The path up the tower was paved in white stone and climbed from the crest of Atoll Cove's slope to the high ground at the island's heart.
In the morning—if morning could be distinguished beneath that dark-red sky—Sharlo, the Old Boatman, and Cole followed the path upwards. Tide-Lass led the way, bare soles pattering upon the stone steps as she counted off the tower's rules. Wash your hands at the tower door before entering. Do not raise your voice inside. Bow when you meet Granny. Answer whatever Granny asks. Don't go asking about what Granny doesn't.
"And one most important rule." The girl stopped before the tower door, turned, and put on a severe little face. "Don't touch the old characters inside. Touch them once, and you'll have nightmares at night."
Seen at close quarters, the tower disturbed Sharlo more than it had from afar.
This was no tower belonging to this world. Dawn Tower in Kandelburg was built from massive blocks; the capital's belfries rose in brick and timber. The body of this tower had not one seam in its stone. From base to summit, it formed one whole, as though cast entire from some grey-white slurry. Its skin was mottled and flaking, and where it fell away, the bones within stood exposed: rust-red iron rods crossing vertically and horizontally, grown into the stone.
Poured stone with iron sinews growing inside it.
Sharlo laid his palm against the tower. Rough and cold. Across the broken surfaces, rust bled down the iron bones and drew dark-brown tear tracks over the grey-white skin. The memories of his two lives collided with a roar. In his former life, this material filled every street. Nothing was less worth a second glance. It was an overpass pier, a dam, a building. In this life, it formed a three-thousand-year-old holy tower at the heart of an island absent from every chart.
Grass grew deep around the tower's foundation. Things lay within it.
Low courses of ruined walls, built from the same poured stone. The shapes of buildings could still be read—one room, another, a row. Houses had once stood beneath the tower, far older than the islanders' stone dwellings. In the deepest grass, Sharlo saw two iron bars rusted dark brown, straight and parallel, lying shoulder to shoulder in the ground. Blackened, rotting timbers slept at intervals beneath them. The pair ran from the tower foundation towards the beach and vanished under the sand.
The distance between the iron bars was neither broad nor narrow. Sharlo studied them for three breaths and swallowed the word that had risen into his throat.
Following his gaze, Tide-Lass explained with practised assurance, "Old stones. They're all over the island. More under the beach. At the lowest tide, an old street comes out among the reefs to the east. All in little squares, as even as if somebody drew it. Granny won't let children play there."
"Why?"
"Granny says—" Tide-Lass lowered her voice and imitated the old woman's cadence. "That isn't a street for living feet. It's part of the old sun's patrimony. Look if you like. Don't tread on it."
A coarse earthenware basin stood outside the tower door. Following the rule, all three washed their hands.
Within the tower, an iron spiral stair wound upwards around its hollow centre. Each tread was a hollow iron plate, humming underfoot, rusted red but firm. On the third circuit, Sharlo stopped.
A plaque the size of his palm was nailed to the wall beside the stairs. Blue characters upon a white ground, one corner missing, the glazed surface crazed with fine lines like a spiderweb—an enamel plaque. Two short lines had been polished bright by three thousand years of fingers.
Sharlo stood there, unable to move.
He knew those two lines. They were written in the language most familiar to his tongue across both lives. This was no oracle, no prophecy. The plaque read:
UP OR DOWN THE STAIRS · MIND YOUR STEP
"Sir?" Cole called back from above.
"Nothing." Sharlo's voice came dry. He gave the plaque one final look and followed. From that tread onwards, every step he placed was light and steady. Mind your step. Three thousand years ago, people who spoke as he did had fixed this plaque inside the tower to warn everyone who climbed it. He intended to heed them.
The lantern room stood at the tower's summit.
When they pushed open an iron door rusted half shut, dark-red daylight flooded through great panes of glass on every side. At the room's centre stood the strangest lamp Sharlo had seen in either life. It scarcely resembled a lamp. It resembled a lotus of glass. Layer upon layer of glass petals encircled and embraced one another, rising from the base to the height of a man. Fine facets had been cut into every petal, shifting beneath the red light. At the lotus heart hung one point of light.
