The coach slowed, its iron-rimmed wheels grinding against the wet cobbles of Eldermoor's single street. Eilis Thornbury peered through the rain-streaked glass, her breath fogging the pane as she tried to make sense of the shapes dissolving in the murk outside. Lanterns hung at intervals along the road, but their flames had shrunk to pale smears in the damp, each one swallowed by the fog rolling down from the moors behind the village. She could taste the moisture in the air, mineral and cold, and beneath it something older, peat smoke and sour grass, the smell of a place that preferred to remain unseen.
The door of the coach swung open with a metallic groan. Eilis gathered her gloves from the seat beside her and drew them on, finger by finger, the leather still warm from where she had been holding them. She stepped down onto the cobbles and felt the wet seep immediately through the thin soles of her city shoes. The driver, a broad man whose face had not been visible to her for the entire journey, lifted her trunk from the boot and set it at her feet with a grunt.
"The Lantern Keeper's Tower is at the far end of the village," he said, his voice flat and uninterested. "Past the chapel. You will see the light."
"Thank you," Eilis said, but he had already turned back to his team, clicking his tongue against his teeth. She stood alone on the empty street, her trunk between her feet, the fog pressing in from both sides as if it intended to swallow the houses that lined the road. Somewhere behind her, a dog barked once and fell silent. Somewhere ahead, she could hear the faint, rhythmic creak of a sign swinging in a wind she could not feel.
Eilis lifted the trunk herself, refusing the humiliation of waiting for assistance that would not come. It was heavier than she remembered from the station, and the handle bit into her palm. She began to walk, her heels striking the cobbles with a sharp sound that returned to her in pieces from both directions, broken by the fog.
The village of Eldermoor was not what she had expected. She had imagined something picturesque, the sort of place painted on biscuit tins and described in ladies' novels, with neat gardens and chimneys that trailed wood smoke in pleasant curls. Instead, she found a place that seemed to crouch beneath the weight of its own sky. The cottages were built of dark stone, their windows small and deep-set, their doors heavy oak reinforced with bands of black iron. The street was wide but unwelcoming, and she noticed that many of the houses had no lights burning in them at all, despite the lateness of the hour. The fog seemed to gather more thickly around their foundations, as if the village had sunk partway into the earth during some long neglect.
She passed a stone cross at the junction of two lanes, its surface worn nearly featureless by weather and time. Set into its base was a small iron box, the kind used for posting notices, but the slot had been soldered shut. Someone had wrapped a length of black cloth around the upper arm of the cross and tied it with twine. A death, perhaps, or something more obscure. Eilis made a mental note to ask and walked on.
Ahead, the fog thinned for a moment, and she saw the chapel she had been told to expect. It was smaller than she had imagined, its bell cote green with moss, its door standing slightly ajar. No light came from within. Past it, she could see the suggestion of a lane winding upward toward higher ground, and at the end of that lane, something pale and tall against the grey sky. A tower. And at its summit, a light that flickered amber and green, as if it could not decide what it was.
Eilis adjusted her grip on the trunk and continued up the lane. The cobbles gave way to packed earth, then to a path of rough flagstones set into the hillside. Her breath came harder here, both from the climb and from the fog that seemed to grow colder as she ascended, carrying with it the faint scent of candle wax and something aromatic she could not identify, resinous and vaguely medicinal. She was aware of her own footsteps, of the weight of the trunk, of the muffled sound of her own breathing, and she was aware, too, of the silence that surrounded her, the silence of a place that had forgotten how to speak.
The tower grew larger as she approached, and she could make out more of its details. It was built of the same dark stone as the cottages below, but the stones had been fitted with a precision that suggested an older craft. There were narrow windows at irregular intervals, some unglazed, some filled with something that caught the amber light from above and threw it back in fragments. The door, when she reached it, was set deep into the stone, and the iron knocker was a ring held in the mouth of a creature she did not recognize, something between a serpent and a hound. She set down the trunk and lifted the knocker.
