Chapter 401 The Eldest

The queens asked on the sixth day.

Not me. They asked Dory. Because Dory is the net, and the net is where everything crosses, and when the queens want something from everyone at once they ask the place where everyone is.

She came up the long stair from the hall under the house at dawn with Pebble at her heels and found me in the kitchen.

"They want to meet them," she said.

"Who?"

"Hearth," said Dory. "All of them. Dinraal and Isolde and everyone." She frowned. The careful frown. "They said properly. In the hall. Not at the long table. Not through the voice." She looked at the floor, as if she could see through it to where they were. "They've been listening since the arch opened. Every word. Through Corin, and the relay, and the silver." She paused. "They say they can hear Hearth's silver. And it's wrong."

"Wrong how?"

Dory thought about it for a long time.

"They didn't say wrong," she said. "I'm saying wrong. They said—" She stopped. Tried again. "They said it sounds like a song someone wrote down."

So they came to the hall under the house.

Dinraal first. Down the long stair. With the First Weapon close behind him, very low, the way he goes when he isn't sure of a place. Then Isolde, with her notebook. Asha, not talking, for once. Eve. Enna, with her arms folded. Aramaeis, at his sister's shoulder, with the soldier's walk. Tiamat. Rhiannon, with her basket, because Rhiannon doesn't go anywhere without the basket.

And our side. Me and Mother and my wives. Kyria. Okafor. Tally, with the notebook. Dory and Corin and Thessaly. Andraste with Vessa, who was awake, facing the stair.

We came out of the stair into the hall.

And Hearth stopped.

I'd forgotten what it looks like, the first time.

The red stone, glowing faintly. The water running in channels from the seventh lake. The shaft of light from the roof, and the grove under it, real trees growing in the middle of a hall cut out of the rise. And the ledges. Every ledge. Every hollow in the stone.

And the queens.

All of them. Our queen, round the roots by the far wall, so old she's older than the house. The first queen, from the hollow, the first one I ever found, who taught Aster how a Hand crosses the dark. The heavy queen on her ledge. The coral queen in her water. The ash queen, grey and gold. The moss queen. The reed queen, still small, in her hollow by the stair. The Scarecrow queen, under the trees, in the shaft of light, with her young round her in a ring.

And through every arch in the hall, faint and far, every queen on every world.

And the broods. Thousands. On every ledge. Silent. Looking at the stair.

Dinraal didn't move.

He stood at the bottom of the long stair with his hand on the First Weapon's back and looked up. At the queens. One after another. All the way round the hall. For a long time.

Isolde had stopped writing. Her pen was in the air.

Aramaeis, at the foot of the stair, had his hand over his mouth.

"Dinraal," I said. Very quietly. Through Dot, who'd come down the stair behind us very carefully, because she doesn't like stairs either. "These are the queens."

He didn't answer.

The Scarecrow queen lifted her head.

Out of the leaves. In the shaft of light. Silver and gold. And looked at Dinraal across the hall.

And then at his wrists.

Come, she said.

Not to me. To him. In the silver. The way the queens talk. I didn't know if he'd hear it. Nobody on Hearth had ever heard a queen.

He heard it.

I saw it go into him. His face changed. His hand went flat on the First Weapon's back. And the bracelets on his wrists went, very faintly, bright.

He walked across the hall.

Slowly. Between the channels. Past the heavy queen on her ledge, who lowered her great head as he went by. Past the coral queen in her water. Past the ash queen. Into the grove. Under the trees. Into the shaft of light.

And stopped in front of the Scarecrow queen.

She put her great head down beside him. As close as she could. The way she lay down beside me in the wheat.

And looked at his wrists for a very long time.

Hold them out, she said.

Dinraal held them out.

The hall went very quiet.

Not the queens. They'd been quiet. Everything else. The water in the channels. The leaves. The broods on the ledges. All of it. The way the house goes still before one of my children is born.

The Scarecrow queen was listening.

And so was every queen in the hall. I felt them. All of them. At once. Reaching. Very gently. Toward the silver on the wrists of a man who'd never seen a queen. The way they reached for me, the first year, in the wheat, under Father's scarecrow, before I knew what I was.