It was exceedingly small and weak, like the final ember of a spent fire. Bright, dim. Bright, dim. Like laboured breath.
Before the lamp lay an old mat. An ancient woman sat upon it.
She was gaunt beyond shape, dressed in a cloth gown washed grey-white. Her sparse white hair was gathered behind her head and fixed with a fishbone pin. Her back remained towards the door, facing the point of light. At the sound, she did not turn, only lifted one twig-like hand.
"You've come," she said, her voice hoarse but clear. "Sit. Tide-Lass, see to the tea."
The three sat before the mat. Tide-Lass brought three bowls of hot water. The island had no tea; two dried pomegranate seeds in each bowl gave the water a faint sweet tartness.
Only then did Granny turn around.
The wrinkles upon her face were as deep as tidal flats at ebb, yet her eyes remained bright, precisely the same shade as Tide-Lass's. She studied the three of them one after another, very slowly, as though tallying pieces of goods.
"The one holding the old lamp." She nodded to the Old Boatman.
"The one carrying new fire." She nodded to Cole, her gaze resting upon the extinguished guiding lamp inside his coat. "Inside the canopy, it fell asleep. No matter. Fire is like a person. Sleeping is not dead."
Last of all, she studied Sharlo. She studied him longest.
"The one with somewhere else inside his eyes," she said. "Two months ago, another like you came here."
Sharlo's breath stopped for half a beat.
"Granny." He set down his bowl and bent gravely at the waist. "That gentleman was my uncle."
"I know," Granny said. "Your brows and eyes aren't alike. The accent in which you ask the way is."
She did not immediately speak of old Vane. The old woman observed her own order. First she spoke of the tower and the island, like a house steward determined to recount the provenance of an inheritance before handing it over.
"This tower is older than every surname on the island," Granny said. "The old people passed down this tale. In the earliest, earliest years, it wasn't this red sun hanging in the sky, but a fine sun, white and bright. So many ships travelled the sea then, as many as fish in the cove. This tower shone their road. Every night the lamp at its top turned and cast a beam of white light for scores of miles. People kept watch below. Those keepers of the light were the ancestors of everyone upon our island."
"Later, the sky changed." Her voice stayed flat, as though she spoke of another family's affairs. "The good sun disappeared, and this red one took its place. The sea grew cold, the ships vanished, the road broke. We don't know how dynasties rose and fell outside. The islanders kept the tower, fished, dried salt, and taught the ancestors' characters from one generation to the next. People elsewhere stopped knowing those characters long ago. We still know a few. Those upon the plaques, the monuments, the lamp base. We cannot read them all, but we know them."
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"And after that—" Granny's eyelids lowered. "The men in gold robes came."
The lantern room was still for an instant. The Old Boatman's fingers shifted almost imperceptibly upon his knee.
"I was little then, the same age as Tide-Lass. The gold-robed men's great ship entered the cove. They climbed the tower and circled this lamp for three days. When they left, their leader stood at the tower door and spoke one sentence. My father—he was the lighthouse keeper of his generation—remembered it all his life."
"He said: 'A wicked relic, defiling the light of day. Report to the Seat. Send ships to cleanse it.'"
"Cleanse." Granny savoured the word and smiled. That smile contained everything.
"The tower would be cleansed. The characters would be cleansed. Those who recognised the characters would mostly be cleansed too. My father saw the gold-robed ship away, climbed the tower, and did not descend for three days. On the fourth, he called everyone upon the island to its foot. He said the thing our ancestors had kept for three thousand years could not burn to ash in his hands. He said an object lay sealed inside the tower's heart—the final handful of light which the first lighthouse keeper had snatched from the horizon on the day the good sun went out. For three thousand years, no one had dared touch it."
"My father said it had to be touched now."
"He kindled it." Granny raised a withered hand and pointed to that breathing mote in the lotus heart. "The old lamp lit. A canopy of red light fell and covered the whole island. Ships outside could no longer find White Strand Island—it was erased from charts, erased from registers, erased from people's hearts. We don't know whether the gold-robed men's cleansing ships ever came. They could no longer find us."
