Chapter 166: The Small Stone

Isolde let the dome go, and the silver light fell across them again.

Pebble had already taken two steps toward the back of the shelf. Rishin put a hand flat against his chest and stopped him. It was like watching a reed stop a cart.

"Not yet," the old man said. "You decide it out here."

"We have decided," Logan said.

"Then say it."

"The stone."

"And what else?"

Logan opened his mouth. He thought of the first aisle, and of a coil of grey cord that stopped a fall. He thought of his mother’s feet on a wet stair.

"There it is," Rishin said. "You went in to look in Tarry, and you came out with a cord and thirty days gone. I am not scolding you for it. I am telling you how that room works."

He took his hand off Pebble’s chest.

"One thing, each time you go in. You choose it out here, with the door shut. The shelves are very long, and every bell on them holds a good reason. A man who walks in to look around is a man it sells to."

"The stone," Logan said again. "Nothing else."

"Say it once more in front of the counter. Aloud."

Alice came with them. Logan had not asked, and he did not argue.

"I was there for the first one," she said. "I am going to be there for this."

Rishin did not come. He lowered himself onto a stone of the nearest fire ring, where he could see the door across the whole width of the camp.

Vina sat down next to him with Lisbell and announced that they would count until Logan came out.

"Count slowly," Rishin told her.

The amber lantern burned beside the black wood exactly as it had burned in Tarry. Logan stopped in front of it with Alice on his left and Pebble on his right.

The door swung inward before any of them touched it.

Warm air came out, smelling of beeswax and dust. The counter of black wood stood where it had stood before, with its two shallow hollows side by side.

The worn step lay in front of it. Beyond them the shelves ran back under their chains of lanterns, further than Logan could see.

The door closed without a sound.

"It is the same room," Alice whispered. "Not one like it."

She was looking at the first shelf. In Tarry, Burr had left a glass bell standing empty there. A coil of thin grey cord lay under it again.

The bottle in the next bell was a different color. Logan let his eyes rest on it only long enough for the panel to open.

[ Chillbane Draught ] [ One use. Cures one sickness of the Second Layer. ] [ Price: 400 Abyss Points ]

’It knows where its door is standing,’ he thought. ’And it has put the price up.’

"The stone," he said aloud. "Nothing else."

They walked down the first aisle. Logan kept his eyes on the lantern at the far end, and he did not read a single bell on the way.

It lay where it had lain before, on its square of dark cloth.

It was a grey river pebble with a hole worn clean through it, on a loop of plain string. It still looked like the only thing in the shop that somebody had picked up off the ground.

[ Hearthstone of the Small ] [ Permanent. Binds to one bearer who cannot become a player. ] [ The bearer cannot be called. ] [ Price: 40,000 Abyss Points ]

Pebble leaned down until his nose nearly touched the glass.

"It is very small, boss."

"So is she."

"That is true." Pebble straightened up. "It looks like me. Like the old me."

"I noticed that in Tarry," Logan said. "I did not know then that it was going to matter."

They went back up the aisle to the counter.

Pebble stepped up onto the worn step.

The hollow in it was wide, and his boots did not fill it. He set his right hand in the second hollow of the counter, as Burr had, and spread his fingers.

The panel opened above the black wood.

[ Offered: Longroad Cairn Slinger (Pebble) ] [ Rank: Mythic ] [ Rate: 32 Abyss Points per day ] [ Available: 365 days ]

"That is wrong," Alice said.

The fourth line blurred. It went grey and came back, and it went grey a second time. When it steadied, the number had changed.

[ Available: 6,201 days ]

Every lantern in the shop went out.

They did not dip, as they had for Burr. They died together on their chains, and the dark came down so completely that Logan could not see the hand he had put on his sword.

He heard Alice’s bow creak. He heard Pebble breathing, slowly and carefully, the way he breathed before a throw.

"Nobody move," Logan said.

A light came back.

It was the furthest lantern in the furthest aisle, a single amber point no bigger than a seed. Then the one in front of it lit, and the one in front of that.

They came on down the length of the shop one after another, at about the pace of a walking man. It looked as though somebody were coming up the aisle with a taper and stopping under each chain.

The last lantern to catch was the one directly above the counter.

The wood creaked.

Logan looked down. The sound had not come from under Pebble’s hand. It had come from the first hollow, the empty one. The black wood there had darkened in the shape of a palm, the way a table darkens under a damp hand.

