Chapter 151: The Amber Door

"You did not add one."

Rishin’s voice came from the far side of the ledge. He had not moved from where he sat with his back against the rock, but his eyes were open now, and they were on the wall of marks behind Logan’s head.

"No," Logan said.

"Good." The old man shifted his weight with a small grunt and tucked his hands into his sleeves. "Everyone who camps here counts. They count because it is the only thing on this wall they can control."

"And you think that is a mistake," Alice said.

"I think it is a habit." Rishin looked past them at the rows of little lines. "Count when you have something to count toward. Until then, all it does is teach you how afraid to be."

He closed his eyes again. Logan could not tell whether he had gone back to sleep or had simply decided the conversation was over.

Lisbell came back while the others were still sleeping.

Logan heard her before he saw her, a soft padding of paws on the path above the ledge.

Then the small black cat came around the shoulder of rock and trotted across the bare stone, her tail held straight up and the gold-white mark on her forehead glowing faintly in the dimness.

She went to Garen first. He was sitting on watch at the mouth of the path with Isolde, and he put out one hand without looking. Lisbell pushed her head against his palm.

Garen went still with his hand on the cat’s head. His eyes had the faraway look of a player listening to a unit through their bond.

"She got her to the rim," he said at last, low enough not to wake anyone. "The fisherman made room for her on the edge. They were sitting side by side when Lisbell left."

Isolde closed her eyes.

Lisbell stepped away from Garen and crossed the ledge. She wound once around Solveig’s kneeling legs, and then she curled up against Vina’s back and went to sleep.

’Two of them now,’ Alice thought, picturing them there. ’Oddren with his line going down into the dark, and Tavi beside him, watching it.’

She did not say it aloud. Logan was already looking at the same patch of rock she was.

The family woke slowly.

Vina was up first. She went straight to the waterfall to look for the glowing snails, and Solveig followed her the entire way without being asked. Martha and Winsmoke had porridge bubbling in the pots before anyone else had finished stretching.

Helen sat by the pool and practiced.

She held her palm over the water and called Mending Spring, let it fade, and called it again. Each time she frowned at the glow as though it had disappointed her.

Logan understood what she was doing after the third try. She was trying to make the light come faster.

’Slow gets people killed,’ he remembered. ’That is what Rishin told her in the garden.’

Daniel sat a little way off with his rock beside him.

Every so often he pointed at a crack in the ledge and called Snaring Roots, and a few thin brown roots poked out of the stone and waved at nothing. Then he nodded to himself and did it again.

"We have a problem," Garen said, over the bowls.

He had laid his panel open where everyone could see it. Isolde laid hers beside it. Logan and Alice did the same.

[ Tower Points: 0 ]

Four panels showed the same number.

"Helen and Daniel have twenty each," Garen went on. "The four of us have nothing. And every unit we brought is all we are ever going to have, unless we start earning."

"The circle wants a hundred for one pull," Logan said. "The crawlers pay ten."

"So we find bigger things," Alice said.

"Bigger things pay more," Rishin agreed from his place by the rock. "But the first layer is thin. You will not find a hundred of anything waiting in one place for you, the way you did in the Tower."

He said it plainly, as a fact he had known for a very long time.

"Then we keep moving," Logan said, "and we take what we find on the way down."

"That is the only way anyone has ever done it," Rishin said.

They left the Weeping Ledge in the same order they had arrived.

The path beyond it dropped more steeply. In places it had been cut into rough steps, and water ran down them in a thin sheet that made every footing slick.

The wall on their left was pocked with small caves and hollows, most of them no deeper than a cupboard.

Logan watched them as he walked. So did Rishin.

"Stay close to the wall," the old man said once, over his shoulder. "But do not walk under the overhangs."

"Why not?" Vina asked.

"Because things live under the overhangs."

Vina moved closer to the middle of the path at once. Solveig moved with her.

They had gone about two hundred paces when it dropped.

Logan never saw it on the wall. The overhang above Daniel’s head looked like bare wet rock, right up until part of it peeled away from the stone and fell.

