Chapter 234: Hunted

Hollin's galley went up the Kell at sunrise on Wednesday with every oar out and nobody rowing to anybody's call.

That's not quite true. They rowed. You can't take a galley forty miles up a river against the current by sitting on deck humming. A hundred and twelve men took up the oars at dawn and rowed her out from the quay at Ferrow's Reach, and up past the black shrine with the cart-sized hand on it, and out into the middle of the river where the whole town could see.

But there was no drum. No call. No whip. Hollin stood at the stern with his big arms folded and his whip coiled on the deck at his feet where he'd dropped it four days ago, and didn't pick it up. And the oars went in and came out and went in, all together, in a long slow beat that wasn't anybody's but theirs.

They were rowing to the song.

* * *

I'd never heard it like that. At the stove, it's a kitchen song. Low. Something you hum with your hands in the dough. At the well on Skerrick it had been a secret, sung so low it wouldn't carry to the coast road.

On Hollin's galley it was a rowing song.

It turns out it is one. It always was. It's got the beat in it, if you sing it slow enough and heavy enough, with a hundred and twelve men pulling on the downstroke. Whose are you, whose are you: pull. Asks the man at the door: pull. Mine, says the kettle: and the whole galley leaned into it, and the river went white under the oars, and she leapt forward against the current like she'd been pushed.

And there's room for one more.

Jory was on his old bench, beside the man he'd rowed with for a year, singing at the top of his voice. Loki was on a bench in the middle, rowing, which I'd never seen him do and which he did, I'm sorry to say, extremely well. Carol was in the bow with her good hand on the rail and her hood down for once, and her silver streak blowing out in the wind off the water, and she was singing too.

And on the banks of the Kell, as we went up, people came out of their houses to watch.

* * *

They didn't wave. Nobody in Kethra waves; it's too much like holding up a hand. They just came out and stood. Women with washing. Men with nets. Children. At every landing and every ferry-stage and every village along the river, people came down to the water and stood on the bank in the cold and watched a galley go past with its oars out and no drum, rowing to a kitchen song.

And at every landing, somebody hummed back.

At the second galley-town upriver, a place called Wick, there were four galleys tied up at the quay. We went past them slowly. Their oarsmen were down on the decks, the way oarsmen are at morning, chained, waiting for the call. They heard us coming a long way off.

By the time we'd passed the last of them, all four galleys were humming.

One of them didn't stop at humming. As we came level with her, her oarsmen stood up. All together. Not to do anything. Just to stand. Two hundred men in chains standing up on the deck of a galley in the middle of Wick, watching us go by.

Her master didn't say anything. He just looked at Hollin across the water. And Hollin looked back at him. And then the other master, very slowly, took off his whip and laid it down on his own deck, and left it there.

* * *

At noon they put a chain across the river.

It was at a narrows called the Gullet, where the Kell runs between two rock walls not much wider than a galley. There was a shrine on each side, high up on the rocks, with a black door and a hand. And between them, stretched across the river at the height of a man's chest above the water, a chain. Iron. Each link as big as my hand. Somebody had pulled it tight from both sides with windlasses, and a priest in white stood beside each windlass, very small, very high up, with an unlit lamp.

"They knew we were coming," said Hollin, at the stern. Jory put it into our language between strokes. "They've had a rider up the river road since dawn."

"Can you get under it?"

"No." Hollin looked at the chain. "It's too low. It'll take the heads off every man on the benches."

I looked at the chain. I could have folded it. I could have folded it into a knot. I could have folded the whole narrows open like a book, and the shrines with it, and the priests, and set the galley down a mile on the other side without a drop of water on her decks.

And I'd said I wouldn't.

"Garrick," said Carol, from the bow. Very quietly. She'd seen my face.

"I know," I said. "I'm not."

* * *

It was Jory who stood up.

He let go of his oar. The man beside him took it without a word and kept rowing. And Jory walked up the gangway between the benches to the bow, beside Carol, and looked up at the chain coming toward us across the water at the height of his own chest.

And then he started singing again. Louder. And the galley sang with him.

And Hollin, at the stern, said one word, very quietly, and the stroke changed. Slowed. Not stopped. Slowed, until the galley was barely moving against the current, creeping, inch by inch, toward the chain. And as she came up to it, Jory reached up with both hands and took hold of it.

Not to break it. He couldn't have broken it. He was fifteen. He just took hold of it, and held it up. Over his head. An inch. Two.

And the man on the bench behind him stood up and took hold of it too.

And the man behind him.

All the way down the galley, as she crept under the chain, men stood up off their benches one after another and took hold of the chain above their heads with both hands, and lifted it. Not far. Just enough. Just over their heads. And passed it back. Hand over hand. Bench after bench, a hundred and twelve men in chains passing the emperor's chain back over their own heads along the length of the galley, while the others rowed, slow, slow, singing.

