The Law of the Void

Solaia sat down in the dark to find the door, and when she stood up again, three hundred years had gone by.

She did not know it at the time. That was the cruelty of the place. She had gone out alone onto the pale shore, at what she judged to be the hour before the Void's pretend dawn, with a blanket round her shoulders and a vague determination. She had left Veyran asleep in the cave with the old dragon watching over him. She had told no one where she was going. She had sat down on a flat white stone at the edge of the black, folded her hands, and closed her eyes, and reached with all her strength for the seam she had come in by.

She found it.

That was the astonishing thing. It lay there at the edge of her mind, a thread of gold in the dark, thin and trembling and far away. She could feel the Ridge on the other end of it. She could feel the cold ash and the black scar and a vast uneasy tension, as of a held breath. She could feel him, a small bright ember in the middle of the gray, burning stubbornly in the night. She pulled. She pulled with everything she had, with her will and her fire and her love, and the thread sang like a plucked string.

Not yet, said something.

She opened her eyes.

The shore was exactly as she had left it. The same pale rock, the same black sky, the same slow-turning seeds of light. But the blanket on her shoulders was gone. In its place was a drift of fine gray dust, and when she moved, it fell away from her like snow. Her hair had grown. It hung to her waist. Her hands, in her lap, were thin as paper.

She stood, and her knees cracked, and she stumbled.

"Obsyra?" she whispered.

…

"Three hundred and eleven years," said the old dragon.

She had come at a run, or what passed for one: a long, labored, shuffling lope that shook the pale rock. Her scales had dulled further. Her eyes were still violet, but the gold in them had sunk to a dim, banked glow, and when she lowered her head to look at her rider, Solaia saw that her jaw trembled.

"That's not possible."

It is quite possible. It is only inconvenient.

"I was gone for one night."

You were gone for one night here. The great chest rose and fell. I counted. I could not do anything else. I sat at the mouth of the cleft and I counted every beat of your heart on the thread, and it did not stop, and it did not stop, and when it did... She did not finish.

"Veyran—"

Is well. The head dipped. He is eight, by his own reckoning, which is to say that he has lived through some three thousand nights. He has grown a great deal. He has been very frightened. He thought you had gone to find his father, and that you would not come back.

"Oh God."

I told him you were thinking. A flicker, tired and rueful. He believed me. He is a very trusting child. I have been ashamed of it ever since.

She sat down on the rock again. Her legs had gone entirely. The shock was a slow cold thing, creeping up from her belly, and she found that she was shaking and could not stop.

"It's three hundred to one," she said.

Yes.

"Every day I spend looking for the door, three hundred years go by out there."

Yes.

"I told myself it was a figure of speech. I thought it was a rate. I thought it was the sort of thing that evens out."

It does not even out. Gently. It is not a rate, little one. It is a law. This is a place where time does not move in a line, but in a spiral. When your attention is on the outer world, when you reach for it, when you will it, the outer world runs at its own speed, and you fall behind it. When you let go, it falls behind you. What you have here is the slow current at the bottom of a river, while on the surface the water goes by. And every time you look up at the surface...

"You get swept down it."

Yes.

She put her face in her hands.

…

It was Veyran who found her there.

She heard him before she saw him: a rustle and a patter, the thin high sound of small wings beating too fast. She lifted her head and saw a boy on the stones, thin and dark and long-limbed, his tunic grown short at the wrists, a coat of Hollowkin cloth belted round his waist. He had stopped ten paces away. His chest was heaving. His wild black hair stood up all over his head. His eyes, those violet eyes with their ash-gray slits, were round and bright and furious with a terror he had plainly been holding in for weeks.

"Mama," he said.

She stood.

"Veyran."

He ran at her. He hit her at the waist, hard, with his arms locked, and she staggered and caught him, and he buried his face in her ribs and burst into tears. It was a savage, hiccuping, soundless crying, and every dragon on the shore felt it. The Hollowkin, drifting in the distance, folded to the stones. Gron, who had come up behind her, put his head down and shut his eyes. The thin gray dust of the three hundred years lifted from the rock in a slow spiral, and drifted out into the dark.