It is ours, said the Scarecrow queen.

Very quietly. To all of us.

It is ours. The same. The same branches. The same seams. The same way the inner part holds itself apart. A pause. Lucas knew. On the eighth day. He told you. It was never only yours.

Dinraal didn't say anything.

But it has been grown, said the Scarecrow queen.

Differently.

Our queen spoke then. From the roots. The oldest queen on Avalon.

Not grown, she said. Grown is what silver does when it listens. To a world. To a mother and a father. To singing. Her voice was very low. The grass in the grove moved. This was not grown. This was made to grow. In one direction. Along one path. Cut back every time it tried to go another way.

Like a hedge, said the Scarecrow queen. Like the ones Lucas's mother talks of. Kept in a line by someone with shears.

A pause.

Almost made by hands, said our queen.

Aramaeis made a sound.

At the bottom of the stair. Very still. With his hand still over his mouth. Tiamat beside him with her hand on his arm.

He took it away.

He said something. In his own language. To the queens. Very slowly.

Dot gave it to us. A breath behind.

"Aramaeis says," said Dot. "Our army found it."

"He says the army found the silver," said Dot. "A very long time ago. Before Bahamut. Before Bahamut's father. In the ground, on a world they took. In seams. In the rock." Dot's rivers went very still. "He says they did not grow it. They dug it up. And they learned to make it grow again, in people. Along one path. With the recovery dependency. So it would come back to them if it was ever taken away." A pause. "He says: an army's word for a leash."

The hall was very quiet.

"He says," said Dot, "they never asked where it came from. Nobody did. It was in the ground. It was theirs."

The Scarecrow queen looked at Dinraal for a long time.

Have you ever seen a queen? she said.

Dinraal looked up at her. At her great head, silver and gold, in the shaft of light. At the eye, very close to his face.

"No," he said.

Dot didn't need to translate that.

No, said the Scarecrow queen. Very gently. Nobody showed you. She breathed out, and the leaves round them lifted and came down. Somebody dug us out of a world and cut us into seams and taught us to grow in a line in men. And never once asked where we came from. Or who we were.

Or if anyone was still singing.

Dinraal knelt down.

In the leaves. In front of her. With the First Weapon beside him. The way Luna knelt in front of our queen at the garden wall the night the queens were angry. He put his forehead against her great face.

He didn't say anything.

The bracelets on his wrists went very bright.

And then, very faintly, so faint I thought I'd imagined it, they hummed.

Isolde was crying. With her notebook against her chest.

Tiamat had gone very straight. Rhiannon had put her basket down.

And Aramaeis, at the bottom of the long stair, the dragonkin General who'd dug no silver himself but served the army that did, said one word. In his own language. Dot didn't translate it.

I asked her later. She said it was the word for sorry. The one you say to someone you've hurt without knowing they were there.

That was when the singing came back.

Vessa heard it first.

Of course she did. She was on Andraste's chest, at the edge of the grove. Awake. Facing the stair. And then she wasn't facing the stair.

She turned her head.

Out. Past the grove. Past the hall. Past the rock of the rise and the sky and the ring and the breathing and everything. The way she turned on the ridge, three breaths old, when she listened past the edge for the first time.

And went very still.

Then I heard it.

Then everyone did.

The thing I felt on the ridge the night Vessa was born. With my hands on the stone. Very small. Very far.

Singing.

It wasn't small now.

It was the same. The same voice. The same far place. But it wasn't one breath any more. It stayed. It came down through the rock of the rise into the hall and filled it, very low, very old, under everything, the way the hum goes under the house.

And every queen in the hall lifted her head.

All at once.

The Scarecrow queen. Our queen at the roots. The first queen. The heavy queen and the coral queen and the ash queen and the moss queen and the reed queen in her hollow by the stair. Every one. And every brood on every ledge. And through every arch, every queen on every world.

They'd heard it before. On the ridge. For one breath.

They knew it now.

Oh, said our queen.

The oldest queen on Avalon. Older than the house. Older than anything on this world. She lifted her head off the floor of the hall, higher than I've ever seen her lift it. All the way up. Into the shaft of light.