The sound, when it fell, was deeper than she had expected, a single resonant note that seemed to travel upward through the tower. She waited. Somewhere above her, she heard the slow creak of a floorboard, then another, then the soft scrape of a latch being lifted. Footsteps descended a spiral stair, their rhythm unhurried, almost playful, as if the person coming down had all the time in the world and wished to make a ceremony of answering his own door.
The door opened inward, and the light from within fell across the threshold. It was not the amber and green she had seen from below, but a softer glow, the colour of old parchment, and it carried with it the scent she had been trying to place. Candle wax, yes, and the resinous, medicinal note she had caught on the path, but also paper, and ink, and the faint sweetness of something burning that was not quite incense and not quite tobacco. The man who stood in the doorway was taller than she had expected, and thinner, dressed in a long coat of dark blue that had been mended in several places with thread of a slightly different shade. His hair was white and fell past his shoulders, and his beard was trimmed close to his jaw. His eyes were very pale, almost colourless, and they regarded her with an expression that was not quite welcome and not quite suspicion, but something in between, the look of a man who had been expecting someone and was now considering whether that someone was worth the trouble of expecting.
"Eilis Thornbury," he said. It was not a question.
"Aldric Vane," she replied. "I am your new assistant."
He tilted his head slightly, as if assessing the accuracy of her pronunciation, then stepped back from the doorway and gestured inward with one long-fingered hand.
"You had better come in, then," he said. "The fog is not good for luggage, and yours has already begun to weep."
She looked down at her trunk. He was right. The damp had crept into the leather at the corners, and a small dark stain was spreading across the flagstone where it had stood. She picked it up and carried it over the threshold, and as she did so, she felt the temperature change, as if she had stepped from one season into another. Inside, the tower was warm, and the warmth was not uniform. There were pockets of cooler air, and others where the heat seemed almost aggressive, pressing against her face and chest as she moved. The room she entered was circular, as she had expected, but larger than the exterior had suggested, the walls curving away from her into shadow. Shelves climbed the walls from floor to ceiling, and the shelves were crowded. Books, yes, but also instruments she could not name, glass vessels containing liquids of various colours, rolled charts tied with red tape, and small brass mechanisms that caught the candlelight and threw it back in tiny, precise stars.
In the center of the room stood a desk of dark wood, its surface covered with papers and open volumes. A candle burned at its left corner, the wax pooling and hardening in elaborate spirals. Beside the desk, on a stand of black iron, hung the lantern she had seen from below. Its glass panels were tinted amber and green, and the flame within it burned without a wick, a small, steady point that seemed to require no fuel and produce no heat.
Aldric watched her look at it, and something shifted in his expression, the faintest suggestion of satisfaction, as a cat might look when its favorite chair had been chosen by a guest.
"The Lantern," he said. "You have heard of it."
"I have read the notices," Eilis said. "The Lantern of Eldermoor, kept burning through the night by the appointed keeper, in accordance with the ancient compact between the village and the moor."
He inclined his head, a small bow that acknowledged her preparation without entirely approving of it.
"Notices," he repeated. "Yes, that is what they call them. The councillors have a gift for making the incomprehensible sound like a posting on a parish board." He moved past her toward the desk and began to gather them into a neater stack, though the stack remained uneven, as if even his neatness had its limits. "You will meet them, of course. Councillor Bramwell Quigley, who believes he runs the village because he has the loudest voice. Councillor Marget Hemsworth, who keeps the books and believes that what is not in them does not exist. Councillor Orin Pell, who was once a friend of mine and is now, I am told, a friend of progress." He paused, and his pale eyes found hers again. "You will form your own opinions. I would advise you to keep them to yourself until you understand which of them have been bought and which are merely for sale."
Eilis set her trunk down beside the door and removed her gloves. Her fingers were stiff with cold, and she worked them slowly, feeling the warmth of the tower return sensation to them one joint at a time.
"I was not sent here to form opinions," she said. "I was sent to assist in the maintenance of the Lantern and the keeping of the records that accompany that office."
"Yes," Aldric said, and there was something in his voice that might have been amusement, though it did not reach his face. "That is what the notice said. And I am the man who wrote it, so you may imagine my surprise when someone answered."
