The hill was waiting for them.

It rose out of the barren ground in the thin gold light of mid-morning, black and round-shouldered and perfectly still, with its ring of leaning stones about the crown. There was no wind. The ash lay on the slope in unbroken drifts, and not one footprint marred it but their own. They came up out of the forest in a long ragged line, eleven people and an old man on a horse, and stopped at the foot of the rise, and nobody said a word.

Liora looked at them.

She saw Hesta, gray and upright, with her ring of silent keys at her hip and her jaw set like a stone. She saw Mirel, who had taken off her shawl and tied her sleeves above the elbow. She saw the stable brothers, enormous and pale, holding hands without knowing it. She saw Dunna's lips moving in a prayer, and Garrick with his unlit pipe clenched between his teeth, and the scullery girl, very small, standing at the edge of the line with her thread already wound twice about her finger. She saw Tobin.

He stood a little apart. His face was white and set and entirely without expression. He held a spool of the pale silk against his chest in both hands, as he had once held a log of firewood, like a shield.

"Remember," said Liora. "At any moment."

Nobody turned back.

They climbed.

The slab was as she had left it, black and smooth and quiet, with the spiral cut deep into its face and the two small hollows in the center. The halves of the broken ring still lay in them, dark and warm. She knelt and touched them, and they answered under her fingers, a faint steady pulse like a sleeper's breath. Behind her, in the leaning shadow of the stones, the others took their places in a circle round the slab, as she had shown them on the table. Eleven threads, each wound about a finger, each running in a long loose curve to the hollow where her hand would lie.

Dravek lowered himself onto the stone.

He did it slowly. He took off his coat and folded it, and set it aside, and he lay down on his back across the black slab with his arms at his sides and his bare head toward the east. In the cold light his face was very pale. The gray tracery lay along his throat and his wrists like the ghost of a hand. He looked up at the ring of leaning stones, and at the pale sky above them, and then, turning his head, at her.

"I should like to say something," he said.

"You may."

"I do not know that I shall be able to afterward." His voice was quite steady. "I should like to say that I am not afraid of the cutting. I have thought about it for two days, and I find that it is not what frightens me. What frightens me is that I shall hold on." His hand lay open on the stone. "Whatever I do. If I should seem to resist, if my hand should close, you are not to think that I wish it. You are to go on."

"I'll go on," said Liora. "I won't cut what you haven't given."

"And if I cannot give it?"

"Then I'll stop, and we'll sit with it." She smiled at him. "I made a rule. Do you remember? It isn't clever."

"It is only hard," said Dravek, and closed his eyes.

She took her place at his side. She knelt by the slab with her satchel open at her knee and the old man's green case laid out on the black stone, and she opened it, and chose the needle. It was the large one, curved like a new moon, and it was cold in her fingers. She threaded it from the pale spool. Her hands were quite steady. She had not expected that.

She laid her left hand in the hollow.

The stone woke.

It was a deep, clear, steady note, rising from the rock itself and filling the whole of the ring, and the spiral on the slab began to glow. It was the gold of the other morning, the gold of a candle through a window. It ran from the border inward, loop by loop, and at the center it reached her hand and passed into it, and she felt the slow bright pull of the thread in her chest, the thin crooked cord that she had tied herself. She closed her eyes. She felt it, a long way off, in the other hollow, where his hand lay open. It tugged. It answered.

"All together," she said. "Breathe."

They breathed.

She heard it, a ragged ring of in-breaths and out-breaths, and under it the small clear whisper of eleven threads drawing taut and falling slack. She felt each one come alive. It was like having eleven small hands laid very gently on her shoulders. A stable hand's, rough and shaky. A farmwife's, strong and cold. A boy's, steady, exact, and a little too fierce. She drew in her own breath, and held it, and let it go, and began to sew.

The needle went into the air above his heart.

It was the stitch. She had done it a thousand times. But it was not the stitch that she knew. It was larger, and deeper, and it did not pass through the air at all. It passed through the *gap,* the long luminous space between his body and hers, and between hers and the eleven at her back. She drew the silk through, and it caught, not on one thing, but on twelve. She felt the weight come into her. It came slowly, and it was cold, and it was heavy as a river in flood. But it did not fall on her alone. It ran out from her in all directions, down eleven threads, and she felt it split and split again and lose itself in the arms and chests of the ring. It was a great rope, and there were hands all along it.