Oh, she said again. Oh. It is her.

"Who?" I said.

Our queen didn't answer.

None of them did. They were singing back.

Not a song I knew. Not the war song. Not the young-going-out song. Not not still. Something very old. Very simple. The kind of song you sing before you've learned any others.

The Scarecrow queen sang it. And our queen. And the first queen, from the hollow. And every queen in the hall, and through every arch, every queen on every world, the same song, all at once.

And Dinraal's bracelets sang it with them.

He was still on his knees in the leaves. He looked down at his wrists. And his face did something I've never seen a face do.

And in the middle of it, the far voice changed.

It didn't stop. It got clearer. As if whoever was singing had heard us singing back and turned toward us. And under it, in it, threaded through it like a line through a picture, there was something else.

A shape.

Not a word. A shape. The way Hearth's pictures used to come, one line at a time. A line. A curve. A circle. Another circle round it. Smaller circles round that.

Garnet was drawing.

She'd come down the stair behind us with her board, the way she does, because if anything ever comes through anything Garnet draws it. She was sitting on the bottom step with her pen going very fast.

A world. A star. Moons round the world. Other worlds round the star.

And lines. Between them. Joining them. All of them. The world to its moons. The moons to the other worlds. Fine lines. Like the silver net up Dory's arms.

And arrows. Pointing. From where we were. To there.

"It's a map," said Garnet.

Very quietly. Looking at the board.

"It's telling us where it is."

Okafor looked at the drawing for a long time.

Then she took the chalk out of her coat. And walked up the stair. All the way. To the map room.

When she came back, she said: "It's the circle."

Everyone looked at her.

"The one I drew," said Okafor. "Past the edge of the map. With nothing in it and a question mark." She held up the chalk. "Garnet's drawing goes exactly there."

Nobody said anything for a long time.

Then the Scarecrow queen spoke. To everyone. In the hall, and through every arch.

We are going, she said.

Not may we. Not should we. The queens don't ask. Not about this.

All of us, said our queen.

All of us, said the first queen. From the hollow. Every queen who can be carried. And every queen who cannot will sing the way.

"Then so are we," said Dinraal.

Still on his knees. In the leaves. He stood up. And looked at the queens. And then at me.

"Hearth," he said. "All of us who can." He held up his wrists. "They were singing that song in my silver the whole time. My father's. Bahamut's. And nobody ever heard it." His voice was very steady. "I would like to know who it was for."

Okafor looked at me.

"Not thin," she said.

"Not thin."

"Not one person."

"Not one person."

Okafor looked at the drawing on Garnet's board for a long time.

"Everyone," she said.

We went at dawn on the seventh day.

I'll write how. Because nobody had ever done it like that, and Kyria says nobody ever will again.

There was no arch on the far side. No First Blade had ever been there. No cutter. Nobody stood at the other end, because nobody knew there was another end.

But the song was there.

And the queens sing the arches. That's what opens them. Not the stone. Not the cutters. The cutters make the shape, and the queen sings the shape open. Every arch on Avalon has opened because a queen sang it.

So Kyria's cutters cut an arch on the north field. Where the wedding was. Where Brock's beans are coming up in rows. The biggest they'd ever cut. Wide enough for the heavy queen.

And every queen on Avalon sang it.

Not to the ridge. Not to Hearth. Not to anywhere they knew.

They sang it the other song. The old one. The simple one. The one you sing before you've learned any others.

And Dory held it. With her hand flat on the stone and her silver net bright up both arms and round her neck.

And Corin asked it to stay.

And Thessaly gave him what he asked.

And Vessa, on Andraste's chest, facing out, listened. And told her mother which way the song was coming from. And Andraste told the arch.

It opened.

We went through.

All of us. Every queen who could be carried, and the heavy queen carrying the ones who couldn't walk, and the Ground walking behind her like a great animal woken for this. The broods. The Mom Squad. My wives. Okafor. Kyria and Teshka and forty Hyrrani. Hearth, every one who'd come through the arch with two faces, Dinraal at the front with the First Weapon. Tally with her notebook. Garnet with her board.

And me.

And on the far side of the arch—

I don't know how to write it.

