The walk along the embankment to the lamp room took nearly half an hour.
It was an old breakwater, probing straight north. To their left, the tilted sea spread soundlessly towards the sky-curtain; to their right, the dead city of Starport gradually receded into a low silhouette. The farther they walked towards the end, the lower the sky-curtain hung overhead—until Sharlo felt that if he raised a hand, he could touch its taut, dark-blue surface. White light from myriad keyholes poured down from above, casting the six travellers' shadows upon the embankment in six strokes of black whose edges were painfully sharp.
Watched. Those words from old Vane's writing on the wall clung to the nape of every neck all the way. Look sparingly at the holes in the sky. Look too long, and you will feel that something is watching you. It is not an illusion.
No one looked at the sky. They looked only at the small window at the end of the embankment, at that one tranquil point of silver-white light.
At the end of darkness was a point of light—whatever that light might be, human legs were made to walk towards it.
The door to the lamp room was not locked.
That was the first thing Sharlo saw when he stopped before it: the most ordinary of wooden doors, with a hasp upon it and nothing through the hasp. A cell at the end of the world, its door unlocked.
He raised a hand and knocked three times.
"Come in," said the voice beyond the door.
The voice made all six of them falter. Each had imagined what a prisoner of three thousand years ought to sound like—ancient, deranged, divine—and it was none of those things. The voice beyond the door was young and clear, carrying only the faintest rasp, as though it had just awakened from a very long silence: the voice of a young man who had watched a lamp all night.
Sharlo pushed open the door.
The lamp room held only a single chamber. At its centre hung a lock.
Not a lock securing anything—it secured nothing at all. A silver-white lock the size of a palm hung in mid-air at the height of a man, without chain or shackle, simply suspended there. Translucent silver-white radiance flowed through its body; peering closer, one could see stars within that flow—myriad tiny points of light turning slowly inside the lock, as though the whole firmament had been cast into it.
Before the lock sat a boy.
He looked no more than sixteen or seventeen, dressed in white, barefoot, and seated cross-legged upon an old mat, facing the lock. His features were impossibly clean—so clean that time had left no trace upon them, like a face three thousand years in the painting and still unfinished. Beside his hand stood a tiny oil lamp with a silver-white flame. The spark of starlight shining through the window came from there.
The boy turned his head and studied his six visitors. His gaze passed over them one by one—and stopped when it reached Sharlo.
It remained there a long time.
"...Interesting," he said. Sharlo had heard that word before—the Proprietor had said it twice, both times when he was losing. But from this boy, it held neither victory nor defeat, only an immensely deep, weary curiosity accumulated over three thousand years. "There is light from beyond the curtain upon you."
Sharlo's heart gave a violent thump.
"Sit." The boy waved towards the floor around the old mat. "Three thousand years, and this is the first time I have had so many guests. The last one left two months ago—by your reckoning of time."
The six seated themselves in turn. The boy looked them over one by one again—more slowly this time, like an old shopkeeper taking stock of a rare consignment.
When he saw the guiding lamp in Cole's arms, one eyebrow stirred.
"First-Kindling flame," he said. "Freshly lit?"
"On Relighting Day." Cole steadied the lamp in his hands. "Reporting to... reporting to Your Immortalship, it is true flame kindled from willing dreams."
"Don't call me Your Immortalship. I don't deserve it, and I'm not used to hearing it." The boy waved a hand and studied that bead of gold-red flame for a long while. Suddenly he smiled. "A good fire. The same temper as that handful in the old days."
"Give my regards to the line of lampkeepers." He went on. "Three thousand years ago, on the day the old sun went out, a mortal ran towards the horizon like a madman, saying he meant to snatch back a handful of sunset. The gods were dead to the last; no one stopped him, and no one helped him. He ran all the way here and asked to borrow some courage from me."
"I told him I had no courage, but I could lend him a pair of fire tongs." The Keeper of the Star Gate's voice softened. "And he truly went. He snatched back one handful, and it has burned to this day."
Cole stood frozen with the guiding lamp in his hands. In the three-hundred-year history of the Dawn Tower, its first lampkeeper had "snatched the last handful of light from the horizon." So, on that night, he had borrowed a pair of fire tongs in this lamp room at the end of the world.