He drew a long shuddering breath.

The black came up under her palm. She felt it rise, and she did not fight it. She followed it down. Down through the gray tracery of his skin and the long muscles of his chest, down into a darkness that had been waiting for her since a night of snow. She found it. It lay deep in him, coiled about the root of his heart, like the shell of an enormous cold seed.

*The root,* she thought.

It was not what she had expected. She had thought that it would be a monstrous thing, a thick black knot of hatred and power. It was small. It was perhaps the size of a walnut, hard and smooth and glittering, and it was beautiful. It was the most perfectly made thing that she had ever touched, and from it ran a thousand fine dark threads, out through every vein, through every nerve, to the ends of his fingers and the roots of his hair.

It was his. She understood that. It was not an enemy. It was a thing that he had taken into himself, at nineteen, in the worst hour of his life, to save forty thousand people, and it had been his, all that time, closer than a heart.

"I have it," she whispered. "I'm at the root."

He did not answer. His lips were moving. His hand, in the hollow of the stone, had begun to close.

"Dravek."

"I know." It was barely a sound. "I know. I am trying."

"Don't try. Just breathe."

Then the voice came.

It did not rise from the stone. It did not come from the air. It was simply there, at the head of the slab, where nothing had been a moment before, and she opened her eyes and saw it.

It had taken a shape. For the first time, in thirteen years and in all the lives of the twelve, it had been given form, and it sat at the head of the black table in the thin gold light like a guest at a great dinner. It was tall, and thin, and graciously proportioned, and it wore a long gray coat that hung about it as if from a hanger. It had hands. They lay folded on the stone, long and pale and perfectly still. It had a neck, and shoulders, and a head, and where a face should have been there was a smooth gray blank, like the surface of a plate.

"Do forgive me," said the Warden. "I did not wish to intrude. But I am obliged to attend. It is in the terms."

Nobody moved. Behind her, she heard the small hard sound of Hesta drawing breath.

"You are, I see, quite determined," it said. "I find it admirable. It would be impolite of me to interrupt a work of such ingenuity, and I shall not, in the ordinary way. But I am bound to mention one or two small points. It is my duty. I should be sorry to think that anyone here had been misled."

"Say them," said Liora, without lifting her eyes.

"The first is a matter of the number." The gray blank inclined toward the ring. "The Pact makes provision for an anchor. It is one. It has always been one. The Pact is, by its terms, a bond between a king and a queen, and the weight of it falls upon the single hand that is chosen to bear it. To spread the weight across eleven persons is, strictly speaking, an irregularity."

"It's the only way that it can be done."

"I do not dispute it. I say only that the oath of silence, which binds the household, was laid upon them under the old terms. It bound them as bearers of the secret. It has not been revised." The voice was very kind. "I should be remiss if I did not point out that it still applies. And that it tightens, as the work proceeds. Madam Hesta, I think, will already have begun to feel it."

A small sound came from behind her. It was not a word. It was a choked, dry, dreadful rasp, like a latch giving, and Liora turned her head. Hesta had gone gray. Her hand was at her collar. The thread on her finger was shaking, and her mouth was open, and no breath came.

"Hesta!"

"I..." It was a thread of a sound. "I am... all right. Go on."

"You are not."

"I said go on!"

The Warden spread its pale hands, courteously. "You see. I have said nothing that is not true. The old woman has but to let go, and she will be free. It is only a thread."

Liora looked at her. The old woman's face was running with sweat. Her eyes were wide and fixed and furious, and in them there was no fear at all. There was only a terrible fierce stubbornness. *I have wanted to stop for thirteen years.* The thread had cut a white line in her finger. She held it.

"Do you hear it?" said Liora, quietly.

"Hear what?"

"The word it used. *Bearers of the secret.* It said that the oath binds them as bearers of the secret." She drew a breath. "It said *secret.* Hesta. Look at me. There isn't one anymore."

The old woman stared.

"The Warden told it to me itself," said Liora. "On the stone, on the day that I said no. It said that the oath was laid on those who knew what was hidden. And I know. And you know. And every person in this ring has heard it, in the infirmary, over three days, in plain words, from my own mouth." Her voice rose, clear and steady, and rang off the leaning stones. "There's nothing left to keep. It's been told. It's been *said,* in the open, to eleven people who chose to hear it, and it's no longer a secret in any sense that the terms can hold. It isn't bearing anything. It's just a thing that people know."