He crossed the room to a smaller door set into the curve of the wall and opened it, revealing a narrow stair that wound upward into shadow.
"Your room is above," he said. "It is small, but the window faces east, and the bed has been aired. I will expect you downstairs at dawn, as the first task of the day is the cleaning of the lenses, which I have not the patience to do properly and which therefore has not been done properly for some time. Do you have any questions before you go up?"
She had several, but none that she wished to ask in the first five minutes of her arrival. She shook her head.
"Good," he said. "Then I will see you at dawn." He hesitated, and for a moment his expression softened, though it did not become warm. "The fog will lift in the morning. It always does. Until then, keep your candle lit. The stairs are not as even as they appear, and the tower has a way of rearranging itself when no one is watching."
She picked up her trunk and began to climb. Behind her, she heard the door close and the latch fall, and then she heard his footsteps cross the floor and pause. She imagined him standing before the Lantern, his pale eyes fixed on the steady flame that needed no wick and gave no heat. She climbed carefully, one step at a time, the trunk growing heavier with each turn of the stair, and the candle she had lit at the bottom casting her shadow up the wall ahead of her in a shape she did not recognize.
Her room was small, as he had promised, but it was clean, and the bed was made up with sheets that smelled of lavender and something sharper, the same resinous note she had caught on the path. The window faced east, as he had said, and through it she could see nothing but fog. She set the candle on the sill and sat on the edge of the bed, and for a long moment she did nothing at all but listen to the tower settle around her, the soft groans of old stone, the faint ticking of the brass mechanisms below, and somewhere, very far above her, the sound of a bell that was not ringing but vibrating, as if the tower itself were humming a note too low for the ear and just loud enough to be felt in the teeth.
She was in Eldermoor. She was the assistant to the Astrologer-Lantern Keeper. Tomorrow she would meet the councillors. Tomorrow she would begin the work she had been sent here to do. For now, she sat in the small room above the room where the Lantern burned and listened to the fog press against the window like a living thing.
Morning came to Eldermoor the way a cat approaches a stranger: sideways, with reluctance. The fog had thinned to a pale gauze by the time Eilis Thornbury descended from her tower room, but it still smelled of iron and old rain, and it still lay in the low places between the cottages like something spilled. She had slept badly. The brass sounds below her had not stopped all night. They had merely changed, becoming quicker and more deliberate toward dawn, as if the mechanisms were warming up for the day.
Aldric Vane was not in the lower room when she came down. The Lantern burned in its cradle, steady as a held breath. The compass on the table pointed to a letter N that had been scratched so many times the gilt had worn away to bare brass. The room smelled of the same resinous note she had caught the night before, stronger now, and of the dust of old paper, and of something else, a sweetish tang like overripe pears that she could not place.
She found a loaf of bread on the table, a knife, and a pat of yellow butter wrapped in muslin and still cool from the cellar. There was also a folded square of paper, and on it, in a small, slanted hand that she was beginning to recognize:
Councillors meet at the tenth hour. I will come for you. Do not wander. E.V.
She ate. She drank water from the stone crock by the window, and the water was so cold it made the bridge of her nose ache. She sat and watched the fog move in the lane below, and she thought about what he had told her, that the seventh lantern was the oldest and the only one not kept in the village, and that the only person who knew where it was had been dead a hundred years. She thought about the fact that he had said this with his back to her, as if he did not want to see her face when she heard it.
The tenth hour came. The bell above the stair rang three notes, low and even, and the door opened, and Aldric Vane stood in it with his coat on and his hair still damp from the fog, and he looked, she thought, like a man who had not slept either, though in his case it was hard to tell.
"The meeting room is in the old mill," he said. "The one with the wheel that does not turn. Do you know it?"
"I have not been in Eldermoor twenty-four hours."
"Then you do not. I will walk ahead. Try not to speak until spoken to. They will want to look at you. They will find reasons."
