The Unwalked Roads

Every book before this one tells of things that happened, or that enough people agree happened that I have been able to write them down without blushing. This book is different. It is a book of rumours, reports, sightings, prophecies and tavern talk: of roads that run off the edge of the known, and that no guild has yet walked to the end.

I set it down because the guilds will walk them. They always do. RavenholdRavenholdThe keep on the Whisperwood March where every guild learns to raid. was a rumour once, and the WyrmspireWyrmspireVel’Thuran’s tower of black stone above Frostspire, with a dragon on top. a story to frighten children, and the Starfall ObservatoryStarfall ObservatoryThe gnomes’ observatory on the highest peak, where something fell out of the sky and stayed. a light on a mountain that the gnomes would not discuss. Now their bosses are on the Rolls, and the guilds want to know what comes next. So do I. This is my best guess.

LysaLysaKindler of growing things, gone down into the roots of Whisperwood. went into the roots of the first forest, and the elves say that WhisperwoodWhisperwoodThe first forest, where the elves woke and the trees gossip. breathes with her seasons. Last spring it was late to wake: a full month late, the latest in the elves’ long count. The trees have stopped gossiping. The wolves have stopped listening. And in the oldest glades, where the roots come up out of the ground like the backs of sleeping animals, the elves have found a way down.

They call it the RootdeepRootdeepThe way down through Whisperwood’s roots to Lysa’s grieving dream. The roots run with salt water.. It goes under the forest by the roots themselves, which are wider than roads and older than the elves, and those who have gone a little way into it say that the roots are wet, and that the water is salt, as tears are. Something at the bottom of Lysa’s dream is grieving, and the forest is grieving with it. The elves will not say what she is dreaming of. I begin to think they do not know, and that this frightens them more than anything else in the world.

Wake her, and the forest wakes with her, every tree at once, and not all of them kindly. Leave her, and the forest sleeps on, and dreams what she dreams.

CorvaneCorvaneKindler of the winds. The ravens are her eyes; the Ravenmother answers for her. scattered herself into the winds, and of all the KindlersKindlersThe singers who made Aetheria, then went down into it and sleep there, holding it together. she sleeps the least soundly. The minotaurs of the StormreachStormreachThe highlands under a veil of storms that has not lifted in nine hundred years. say that every wind in AetheriaAetheriaThe Ember of the Aether: the world. comes home once a year to a single place above the storms, as birds come home to roost, and that Corvane is most herself there, and nearest waking. They call it the Eyrie of CorvaneEyrie of CorvaneWhere every wind comes home to roost, above the storms. Corvane sleeps lightest there, and it moves., and they say that it moves.

Since the guilds began to bring down Lord VarricVarricLord of Ravenhold, who bargained to hold the wood until it was quiet, and holds it still, a century dead. every week, the ravens of the WhisperwoodWhisperwoodThe first forest, where the elves woke and the trees gossip. March have grown quiet. The RavenmotherRavenmotherA raven the size of a woman, or a woman the colour of a raven, who keeps Ravenhold’s rookery. answers for Corvane, and she has stopped answering. The minotaurs have taken this badly. They say the Kindler of the winds is turning over in her sleep, and that when she turns, the winds turn with her, and a guild that wishes to reach her will have to stand on air and fight in a gale that has its own opinions about where the raid should stand.

OrunOrunKindler of fire and stone. He sleeps curled around the fire under the mountains. went down into the fire under the mountains, and lay curled about it like a smith banking his forge for the night. The EmberforgeEmberforgeHammerdeep’s great forge, heated by the root-fire. Its fires still burn, without fuel. is heated by that fire, and its fires still burn without fuel. But the Emberforge is only the hearth. Below it, below the ninth hall of HammerdeepHammerdeepThe dwarves’ kingdom of nine halls under Frostspire, burned in a night., below anything the dwarves ever cut, is the forge itself, banked and waiting, with the Forgefather asleep around it.