"And the price?" Sharlo asked softly.
"A lamp must eat fire," Granny said lightly. "There was only one handful of the old light. Each day it burned, one day's worth was lost. My father guarded the first three years and was worn to ash. At the end, he walked into the lamp himself and carried its flame a stretch farther. From that time, the island had a new rule—"
"When a person grows old, falls ill, and must go, they are neither buried nor given to the sea. They climb the tower and enter the lamp," she said. "Their souls join the old light, and the island remains hidden one day longer. Five years. Thirty-seven people have gone from this island. Thirty-seven soul-fires, one by one, have held up this sky for everyone."
"The first to enter the lamp was the mute old fisherman from east of the cove." Granny's voice slowed, like fingers counting a string of beads held for many years. "He fished all his life and never spoke a word. On the day my father announced the new rule to the island, no one answered. That rule was too great. The dead neither buried nor given to the sea—anywhere else, it would defy the ancestors. Everyone upon the beach bowed their head. Only the mute old man stepped forward. He made several signs."
"My father understood and wept upon the spot." Granny lifted her withered hand and slowly made three gestures—pointed to herself, pointed to the tower, then laid her palm over her heart. "He signed: It is my turn to tend the lamp."
"The old mute fisherman could not speak one word, yet he was the first to understand that this rule was not about what followed death. It was a changing of the watch," Granny said. "On the night he entered the lamp, everyone in the cove escorted him to the tower's foot. From then on, the islanders stopped saying 'so-and-so is gone.' They said, 'so-and-so has climbed the tower.' Thirty-seven, one after another, and every one walked up of their own will."
"Which is why the island has no graves," the Old Boatman said, his voice deep.
"No graves." Granny looked at him. "Old brother with the lamp, you know the river and guide the dead upon their way. I know what you mean to ask. Our dead never travelled your river. We kept them here to guard their home. If you say we broke the rules..."
"No." The Old Boatman slowly shook his head. The old spirit-ferryman studied the mote of light for a long while, then suddenly bent towards the lamp in a profound salute Sharlo had never seen him offer—the complete courtesy with which a spirit-ferryman saw a passenger aboard.
"For three thousand years, this old man has seen passengers aboard, all travelling home," he said hoarsely as he straightened. "This is the first time I have seen an entire shipful refuse to board, turn around, and hold their own front door shut. That does not break the rules."
"It means every passenger aboard is a boatman."
Granny's clouded eyes brightened. She returned half his salute, then turned to Cole.
"Young man carrying new fire. Lend Granny the lamp in your arms."
Cole presented the guiding lamp in both hands. Granny laid her withered palm upon its glass for a moment. Suddenly, the dark-red mote preserved in the wick gave the faintest leap—and the old light within the lotus heart answered with a tiny leap of its own. Old and new, two points of fire through two layers of glass, like two unacquainted hands brushing fingertips in the dark.
"It is good fire." Granny returned the lamp to Cole and studied the boy's face. "Fire kindled from things freely given has the same temper as the old light. Young man, did your master teach you how to feed a lamp?"
"He did," Cole said.
"Good." Granny nodded and said no more. But Sharlo heard what lay inside that question and answer—a grave matter waiting further ahead.
At last, Granny took the oilcloth packet from beneath the mat behind her.
Three layers of oilcloth, wrapped perfectly square, the cord tied in the fisherfolk's most solemn dead knot. Granny held it upon her knees and did not immediately pass it over.
"Two months ago, that Mr. Vane stayed upon the island nine days," she said. "The first three, he climbed the tower and asked me questions, studying the old characters one plaque at a time and copying every one into a little notebook.
"From the fourth day, he went down to the beach. When the great tide went out, he crouched for three days beside the old street upon the eastern reef. At ebb he went down, measured old walls and sketched the squares; only when the tide rose did he return, and his trouser legs never dried. I sent Tide-Lass's father with him, afraid the tide might take him. He stood at the old street's end for one full hour. When he returned, he told me one sentence without head or tail."