There was a silence.

Then, with a sound like a rope parting, Hesta drew a long, dragging, shuddering breath, and her hand fell from her throat. She stood swaying. She was weeping, openly, with her gray braid streaming, and she did not wipe her face.

"It has let go," she said. "Oh, my lady. It has let go."

The Warden did not move. But the long gray hands, folded on the stone, had gone a little stiff, and for the first time since she had known it, Liora heard in its voice something that was not courtesy. It was something close to interest.

"Quite so," it said. "I had hoped that you would see it. It is a very fine point. I shall be obliged to revise my estimate." A faint, dry pause. "The second matter is somewhat graver. I am sorry to raise it. It concerns the king."

Liora felt him stir under her hand.

"By his own signature, upon this stone, His Majesty accepted the Pact," said the Warden. "And by the same signature, he accepted the power that came with it. They are one thing, you will understand. They have been so for thirteen years. He cannot lay down the burden and retain the gift, or lay down the gift and retain the burden. He may only lay down both, together, in a single act." The gray blank turned toward the slab. "And in the same moment, he forfeits every protection that the power has afforded him. The Blight, Your Majesty, will cross the ridge. I should not wish you to be under any illusion. The north will go as the valley went, and in the same hour, and you will be a man lying on a stone, without the power to stay it."

"No," said Liora. "That's not..."

"I do not lie."

"I know you don't. But you don't tell it all." She was trembling. She had her hand in the hollow, and her heart was pounding so hard that it shook the needle. "The Blight lives in the Pact. That's what Edrin wrote. *The Blight is the Pact's appetite.* It's what the thing does when it's hungry. If the Pact is cut at the root, there's nothing for it to eat."

"A most interesting theory."

"It isn't a theory."

"It is, my dear. It has never been tested." The voice was very gentle. "And if you are mistaken, it will be the north that pays. I would have you consider it. It is forty thousand lives, to set against a single man's release. I should not like it to be said that I did not warn you."

She looked down at the man on the stone.

His eyes were open. They were clear and gray and quite steady, and they were fixed on hers. He had heard every word. He lay with his hand half closed in the hollow, and she saw the muscles move in his forearm, and she saw the thing that she had been afraid of. It was the sum. It was the old unforgiving arithmetic of a boy of nineteen on a hillside. *Forty thousand against one.* It rose in his face like a tide. She saw him begin to close his hand.

"Dravek," she said.

"I know what it is," he whispered. "I know. I have done this sum."

"I know that you have."

"It is the only one that I know how to do."

"I know." She laid her free hand against his cheek. It was warm. "But I'm asking you to do a different one."

He was breathing hard. His eyes did not leave hers.

"It said that it's untested," said Liora. "It's right. I can't promise you that it'll work. I can only tell you what I believe. And I believe that the old man spent thirteen years, and twelve lives, and a hand that he'd have given anything to keep, finding out what the thing was. And I believe that he wrote it down. *The Blight is the Pact's appetite.* He wasn't a man who guessed." Her voice cracked. "You don't have to trust me. You don't have to trust the Warden. You've only to decide whether you trust him."

"Edrin."

"He chose me," said Liora. "He chose me, and I was angry, and I'm still not sure that I forgive it. But I'd put my life on his hand. And so would you. You did, for thirteen years."

The man on the stone shut his eyes.

It was a long moment. The whole ring held its breath. She could hear the hush of eleven threads, drawn taut as harp strings, and the long note of the stone, and far below, a bird. Dravek's chest rose and fell. His hand lay half closed in the gold light.

She saw Tobin.

He was standing a pace behind the head of the slab, with his silk wound tight about his fist and his thin white face turned down toward the man on the stone. She had not thought that he would look. He was looking. His brown eyes were wide and wet and quite unreadable, and as she watched, he took a step nearer. It was a single step. It brought him to within a yard of the king's head.

"Do it," said Tobin.

He said it very low. It was almost not a sound. But in the hush of the ring it carried to every ear.

"I don't forgive you," said the boy. "I told you that. I'm not going to say it's all right. But you took something from me, and I want you to take it back, and I want you to be a person that I can hate properly, who's alive, and not a person who died doing a clever thing." His voice shook. "So let go. Please. I'll hold the rope."