And at the stern, Hollin took the last of it on his own two hands, and lifted it over his own head, and let it go behind him.

It fell back into the river with a great slap of water. The galley went on.

High up on the rocks, the priests in white stood beside their windlasses and watched us go.

They didn't do anything. I don't think they knew what to do. Nobody had ever lifted a chain before. They'd only ever been under them.

* * *

We reached the falls at dusk.

The Kell comes down out of the hills there in a long white roar over three great steps of black rock. You can't take a galley up it. Hollin brought her into a backwater below the first step, where the water was slack and black and full of foam, and ran her bow up on a shingle bank under the trees.

Above us, the forest started. Mirewood. It came right down to the water on both sides, dark and close and old, the trees so thick and tall you couldn't see the sky through them. The river went up into it in steps, white and roaring. There was no road. Not a track. Not a path.

"Three days," said Hollin. He was standing at the bow, looking up at the trees. "I'll wait three days. If you're not back by the third night, I'll come up and find you myself." He looked down at his hundred and twelve. "We all will."

"You'll be chained," I said. "You've all still got the chains on."

Hollin looked at me. And then he did something I hadn't seen him do. He smiled. It didn't suit his face at all. It made him look about twenty years younger and very surprised.

"We stood up in chains," he said. "We lifted his chain over our heads in chains. I think we can walk in them."

* * *

Ossery hadn't spoken since noon.

He'd sat in the stern all day by Hollin's feet with his stick across his knees and his face turned back down the river. Toward Ferrow's Reach. Toward the coast. Every now and then he'd flinch. Not much. A little, the way you flinch when somebody pinches you in a crowd and you can't see who.

When we came off the galley onto the shingle at the falls, he stood for a long time with his face turned back the way we'd come.

"How many?" I said.

"Thirty-one," said Ossery. "Since this morning. Thirty-one of my stones. All along the small roads. All the way from the coast to Ferrow's Reach." He swallowed. "The ones that had cups on them. And bread. And candles. One after another. Going dark."

"The same as the lead?"

"No." He shook his head. "No. Lead is just weight. Lead is just a floor on top of me. I could feel them under it. Still there. Still mine. Just held down." He gripped his stick. "This is different. This is like somebody putting their hand over a candle. They're not under anything. They're just—" He stopped. "They're just not asking anymore. As if somebody walked up to each one and said, there. You're found. Stop asking."

* * *

We went up into Mirewood at first light on Thursday.

Ossery went first, the way he always does, with his stick. And for the first hour I thought he'd been wrong, and there was no road at all, because the forest floor was moss and roots and rotten leaves, deep and soft and black, and there was nothing to follow, nothing to see, every way the same.

And then Ossery put the end of his stick down and the ground was there, and a silver footprint came up out of the moss where he'd stepped, and stayed.

"Somebody came this way," said Ossery. Quietly. Almost to himself. "A long time ago. A woman. She was lost." He took another step. Another silver print. "She was running. She'd come out of the Keeping House. Before it was the Keeping House. When it was a lord's house, and she was a maid in it, and she'd run away. And she didn't know which way to go." Another step. "And she asked. And I told her."

"Where did she go?"

"Home," said Ossery. "She went home." He walked on. "It's her road. She made it. Just by being lost on it and asking." He looked back at me over his shoulder, and his face was strange, half glad and half frightened. "It's the only road through Mirewood. There's only ever been one person lost here who asked."

* * *

We saw it at noon.

We'd stopped on a ridge where the trees thinned, to drink from a stream. Loki was lying on his back on the moss with his eyes shut, complaining about his arms. Carol was sitting on a rock with her bad arm in her lap, very pale. Jory was filling the water-skins.

And Ossery, who'd been standing at the edge of the ridge looking back down the way we'd come, said, "There."

I looked.

Below us, a mile back, the forest went down in long dark folds toward the river. And on one of those folds, where the trees opened for a moment on a bare slope of rock, something was standing.

It was very tall. Taller than Ignatius. Thin, so thin it looked like a man drawn with a single stroke of a pen. Gray all over. Gray coat, gray hair, gray skin, the gray of something that's been left out in the rain for a hundred years. It stood perfectly still on the bare rock with its face turned up the slope. Toward us.

Around its neck was an iron collar.

And from the collar, a chain went up. Not down to the ground. Up. Into the air. Thin, so thin I could only see it when the light caught it, going up from the gray thing's collar and back over the trees toward the south, toward the coast, toward the city, like a kite string going back to a hand forty miles away.

It had something over its eyes. A band of cloth. Tied at the back of its head.

It was blindfolded.