The dwarves call it the Banked ForgeBanked ForgeThe forge below the ninth hall of Hammerdeep, where Orun lies curled about the root-fire., and they will not go down to it, because of the first oath: take heat, never take flame. IgnarothIgnarothEldest of dragons, born of a drop of Orun’s fire. Bound atop the Wyrmspire, and back every week. was one drop of that fire, and he burned a kingdom. The kingless dwarves of the StonegateStonegateThe dwarven quarter of Highcrest, given to the kingless dwarves after the Burning. say that the oath-stonesoath-stonesThe pillars of Hammerdeep on which every oath was cut. They cracked in the Burning. that cracked in the BurningBurningIgnaroth’s passage up through Hammerdeep, twelve years before the Crown. can only be mended in the fire that cracked them, and they have begun, very quietly, to ask the guilds whether an oath can be kept by someone else on your behalf.

Xal’zarith, the Dreamer in the DeepXal'zarithThe dream that dreams itself: Thal’s sleep, soured by the Hollow. Woken in the Abyssal Sanctum., is a dream: ThalThalKindler of the sea, asleep in the southern trench. A splinter of the Hollow sours his dreams.’s sleep, soured by the splinter of the HollowHollowWhat lies beyond the edge of the Aether: not darkness, but the absence of anything to be dark. that fell into the southern sea more than six thousand years ago. The guilds who have gone down into the Abyssal SanctumAbyssal SanctumThe Order of the Hush’s cathedral over the trench, sunk in the Drowning. It opens when the Wyrm falls. and stood among its nine chains know this. What they do not know is how far the trench goes down below the chains.

No line has ever sounded it. The TidekinTidekinThe dream-born of the Corsair Reaches, children of Thal’s sleep before it soured. call it the Unsounded TrenchUnsounded TrenchThe trench below the Sanctum’s chains, where Thal sleeps with the splinter in his side., and say that at the bottom lies Thal himself, the quietest of the seven, with the splinter still in his side. Pull it out, the Tidekin say, and Thal might wake, and remember his children, and the MawMawThe storm-belt round the Drowned Caldera, born in the Drowning: the Dreamer’s breathing. might go still. Leave it, and he never stops dreaming, and the dreams never stop coming up. The Tidekin are divided on which they would prefer, which is the first time anybody can remember the Tidekin being divided on anything.

SerenSerenThe Watcher. She set the stars as watchfires on the walls of the world, and alone stayed in the sky. alone would not go down. She stayed in the sky among her lamps, to tend the watchfires and keep the walls. And every week, on the stroke of the bells, the TurningTurningThe weekly curse that stands back up whatever the guilds bring down, and snuffs a star to pay for it. snuffs one of them out.

The gnomes of the Starfall ObservatoryStarfall ObservatoryThe gnomes’ observatory on the highest peak, where something fell out of the sky and stayed. have counted the stars, and then counted them again, and have stopped telling anyone the number. They say that the piece of MorrowMorrowThe dark moon, whose moonshadow grew hidden things. Nhal took it on the Night of the Missing Moon. that came down on their mountain left a road behind it, as a falling stone leaves a hole in ice, and that the road runs up, past the moon, past the Sun, to the walls of the world: the Watchfire WallWatchfire WallThe walls of the world, where Seren keeps her last lamps lit against the Hollow., where Seren keeps her last lamps lit with the HollowHollowWhat lies beyond the edge of the Aether: not darkness, but the absence of anything to be dark. pressing on the other side. A guild that went up that road would be the first company of mortals to leave the world. The gnomes are drawing up a list of the things such a guild would need. It is a long list, and it begins with air.

MaelisMaelisThe Mender, in every hand that binds a wound. What is broken can be made whole. went into every living hand that binds a wound or sets a bone, and so the Mender has no place of her own, or so the priests have always taught. The healers of the guilds tell it differently. They say there is a house, at the end of a road that only appears to those who have mended more than they have broken, where everything ever broken in AetheriaAetheriaThe Ember of the Aether: the world. goes to wait for her.

They call it the House of MendingHouse of MendingWhere every broken thing waits for Maelis. The road appears to those who have mended more than they broke.. Nobody fights there. Maelis does not fight; she asks. But every broken thing the guilds have left behind them comes back to be made whole, and some of them are very large, and some of them are still angry about it. The healers say that the house is the one place in the world where a raid is carried by those who keep it standing, and the warriors say that the healers would say that.

Men came to AetheriaAetheriaThe Ember of the Aether: the world. out of the west, from a land the sea took. The Annals have always told it as a closed door: the land was gone, and the Hundred KeelsHundred KeelsThe fleet that brought Men to Aetheria from a land the sea took. were all that came out of it. I am no longer sure the door is closed.

