The Longest Stair

She did not stop for a lamp. She did not stop for her coat. She went through the dark house at a dead run, in her stockinged feet, with her heart beating in her ears and one terrible word going round and round in her head like a moth against a pane.

Gone. Gone. Gone.

The windows went by her one after another, blank and black. She had run these corridors a hundred times. She knew them as she knew the lines on her palm. But tonight they were strange. There was no ticking in the walls. There was no breath. The glass beneath her feet was cold as a pond in January and dead as a plank, and every pane she passed gave nothing back, not her face, not the stars, not the faint pale ghost of the moon. It was like running through the inside of a stopped clock.

"Casimir!" she cried. "Casimir!"

Her voice fell into the dark and was not answered.

She took the corner at the bottom of the east stair too fast and fetched up against the wall. She hung there, panting, with her hand pressed to her side. And in the stillness, from the foot of the steps, she heard a small dry sound, like a man trying to clear his throat after a long illness.

"Miss."

He was sitting on the bottom stair.

She had passed him. She had been so wild with fear that she had run straight by him in the gloom, and had not seen. He sat with his back against the newel post, in the dark, in his steward's coat. His good hand rested on his knee. The other lay across his lap, in its napkin, like a thing he had been given to hold. His long glass face was turned toward the wall, and his hair, that pale spun fall that had always stirred when he moved, lay perfectly still.

She went down on her knees beside him.

"Perrin. Where is he?"

"I could not stop him," said Perrin.

"Where is he?"

"The Heart, miss. He went up an hour ago." His voice was a thread. It came from a long way off. "I should have woken you. I know it. I sat here a good while and thought about it. I stood at the door of the cellar with a candle in my hand. And I did not do it."

"Why?"

"Because he asked me not to."

She stared at him.

"He did not say so in words. He is far too clever for that. He merely looked at me, on the stair, and said good night. In the voice that he used to use when he was small." He closed his eyes. "I have known that voice for three hundred years, miss. I could not have refused it for my life."

"You knew?"

"I knew what he would do. I did not like it." His smile was tired and wry and absolutely heartbroken. "I am not a brave man. I am a tear. We have a poor reputation for it."

She seized his hand. It was cold. It was very cold. And as she held it she saw, in the faint gray light that came from nowhere, that the silver threads in his wrist had begun to go out. They darkened, one by one, like wires in a failing lamp. Where the fingers should have been there were only faint rainbow-colored shadows. He was fading from the ends inward.

"Oh, Perrin. You're going."

"It is of no consequence."

"You're going!"

"I am a part of him, miss. When he thins, I thin. It is merely arithmetic." He opened his eyes, and they were shining. "I am only sorry I did not get to finish the roofs."

She pressed her forehead to his knee and wept like a child.

He put his hand on her hair. He did it so gently she hardly felt it. She felt the fingers go through it, light as snow, light as nothing, and the faint sweet chime of glass.

"Go and read what he has left you," said the steward, very low. "It is in your room. Go on. Then do what you were always going to do. I shall be here when you come back."

"You'll be—"

"I shall be here," said Perrin firmly. "I have decided."

…

The letter was on the window.

She saw it as soon as she opened the door. It was the one window in the east tower that was not dark. Frost covered the pane in a thick white fern, and in the middle of it, written by a finger with a quiet hand, in tall stiff letters like a row of pines, the glass said:

Forgive me.

She went across the room as though pulled on a string.

She read it by the dim blue light of the dawn that was just beginning to come. She read it with her fist pressed to her mouth. She read I have broken my word, and You were willing to give everything, and Of all the things I have held in three hundred years, you are the only one I did not hold. She read it twice. By the second reading, the frost had begun to run. The words were melting from the top downward, in thin bright rivulets, and she watched the bottom line stand alone for a moment against the gray.

It was a very good rug.

She laughed.

It was a terrible noise. It came out of her like something torn. She laughed with her hand over her mouth and the tears pouring down her face, and she hit the window with the flat of her palm, hard, so that the whole pane shook.

"You idiot," said Elowen. "You absolute, bloody, unspeakable idiot."

The last line ran, and vanished.

"We said together! You swore! On the stairs! You held my hand!"

The frost wept. The window dripped. She stood with her forehead against the wet cold glass and her fists clenched at her sides and said, over and over, to a house that was not listening, "I'll kill you. I'll kill you. I'll kill you."

Then she wiped her face, hard, with both hands.

She turned. She snatched up the gray book from the desk. She took the music box from the shelf where it had sat, and wound it, and put it into her pocket, where it ticked against her ribs like a second heart. She dragged on her coat. She looked once at the room, the bed, the basin, the empty frame of the mirror over the chest, and then she was out of the door.

Fine, thought Elowen. Fine. You want to go and be noble. You can do it with me hanging off your coat.

…

They were waiting for her at the bottom of the tower.

She heard them first. It came up the stair from below, a soft sound, a rustling, a sliding, a hundred whispering voices together. Then she turned the last curve, and saw the great hall, and stopped.

It was full of Echoes.

They had come out of the dark panes. All the windows and the glass that he had put out, the ones that no longer held his eye, had opened like doors, and what had been waiting behind them had poured out into the house. She saw them in the broken doorways. She saw them in the empty window frames. They crept up out of the floor, from the shards that lay strewn across the stones, and stood in rows with their faces upturned.

There were hundreds. They were pale, and wet, and smooth, and every one of them had a human shape. Some wore the clothes of the dead. Some wore the faces of children. She saw an old man with a lute. She saw a woman in a ruffled cap. She saw a boy of sixteen, who looked at her out of Rosalind Quill's eyes. They were all of them very still, and they all had their heads tilted a little to one side, like birds listening.

