THE HUNDREDTH NIGHT (I)

Day 100 of 100

By four o'clock the whole of Vermont had gone quiet.

Rooke felt it as he came up the Academy road in the gig: a vast, listening hush, like the hush in a theater before the curtain. The farm carts had stopped in the lanes. The men in the hayfields stood with their scythes grounded and their faces turned up. A woman on a porch in the Falls had a smoked glass held to her eye, and her children knelt in a row on the boards beside her, their small pale faces tilted. Dogs lay down in the road. Cattle had begun, one by one, to walk toward their barns.

The sky was the color of pewter. The sun hung in it, white and small and fierce, with a thin black bite taken out of its western rim.

A quarter gone, he thought. Forty minutes to totality.

He drove the mare hard. Beside him on the seat, Okafor sat with a shotgun across his knees and his hat jammed down. Josie clung to the back rail with her bag in her lap and her jaw set. They did not speak. They had said everything in the cabin, and in the gig, and in the gray of the morning, and now there was only the road, and the strange brass light, and the hammering of the mare's hooves on the dust.

Mara had gone ahead.

That had been the plan. It was a poor one; he'd said so. But there was no other. The Rite could not begin without her; and the Rite, if it was to be turned, must begin. She would walk into the Sanctum at half past four with her head up and her hands open, as a guest walks into a house. She would take her place in the circle. And Pryce, who was waiting at the chapel door with a stick and a face like death, would walk with her.

I'll be a few minutes behind, he'd said.

I know.

Mara—

Don't. She had put two fingers on his lips. If you say it now, I shall cry, and I've the whole of the afternoon to look composed. She had smiled. Say it after.

He had watched her go down the track into the pines in Ruth Pellam's gray cloak, a slight straight figure with her hair tied back in a ribbon. She had turned at the bend. She had lifted one hand.

He had said it anyway, aloud, to the empty road.

…

The chapel was ringed with gray.

He saw them from the lime-walk: a double cordon of Bureau porters across the lawn, shoulder to shoulder, rifles sloped, faces blank. They were not Wardens. Wardens would have looked at him. These looked at nothing, at the middle distance, like men who had been told that if they thought they would be punished. Behind them the old stone building stood against the strange sky, with its square tower and its dark door, and the bell tolling slow and flat.

"Eighty," muttered Okafor. "Ninety, maybe."

"Hartwell?"

"Inside. With the Lieutenant's squad. The Director's own."

"Pip?"

"I sent him a note." The big man's mustache twitched. "He's a good lad. He'll be where he's wanted."

They left the gig under the limes. They went round by the north wall, through the old burial ground, among the leaning stones and the long wet grass, with the shotgun held low. At the foot of the tower, behind a tangle of yew, was a small iron door, green with age, half hidden by ivy. Okafor stopped.

"The sexton's way. It comes out in the crypt."

"You're sure?"

"I surveyed it in 'eighty-eight. Before the Bureau bought the hill." He grinned, without mirth. "I'd have said it was just a drain."

He put his shoulder to the door.

It gave with a shriek.

…

The crypt was dark, and low, and full of the dead.

They went through it in single file, with a lantern, past a long procession of stone coffins whose lids bore the carved effigies of Founders; past a row of niches stacked with bones; down a passage that dripped. Josie held her skirts and breathed through her mouth. Okafor, in front, moved like a bear in a cave, huge and silent, with the shotgun at his hip. Rooke came last. He had the revolver in his hand. It was Hartwell's, and it felt like a stranger's.

At the end of the passage a shaft of light fell across the floor.

It was strange light. Dull gold, and cold, and wrong. It came from a grating in the vault above, a narrow slit, and lay on the flags in a long thin bar; and as they came into it Rooke looked up and saw, through the grating, the sky. The sun was a crescent. A bright curved blade, hanging in a bruise-colored heaven. Already the world around it had begun to darken.

"Twenty minutes," whispered Josie.

"Less."