The boy next looked at the Old Boatman's blue-green glass lamp.
"The Stillwater Society." He recognised that dim green glow, and something indefinable entered his tone. "Upon the river... are things well?"
"The river is busy now," the Old Boatman answered with a bow. "Since the autumn equinox, river and sea have seeped into one another, and old accounts three thousand years deep have risen again. The drowned have the right to cross the river; two thousand souls from White Strand Island have gone home; the imprints upon the platform boarded their train. Not one of the river's boats has ceased its run."
"Busy is good," the boy murmured. "A river busy ferrying people is still a river."
He paused, gazing at the blue-green glass lamp. Suddenly he lowered his voice, as softly as if entrusting them with a private matter:
"May I trouble you? When you see the river on your way back, carry a message for me."
"To whom?"
"To the river," said the Keeper of the Star Gate. "Tell her—Elder Sister, hold on a little longer. The keeper of the lock is still at his post. When this affair is over, I shall go down and see you."
In the lamp room, all six held their breath as one. The Last Ferryman is stranded on his own black river. The Keeper of the Star Gate is locked beyond the firmament. Two adjoining lines in the Seventeen Dirges—two imprisoned gods.
Sister and brother. One trapped in the river beneath all things, the other having locked himself at the horizon above them. For three thousand years, one south and one north, each had kept watch at one end.
The Old Boatman raised his blue-green glass lamp and performed a spirit-ferryman's full obeisance with grave solemnity. "This old man will deliver it with his own hands."
At last, the boy's gaze came to rest upon Casimir—upon the fixed, crusted-over line of red characters that burned across his body.
"The Worldstrider's line." One glance was enough. "I recognise the way the knot upon you was tied."
Casimir stopped breathing.
"Thirty years, is it?" said the Keeper of the Star Gate. "Come back alone in a while. I will teach you something."
"Teach me... what?" The navigator's voice was less steady than Sharlo had ever heard it.
"How to see which way the keyhole of your lock opens," he said. "The key's proper trade. No one has come to ask my instruction in three thousand years. My hands itch for it."
"My uncle." Sharlo sat opposite him. "August Vane."
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"He did not give me his name. He said names were worth nothing in his family; questions were the things of value." The boy smiled, cleanly and wearily. "He sat here for a night and asked questions all through it. Good questions. The best I had heard in three thousand years."
"You are the Keeper of the Star Gate," Viola said, her notebook open and her pen poised. "The twelfth of the Seventeen Dirges. The Keeper of the Star Gate is locked beyond the firmament."
"I am." The boy nodded, as calmly as if acknowledging his surname. "That nursery rhyme of yours has seventeen lines. Sixteen and a half of them are right. When it comes to my line, only half is right."
"Which half is wrong?"
"Locked," he said.
He raised a hand and gestured lightly towards the suspended silver lock.
"Do you see it? The lock upon the sky-curtain. All the stars in heaven are its keyholes—one lock, myriad apertures. Every one of them is real, and I can open every one. I am the key. Opening locks is my name, my path, the only way this 'character' of mine can be written in the world."
"Three thousand years ago, the gods died, fled, or broke. When my turn came, I looked at this lock and thought for a very long time." The boy's voice was level, as though he spoke of someone else's affairs. "Killing me would have been useless—the key would die, but the lock would remain, and sooner or later something else would learn to open it. Imprisoning me would have been useless too—there is no prison under heaven that can hold a key."
"So I devised a method of my own."
He reached out and lightly touched his chest.
"I locked myself inside this lock," he said. "The key lies within the lock. The lock is sealed with the key. The only thing under heaven capable of opening this lock is the very seal upon it. So long as I sit here without conceiving the thought, the lock will not open."
"No one holds me under guard." The Keeper of the Star Gate regarded them and gently turned over the bureaucratic comment of eight characters. "The inventory says: Alive. In custody.—but they do not understand. The one holding me here is myself."
"I am not locked beyond the firmament," he said. "I put myself down as the stake for this watch."
The lamp room remained silent for a long while.