He turned and went out into the lane. She followed. The village was awake now, in a thin, cautious way. Smoke rose from three chimneys out of perhaps two dozen. A dog watched them from behind a gate and did not bark. A woman in a green shawl crossed to the far side of the lane when she saw them coming, and did not look at Eilis at all, only at the Astrologer-Lantern Keeper, with an expression that was not quite fear and not quite resentment, but something between, the way one looks at a man who has been told a thing one has not.
The old mill stood at the bend of the lane, where the road widened into a rough square. The wheel was there, massive and moss-grown, its paddles half sunk into a ditch that had once been a race. The wheel did not turn. The water that might have turned it was only a black thread in the bottom of the ditch, slow as cold syrup. The building was stone, lower than she had expected, with a door of thick oak and a single window set high in the gable, shuttered.
Aldric Vane did not knock. He pushed the door open and stood aside. The sound from within was the sound of three people trying to speak at once and none of them quite succeeding.
She stepped into the dim.
The room was long and low, lit by a single lantern hanging from a beam, and by the pale light from the shuttered window. A long table ran the length of it, scarred and uneven. Three men sat at it. They fell silent when she entered, and the silence was of a particular kind, the kind that is itself a kind of speech.
The man at the head of the table was the largest of the three. His name, she was to learn, was Councillor Bramwell Quigley, and he wore a coat of dark wool, buttoned to the throat, and a beard trimmed close to the jaw, and he had the kind of face that is built for disapproval. He looked at her the way a customs officer looks at a trunk that has been opened and reclosed.
"This," said Aldric Vane, "is Eilis Thornbury. She is my assistant. She has come from the capital to take the readings. I have told her what she needs to know and no more I will not have her pressed."
"She will be pressed if the council sees fit," said the man at the foot of the table, and this was Councillor Orin Pell, and he was the smallest of the three, and the youngest, with a thin, sharp face and eyes that moved too quickly. "We have not had an assistant in fifteen years. We have a right to know who is in the room."
"You have a right to know what you are told," said Aldric Vane, "and no more I will not have her pressed."
"Let her speak for herself," said the third man, and this was Councillor Marget Hemsworth, and he was neither large nor small, but somewhere in between, with a soft, pouchy face and a voice that was gentler than the other two, and which therefore carried further. "Let the girl speak for herself. She is not a parcel. She is not a letter that has been opened and reclosed."
There was a silence. The lantern on the beam swung very slightly in a draft that came from somewhere she could not identify. It made the shadows on the wall behind the three men move like the hands of a clock that does not know what hour it is.
Eilis sat down on the bench that ran along the wall. She set her hands flat on her knees. She did not speak.
Aldric Vane took the chair at the side of the table, between Quigley and Pell, and he too sat without speaking.
Then Councillor Bramwell Quigley cleared his throat, and the meeting began.
"We will start," he said, "with the matter of the missing lantern."
"The missing lantern," said Councillor Orin Pell. "The missing lantern that no one has seen fit to mention in the public record. The missing lantern that has been missing, by my count, for thirty-one days."
"Twenty-nine," said Aldric Vane, without looking up.
"Twenty-nine," agreed Pell, "if you say so. I will not quarrel with the Astrologer-Lantern Keeper on a matter of arithmetic. But twenty-nine days, Councillors. Twenty-nine days since the inventory was done. Twenty-nine days since the sixth lantern was in its place. Twenty-nine days since I myself looked at the door of the shrine on the night of the new moon and saw the wick behind the glass, burning as it should burn. And then, on the night of the first quarter, I went again. And the wick was out. And the glass was cold. And the shrine was locked, and no one had a key, and no one had been in, and no one had been out."
"There was no forced entry," said Councillor Marget Hemsworth. "The lock was not touched. The hasp was not marked. There was no sign of a tool, no sign of a hand, no sign of a foot."
"There was no sign of anything," said Pell. "That is the point. There was no sign of anything at all. That is what I have been saying for twenty-nine days, and that is what I will continue to say until someone listens to me."
"And what," said Quigley, "do you propose was the cause?"
"I do not propose. I observe. I observe that a thing that was burning is not burning. I observe that the door was locked and the lock was not touched. I observe that the night was fog, and the fog was thicker than any fog I have seen in this village in fifty years, and that the next morning the heather on the moor was bent in a path from the shrine to the edge of the standing stone, and that the path was as wide as a man's shoulders and as long as a man's stride."