I've tried four times. Genny tried. Garnet drew it nine times and tore up eight. Dot says there's no word for it in the old dictionary or the new one or any of the languages she's learned since.

I'll write it plainly.

A world.

Green. Not grey. Not scraped. Not eaten. Green, from one edge of the sky to the other. Forests and plains and long slow rivers, under a white sun. And in the sky, three moons. Close. Very close. So close you could see their mountains.

And between them, silver.

Threads. In the sky. In the daylight. Running from the ground up into the air and out across the sky to the moons. Fine. Bright. Thousands of them. Like the strands Dinraal spun across the canyon, only so long they went out of sight. Joining the world to its moons. And past the moons, I could feel it, out across the dark between the worlds, to the next world round the star. And the next. And the next.

A net.

The whole of a sun's worth of worlds, joined by silver, like the net up Dory's arms.

I knelt down and put my hand on the ground.

And felt it.

Silver.

All of it. Every atom of that world. Not in seams. Not in veins in the rock, the way it is on Avalon, waiting to be found. All of it. The soil and the stone and the roots of the trees and the water in the rivers. Down through the rock. Down through the hard sheets and the warm. Down to the heart.

The heart was silver.

The whole world was a queen.

I took my hand off the ground.

Very slowly.

Everyone was looking at me.

"She's here," I said. "She's—" I didn't have a word. "She's everywhere. The ground. The trees. The heart. The moons." I looked up at the threads in the sky. "The next world. And the next."

"Where?" said Dinraal. Very quietly.

"Everywhere," I said. "We're standing on her."

And then she spoke.

Not from anywhere. From everywhere. Up through the ground. Down through the threads. Out of the trees and the rivers and the three moons in the sky. Into every one of us at once. Into every queen. Into every brood. Into Dinraal's bracelets. Into the silver in Mother, and Kyria, and Teshka, and the children on Avalon on the other side of the arch, and Tally, and Dory, and me.

Very old. So old it didn't sound like anything. It sounded like a mountain sounds. Like the sea sounds.

And very, very glad.

My children, she said.

Every queen in the clearing put her head down on the ground.

All of them. At once. The Scarecrow queen. Our queen. The first queen. The heavy queen, so the Ground behind her shook. The coral queen and the ash queen and the moss queen and the reed queen, small, in her keeper's arms. Every one. With their great heads flat on the green ground of that world. The way you'd put your head on your mother's lap.

My children, said the voice again. All of you.

You came home.

"Who are you?" said Dinraal.

He was the only one standing. Except me. He had his hand on the First Weapon's back and his bracelets were so bright you couldn't look at them.

The voice was quiet for a long time.

You call the one you found first, Lucas who asks, the first queen, it said. She was the first you found. A pause. She was not the first.

I am.

I was the first, said the eldest queen. Before any of them. Before the houses. Before the voice. Before the worlds you know had anything on them that could hear me. The threads in the sky shimmered. I sang. Into the dark. And where I sang, silver grew. On other worlds. A seed, and then a seam, and then, when the world was ready, a queen. Who fitted the world. Feathers on the Kethri world. Coral in the shallow seas. Moss. Ash. Snow.

All of them mine. Every one.

Every queen.

And every one of you with silver in you. Every man and woman and child. Every brood. You are all my children.

"And mine?" said Dinraal. Holding up his wrists. "They dug it out of the ground. On a world they took. They cut it into seams."

The eldest queen was quiet for a long time.

Yes, she said. I felt it. A pause. A long time ago. A world where I had sung, and a seed had grown, and a queen had not yet come, because the world was not ready. And someone came with shears and took the seed before it could listen.

And grew it in a line.

In men.

And never asked.

Her voice went very low. The ground shook a little.

I have been singing to that silver ever since, she said. In your father. In his father. In you. Every day. Every hour. A pause. You never heard me. Nobody had shown you how.

Lucas did.

Dinraal sat down.

On the green ground. Very suddenly. The way Andraste sat down on the ridge after Vessa.

The First Weapon climbed into his lap, as much of him as fitted, and put his chin on his knee.

Isolde knelt down beside them both and put her arms round him. She'd dropped her notebook. She didn't pick it up.