This year the fishers of the SaltwindSaltwindThe coast where the Hundred Keels came ashore: wrecks, smugglers and crabs the size of carts. Coast have brought up wheat in their nets from the western sea: whole sheaves, waterlogged and green. Then roof-tiles. Then a church bell, which nobody will hang. And the captains who sail furthest out report a coast in the west where there was only open water when their fathers sailed: low and grey and dripping, with towers on it. The TidekinTidekinThe dream-born of the Corsair Reaches, children of Thal’s sleep before it soured. say the sea is giving things back as ThalThalKindler of the sea, asleep in the southern trench. A splinter of the Hollow sours his dreams.’s dream sours. The AdmiraltyAdmiraltyThe Crown’s navy in the Reaches, which hunts the Brethren. says nothing at all, which is how one knows the Admiralty is worried.

If it is the old land of Men, it is risen wrong. Those who have rowed close say that the fields are white with salt, that the towers lean, and that there are lights in some of the windows. The Crown has quietly let it be known that any land in the west is the Crown’s by right of King AldricAldricCaptain of the Hundred Keels and first king of Highcrest. The years are counted from his crown.. The BrethrenBrethrenThe pirate brotherhood of Rumhollow, with a code they keep and a hatred of the Navy. of RumhollowRumhollowThe pirates’ own port in the fogs of the Blackwake Strait. have loudly let it be known that it is not. The guilds, as usual, are waiting to see who will pay them more. They are calling it the Risen WestRisen WestA grey coast come up out of the western sea: the land of Men the sea took, risen wrong..

There are stranger rumours still, from the other end of the world. Beyond FrostspireFrostspireThe northern peaks over Hammerdeep, with the Wyrmspire on the highest crag. the maps stop. Some of the dwarves fled north after the BurningBurningIgnaroth’s passage up through Hammerdeep, twelve years before the Crown., and were never heard from again, and something followed them up out of HammerdeepHammerdeepThe dwarves’ kingdom of nine halls under Frostspire, burned in a night.. The few who have gone looking call the country past the peaks the Frostbound NorthFrostbound NorthThe country past Frostspire where the maps stop, and where some of the dwarves fled after the Burning., and do not go back.

Not every unwalked road is a long one. Some of them start in the AshfenAshfenOnce the orcs’ grassland, now marsh, since the moonwell soured., or under HighcrestHighcrestThe city on the crest above Greenmeadow, seat of the Crown and of a thousand guild halls., or on the next street over.

The Marsh Hag Grizzelda’s hut on legs has been seen further from its usual place each week, and with a gait the bog-folk describe as purposeful. Some say it is trying to leave her. Some say she is steering. Both camps agree that whoever gets inside it first will find a great many curses, at fair prices, and nobody to sell them. And in the western bogs, Gnashjaw the Swamp Lord has put his sunken bucket on a sunken throne, and the lizardfolk who have tired of him are said to be asking which of the guilds is for hire. They call his seat the Bucket ThroneBucket ThroneGnashjaw the Swamp Lord’s sunken seat in the western bogs of the Ashfen., without irony, which is the most frightening thing about it.

Under FrostspireFrostspireThe northern peaks over Hammerdeep, with the Wyrmspire on the highest crag., the nine halls of HammerdeepHammerdeepThe dwarves’ kingdom of nine halls under Frostspire, burned in a night. are still burning without fuel, and the oaths cut on the cracked oath-stonesoath-stonesThe pillars of Hammerdeep on which every oath was cut. They cracked in the Burning. still bind whoever swore them. Some of those who broke their oaths in the BurningBurningIgnaroth’s passage up through Hammerdeep, twelve years before the Crown. are said to be down there yet, unable to leave until the oath is kept. Under MistveilMistveilThe fog-wrapped tops of drowned Vaelmere’s towers.’s fog, the drowned towers of VaelmereVaelmereThe elves’ city of a hundred white towers in the sea, drowned in a single night. go down further than any diver has followed them, into what the elves call the Vaelmere UndercroftVaelmere UndercroftThe drowned depths below Mistveil, where something hums the rest of the Lullaby.. The LullabyLullabyThe endless hymn that kept the Dreamer asleep, until it was stopped mid-verse. stopped mid-verse in the DrowningDrowningThe night the Lullaby stopped and Vaelmere sank, about 3,200 years before the Crown.. The divers say something down there is humming the rest.