There was a silence.
"The standing stone," said Hemsworth, in a voice that was now careful. "The standing stone is not on village land."
"The standing stone is not on anyone's land," said Pell. "That is what makes it the standing stone."
"The standing stone is not on village land," repeated Hemsworth, "and therefore the council has no jurisdiction over what passes between it and the shrine."
"And yet," said Pell, "the path was there."
"And yet," said Hemsworth, "the path is not the council's concern."
"And yet," said Quigley, cutting in, "the lantern is."
He turned to Aldric Vane.
"You are the Astrologer-Lantern Keeper. The lanterns are your charge. I will ask you plainly. In your professional opinion, what is the state of the sixth lantern?"
Aldric Vane did not answer at once. He sat with his hands on the table, and she saw, in the dim light of the swinging lantern, that the nails of his left hand were bitten down to the quick, and that there was a faint tremor in the third finger, and that he was pressing the tip of it against the wood to make it stop.
"The state," he said at last, "is out."
"Out," repeated Quigley.
"The wick is not lit. The flame is not there. I cannot say what is there because I have not been permitted to enter the shrine."
"You have not been permitted," said Quigley, "because the lock is sealed. It has been sealed since the night of the first quarter. The seal was put on by the council, with my hand and the hands of Councillors Pell and Hemsworth. We sealed it because we did not wish the shrine to be entered until such time as we had taken counsel. We have now taken counsel. We have consulted the records. We have consulted the keeper of the key, who is the Astrologer-Lantern Keeper, who sits before us."
"I do not have the key," said Aldric Vane.
"You do not," said Quigley.
"I do not have the key, and I have not had the key, and I have said this in writing to the council on three occasions, the last of which was fourteen days ago."
"Then where," said Quigley, "is the key?"
"The key," said Aldric Vane, "is not in my possession."
"Then in whose possession is it?"
"I do not know."
There was a silence. Councillor Orin Pell leaned forward, and the bench creaked under him, and his thin face was very white in the swinging lantern light.
"Then we are at an impasse," he said. "The council has sealed the shrine. The Astrologer-Lantern Keeper has not the key. The lantern is out. And the village is, by the reckoning of Councillor Hemsworth, twenty-nine days nearer to a thing none of us wishes to name."
"I did not say twenty-nine days nearer," said Hemsworth. "I said twenty-nine days since the inventory."
"It is the same thing," said Pell.
"It is not the same thing."
"It is the same thing, Councillor Hemsworth. It is the same thing, and you know it is the same thing, and I will not have you sit there and pretend otherwise while the fog thickens outside this window and the heather bends on the moor in paths that no man has walked."
"Enough," said Quigley.
He brought the flat of his hand down on the table, and the sound was not loud, but it was final, and the lantern above the beam swung and steadied, and the shadows on the wall behind the three men went still.
"Enough," he said again, more quietly. "We are not here to quarrel. We are here to determine a course. The course is this. The seal will be removed. The shrine will be opened. The Astrologer-Lantern Keeper will enter, and he will determine the state of the lantern, and he will report to this council, and the council will decide what is to be done. Councillor Pell?"
"Agreed," said Pell, at once.
"Councillor Hemsworth?"
"Agreed," said Hemsworth, more slowly.
"Astrologer-Lantern Keeper?"
Aldric Vane did not answer at once. He sat with his hands on the table, and the third finger of his left hand was trembling again, and he was pressing it against the wood, and she saw that the wood had been worn smooth in that one spot by years of the same pressure.
"I will enter," he said at last. "But I will not enter alone."
He turned his head, and he looked at Eilis Thornbury, and she saw, in the pale light of the swinging lantern, that his pale eyes were not pale at all, but a color so light it was almost the color of the flame in the room below, and that in them there was something that was not a request, and not a command, but something between, the way one looks at a person one has decided to trust before one has been given any reason to.
"I will enter," he said, "with my assistant."
