Chapter 11: The Bellkeeper's Book

Inside the tower's lowest room, with the door shut behind them, Naho heard her own voice come back.

It cracked on the first word.

The Bellkeeper's family had worked out the rule in the first week.

A girl wrote it on a slate for them: the grey drank sound out of open air, but stone walls held it.

The whole village lived indoors now, and spoke in kitchens, and wrote on slates between doors.

The room was round and low, with a stove in the middle and a ladder going up into the dark.

The table had been worn pale by years of cups from every house in the Weir.

The old man who had pulled the silent rope sat at the head of it with the ferryman's loaf in front of him.

He was tearing it into small pieces and not eating any.

He was deaf, he told them in a loud, cheerful voice, and he read lips when he could, and he always could.

Brant took this as an invitation.

He planted both fists on the table and used his parade voice.

"I am Captain Mallow of the Royal Escort, and I require the key to the belfry."

The Bellkeeper watched his mouth very carefully.

"Yes," he said. "There's soup."

A girl put a bowl of soup in front of Brant.

Brant looked at the soup, and then at the old man, and said slowly and clearly that he did not require soup.

"Very tall," said the Bellkeeper, nodding. "Eat up."

Alric stepped forward and stood in the lamplight with his chin up, to try the Chosen's speech.

He was still the color of ash, and the mail on him was grey and mended.

He had not said a false thing since the farmhouse.

"I am Alric Doveland," he said, "the Chosen of Aldermarch, and I have come to close the Gloam."

"Soup," said the Bellkeeper, with deep sympathy, and another bowl arrived.

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