could see me.”

* * *

My father came over from the doorway.

He didn’t say anything. He crouched down in front of me, the way Julian used to when Ignatius and I asked him things. The way Thor did on the beach. He looked at my eye. Then he put his hand on the back of my neck, the way he used to when I was small and had done something brave and stupid.

”Midwinter,” he said. ”Julian’s crowning.”

”Yes.”

”Then you’ll see him crowned with both eyes.” He squeezed my neck. ”That’s a good thing to wait for. Better than most.”

Helena, at the stove, said nothing. But she put an extra spoonful of honey in my porridge, and didn’t say anything about it, and burned her own.

* * *

The elves came to Westmere at nine.

Thirty of them. Through the Concordia arch, which they don’t like, because elves don’t like gates any more than my grandfather does, though for different reasons. My grandfather says a gate is a rumor. Elves say it’s rude. You should see where you’re going, they say. The going is the point.

They were the Havenreach longbows. The elves who’ve lived in the lower town under Greykeep since my father’s first winter, when he asked them to stay and then left them alone, which was what they’d wanted. They keep the woods on the east side of the valley and the archery butts below the north wall, and once a year at harvest they shoot at the festival and nobody ever beats them, and nobody ever expects to.

Their captain was called Siriel.

She was old. Not the way Alistair is old. The way a tree is old. Tall and thin and very straight, with hair the color of wet bark down to her waist in one plait, and a face that hadn’t changed in the twenty-three years I’d been looking at it and probably wouldn’t change in the next two hundred. She carried a longbow taller than she was, unstrung, like a staff.

She came down onto the north pier and stood looking at the Knock, rocking at her mooring in the gray morning swell.

”That,” said Siriel, ”moves.”

”It’s a ship,” I said.

”I’m aware it’s a ship.” She watched the deck tilt one way, and back, and the other way. ”Eleanor wishes us to stand on it and shoot.”

”Yes.”

Siriel was quiet for a long time.

”Elves,” she said at last, ”do not stand on things that move.”

* * *

She tried anyway. They all did.

Thirty of the best archers in Avarra, who can put an arrow through a wedding ring at two hundred paces on a still day and split the arrow behind it, went up the Knock’s gangplank one by one, each of them asking the Castellan very politely in old elvish, which it turned out it understood. And they lined up along the rail with their longbows strung. And Tamar’s sailors put a barrel out in the harbor on a buoy, a hundred paces off, with a white cloth nailed to it.

And the Knock rolled.

Not much. It was a gray, ordinary morning. A long, slow, easy swell coming in past the harbor mouth. The kind of sea a Westmere fisherman wouldn’t even notice. The deck tipped a little to the left, and came back, and tipped a little to the right.

And thirty elves loosed thirty arrows, and twenty-eight of them went into the sea.

* * *

Siriel lowered her bow and looked at the barrel for a long time.

Two arrows were in it. Hers, and one other. Neither was in the white.

”I see,” said Siriel.

Her archers stood along the rail very straight and very still, the way elves stand when they are deeply humiliated and will die before showing it. One of them, a young one, was holding onto the rail with her free hand, very hard, and her face had gone a delicate shade of green.

”We aim,” said Siriel to me, very precisely, ”with the whole body. We stand on the earth, and the earth is still, and we are still on it, and the arrow goes from the stillness. That is how an elf shoots.” She looked down at the deck. ”This has no stillness. It tilts. Every moment, it tilts. By the time I have loosed, the place I was aiming from is no longer where it was.”

* * *

I knew what she meant. I knew exactly.

Because that’s how I’d been living for a week. Every time I turned my head, the place I was looking from had moved. Every time Alistair came around on my left, the world I could see had shifted, and I’d had to find it again.

And because I’d been on a dragon’s back eight days ago. A dragon in flight, chained, swinging like a whip, heaving under my boots. And Avarn’s voice in my head the whole time. Where are your feet, Garrick? Where’s your weight?

”Can I try something?” I said.

Siriel looked at me. Down. She’s very tall.

”You have one eye,” she said. Not unkindly. Just a fact.

”Yes,” I said. ”That’s why I want to try it.”

* * *

I didn’t take a bow. I can shoot, a little, the way everyone at Greykeep can shoot a little, but I’m not an archer. I went and found a Kethran sailor.

His name was Kell Dunnet, and he’d been a topman on a red ship for nine years. He’d come ashore on Tuesday night asking for harbor-right, and he’d been on the North Sands every day since, helping the dwarves with the keels. I asked him to come up onto the Knock. He asked the Castellan. The Castellan said Of course. He came up.