Ahead of them a heavy door of oak stood open on a flight of steps. The steps went down. Below, from a great way off, came a hum, low, deep, vibrant, like a swarm of bees, or the note of a great bell struck once and left to die; and under the hum, faint and rhythmic, a human voice, chanting.

He knew the chant. He'd heard it at a hundred Sealings. The old Latin. Ad lucem. Ad vitam. Ad finem.

To the light. To the life. To the end.

"They've begun," said Okafor.

…

There were fifty-one steps.

He took them three at a time. He did not remember descending. He was aware of the stone going by, and the curve of the wall, and the hum growing, until it filled his bones and shook the lantern in Josie's fist. At the bottom the stair opened on a landing, and the landing on an arch. And through the arch, as through a lens, he saw the Sanctum.

It blazed.

The nine gray pillars stood in their ring, each topped now with a cup of cold white fire. Between them, set into the floor in a circle of black iron, ran a pattern of lines: a great six-pointed star, a snowflake, forty feet across, burning with a pale blue radiance that lit the roof of the cavern like a sea-cave. In its center rose the Founder's Stone. And on the north side of the ring, raised on a platform of iron, black and tall and seamless, stood the Mirror.

It drank the light.

He felt it from the arch: that cold deep drag at the edges of his sight, the pull of the well. It filled the room. The blue radiance of the star bent toward it. The pillars' fire leaned. And in front of it, at the foot of the platform, a thick black cable as wide as a man's thigh ran across the floor from a socket in the Mirror's base and vanished into a hole in the wall, bound in iron bands, towards the chapel and the hill and the distant mountain.

Around the ring, in a ragged circle, stood men.

Wardens. A score, in dress gray, with rifles. Hartwell was among them, red-faced and wretched, with his hat in his hands. Tilden. Greaves. Faces he had known for years. They stood at attention, with their eyes fixed on a point in the air, as men stand at a funeral. And at the far side of the ring, by the Stone, in a long coat of silver cloth that caught the pillars' fire, with his black stick planted before him and his white hands raised, stood Augustin Halloran, chanting.

Dr. Calder stood at his elbow. She was holding a brass instrument, a sort of gauge, and her face was the color of paper.

And in the circle, on the star's two opposite points, with sixty feet of burning lines between them, stood two women.

…

Mara.

She stood on the south point of the star in her gray cloak, with the hood thrown back. She had put aside her spectacles. She had done her hair; it was tied with a ribbon, and the chestnut at the roots caught the light. Her hands hung open at her sides, palms forward, as she had said they would. Her eyes were closed.

She was shining.

It rose off her in a pale clear silver-blue, in a pillar, thin as smoke and bright as glass, going up from her crown to the roof of the Sanctum and beyond; and it was streaming. A fine thread of it ran from her breast, curving, in a long shimmering arc, toward the Mirror. He saw it enter the black. He saw her flicker.

On the north point of the star, opposite, a second woman.

She was in red. A dark wine-red, plain, severe, high at the throat, with her hair loose over her shoulders and her arms folded across her breast. She too had her eyes shut. A second pillar rose from her, gold and crimson, thicker, warmer, wilder than the first; and a second thread curved from her heart, in a mirrored arc, toward the black.

Vesper.

She had come.

His breath went out of him in a rush. He had not been sure. He'd lain awake half the night with the doubt like a splinter. She'll come. She won't. She gave us the notebook; it may have been goodbye. But she was standing there on the star, with her sigil blazing on her wrist and her chin high, as straight and pale and proud as a woman on a scaffold; and the two lights drained from her and from her counterpart, and met in the air above the Stone in a slow, spinning, silent braid.

The Mirror drew them.

It drew them as a flame draws a moth. And he saw, with a sick lurch, that at the Stone's foot, under the braid, the iron of the star was glowing. White, then yellow, then a dull ominous orange. The two women stood at either end, swaying slightly, and the lines of fire between them narrowed toward the center like the spokes of a wheel.

Ninety seconds, thought Rooke. No. Less. Totality's not yet. They're drawing them early.

He means to take them before the Reintegration.

…

"Now," said Okafor.

