Chapter 22: The Last of the Thread

Maelis's POV

Thessaly knew how to call the pieces home, and she had known it since she was a child.

She told us on the Dawn gate, with straw in her hair, in front of Daelan and Wynne and me.

Their mother had sung two verses of the lullaby.

The first was for anyone.

The second she sang only to the nine of them, and it was not words, but each of their Hours in turn, very softly, in the order they were born.

"Perrin never heard it," Thessaly said. "He was never in the room. He learned the first verse from the ember, and he sang it for a year."

"And the second?" Daelan said.

"It's what the ember answers to. If the nine of us sing it at the Dawn, and the Crown has something to burn, the pieces will come home."

"What does it need to burn?"

Thessaly's eyes came to my wrist.

I had already felt it.

The thread had been growing hot since the Mirror, and now it ached, from the bone outward.

I put my hand over it, and the Crown on Daelan's brow turned its light on me.

It had no voice, but it made me know.

The thread is the last of the price, I understood. At the next Dawn it is spent. After that, there is nothing left of what you gave.

I thought, so that is the end of the debt.

I thought, I will never have them back.

Daelan was watching my face.

"What?" he said.

"Nothing yet," I said. "Let me think."

I walked down to the lemon garden, alone, because I could not think near him.

The trees were white with blossom, and the stool stood empty in the middle of the grass.

Perrin sat on the edge of the fountain, with his hands in his lap and a dozen sparrows on his shoulders.

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