”Kell,” I said. ”Stand on the rail.”

He looked at me as if I was mad. Then he shrugged, and climbed up onto the Knock’s rail, and stood on it. On the narrow wooden rail. Over the water. With the deck rolling under him. And he stood there with his arms loose at his sides and his feet bare and his knees a little soft, and he looked bored.

The elves stared at him.

”How?” said Siriel.

* * *

Kell didn’t speak our language well. So I asked him in his, a little, which I’d been learning from Iselle all week. And he told me. And I told them.

”He says you don’t stand on a ship,” I said. ”You stand on the sea. The ship’s just in between.”

Siriel’s eyebrows went up a very small distance.

”He says your knees aren’t for holding you up. They’re for letting the ship go past under you. You let the deck tip, and you don’t tip with it. Your feet go with the ship. The rest of you stays with the sea.” I watched Kell on the rail, swaying, and his head not moving at all. Not one hair. Like a gull on a post in the wind. ”He says the sea’s still. It’s always still. It just doesn’t look it.”

Siriel looked at Kell’s head. Not moving. Then at his knees. Moving.

”And,” I said, ”he says every roll has a top. The moment the ship stops going one way and before it starts going back. Like the top of a swing. For a breath, everything stops.” I looked at her. ”That’s your stillness. It’s still there. It just doesn’t last as long.”

* * *

Siriel was quiet for a long time.

Then she handed her longbow to the archer beside her. And took off her boots. Elvish boots, soft gray leather, very old. She set them neatly side by side on the deck.

And she climbed up onto the rail of the Knock beside Kell Dunnet.

She nearly went in. Once. On the first roll. Her arms went out and her face went entirely still, the way elves’ faces do when they’re terrified. And Kell, without looking, reached out one hand and put it flat on the small of her back, and didn’t hold her, just touched, and said something in Kethran, very low.

”He says knees,” I translated.

Siriel’s knees bent.

The deck rolled out from under her. She didn’t go with it.

* * *

She stood on the rail of the Knock for an hour. Barefoot, with her hair blowing, beside a Kethran topman who was teaching her without a word of her language, while thirty elves stood on the deck watching their captain learn to stand.

Then she held out her hand without looking, and her archer put the longbow in it.

She drew. Very slowly. The deck rolled. Out. Out. Slowing. Stopping. For one breath, the whole ship hung still at the top of the roll, like a swing at the top of its arc.

Siriel loosed.

The arrow went into the center of the white cloth on the barrel a hundred paces out in the harbor and stood there humming.

On the deck, thirty elves let out their breath at once.

Siriel lowered her bow and looked down at Kell Dunnet.

”Thank you,” she said, in very careful, very old-fashioned Kethran. Then, in ours, to me: ”Tell him I have been shooting for six hundred years. Tell him I have not been taught anything new in four hundred of them.” She paused. ”Tell him I would like it noted.”

* * *

By noon, all thirty of them were on the rail.

Barefoot. In a long line along both sides of the Knock, with their boots set neatly in pairs on the deck behind them, and thirty Kethran sailors standing behind them with one hand flat on the smalls of their backs, saying knees in Kethran. And at the top of every roll, thirty longbows loosing at once, and the barrel out in the harbor bristling like a hedgehog.

My father came and stood on the end of the north pier to watch.

He’d been on the North Sands with the dwarves all morning, setting rivets. He stood there with his hands in his pockets watching thirty elves stand on a ship’s rail like gulls, and then he turned his head to the sea, and closed his eyes, and breathed out.

The swell got bigger.

Not much. A little. A long slow heave coming in past the harbor mouth, twice the height of the morning’s. The Knock rolled deeper. Thirty elves wobbled. Thirty Kethran hands pressed flat on thirty backs.

”Knees,” said thirty sailors.

And at the top of the roll, thirty arrows went into the barrel.

”Again,” said my father, and made the swell bigger.

* * *

Siriel came and found me at the end of the day.

I was sitting on a bollard at the end of the north pier, watching the elves practice in the evening light. They didn’t need the sailors’ hands anymore. They’d learned it in a day. Elves learn things slowly, and then all at once, Siriel says, the way a tree grows.

She stood beside me. On my left. I didn’t see her come. I heard her, though. Faintly. Through the wall, at the bottom of the well. A soft footstep on the stones.

I turned my head.