* * *

"It's looking at us," said Jory, very low.

"It can't," said Carol. "It's—"

"It's looking at us."

It was. I could feel it. The way you feel somebody looking at the back of your neck in an empty room. It stood on the bare rock a mile below us with a cloth tied over its eyes and its face turned up toward us, and it knew exactly where we were. Every one of us. I could feel it knowing.

And then it moved.

Not toward us. To the side. A few steps, very slow, very careful, to where something was lying on the rock. Something small. I couldn't see what. It bent down, its long gray body folding like a heron's, and put out one long gray hand, and laid it flat on whatever it was.

Below us, on his ridge, Ossery made a sound like a man stabbed.

"That was mine," he said. "That was a stone. Somebody had carried it out of a wall and put it on the rock there for a marker. A shepherd. Years ago." He shut his eyes. "It's gone dark."

The gray thing straightened up. Turned its blindfolded face toward us again.

And came on.

* * *

Loki had sat up. He was looking at the gray thing below us with an expression I'd never seen on his face before. Not frightened. Something else.

"I know who that is," he said.

We all looked at him.

"I know who that is," said Loki again. Very quietly. "I didn't know he was still—" He stopped. "His name is Venn."

"Venn?"

"Venn the Finder." Loki didn't take his eyes off the gray shape on the slope. "Before the hand. Before Malachar. He was a house god. A little one. The littlest, almost. He was the god you asked when you'd lost something. A ring. A child's shoe. The key to the cellar. You'd say, Venn, Venn, find it for me, and turn around three times, and there it would be, under the bed." Loki's voice had gone strange. "Every house in Kethra used to have a little shelf for him. By the door. With a dish on it. You put the things you found in the dish, to say thank you."

"What's he doing on a chain?"

"What do you think he's doing on a chain?" said Loki. "What would you do with the god who finds everything that's lost, if you were the god who holds everything?"

Nobody answered.

"You'd blindfold him," said Loki, "so he can't see anything but what you point him at. And you'd put a chain on him, so he can't go anywhere but where you send him. And you'd send him after everything that got away." He looked at me. "He doesn't find lost rings anymore, Garrick. He finds lost people. That's what he's been for, for a thousand years. Every runaway. Every list-runner. Every maid who came out of a lord's house in the dark and ran." He looked at Ossery. "He doesn't hate your stones. He's been told they're lost. And he finds things that are lost. That's all he knows how to do. He walks up to them and puts his hand on them and says, there. Found. And they stop asking."

* * *

"Can we outrun him?" said Jory.

"No," said Loki. "Nobody's ever outrun him. Not once. That's the point of him."

"Hide from him?"

"He's the god of finding things. What do you think?"

I looked at the gray shape coming up the slope through the trees. Slow. Careful. Unstoppable. Blindfolded, on a string from the city.

Then I looked at Ossery.

"He finds what's lost," I said.

"Yes."

"What about what isn't?"

Ossery looked at me. And then, slowly, something came into his face. The water-over-stones look.

"He can't find what isn't lost," he said. "Nobody can. You can't find a thing that's already where it is. You just—" He stopped. "You just walk up to it. Like anybody."

"So if we know where we are," I said. "Every step. All the time. If we never once don't know—"

"Then he has to follow us like a man," said Ossery. "On his feet. Not like a god. He can't just know." His hand tightened on his stick. "He can still follow. He's very good at following. But he has to do it the slow way. Like a hound on a scent. Not like a hand reaching into a dish."

"Then you'll tell us," I said. "Every step. Where we are. All the way to the Keeping House. Out loud."

Ossery looked at me for a long moment. Then he smiled. A small, fierce smile I'd never seen on him.

"I've never once been asked to do that," he said. "To tell somebody where they are before they asked." He turned around, and put his stick down, and a silver footprint came up out of the moss. "Mirewood. The ridge above the second falls. The stream on your left going up. The Keeping House is five miles north and a little east. You are here."

* * *

He did it all afternoon.

Every step. Out loud. In his water-over-stones voice, not loud, never stopping, the way you'd talk to a frightened horse. The big beech with the split trunk. The stream's on your left. Four miles north. You are here. The rock shaped like a sitting dog. The stream's gone under the ground; you'll hear it again in a hundred steps. Three and a half miles. You are here.

And we said it back. All of us. Every step. Carol and Jory and Loki and me, in a line behind him on the dead maid's road, with the silver footprints coming up out of the moss. You are here. We are here. We are here.

It's a strange thing to do for a whole afternoon. To never once not know where you are. I'd never done it in my life. Nobody does. You walk along thinking about something else, and look up, and you're somewhere, and you don't know how you got there. Everybody's a little bit lost, nearly all the time.

Not that afternoon.

