The Lantern Hall opens when the body sleeps deepest, and on the night after the Oath it opened for the Quiet Hands as it always did, down a long, low corridor of dark stone that had no door at either end.
The Ferryman’s lamp was near the entrance. It was the first lamp a Hand came to, and the last one to go out, and it burned with a steady, plain light that was almost white at its centre. It did not flicker. It did not sway. It hung on its iron hook at the height of a tall man’s shoulder, and it looked down the long hall as a ferryman looks at a river: without impatience, and without any wish to be anywhere else.
It had said one sentence since the dream began.
The bridge is still there.
It was a sentence it could cross a river with, and it would not say another until the dream was over. The Ferryman did not speak in two sentences, not even in sleep, where the water was deeper and a careless word could carry a Hand straight under.
Nine lamps burned down the hall.
They were set in a line along both walls, at equal distances, each one on its own iron hook, each one the colour of the Hand it belonged to. The Ferryman’s was white. Harrow’s was a dusty brown, the colour of mortar. Gaunt’s was a dull red, like a forge that has been banked for the night…