And in the middle of them, a little ahead, stood a girl in gray wool with her hair brushed smooth.

"Hello," said the Echo of Elowen.

"Get out of my way."

"We can't."

"Then I'll go through you."

"You won't need to." The girl smiled. "We're not here for you. We've come for him."

"What?"

"He's letting go." The soft voice was full of wonder. "Didn't you feel it? It went through the whole Land. He's put out the glass. He's opened his hand." She tipped her head. "And now the things that he was holding don't have anyone to hold them."

The rustling grew louder.

"We're so hungry," said the Echo.

…

She backed away.

They did not move. They only watched, with that terrible mild attention, as the girl in the gray coat retreated up the first three steps. They hadn't come for her. She saw that, now. They weren't looking at her at all. They were looking past her, up the stair, with their white faces turned to the place where the light had been. And the hunger in them was so naked, so utterly without malice, that it made her sick.

They don't know what they are. She thought of the girl on the hill. They only know they were left.

"Please," said the Echo, gently. "Don't be frightened. He doesn't need to be stopped. It's lovely, what he's doing. He's letting us in."

"He's letting himself die!"

"He's letting himself go." The smile was sweet. "It's the same. It's the same thing, in the end. When the Heart opens, all of us will come home. We'll be whole. We'll have everything we lost. And you can come, too."

"I don't want to."

"You'll forget your name."

"I know."

"You'll forget him."

She had been about to turn and run. She stopped. She stood on the stair, with her hand on the cold rail, and looked at the girl in the gray dress with the clean smooth face.

"No," said Elowen. "I won't."

She drew a breath.

She had never sung it like this. She had sung it in the great hall, and the tower, and in a gallery full of stars. She had sung it with hurt, with fury, with longing. Now she sang it plainly, as she had once sung it to a cow. She sang it with her mother's flat honest country voice, and Elodie's pitch, and the slight rasp at the edge of her own. She sang it as if it were the only song in the world.

Ember, ember, keep the night.

The fire woke in her.

It did not come like a flood. It came like a lamp being lit. It rose up through her ribs, small and steady and gold, and she let it out of her with the song, and it spilled over the stair in a shining ring. The Echoes flinched. The nearest of them stepped back, with her pale hand raised to her eyes. The hall brightened, and she saw all the faces turn, and look at her.

Hold it small and hold it bright.

"Don't," whispered the girl in gray.

Hush the wind and hush the snow.

"Please. It hurts."

"I know," said Elowen. "I'm sorry." And she went on singing. She went up the stairs, step by step, with the song in her mouth and the fire in her hands, and the Echoes fell back before her like a tide. They didn't attack. They shrank. They covered their faces. They sank into the walls and the floor, and she heard them going, a sad slow rustle, like leaves.

She had won. She did not feel it. She felt only the awful smallness of what she had done, and the hunger in their eyes as they went.

I'll come back, she thought, to every one of them. I'll find a way. I promise.

She reached the top of the hall, and turned, and ran.

…

The Great Mirror stood in the round hall.

It had split from crown to floor, and the two halves hung crooked in their frame. The seam between them was no more than a hair's breadth now. Beyond it there was a faint light, pale and flickering, like a candle seen through a keyhole. She stopped before it, panting, and laid her palm on the black glass.

It did not answer.

"Open," said Elowen.

Nothing.

"Open, damn you! I know you're in there! I know you can hear!" She beat on the pane. "You can't just— you don't get to just— open the door!"

The glass stayed dark.

She stood for a moment with her fist raised. Then she lowered it. She took a long breath, and let it out, and began, very softly, to sing.

Not the song. She had sung the song until her throat was raw. This was something smaller. It was a single note. It was the one that he had sung, in the tower hall, with his forehead against hers. The half-tone higher. The note that had turned a lullaby into a question.

She sang it as clearly as she could. She sang it for a long time.

The seam in the glass began to glow.

It was only a thread of gold at first, a hair's-width line, no brighter than a spider's silk. It widened. It spread. The two halves of the pane slid apart, with a sigh, and a breath of warm air came out of the dark, smelling of metal and honey and rain. Behind the door, the spiral stair rose away into the shaft of pearl.

But the stair was fading.

She saw it at once. The steps that had been warm and pulsing were pale and faint. They were barely there. She could see through them, to the dark behind. The light that ran along the walls was a flicker, a stutter, a trembling thread, and as she watched, the third step from the bottom dimmed, and went out.

She put her foot on the fourth.

It held. It was cold, thin as ice, and she felt it shiver beneath her weight. She went up. She went up on her hands and her feet, singing, with the note rising and falling in her throat, and each step she touched brightened for a moment under her palm, flared gold, and sank back into gray as she passed.

Hold on, she thought. Hold on. I'm coming.

I'm coming. You great stubborn fool. I'm coming.

She climbed through the heart of a dying house. The stair swayed. The walls breathed, slow and shallow. Somewhere below, a long way down, she heard the high thin chime of glass breaking, and then another, and another, like a chain of bells going out one by one. She did not stop. She did not look down. She climbed, and sang, and counted the steps in her head, as she had once counted them in the fog.

One hundred. One hundred and one.

At the top, the door of the Heart stood in front of her.

It was shut. She had never seen it shut. It was a plain, round, pearly slab of crystal, without a handle, and the light that came from under it was so faint that she could hardly see it. She stopped, with her hand on the cold surface. She listened.

There was no sound from the other side.

No pulse. No hum. No ringing note. It was the silence of a held breath, deep as a well, and in it she heard the loudest thing she had ever heard in her life: the dreadful, steady, patient absence of a heartbeat.

Please, she thought. Please let me be in time.

She put her shoulder to the door, and pushed.