And behind us, Venn came on. I could feel him. We all could. Not knowing, anymore. Not that feeling at the back of the neck. Just following. Slow. A mile back. Half a mile. Feeling for our footprints in the moss with his long gray hands like a blind man feeling for a step.

He didn't put out a single one of the dead maid's prints. I watched. I looked back every hundred steps. They were still there, behind us, a line of little silver lights going away down the slope into the dark under the trees. And the gray shape coming up beside them, very slowly, touching each one, and moving on.

It wasn't lost. It was a road. A road that knew exactly where it went.

Venn couldn't find it. He could only follow it.

* * *

We stopped at dusk because we had to. Carol couldn't go on.

She didn't say so. She never says so. But she'd been walking since first light on mud and moss and roots with her bad arm and no sleep, and when we came to a hollow under a great fallen oak, she sat down on the root of it and didn't get up.

"Two miles," said Ossery. "The Keeping House is two miles north. Over the next ridge. You are here."

"We are here," said Carol, with her eyes shut.

I sat down beside her.

"I'll keep watch," said Loki.

I looked at him. He was standing at the edge of the hollow, looking back down the dead maid's road with his arms folded. Into the dark. Toward Venn.

"Loki."

"I said I'll keep watch. Go to sleep. You've got a house to get into in the morning, and three people to get out of it, and you won't do either of them if you've been awake for two days."

He didn't turn around.

"I know what you're thinking," I said.

"I very much doubt that."

"You're thinking that if it comes to it, somebody ought to be lost on purpose. So he follows them instead."

Loki was quiet for a long time.

"I'm the god of lies, Garrick," he said at last, without turning around. "I'm the best there's ever been at being somewhere other than where people think I am." He paused. "And I've got a son on the other side of the sea, who isn't on a chain anymore, because somebody came and took it off him." He looked down the dark road toward the gray thing following it. "That's somebody's boy, down there. With a cloth over his eyes. Somebody used to put a dish out for him by the door."

He didn't say anything else.

Neither did I.

* * *

At ten past nine I held up my hand, under the fallen oak, in the dark, in the middle of Mirewood.

I couldn't see anything. No tower. No window. Not even the sky. Just the branches overhead and the dark.

But the coal pulsed against my palm. Hers. Long. And the forge-red beside it, her father's. And then, very faint, something new. Not red. Not gold. Silver. Faint and scattered, like a great many small lights a long way off, in a long line, all at once.

The dark of the moon. Selvane's harbors. Every harbor on the coast, saying the old names, all together, in the dark.

And one more word after.

I couldn't hear it. I was forty miles from the sea and two miles from the Keeping House, under a tree, in a forest with a blindfolded god on a chain coming up the road behind me. I couldn't hear anything but the wind in the trees.

But I knew what the word was.

* * *

From Mary's book. Wednesday and Thursday. Mary's hand, small and steady:

Wednesday. Sel's thirty-first tree.

Thursday. Sel's thirty-second. The dark of the moon.

Thursday, at dusk, Benjamin and Wynn and Selvane's old lamp-lighters went down to the end of the south mole with the lamp, the way they do at the dark of the moon, and said the names. The old ones. All of them, all the gods of the harbors on this coast, the way Selvane taught them. Benjamin sang the third verse wrong, on purpose, the way he always does.

And then, at the end, Benjamin said one more word. Nobody had told him to. He said it in Kethran. He says he heard it on the wind.

9:10 p.m. at the stone. Hers. Ignatius's red. Cerys's white. Garrick's, very faint, far inland, under something. And then Davren made a sound and dropped his pencil. All along the far coast, at the far bearing, from the north as far as the stone can see to the south as far as it can see, a line of lights. Silver. Small. One at every harbor. All at once. All the way down the coast of Kethra. Like a necklace somebody had laid along the edge of the sea in the dark.

Uriah came down. He stood at the stone with his hand on it for a long time. He said: that's every harbor that kept her name. He said: she's lit them all.

Then he said: they're saying it. All of them. Tonight. All down the coast.

Fourteen days since midwinter. Fifteen.

And under that, in a big, square, salt-stiffened hand, the hand of a man who writes as if he were tying knots, every letter pulled tight:

Benjamin, son of Aurelia. I'd like it noted that I've sung the third verse wrong at the dark of the moon every month since I came home, because the right words were my mother's, and I wasn't ready. I'd like it noted that tonight, at the end of the names, I said one word in a language I don't speak, because I heard it on the wind and it seemed rude not to answer. I'd like it noted that it was a short word. A soft sound at the front of the mouth. I'd like it noted that I asked my mother what it meant, and she told me, and then she sat down. I'd like it noted that I've been sitting on the mole since, not singing anything, and that Wynn brought me tea.