Dravek's eyes opened.

He looked up at the boy. For a long, long moment he said nothing. Then something went across his face, slowly, like the sun coming out on a cold field. It was not a smile. It was not anything that she had a word for. It was the look of a man who has been handed, in the last hour of his life, a thing that he had no right to be given.

"Yes," said Dravek, in a whisper.

His hand opened.

It did it all at once. She felt it go, the long clenched fist of thirteen years, uncurling in the hollow of the stone, finger by finger, like a leaf in the sun. He drew a breath that seemed to have no bottom. And he said, quite clearly, to the sky and the leaning stones and the gray shape at the head of the slab, in a voice that carried to the edge of the world:

"I give it back."

The root moved.

She felt it under her needle, deep in the dark of him, the small hard glittering seed turning over in its bed. The thousand dark threads that ran from it flexed and trembled. And the voice at the head of the table, for the first time, lost its grace.

"Ah," said the Warden. "That is... irregular."

It moved. It rose from its place, in a single smooth unfolding of gray cloth, and stood over the slab, tall as the leaning stones, with its pale hands spread. "I should not like this to be rushed. There are provisions. There are procedures. A gift of this magnitude must be properly witnessed, and I do not think that..."

"I witness it," said a voice.

It was an old voice, and cracked, and very soft. Pell had slid down from the gelding. He stood at the edge of the circle with his stick in one hand and the green case of silver in the other, swaying on his feet, and his pale eyes were fixed on the thing that had made him a runaway. He did not look afraid. He looked, she thought, like a man who has been carrying a very heavy trunk up a very long stair, and has reached the landing.

"I witness it," said Pell. "As one who has stood on this stone. As one who knows the terms." He set down the stick. He took a step, and another. "And I should like to say, before I do the thing that I came here to do, that I was wrong. I was wrong to run. I was wrong to sign, or nearly. And I was wrong to hide my hand."

He lifted his left arm.

He took hold of the cuff of the gray glove with his right hand, and drew it off.

It came away slowly. It was a thing that had been drawn on and not removed for nine years, and it clung. Beneath it, she saw, there was no hand. There was only a stump, a smooth knob of pale scar ending at the wrist, shining like polished horn. He held it up in the light. His face was quite calm. He was weeping, silently, without any sound at all.

"It took the whole of it," said Pell. "I said so. It took what it could. But I find that I do not need a hand to hold a thread."

He crossed the ring. He stopped beside the slab, at the foot, where the third hollow had been worn by thirteen years of weather, a small shallow dent at the edge of the black stone that she had never noticed. He laid the stump in it. It fit as a key fits a lock. And from his right hand, which he held out blindly toward Tobin, he took a single silken thread, and wound it twice about the scarred knob of his wrist.

"Edrin," said Pell, to the empty air. "I am sorry that I ran."

The stone sang.

It was not the note that she had heard before. It was a chord. It rose from the black rock in three voices, one after another, a deep one and a middle one and a high thin trembling one, and they laid themselves over each other and rang together, and the whole ring of leaning stones shivered. The gold ran out along the grooves to the three hollows. It ran up the threads. It leaped along the eleven silken cords from palm to palm, and she felt it come, a great warm tide, flooding through the hands of the ring and into her own.

She was not alone.

She had never been so little alone in her life. She felt them all. She felt Hesta's long weariness, and the stubborn clean joy beneath it. She felt Mirel's grief, old and plain and bearable, and a small hard kernel of something that was almost peace. She felt the stable brothers' fear, and Dunna's prayers, and Garrick's terror, and the scullery girl's wild small happy courage. She felt Tobin, hot and fierce and burning like a coal. She felt Pell, a long way down, quiet and spent and entirely at rest.

And she felt the root, under her needle, shining like a star.

The thread went taut as a bowstring. The whole weight of the Pact hung from it, thirteen years of it, black and enormous and cold, and it did not crush her. It ran through her. It ran out along twelve cords into twelve pairs of hands, and was divided, and divided again, into pieces so small that each of them could be carried by a child.

She lifted the needle.

It shone in her fingers like a sliver of moon. She laid its curved edge against the shining seed in the dark of him, and she felt it hold. The whole of the ring leaned in. The air had gone as still as glass. Far off, a very long way off, she heard a lake begin to break.

"Now," said Liora, and drew the thread.