Closer to home, I regret to report an incident at the AthenaeumAthenaeumHighcrest’s house of scholars and magisters, where the Annals are kept.. A junior magister read aloud from a book in the restricted stacks, and the stacks are now, in a manner of speaking, defending themselves. The lower reading rooms of the Athenaeum StacksAthenaeum StacksThe restricted reading rooms of the Athenaeum, closed since they began defending themselves. are closed until further notice. Footnotes have been seen moving in the corridors. I am writing this on the top floor.

And the goblins of the Warrens, who are owed a loaf of bread per household per year forever, now want butter. The Crown has refused. The goblins have pointed out that the Rent of BreadRent of BreadA loaf per household per year, owed to the goblins of the Warrens forever. They now want butter. says nothing about where the bread is to be kept, and have dug the Butter VaultsButter VaultsThe goblins’ diggings under the Royal Dairy, made to press the matter of butter. under the Royal Dairy to make the point. Negotiations continue. In the Warrens, negotiations involve a dungeon.

The Concord of HighcrestConcord of HighcrestThe pact of 412 YC that made every people who signed it free folk of the realm. made every people who signed it free folk of the realm. It was never closed. Several peoples have since asked for a pen.

LizardfolkLizardfolkThe bog clans of the Ashfen, tired of Gnashjaw’s bucket, who have asked to join the Concord. have lived in the AshfenAshfenOnce the orcs’ grassland, now marsh, since the moonwell soured. bogs under Gnashjaw’s bucket for longer than anyone has bothered to count, and some of the clans have had enough of it. They are cold-blooded and very patient, and they have sent an embassy to HighcrestHighcrestThe city on the crest above Greenmeadow, seat of the Crown and of a thousand guild halls. to ask what a guild is, and whether one may be joined by somebody with a tail. The Crown has not yet answered. The guilds already have.

In the WhisperwoodWhisperwoodThe first forest, where the elves woke and the trees gossip. March there are folk who are seen only at dusk, in black feathered cloaks that the wearers swear are not cloaks. The common people call them the RavenkinRavenkinDusk-folk of the Whisperwood March in feathers that are not cloaks: Corvane’s eyes given legs., and say they are CorvaneCorvaneKindler of the winds. The ravens are her eyes; the Ravenmother answers for her.’s eyes given legs. They answer to the RavenmotherRavenmotherA raven the size of a woman, or a woman the colour of a raven, who keeps Ravenhold’s rookery. and to the wind, and only reluctantly to anyone else, and they have begun to come to the March towns asking after the guild that keeps killing Lord VarricVarricLord of Ravenhold, who bargained to hold the wood until it was quiet, and holds it still, a century dead.. Nobody is sure yet whether they come to thank it.

In the deep of Whisperwood, the trees have gossiped for so long that a few of them have started walking, slowly, to see whether the gossip is true. The elves call them the BarkbornBarkbornTrees of Whisperwood who gossiped so long they started walking. One is due in Highcrest next spring.. They are slow to anger and slow to everything else, and one of them has been on its way to the Concord hall in Highcrest for eleven years. It is expected next spring.

And if the Risen WestRisen WestA grey coast come up out of the western sea: the land of Men the sea took, risen wrong. is what it seems, there may be people in it: the folk the Hundred KeelsHundred KeelsThe fleet that brought Men to Aetheria from a land the sea took. left behind, who were not quite drowned when the sea took the west. The SaltwindSaltwindThe coast where the Hundred Keels came ashore: wrecks, smugglers and crabs the size of carts. fishers call them the WestfolkWestfolkThe folk the Hundred Keels left behind, seen waving on the grey shore of the Risen West., and say they have been seen on the grey shore, waving, and that they have been waiting a very long time for somebody to come back for them.

Every calling of the ConcordConcord of HighcrestThe pact of 412 YC that made every people who signed it free folk of the realm. keeps a KindlerKindlersThe singers who made Aetheria, then went down into it and sleep there, holding it together. as its own. Some callings have never answered the Charter of BannersCharter of BannersQueen Elspeth’s decree of 1102 YC that handed the realm’s old wars to the guilds., and the guilds have begun to ask them why.