"Why have you been hiding?" said Okafor.

She was standing very straight. With her slate. She'd been writing the whole time. She wrote everything down.

The eldest queen was quiet for a long time.

Because of the hungry, she said.

I have been fighting them, said the eldest queen, for longer than you have a word for. Millions of your years. Since before the houses. Since before most of the stars you can see were lit.

They came out of the dark. A long time ago. From further than I have ever sung. I do not know what they were before. I do not think they were ever anything but hungry.

They do not want worlds. They do not want people. They eat those. On the way.

The threads in the sky went very still.

They want me.

Nobody said anything.

They eat silver, said the eldest queen. More than anything. More than people. More than forests. When they find a queen, they eat her, and the silver goes into the heap, and it becomes more of them. And then they can taste me. A pause. Every queen is a little of me. Every seed. Every seam. Every sliver in the back of a man. When they eat one, they learn the taste of me a little better. And they follow it. Back. Toward where it came from.

Every queen they eat is a step toward me.

Every world they eat is a road.

The Scarecrow queen made a sound.

Low. Into the ground. The way she made it the night the piece of her was eaten on the far side of the ring.

The towers, she said. On the far side. Going out. One at a time.

Yes, said the eldest queen. The houses cut my children into pieces and put them in towers on every world they took. Ten thousand pieces of one queen, on ten thousand worlds. Her voice went very low. They thought they were using us. They were laying a road. From the far yard to the middle of everything. Paved with my children.

And the hungry are walking it.

"And when they find you?" said Dinraal. From the ground. Very quietly.

The eldest queen didn't answer straight away.

Then there are no more seeds, she said. No more seams. No more queens. No more silver in anything, anywhere, ever. A pause. And the hungry will turn round and look for something else.

"Why now?" said Okafor.

The eldest queen was quiet for a long time.

Because I could not be heard before, she said. I have sung to my children every day for longer than there have been days. And they could not hear me. Not over the voice. Not over the note. Not over the houses cutting them and making them sing what was not theirs.

And then one of them was born facing out.

Andraste went very still.

A child at the top of the wall, said the eldest queen. Who listens past everything. Past the houses. Past the hungry. All the way to me. A pause. On the ridge, when she was three breaths old, she heard me. For one breath. And all of you heard what she heard.

So I knew there was someone who could.

And then you went to the world they put you on with the hungry. Merrow. And you did not do what the houses asked. You did not make it white. You took the children and the queen in pieces and you left the houses and the hungry to eat each other. Her voice changed. Very slightly. Something in it I didn't expect. A great many of them died that day. A swarm. Thirty of the houses' hands.

It was the first time in a very long time that something fought the hungry and was still there after.

So I sang the way.

Tally knelt down.

Very slowly. On the green ground. With her notebook. And put one hand flat on the grass.

"The first note," she said. Very quietly. In the voice she uses for the voice. "The eleven pieces. On the floor of the long ward. Who hum toward each other." She swallowed. "I have been looking for the rest of her since before I knew my own name."

The eldest queen was quiet.

She is one of mine, she said. One of the oldest. I sang her into a world a very long time ago, and she grew, and fitted it. And the houses came. A pause. I have felt every one of those eleven pieces every day since you found them. They are singing to me. Very small. Very far.

Tally didn't say anything for a long time.

Then she opened the notebook. To THE FIRST NOTE. Eleven marks.

And under the last one, very small, she wrote: She has a mother.

Mother came and stood beside me.

She hadn't said anything. All of it. The hall. The singing. The arch. The green world and the threads in the sky and the voice coming up through the ground.

She stood beside me now. And put her hand on my back. Between my shoulders. Where Father used to put his.

And said, very quietly, to the ground:

"He's mine too, you know."

The eldest queen was quiet for a long time.

Then she laughed.

I didn't know they could. Not like that. It came up out of the whole world at once. Out of the trees and the rivers and the three moons in the sky. And every queen in the clearing lifted her head and looked at Mother.