He stepped through the arch.

He did it with a roar, a great hoarse bellow that rang off the vault, and the shotgun went up in his hands; and the Wardens round the ring turned as one, with a clatter of arms, and fell back in confusion. Rooke was beside him. He had not known he was moving. He was in the arch with Hartwell's revolver raised in both hands, and the stone floor under his boots, and a voice that was his own saying:

"Stand down!"

They stared at him.

Twenty faces. Twenty rifles, swinging round, wavering, uncertain. He saw Hartwell's mouth open. He saw Greaves, a lean pale man with the eyes of a heron, bring his weapon to his shoulder and aim.

"Captain Rooke," said Halloran.

He had not stopped chanting. His voice flowed on, sweet and low and uninterrupted, a river under the words. "Captain Rooke, how very good of you. We had begun to fear you would miss it." He did not turn his head. "Lieutenant Greaves, you will shoot him, please, if he moves."

"Sir—"

"At once."

"He's the Captain, sir—"

"He is a fugitive and a traitor and a harborer of the Doppel. Shoot him."

Greaves did not move. His rifle trembled against his cheek.

"Tom," said Rooke.

It was to Hartwell. The red-faced man stood three yards off, with his cap crushed in his fist and his eyes shut as though against a glare.

"Tom. You know what this is. You've read the register. You've seen the cells. I know you've seen." He kept his voice steady. "Those are two women, in that circle. They're not specimens. They're not Doubles. They are a girl you walked past in the library, and her sister, and they are about to be burned to run a machine."

"I don't—"

"You do. You told me. In the loft, with the badge. You said, I'm glad." He lowered the revolver a little. "Be glad again. Stand aside."

Hartwell opened his eyes.

For a long moment they looked at one another across the burning floor. Then, slowly, with the air of a man laying down a very heavy load, Hartwell set his rifle on the flags.

"I'm done," he said hoarsely. "God forgive me. I'm done."

"Hartwell!" cried Greaves.

The shot cracked.

…

It was Tilden.

He had been standing at the end of the line, a thin dark young man with a pistol-hand that shook. He had not been listening. He had been looking at the Mirror, with his mouth a little open, as a child looks at a fire; and when Hartwell dropped the rifle something in him broke, and he fired.

The ball went past Rooke's ear. He felt it pass. It struck the pillar behind him and whined away across the cavern, and a shower of stone-chips rattled on the flags.

He did not think.

He turned. He put the revolver's front sight on the center of Tilden's breast, and then, in the last instant, without having decided, lowered it to the right shoulder. He squeezed.

It was a very loud sound. It went through him like a blow. He saw Tilden spin, and cry out, and drop his pistol, and clap a hand to his arm; he saw the blood come through the gray in a dark bright flower. The boy sat down. He stared up at the Captain with an expression of the most naked astonishment.

"I'm sorry," said Rooke.

He had known the boy for four years. He'd taught him to read a trail. He stood with the smoking revolver in his hand and a great cold sickness rising in him, and the knowledge, quite clear, that he'd just shot one of his own.

"Sorry, Tilden. Sit still."

All around the circle the Wardens had begun to move. Some raised their rifles. Some lowered them. Two broke away and ran for the stair. Okafor roared and swung the shotgun in a wide arc, and the men near him flung themselves flat; Josie, who had come in at his heels, was already on her knees at Tilden's side, tearing a strip from her apron. A voice screamed. Another began to pray. And in the middle of it, through the smoke and the stone-dust and the strange cold flicker of the pillars, Halloran's chant went on and on, unhurried, sweet, undisturbed, like the singing of a man in a bath.

…

"The cable!" shouted Okafor.

He had seen it. He was already moving, bull-shouldered, across the floor toward the black rope at the Mirror's foot; and Rooke, with a sudden cold lucidity, saw what was needed. The cable. The thick iron-bound cord that ran from the socket to the wall, that would carry the light to Blackfrost. If it were cut—

If it were cut, the draw would stop. The Rite would fail.