"He said: 'Granny, that street does not end in the sea. It slopes down. At its far end, beneath the sea, it still joins a city.'"
"On the seventh day, he borrowed the lantern-room table and wrote through the night. When he finished, he gave me this packet."
"On the eighth day—" Granny paused and looked at the point of light in the lotus heart. "He did something I had not permitted, and which he had never discussed with me. He climbed the tower, stood before the old lamp, took an object from inside his coat, and fed it through the glass petals."
"What did he feed it?" Sharlo's voice tightened.
"A little roll of written paper," Granny said. "A small leather-bound notebook filled in his own hand. By the time I tried to stop him, the paper had caught. He told me: Granny, this book contains the work of half my life. It is the only copy under heaven. I know it by heart and no longer need it—but it is the thing I would least willingly surrender. What the old lamp eats is what we cannot bear to surrender. Burn it, and it will hold the island a few more days."
"That night, the old lamp burned steadily until dawn. For the first time in five years, it did not gasp." Granny lowered her eyelids. "Early on the ninth day, he went to the beach, hired the Holl family's little boat, and sailed north. As he left, he told me: Granny, these extra days are for the one who comes after me. When he arrives, give him the packet. Let him choose the rest of the road himself."
Sharlo sat upon the mat without speaking for a long while.
The work of half a lifetime, the only copy under heaven. He knew the weight of such a thing. It was a Veilseeker's entire patrimony. His uncle had burned it for an island of strangers, solely to purchase several more months for someone who would "probably come."
"He said: Granny, someone will come after me, following the chart I bought. He can read the old characters in the tower. Give him one to read. If he can read it, give him the packet. If he cannot, keep guarding it."
"I asked when the man would come. He said there was no knowing. Months if soon; years if late. I asked who the man was."
Granny looked at Sharlo and spoke one word at a time.
"He said: A young man with more courage than I. I spent my life investigating other people's origins. He dares investigate his own."
The lantern room was very still. The lotus heart's light brightened, dimmed, brightened, dimmed.
"On the stairs just now, the third circuit," Granny said. "You stood a long while before the blue plaque. Tide-Lass saw you. Read it to me."
Sharlo closed his eyes. When he opened them, he looked at Granny and read those two lines in the language most familiar to him across both lives. The words of his native accent fell inside the three-thousand-year-old lantern room, eight brief characters striking the floor with weight.
Then he translated them into the common tongue. "Up or down the stairs, mind your step."
Granny's withered fingers tapped three times upon the oilcloth packet on her knees—like a stamp of validation.
"I know the shapes of those characters, but I cannot sound them," she said. "The sounds you made agree by half with the old cadence my father learnt in childhood. After three thousand years, half is enough. You are the one."
Solemnly, she pushed the oilcloth packet towards him.
Sharlo untied the dead knot and unfolded three layers of oilcloth. Inside lay two things: a roll of hand-drawn sea charts, its paper edges worn to fuzz, and a letter sealed with wax, its cover addressed in old Vane's familiar, lean hand.
He broke the seal and drew out the letter. It was thick, more than a dozen pages. The first page bore only three sparse lines, written separately from the rest:
"To the person who followed the chart—probably you, Sharlo. If it truly is you, do not hurry to read further."
"First, do one thing for me. You have probably already read the blue plaque upon the third circuit at the tower's foot. Now go back and read every old character in this tower aloud to Granny, plaque by plaque."
"She has guarded this light all her life and, for a tower whose characters she cannot sound, guarded those characters all her life. It is time someone read them to her."
Sharlo held the letter against his knee and raised his head.
Granny sat before the old lamp with her withered hands folded inside her sleeves, watching him. When he looked up, the old woman blinked those eyes precisely the same shade as Tide-Lass's and asked:
"What does the letter say?"
"It says—" Sharlo turned the first three pages over and tucked them beneath the rest. He rose and bowed deeply to Granny. "Today, we do not read the letter."
"Granny, may I trouble you to come down the tower with me?" he said. "We shall begin with the blue plaque at its foot and read them one by one, all the way to the top."