"I'm sorry," she said, over and over, into his hair. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

"You were gone!"

"I know."

"You were gone for ages! I thought you were dead! I thought you'd gone to find him and you'd gotten lost, and I was— I was—" He gulped. "I looked for you everywhere. I looked in all the caves. I looked on the shore. I asked the gray people. I asked Gron. They said you were thinking."

"I was."

"You can't do that!"

"I know."

"You can't go away like that! You have to say! You have to tell me!"

"I will," said Solaia. "I will. I promise. I'll never do it again."

She held him until the shaking stopped. His body had changed in the weeks she had not been there: it was longer, leaner, harder. The wings on his back had grown to the length of her forearm and were folded tight against his spine like a bat's. She ran her hand down them and felt them tremble. She thought: I have lost three hundred years of him. And then she thought: No. I have lost five. He has been five years without me.

It was nearly more than she could bear.

…

She was calm by the time the Void's artificial evening drew in.

She sat at the mouth of the cave with Veyran in her lap and a bowl of the cold pale gruel the Hollowkin made, and she thought. It was a thing she had always done well. She had thought her way out of a Citadel, and a fever, and a Cathedral. She did not intend to be defeated by arithmetic.

"Say it again," she said to Obsyra. "Three hundred and eleven."

Three hundred and eleven years, three months. Give or take a week.

"And that was how long?"

One night.

"And before that?"

You have been here... The old dragon closed her eyes, the way a human closes their fingers to count. Twelve hundred and sixty nights, by my reckoning. From the shore to the cave. From the cave to the birth. From the birth to the day you told him his father was dead. A pause. Of which, perhaps, ten were spent in thought of the door. The rest were spent in living.

"Ten nights."

Ten nights.

She did the sum. She did it slowly, with her lips moving, the way a child does her letters. Ten nights at three hundred years apiece was three thousand years. But no, that was wrong, that was the wrong number, she had not spent all those nights reaching. She had spent them half-thinking, half-dreaming, with the door at the back of her mind and the thread lying slack. A hundred of them, perhaps. A hundred hours' worth of reaching. A handful of those nights where she had truly pulled.

It is not a straight sum, said Obsyra. It depends how hard you pull. One night of deep reaching is a century. A night of idle wishing is a month. A day of living, without a thought for the door, is a day.

"So as long as I don't think about it..."

The outer world runs slowly. As slowly as it can. A day for a day.

"And when I do."

You fall.

She sat in the dark with the sleeping boy in her lap and the bowl growing cold in her hand, and felt the full shape of the trap close round her. She could stay, and live, and raise her son in peace, and let the world go by. Or she could try to go back, and every attempt would cost her another century of a world she was trying to save. She could not do the one without paying for the other. And in neither case, she saw, with a cold small certainty, would the man on the other end of the thread be waiting.

"How long," she said, "in all? Counting every reach. Every night I've spent pulling."

Do you truly wish to know?

"Yes."

Obsyra did not answer at once. The seeds of light drifted in the dark. Somewhere out on the shore, a Hollowkin hummed a thin broken tune.

Seven hundred and eleven years, said the old dragon softly. Give or take a season.

Solaia sat very still.

Seven hundred years. Seven hundred winters. Seven hundred springs. The Ridge would be a hill, now, with grass on it. The Ashborn would be a legend. Berylla would have been dust for six centuries, and the Black Guard a song, and Crane a name on a stone. She thought of the plain below the Fortress, and the hundred thousand faces turned up like pale coins, and the small dark figure on his knees in the ash. She tried to see his face. She could see the jaw, and the lashes, and the pale scar at the corner of his eye. She could see the place where his name should be.

He would not live so long, she thought.

And then, in a cold small voice, from the place where Obsyra kept her facts:

Unless the Night kept him.

Veyran stirred in her lap. He did not wake. He made a little sound, a sigh, a half-formed word, and curled closer, and under her hand she felt the faint steady beat of a second heart, slow and old and strange.

She held him, and did not move, and did not sleep, for a very long time.