The LamplightersLamplightersKeepers of Seren’s watchfire chapels, who light a lamp for every star the Turning puts out. keep the old watchfire chapels of SerenSerenThe Watcher. She set the stars as watchfires on the walls of the world, and alone stayed in the sky., and light a lamp in each for every star the TurningTurningThe weekly curse that stands back up whatever the guilds bring down, and snuffs a star to pay for it. puts out. They have run out of chapels, and have begun lighting lamps on the floors of the guild halls instead, where it is said that a wounded fighter who stands in the light will close up like a flower at dusk. The Order of the Dawn LampOrder of the Dawn LampThe Crown’s holy knights, the paladins, who carry Seren’s light in the oath. regards them as cousins. The Lamplighters regard the Order as late.

The RunesmithsRunesmithsDwarves who cut oaths into iron, and into whoever is standing nearest. are dwarves who cut oaths, not in stone but in iron: into armour, into shields, into the ground underfoot and, when pressed, into whoever is standing nearest. Their runes keep working after they have walked away, which is either very useful or very worrying, depending on whose name is on the rune.

The MoonshadesMoonshadesPriests of Morrow who admit their moon is gone, and fight from its shadow anyway. were priests of MorrowMorrowThe dark moon, whose moonshadow grew hidden things. Nhal took it on the Night of the Missing Moon. who left the Shadowmoon TempleShadowmoon TempleThe temple of Morrow’s priests, who refuse to believe their moon is gone. when Priestess NyxNyxPriestess of the Shadowmoon Temple, keeping faith with a moon nobody can see. would not admit their moon was gone. They admit it. They fight from its shadow anyway, which they say is still there for those who know where the moon used to be, and the darker the night, the harder they hit. And on the StormreachStormreachThe highlands under a veil of storms that has not lifted in nine hundred years., a few of the storm-callers have at last walked down from the StormspireStormspireThe citadel on the Stormreach cliffs where the callers hold the endless storm. after nine hundred years of holding the same storm, and they say they would like to try making a different one. They have asked the guilds for somewhere to practise. The guilds have offered the raid.

The Corsair ReachesCorsair ReachesThe sea beyond the sea, on no mainland chart, reached only by a guild’s own ship. are where the charts stop. That is no longer quite true: the chartmakers of SaltmarrowSaltmarrowThe Crown’s walled harbour in the Reaches, home of the Admiralty and the guild berths. have started selling charts of the places beyond the Reaches, at prices which suggest that they have not been there either.

Out past the last of the Reaches, a string of lighthouse isles runs toward the edge of the world, each lit by a keeper who will not say who pays them or why the lamps all point outward. The sailors call it the Lantern ChainLantern ChainLighthouse isles past the Reaches whose lamps all point outward. Nobody says who pays the keepers.. In the south, where a second piece of MorrowMorrowThe dark moon, whose moonshadow grew hidden things. Nhal took it on the Night of the Missing Moon. came down into the sea, the weed grows so thick that ships go in slowly and come out, when they come out, with hidden things growing on their hulls: the Morrowweed SargassoMorrowweed SargassoA weed-choked sea where a second piece of Morrow fell, and hidden things still grow., where Morrow’s moonshadow is still at work. Far to the east lie the BonefieldsBonefieldsWhere the leviathans go to die, and the wreckers build harbours in their ribcages., where the leviathans of the deep go to die and the wreckers go to get rich, and the harbours are built in ribcages.

And north of the Reaches the water goes black and the ice comes down: the Frostbound IslesFrostbound IslesPack ice and black water north of the Reaches. The icebergs do not stay where the charts put them., where hulls need refitting before they go and the icebergs do not stay where the charts put them. No guild has yet come back from them with a chart worth the name. Several have come back with frostbite and a story.

There is one road more, and I set it down last because it is the end of all the others. Past the last star, at the edge of the HollowHollowWhat lies beyond the edge of the Aether: not darkness, but the absence of anything to be dark., VeskVeskThe Laughing, who sang out of time, then went out past the wall and dealt the Hollow a wager. sits at the Last TableLast TableWhere Vesk sits at the edge of the Hollow, past the last star. No guild has found the road., and deals. No guild has found the road. The goblins say that every other road in this book is a stretch of it.

The world stands while the guilds fight. Fight long enough, and you will have walked every road there is, and come at last to mine. Bring a chair. Bring your own cards. I know what is in mine.