And so would the Reintegration. Mara needs the ninety seconds. She needs the Mirror dead and the Stone alive.

He ran.

He was ten yards from the platform when the first of them came at him: Greaves, with a bayonet fixed. He saw the long blade flash. He ducked, and it slid past his ribs and tore his coat, and he hit the man in the face with the butt of the revolver. Greaves went down. Another came. A big man, a porter in gray. Rooke struck, and struck, and felt his knuckles split; he heard Okafor's shotgun go off, a great flat boom that sent plaster raining from the vault; he heard Josie screaming something. He fought through them with a cold rage that had no thought in it, a lit fuse of a man, toward the thing at the end of the room.

He reached the platform.

He saw the cable at his feet, black and gleaming, lashed with iron. He raised the revolver to fire at the bands.

And a voice, quiet and amused, said, "No, Captain."

…

The Director had stopped chanting.

He stood on the far side of the Stone, a hundred feet away, at the edge of the burning star. He had lifted his stick. It was not a stick. It had never been a stick. He held it up before him in both hands, and the black wood had split along its length, and from the split poured light: a long white blade of cold flame, narrow, humming, as tall as a man.

"Put it down," said Halloran gently.

The revolver would not move.

Rooke strained. He felt it in his arm, his shoulder, his spine: a vast invisible grip, like the grip of a hand closing over the whole of him. His finger would not close. His arm began to lower. He fought it with all his strength, with the Sight, with the Seer's trained will, and felt his will go into the grip and be swallowed, like a stone dropped in a pond.

"That is the beauty of the thing," said the Director. "One need not hurry. I have so many more souls than you."

The pistol fell from his hand.

He stood motionless on the iron platform, with his hands hanging, unable to lift a finger. Behind him the fighting had stopped. Okafor stood stock-still with his shotgun half raised and a look of astonished rage. Josie knelt, frozen over her patient. Hartwell stood frozen, his hands out. The whole Sanctum had gone still, as a pond goes still under ice; and in the stillness he heard the hum of the Mirror, deep and satisfied, and the little crackling of the burning lines.

He looked at the star.

Mara hung in the air.

He had not seen it happen. She had lifted a foot from the floor. Her head was thrown back, and her arms were out, and the blue-silver pillar of her light was drawn so thin that it was no more than a thread. Opposite her, Vesper, too, had risen; the gold-red column was a slender, quivering wire. The braid above the Stone had thickened. It burned like a sun.

Above the ring, through the grating in the vault, the sky had turned the color of a bruise. The crescent of the sun was a narrow bright wire. There was a minute left. Perhaps less.

"You came," said Halloran, "very nearly in time."

He came round the Stone. He walked along the edge of the star with the blade of cold light held easily at his side, his silver coat moving in the draft, and stopped a pace from the Captain, and looked up into his face with the mild sorrowful eyes of a man at the bedside of a child.

"I do admire you, Callum," he said. "I have always admired you. You are the most extraordinary young man. You came a hundred miles through the dark, with a drunken Irishman and a girl with a bag, to save a pair of women you cannot tell apart." He smiled. "And you think you can do it."

Rooke could not speak. His jaw would not move.

"But you have not understood," said the Director. "You never have. You think you are the knight in this story. The one who tears down the tower." He laid his white hand on the Captain's breast, lightly, over the heart. "You are not. You have never been anything but the instrument."

The ring of black stone on his finger glittered.

"I watched you tear her in half, you know. On the dock. Ten years ago." His voice was a murmur. "From the hill. With a glass. I had known the girl's mother. I had been waiting for the daughter, for a long while. And I thought, what a pity, she is too young to ripen. She is too small to give." The smile deepened. "And then you came along with your pretty book."

The sky was dimming.

"I did not make the Division," whispered Halloran. "I did not need to. You did it for me. With your own hands, out of love. And then you grew up, and joined my Wardens, and brought me every Doppel in the county, one by one, like a good dog with a bird." He patted the breast gently. "Do you think you can save her, Captain?"

His eyes were mild and blue and entirely without pity.

"You are only my tool."