And the bell above the stair, in the tower across the lane, rang once, a single note, low and even, as if the tower itself had heard him and had agreed.
She held his gaze, and she thought of all the things she might have said, and she said none of them. She set the wine down. She folded her hands in her lap. She felt the cat settle against her ankle, and the weight of him was warm through the leather of her boot, and she thought, very clearly, that she was afraid, and that she had been afraid for some time, and that the fear had been growing in her like the stone had grown in the lantern, slowly, and that she had not named it because she had not wished to give it room.
"Agreed," she said.
The word was small and very plain, and it did not tremble, and Aldric Vane, after a moment, inclined his head to her, and the inclination was deeper than he had given to the councillors, and she understood that she had been given something, and that it was not a debt, but an obligation, and that the obligation was older than either of them.
Quigley struck the table with the flat of his hand, and the lantern above them swayed, and the shadows on the wall swung out, and swung back, and were still.
"Then we are resolved," he said. "The seal will be removed on the seventh day from now, at the sixth hour after noon, when the light through the western window will fall upon the seal and not move from it until the seventh hour. Councillor Pell will oversee the work. Councillor Hemsworth will prepare the shrine. I will inform the village. Astrologer-Lantern Keeper, you will prepare yourself, and your assistant, and any tools you require. You will submit a list of those tools to me by the fifth day, and the list will be reviewed, and the items will be provided. Is this understood?"
"It is understood," said Aldric Vane.
"Then this council is adjourned," said Quigley. "Until the seventh day. Go with care. All of you."
He rose, and Pell rose with him, and Hemsworth rose more slowly, and the three of them went out together, and the door closed behind them, and the cat lifted his head, and Eilis heard the footsteps recede across the landing, and then down the stair, and then the outer door, and then there was only the wind in the lane, and the slow creak of the lantern above.
Aldric Vane did not move. He sat with his hands still on the table, and the third finger of his left hand was still trembling, and he was watching her, and she was watching him, and the cat purred against her ankle, and the lamp on the wall gave a small sound, a tick of cooling brass, and then was quiet.
"You should sleep," he said, at last. "What I will require of you in the week to come is not small, and the body does not forgive what the will commands."
"I do not sleep well," she said. "I have not slept well for some time."
"I know," he said. "I have seen it in your hands. You have the look of one who has been counting the hours instead of living them. The look is not new. It has been growing for years."
She did not ask him how he knew. She sat with her hands folded, and the cloth of her sleeve was dark against her knuckles, and the knuckles were white, and she thought, again, that she was afraid, and that the fear was not of the shrine, and not of the lantern, and not of the stone that had begun to die, but of something else, something that she had not yet been given a name for, something that lived in the long hours of the night, in the rooms of her house, in the lane outside her door, in the moors above the village, in the fog that came down from the north and lay upon the hills and did not lift.
"I will be here at the sixth hour," she said. "On the seventh day. I will be ready."
"I know," he said, again. "I have known since you came to the door."
He rose, then, and the cat rose with him, and the cat went to him, and pressed against his ankle, and purred, and Aldric Vane put his hand down, and the cat turned his head into the hand, and the purr deepened, and then Aldric Vane crossed the room, and opened the door, and stood there for a moment, looking out into the landing, and the landing was dark, and the stairs were dark, and she could hear, very faintly, the sound of the wind in the lane below, and the sound of the bell in the tower, and the sound of the fog against the windows of the hall.
"Go home," he said. "Lock your door. Do not open it for any sound you cannot name. Do not go to the moors. Do not listen for the music box. Not until I tell you that you may."
"How do you know," she said, "about the music box?"
He did not answer at once. He stood in the doorway, and the cat was at his ankle, and the lamp on the wall was swinging very slightly, and the shadows on the landing were long and thin.
"Because I have heard it," he said, "every night for forty years. And I have gone to the moor every time. And I have found what you will find, if you go. And I have come back. And the next night I have gone again. And the next. And the next. Do you understand what I am saying to you?"
"I think so," she said.
"Then go home," he said. "And lock your door. And I will see you on the seventh day. At the sixth hour. In the square. Do not be late."
