Chapter 146: Entering The First Layer

Logan went down the steps after him.

He did not decide to. His feet were already moving before he had worked out what he would say, and by the time he reached the ledge he still had nothing.

Rishin sat at the very edge with his legs hanging over the drop, exactly the way Oddren sat further along. His hands were folded in his lap. He did not turn around.

Logan sat down beside him, a little further back from the edge.

"You want to ask about the marks," Rishin said.

"No."

"Good."

They sat there. Below them the lanterns of Hollowreach ran along the rim in both directions, and below the lanterns the dark went on without any bottom Logan could see.

"Your father moved the boots," Rishin said, still watching the dark.

"He does that."

"He set them by the hearth where they would not be kicked." Rishin’s voice was low. "He did not know whose they were, and he still took care of them."

"He worked his whole life for people who never learned his name," Logan said. "I think he stopped expecting them to."

Rishin nodded slowly.

"That is a good man to have at your back down there," he said. "Better than most of the strong ones."

Logan looked at him sideways. The old man’s face was calm again, and his hands were loose in his lap.

Only his shoulders gave him away. He was holding them the way Logan’s father held his after a double shift, as if something heavy sat across them and putting it down was not allowed.

’He looked at those marks and walked out,’ Logan thought. ’He did not want Vina to wake up and see his face.’

"Sit back from the edge, boy," Rishin said. "You sit like somebody who has never fallen."

"I have fallen." Logan did not move. "I broke myself on your mountain. You put me in a pond."

"You fell a few meters and I caught you." Rishin looked down past his feet. "Nobody catches anyone here."

Logan shifted back half a meter.

"What happens next?" he asked. "When everyone has rested."

"We go down to the first ledge." Rishin said it as if it were the simplest thing in the world.

"There is a stair cut into the wall below the town. Everyone who goes down takes it, because there is no other way that does not end with hookwings."

"And on the ledge?"

"There are things on the ledges that will try to kill your parents." Rishin’s voice did not change.

"They are small things, and slow. Your mother and father will kill them, and they will earn Tower Points and levels for it. You and the Rezvolts will stand close enough to stop anything they cannot."

’That is the whole plan,’ Logan thought. ’Nothing clever. Just slow.’

It was, he realized, exactly what Rishin had told him in the garden. The next step down, whenever they were brave enough to take it.

Alice came down the steps carrying a bowl.

She held it out to Rishin without saying anything. Steam was coming off it, and it smelled like whatever Martha and Baldrun had finally agreed on.

Rishin looked at the bowl.

"Winsmoke says you are too thin," Alice said. "Martha agrees with him. Baldrun is still arguing, but only about the salt."

Rishin took the bowl. He ate it sitting at the edge of the world with his feet over nothing, and Alice sat down on Logan’s other side and did not say anything else until he was finished.

When he handed the empty bowl back, he held onto it a little longer than he needed to.

"Thank them for me," he said.

"Thank them yourself," Alice said. "They will be unbearable about it."

Rishin huffed through his nose, which might have been a laugh.

They rested in the house with the open door.

Logan did not know how long they slept. The light over the rim did not change, and the lanterns kept burning the same pale blue.

When he woke, he opened his panel to check the count of days and closed it again before he could look any closer.

Vina was not in the house.

He was on his feet with his hand on Grimlord’s Blade before Terry spoke from the doorway.

"Ledge," Terry said. "With Solveig. She is fine, Lord."

Logan went out onto the step and looked down.

Vina was sitting on the ledge a little behind Oddren, with Solveig standing directly behind her. Oddren was showing her the fishing line. He had wound a little of it around her finger so that she could feel it pull.

"What do you catch?" Logan heard her ask.

"Nothing, mostly," Oddren said.

"Then why do you fish?"

Oddren let the line slide back off her finger and down into the dark.

"Because the line goes where I cannot," he said.

Vina thought about that. Then she scooted a little closer to him and sat there watching the line with him, and she did not ask anything else.

The stair began at the far end of the rim road, past the last of the lanterns.

It was cut straight into the wall of the Abyss. It was wide enough for two people side by side, and it zigzagged down the rock in long switchbacks until it disappeared into haze. There was no rail on it anywhere.

The units went down in single file. Billy went first because Billy always went first, and Terry went last because somebody had to.

Sonic walked in the middle of the line with his arms folded, and he looked at the open air the way a starving man looks at a table he is not allowed to sit at.

Helen and Daniel walked between Garen and Isolde. Vina held Rishin’s hand. Logan and Alice walked just behind them, close enough to reach either one.

The walls were not empty.

A little way down the stair, the rock on the opposite side of the drop began to change.

It was covered in small dark holes, thousands of them, packed together like cells in a honeycomb. In every hole there was a small grey shape. Every shape had a long curved beak.

Every beak was turned toward the stair.

Alice kept her eyes on her feet and her hands nowhere near her bow.

’We brought two Tier-9 players and an army,’ she thought. ’And the thing I am most afraid of right now is a bird the length of my arm.’

She glanced ahead at Helen, who was walking with one palm pressed flat against the wall. Daniel had his arm around her waist, and he was placing each foot as though the stair might change its mind.

"Do not run," Rishin said, without raising his voice. "And do not throw anything."

Nobody ran.

[ You have entered the First Layer. ]

The stair ended on a wide shelf of rock jutting out from the wall.

It was covered in growth. Pale stalks as tall as Vina rose out of cracks in the stone, each one topped with a soft cap that glowed faintly green. Between the stalks, the ground was carpeted with something like moss that gave slightly underfoot.

Vina made a small delighted sound when she saw it.

A dry, rhythmic clicking came from the stalks like fingernails tapping on stone. At the back of the shelf, the stalks began to sway as whatever made the sound pushed through them.

Rishin let go of Vina’s hand and put her behind him.

"Helen," he said. "Daniel. This one is yours."