Yes, said the eldest queen. I know. I have watched you. Through my children. Through the one in the wheat. The Scarecrow queen lowered her head. Your husband, standing between the beds, saying it so that it was said. And you, after, for years, in a room you could not leave, saying it anyway, to a window, so that it would still be true.

You made him the one who asks.

Every child of mine who has ever had silver in them has been told what they were for. By armies. By houses. By the people who cut them.

He was told what he was. By you.

Mother didn't say anything.

She kept her hand on my back.

Lucas, said the eldest queen.

"Yes."

The first dawn, on the rim, you turned sixty-one of my children to salt. They were coming to warn you, and you did not know. A pause. And then you put a scarecrow in the field for them. And you said hello to every one of my children who came after. Every one. Every day.

Nobody had ever said hello to them before. They had been taken and cut and sung through and used.

You did.

That is why I could find you.

Vessa was facing out.

On Andraste's chest. In the clearing. On the green ground of a world that was a queen. She'd turned away from all of us. Away from the eldest queen. Away from the threads in the sky.

Out. Past the moons. Past the next world, and the next.

Into the dark.

Andraste looked down at her.

"She's listening," she said. Very quietly. "Past here."

"To what?"

Andraste didn't answer for a long time.

"Breathing," she said.

The eldest queen heard her.

Yes, she said. Very gently. The one at the wall. She hears them. She was born facing them.

A pause.

So that someone would.

The eldest queen was quiet for a long time after that.

The threads in the sky shimmered. The three moons hung very close. And somewhere very far out, past the next world and the next, Vessa listened to the breathing, and didn't turn away.

My children, said the eldest queen. Once more. To every queen with her head on the ground, and every brood, and every one of us with silver in us. I have fought them alone for longer than there have been stars to name it by.

I am very tired.

The Scarecrow queen lifted her head.

Out of the grass. Silver and gold. And looked at me.

I knew what she was asking. She'd asked it in the grove. Our queen had asked it at the garden wall. Do not let them eat us.

I'd promised.

I knelt down. And put both hands flat on the green ground of the eldest queen's world. On her. All of her. Down to the silver heart.

"You're not alone," I said. Out loud. To the ground. To the moons. To the threads in the sky. "Not any more."

I looked round the clearing. At the queens with their heads down. At Hearth, Dinraal on the ground with Isolde's arms round him and the First Weapon on his knee. At the Mom Squad. At my wives. At Okafor with her slate. At Andraste with Vessa facing out.

"Not one person," I said. "Everyone."

The eldest queen didn't answer.

But the ground under my hands went warm.

All of it. The whole clearing. The whole world. Very gently. The way the floor of the house goes warm when our queen hums under it at night.

And every thread in the sky, from the ground to the three moons and out across the dark to the next world and the next, lit at once.

Okafor wrote on her slate.

I saw it afterward. Under THE HUNGRY and THEY ARE FIGHTING TOO and HEARTH, which she'd copied over from the map room wall. One more line. Very small.

They're not looking for us. They're looking for her.

And under that:

So are we.

Days 4510–4512. The Eldest.

The queens asked to meet Hearth properly, in the hall. Dinraal had never seen a queen. The Scarecrow queen: it's ours, the same, but grown differently; made to grow in one line, cut back like a hedge. Aramaeis: our army dug it out of the ground and never asked. Dinraal knelt, and his bracelets hummed. Then the singing came back, and stayed, and every queen knew it: it is her. Under the song, a shape; Garnet drew a map to Okafor's empty circle. The queens: we are going. Hearth: all of us. Kyria cut an arch on the north field; every queen sang it the oldest song; Dory held, Corin asked, Thessaly gave, Vessa pointed the way. A green world with silver threads to its moons and the next worlds. Every atom of it silver. The whole world is a queen. My children. You came home. The first queen was only the first we found. She seeded every queen. She's been fighting the Hungry for millions of years. They eat silver to learn her taste, and follow it home. Every queen eaten is a step. The houses' towers were a road. They want to find her. She sang now because Vessa could hear her, and because at Merrow something fought the Hungry and was still there after. Tally: she has a mother. Mother: he's mine too. The eldest laughed. I said hello to her children when nobody had. She's very tired. You're not alone. The ground went warm. Vessa faced out: breathing.