It was long and pale and many-legged, like a spider stretched out to the length of a man.

It had been pressed so flat against the rock, and its skin was so close in color to the wet stone, that nobody had seen it at all.

Daniel looked up. His hands came up too late.

Alice did not look up. She had been looking at that overhang for the last ten paces, because it was the only one on this stretch that Rishin had walked under slightly faster than the rest.

Her bow was already drawn.

The arrow went up past Daniel’s shoulder, close enough to ruffle his hair. It took the pale thing through the center of its narrow head while it was still in the air, and the force of the shot threw it back against the wall.

It slid down the wet rock in a tangle of legs and lay still at Daniel’s feet.

[ Pallid Wallclinger slain. ] [ Alice Rezvolt: +50 Tower Points ]

Daniel stared down at it.

Up close, it was worse. Its legs were jointed in too many places, and each one ended in a hooked claw that could have gone straight through a man’s shoulder.

Its body was barely thicker than Logan’s arm, but it was nearly two meters long, and its mouth was a round pale ring full of small inward-pointing teeth.

[ Pallid Wallclinger ] [ Level: 6 ] [ Rank: Rare ]

"Nyriel," Logan said.

The constellation flickered above the path and came back quickly.

[ Attack: 58 ] [ Speed: 47 ] [ Constitution: 40 ] [ Arcane: 0 ]

’Attack fifty-eight,’ Logan thought. ’That is four times what the crawlers had. If it had landed on Dad from above, it would have been on his throat before his roots even came up.’

Helen had both hands pressed over her mouth. Daniel looked up at the overhang, and then at Alice, and then back down at the thing at his feet.

"Thank you," he said.

"You are welcome," Alice said. She lowered her bow. "It was not yours to fight."

"No," Rishin agreed. "That one was not."

He gave Alice a short nod. It was the closest thing to praise Logan had seen from him since the mountain. Alice pretended not to notice, and her ears went slightly pink.

"Fifty," Garen said, reading the panel that still hung over the dead clinger. "For a Rare at Level 6."

"Half a pull," Logan said.

Alice looked at her panel.

[ Tower Points: 50 ]

Then she looked at Logan’s, which still said zero.

"I would lend you some," she said, "but I do not think the circles take loans."

"I will catch up."

"You will have to find something that falls on your father first," Alice said. "I am watching all the good overhangs."

Despite everything, Logan laughed. Helen made a small, startled sound that turned into a laugh as well, and even Daniel’s mouth twitched.

The path went on around another bend.

On the far side of it, the wall opened into a shallow alcove. It was only as deep as a doorway, and a doorway was exactly what it held.

A door had been set into the rock.

It was made of dark wood, bound with iron that had gone black with age. It had no handle and no keyhole.

A single small lantern hung on a hook beside it, and the light inside was not the pale blue of the rim lanterns. It burned a deep, steady amber, the color of honey held up to a fire.

There was no sign above the door. Logan did not need one, because a panel opened in front of him as soon as he looked at it.

[ Relic Shop ] [ Currency: Abyss Points ] [ Your Abyss Points: 0 ]

Everyone stopped.

Billy rolled up behind Logan and peered at the door with frank curiosity.

"Boss," he said. "Is that the shop? The one where they buy us?"

Billy got no answer.

Logan looked at the door, and at the amber lantern beside it, and at the number on his panel. He thought about Rishin sitting on the edge of Vina’s bed back home, saying the words Abyss Points for the first time.

’Down there, a summon’s remaining life can be spent.’

Rishin had stopped a pace in front of the door. He did not reach out to touch it. He simply looked at it the way a man looks at a dog that once bit him.

"It will open the moment you are willing to pay," he said.

Alice looked down at the zero on her panel. Then she looked back along the path at the line of units.

"And the only thing we have to pay with is them," she said quietly.

"Yes."

Billy studied the door a little longer. Then he rolled one careful quarter-turn backward, away from it, and kept his wheel between the door and Vina for the rest of the time they stood there.