Sharlo looked at the barefoot boy in white, at the tiny silver lamp beside him, and suddenly felt heat in his throat. Granny keeping the lamp. Old Bann keeping the wall. The imprint keeping the station. The Chief Lamplighter keeping the tower. The Stillwater Society keeping an entire black river. Along this road, he had seen so many people who kept hold of one thing and refused to let go. And now he saw that the northernmost link in this long chain of watchers had been riveted inside this lamp room at the end of the world for three thousand years.
A god had made himself the nail in his own lock.
"One question," he began, his voice very soft. "What exactly are you keeping out? Beyond the lock—beyond the apertures—what is there?"
The boy fell silent.
Upon that face left unfinished for three thousand years, the clean weariness slowly sank, settling into something Sharlo could not read.
"I opened it once," he said at last. "Three thousand years ago, before everything came down—I was young then, and proud. I was the doorkeeper among the gods; there was no lock under heaven I did not dare open. I opened one slit in the sky-curtain, only one, and looked through."
"For how long?"
"One glance," said the Keeper of the Star Gate. "Only one glance. Then I closed the slit and locked myself inside."
"There is no need to ask what I saw." He raised his eyes, and for the first time those three-thousand-year-old eyes showed what lay at their depths. It was not madness or fear, but something more terrible: the calm of certainty. "I will tell you only one thing—one sentence purchased with three thousand years at this post. Remember it. Take it back. Tell everyone who would draw open the great curtain—"
"The curtain is there to shield those inside from the light. It is also there to let them keep their dignity."
"No matter how ugly the performance, while the curtain remains shut, it is still only a play." He spoke one word at a time. "Once the curtain opens—it is time to take the final bow."
Outside the window, the star-apertures in the sky-curtain shone coldly.
"The Dirge Society means to open it," Sharlo said.
"They have meant to for three hundred years." The Keeper of the Star Gate's tone became bland, as though he discussed children who did not know their own limitations. "They call it the Final Curtain. They carry things behind the curtain—you saw that long belt, three thousand years of human hearts, carriage after carriage. They believe they are furnishing the scenery for the 'grand play of the Final Curtain.' They believe a divine kingdom waits for them backstage."
"And the truth?"
"The truth is that every object carried 'backstage' is doing the same thing." He looked at the suspended silver lock, and his voice deepened. "Providing the warm-up. What do you people of the theatre call it? When a house has gone cold, you take the hottest things you have to warm it."
"They are warming the house," said the Keeper of the Star Gate. "They have been warming it for three hundred years."
"For whom?" Cole could not help asking. "Isn't there... an audience backstage?"
The lamp room fell deathly still.
The Keeper of the Star Gate looked at the boy holding the guiding lamp. He looked for a very, very long time. He opened his mouth—and then did the most chilling thing of the entire night:
He did not answer.
He merely turned his head back towards the lock he had guarded for three thousand years, and in an almost gentle tone, changed the subject:
"Your uncle asked that far on the night he came," he said. "I did not answer him either. He stared at me for a long while, then said: No answer is an answer in itself. Then he asked me his final question—the one I could not answer."
"What did he ask?" Sharlo's voice tightened.
"He asked: Can the script of this play still be changed?"
The Keeper of the Star Gate slowly turned back and looked at Sharlo.
"I said I opened locks; I did not write scripts. He asked: Then who writes them? I said the one who writes the scripts is also in your nursery rhyme. The eighth line."
The Dreamwright never was.
"When your uncle heard that, he sat for the length of an incense stick without speaking," said the Keeper of the Star Gate. "Then he rose, thanked me for my lamplight, borrowed something from me, and went west."
"West—" Sharlo's heart plummeted. "Towards the Colossus?"
"The source of the black river lies beneath the Colossus's pillow," said the Keeper of the Star Gate. "The river beneath all things flows out of the fallen dusk. Your uncle went to meet a colleague older than I am—the one in the fourth line."
"What he borrowed was a lamp." The boy pointed to the little silver-white lamp beside his hand. "I divided its flame and gave him half. He said it was dark below."