”Better,” said Siriel. ”You heard me.”

”Just.”

”Just is a beginning.” She looked at me. ”Your mother says the eye will come back at midwinter.”

”How did you know that?”

”Elves hear everything that’s said in a kitchen,” said Siriel. ”Kitchens are very loud.”

* * *

She sat down on the bollard beside mine. On my left. Which she must have done on purpose.

”You taught me something today,” she said. ”I will teach you something back. That is fair.”

”You don’t have to.”

”I know I don’t have to,” said Siriel. ”That is what makes it fair.” She put her hand out, flat, palm down, on the left side of my face. Not touching. Just near. ”Elves shoot in the dark. Did you know that?”

”I’ve heard.”

”We do not see the target. Not in the dark. We hear it. A deer breathing. A bird settling. A man shifting his weight.” She held her hand there by my left cheek. ”Your eye is dry, your mother says. It will fill from the bottom. But your ear is filling already. Faster. And an ear can see, Garrick, if you teach it. It sees around corners. It sees behind you. It sees in the dark.” She moved her hand a little. ”Close your eyes.”

I closed them. Both. The good one and the gray one.

”Where am I?” said Siriel.

* * *

I listened.

It was faint. Everything on the left was faint. Like listening through a curtain. But I could hear her breathing. Elves breathe very slowly. And the soft creak of the bollard under her as she shifted. And the small dry sound of her plait moving on her shoulder.

”Left,” I said. ”Close. A little behind.”

”Good.” The sound moved. ”Now?”

”In front. On the left. Standing.”

”Now?”

I listened. Nothing. Nothing at all. And then, very faint, very close, a breath. Behind me. On the left. Where Alistair’s sword always comes from.

I turned my head and put my hand up, and caught her wrist.

Siriel was quiet for a moment.

”Hm,” she said.

Which, from an elf, I found out later, is exactly the same as it is from a dragon or a dwarf.

* * *

”Midwinter,” said Siriel, letting go. ”Three months. You will hear me coming by then. You will hear Alistair coming. You will hear the sword before it leaves his hand.” She stood up and picked up her bow. ”And when the eye comes back, you will have two ways of seeing on that side, where everyone else has only one. That is not a small thing.”

She looked down the pier at her archers on the Knock’s rail, barefoot, at the top of every roll, loosing into the last of the light.

”Every elf thinks the way they have always done it is the only way it can be done,” she said. ”It takes a very long time to learn that it is not. Six hundred years, in my case.” She glanced at me. ”You learned it in a week. With half your eyes. I find that very irritating.”

”Sorry.”

”Don’t be,” said Siriel, and almost smiled. Which, for an elf, is a great deal. ”Five o’clock tomorrow. I’ll stand on your left. Alistair can stand behind me. We’ll see who you hear first.”

* * *

Mary’s book. Wednesday. Written on the end of the north pier at sunset, with thirty pairs of elvish boots lined up neatly along the stones beside her and the sound of bowstrings coming off the harbor like rain.

Wednesday. 4:30 a.m. Garrick heard a wren on his left. His ear is coming back.

Evelyn says the eye isn’t hurt. It’s spent. He drew it all the way down. It’s a well, not a muscle. It fills from the bottom. Midwinter, perhaps. From the edges, like frost off a window.

Carol says she’ll stand on his left till it comes back. She says she always has.

Uriah says he’ll see Julian crowned with both eyes.

9 o’clock. Siriel and 30 Havenreach longbows. Elves don’t stand on things that move. 28 arrows in the sea.

Garrick asked a Kethran topman, Kell Dunnet, to stand on the rail. He did. He says you don’t stand on a ship, you stand on the sea. Knees. The top of every roll is still, like a swing.

Siriel took off her boots and stood on the rail. Kell put his hand on her back and said knees. She hit the white. 600 years, nothing new in 400. She’d like it noted.

By noon all 30 on the rail. Uriah made the swell bigger. Then bigger. Again.

Sunset. Siriel taught Garrick to see with his left ear. He caught her wrist with his eyes shut. She said hm. She says he’ll have two ways of seeing on that side, where everyone else has one.

And under that, in a hand so fine and so regular it could have been engraved, every letter joined to the next like a vine along a wall, in ink a very faint green:

Siriel of the Havenreach longbows. I’d like it noted that it was Kell Dunnet’s idea, and the boy’s, and that I am six hundred and eleven years old and was taught to stand by a sailor. My knees are very grateful.