She rose, and crossed the room, and passed him in the doorway, and the cat lifted his head, and mewed, and she put her hand down, and the cat turned his head into her hand, and purred, and she stood for a moment with her hand on the cat, and Aldric Vane's hand was on the door, and the dark of the landing was behind him, and the dark of the stair was below, and she could hear, very faintly, the sound of the bell in the tower, and the sound of the fog, and the sound of her own breath, and the sound of his.
"Good night," she said.
"Good night," he said. "Eilis."
He had not called her by name before. She heard it, and she felt it, and she did not know what to do with it, and she went down the stairs, and the cat did not follow her, and the lamp in the hall below was out, and she opened the door into the lane, and the fog came in, and the cold came in, and the smell of the moors came in, and she stepped out, and closed the door behind her, and stood in the lane, and the village was very quiet, and very still, and the fog was upon her, and she could not see the end of the lane, and she could not see the roofs of the houses, and she could not see the tower.
She walked home. She did not run. She did not look behind her. She listened for the music box, and she did not hear it, and she was glad, and she was not sure that she was glad, and she reached her door, and she took the key from her pocket, and the key was cold, and her fingers were colder, and she fitted the key into the lock, and turned it, and the lock gave, and she went in, and closed the door, and locked it, and stood in the dark of her own hallway, and the cat was not there, and the house was very still, and very quiet, and the smell of the lamp oil was in the air, and the smell of the bread she had baked that morning was in the air, and she stood there for a long time, and she did not light a lamp, and she did not go up the stairs.
She went to the window, and she looked out, and the fog was against the glass, and she could see nothing, and she pressed her hand against the glass, and the glass was cold, and the fog was cold, and her hand was colder.
She thought of the moor. She thought of the empty lantern post. She thought of the torn scrap of embroidered cloth, and the music of the unseen box, and the figure in the cloak, and the figure in the fog. She thought of the council chamber, and the worn place on the table, and the lamp that swung, and the cat at his heel, and the sound of the bell in the tower. She thought of the lantern in the shrine, and the flame that had burned for four hundred years, and the stone that had begun to die, and the dark that was behind the shrine door, and the dark that was behind her own door, and the dark that was behind the fog, and the dark that was behind the long hours of the night.
She thought of what Aldric Vane had said. Do not listen for the music box. Not until I tell you that you may.
She listened.
She heard the wind in the lane, and the creak of the sign of the tavern across the way, and the slow drip of water from the eaves, and the distant lowing of cattle in the byre beyond the square, and the even breathing of the fog against the glass, and she listened for the music box, and she did not hear it, and she waited, and she did not hear it, and the fog thickened, and the glass grew colder, and her hand grew colder, and she thought, very clearly, that she would hear it, that night, or the next, or the next, that it would come to her through the fog, and the glass, and the dark, and that she would not be able to not listen, and that when she heard it she would go, and that she would find the empty lantern post, and the torn scrap of embroidered cloth, and that she would come back, and that the next night she would go again.
She took her hand from the glass. She turned from the window. She lit the lamp on the table in the hallway, and the lamp gave its small sound, a tick of warming brass, and then a steady small glow, and the hallway was warm, and the dark was pushed back, and the stairs were lit, and the rooms above were lit, and the cat was not there, and she went up the stairs, and she went to her room, and she closed the door, and she sat on the edge of the bed, and she took off her boots, and she unbuttoned her cuff, and she looked at the bruise on her wrist, and the bruise was dark, and the bruise was shaped like nothing, and the bruise did not hurt.
She lay back on the bed, and she did not undress, and she did not pull the coverlet over her, and she lay there, and she listened to the house, and the house was quiet, and the lane was quiet, and the village was quiet, and the fog was upon the village, and the moors were above the fog, and the shrine was in the hills, and the lantern was in the shrine, and the stone was in the lantern, and the flame was on the stone, and the flame was dying.
She closed her eyes.
She did not sleep. She lay with her eyes closed, and she listened to the house, and the lane, and the village, and the fog, and the moors, and the shrine, and the lantern, and the stone, and the flame.
She heard the music box.