"I asked whether he would make it back. He answered with something I remember to this day—"
The Keeper of the Star Gate looked at Sharlo and passed those words to him exactly as they had been spoken:
"He said: My nephew will be here soon. An uncle ought to go down first and light the road lamps."
Sharlo sat upon the old mat and did not speak for a long time.
The lamp room was so quiet that he could hear his own heartbeat striking the words, beat by beat. Lamps along the road. Two months ago—a year and a half ago outside—a man in his fifties had borrowed half a divine lamp and walked alone into the deepest darkness in the world. And before he went, what he had thought was: My nephew will be here soon. The road must not be dark.
He lowered his head, drew Watch No. 03 from inside his coat, and closed it in his fist. It was still running, tick, tock, tick, tock, keeping their time.
"I'll go now." He raised his head. "Which road? From here to the Colossus's pillow—"
"You cannot go now."
The Keeper of the Star Gate shook his head, calmly and beyond dispute.
"It is not that the road is closed. Your accounts are not in order," he said. "Your ship is waiting upon the sea outside, with your people aboard. You owe a platform a report of what became of someone, two thousand words to two thousand countrymen in the fog, and an entire roll to the North Tunnel. And then—"
His gaze shifted to Viola.
"This companion of yours who does not sleep." The Keeper of the Star Gate looked at her, pity showing in those three-thousand-year-old eyes. "Six years of debt, and the collection notice is already on its way. I can see the playbill for the Final Curtain Season—her name is printed upon it. Her creditor now is not fate. It is that play."
"Going down to the black river to find your uncle is an errand from which you may not return," he told Sharlo. "Would you walk that road with a body full of outstanding accounts, taking someone whose name has been called by the playbill?"
"Go back. Clear the accounts outside, make arrangements for your people, repay what must be repaid, report what must be reported," he said. "Then come back travelling light."
"The lamps your uncle lit along that road will not go out." The Keeper of the Star Gate pointed to the silver lamp beside his hand. "He borrowed my fire. Only one thing can extinguish my fire—my conceiving the thought of opening the lock. So long as I do not, it will burn."
"I have kept this watch for three thousand years," he said. "Keeping a few lamps alight for your uncle is no trouble."
Sharlo gripped the watch. Inch by inch, his knuckles whitened; inch by inch, they relaxed.
"Very well," he said at last, his voice hoarse. "I'll go back and clear my accounts."
"When they are clear, I'll come." He looked at the Keeper of the Star Gate and spoke one word at a time. "When I do, I'll turn over the accounts here as well—your account, your sister's, the account of all these keyholes in the heavens. The Curtainbreaker keeps the books and never minds how many debts are added."
The Keeper of the Star Gate looked at him, then suddenly smiled. Amid three thousand years of exhaustion, that smile shone like a real boy's.
"Very well," he said. "I shall await you."
"I have waited three thousand years." He turned back towards the lock through which starlight flowed and spoke softly. "One more journey will make no difference."
On the way out, Sharlo stopped at the door.
"One last thing." He turned back. "You have kept watch for three thousand years—one person, one lock, one lamp. In all that time, has anyone ever relieved you?"
The Keeper of the Star Gate stared.
Then he smiled and shook his head. "There is only one key. No one can relieve this watch."
"The watch cannot be changed, but the entertainment can." Sharlo said. "I have a theatre whose curtain rises at midnight, performing especially for those who keep watch through the night. It doesn't matter that you cannot leave—"
He took Mick's brass whistle from his coat, weighed it in his hand, then put it back. What he finally drew out was a grey-white theatre ticket stub—one of the tickets condensed from the applause he had saved. He pinched it free and laid it on the edge of the old mat.
"Keep the ticket. Some night, when you grow tired sitting before the lock, hold it and take a nap," said the Curtainbreaker. "My theatre recognises it. If you cannot come in body, come in dreams—row seven. I'll save you a seat."
"A man who keeps watch through the night deserves to have someone tell him a play."
The Keeper of the Star Gate stared at the ticket stub for a very long time. For the first time in three thousand years at his post, someone had saved the keeper of the lock a seat.
"...Very well," he said at last, so softly he could scarcely be heard. "Don't hurry me out when the house clears."