"Boss," Pebble said. He had not moved a finger. "There is somebody standing next to me."

There was nobody. The step was wide enough for two, and only one pair of boots stood on it.

"Is it touching you?" Alice asked. Her arrow was pointed at the empty air beside him.

"No, ma’am. It is only looking." Pebble swallowed. "It is looking very hard."

’To that door, he is a question,’ Logan thought. ’And this is it asking.’

The dark shape in the hollow faded slowly, from the fingers inward. Nothing else in the shop moved.

"Do it," Logan said. "Before it thinks of another one."

Pebble turned his head toward the counter.

[ Exchange: 1,250 days (Pebble) → 40,000 Abyss Points ] [ Purchased: Hearthstone of the Small ] [ Pebble: Lifespan 4,951 days ]

Logan was watching his face, so he saw it happen.

A lock of the sandy hair above Pebble’s left temple went pale. It did not fade. It turned grey in the time it takes to blink, from the root to the tip, as if a brush had been drawn through it.

Pebble lifted his hand from the counter and flexed it.

"Burr told us it was like putting down a pack," Logan said.

"It is not like that for me, boss. It is like the pack got lighter and my legs got older."

"Are you all right?"

"Yes." He touched the grey lock and looked at his fingers, as though some of it might have come off. "I would do it again. I only did not expect to feel it go."

The stone lay in the first hollow, exactly where the dark palm had rested. Its string was coiled beside it.

Logan picked it up. It weighed almost nothing. It was a little warm, like a stone that has been carried in a pocket.

’Twelve hundred and fifty days,’ he thought. ’More than three years of a life, for this. And he has thirteen years left over.’

"Logan," Alice said.

She was looking back down the first aisle.

At the end of it, the glass bell was not empty. A second grey pebble lay there on its cloth, holed and strung exactly like the first.

Logan closed his fist around the one in his hand to be sure he still had it.

"It was never the last one," he said slowly. "There was always going to be another. It will sell that stone to every parent who walks in here, for the price of four friends."

"Teska," said Alice. "And Brin."

"I know."

"He has the days for both of them."

"He does." Logan made himself think it through. "They are a whole layer above us, behind two wardens. I cannot put a stone in her hand from here."

"And if we see them again?"

"This door stands on every layer. Wherever we meet that family, there will be one close by, and Pebble will be with me."

He looked at the counter.

"One thing, each time. We chose it outside."

Alice’s shoulders came down. She lowered the bow.

Logan put his palm against the door. In Tarry it had swung open under the lightest push.

It did not move.

He pushed harder, and it held as though it had been built into the rock. Alice’s arrow came back up. Pebble had a red stone in the cradle of his sling before Logan had seen him reach for it.

Then the wood gave under his hand like any other door, and the white glare of the camp came in.

Vina had reached four hundred and six.

She told him so as he crossed the camp. Then she saw what was hanging from his fist, and she stopped talking.

Everyone had gathered at the fire ring. Helen stood with both hands pressed to her mouth. Daniel had his rock under one arm. Garen and Isolde stood behind them, and Billy had worked his way to the front.

Logan did not go to his sister. He went to the old man sitting beside her, and he held the stone out by its string.

"You know what it is," he said. "You put it on her."

Rishin looked at the grey pebble turning slowly in the light.

His hands came out of his sleeves. He cupped them, and Logan lowered the stone into them.

Rishin turned it over once. He put the tip of his little finger into the hole, and it went in exactly as far as the first joint.

"It is lighter than I thought it would be," he said.

Alice’s eyes met Logan’s over the white head.

’He knew the price to the point,’ Logan thought. ’He knew it would still be on its shelf. And he has never once had it in his hands.’

Rishin picked at the knot in the string with his thumbnail until it came undone. He tied it again, a finger’s width shorter, and he pulled the new knot tight with his teeth.

"A long string catches on things," he said. "Come here, little one."

Vina stood up in front of him. He lifted the loop over her braids and settled it around her neck. Then he tucked the stone down inside the collar of her coat with two fingers.

[ Hearthstone of the Small ] [ Bound to: Vina Wolf ] [ The bearer cannot be called. ]

"Under the coat, against your skin," Rishin said. "You do not take it off to wash. You do not take it off to show Teska. If it is ever in your hand and not around your neck, you shout for Solveig."

"Yes, Grandpa Rishin."

She fished it straight back out to look at it.

"It is a rock with a hole in it," she said.

"It is a rock that works," said Daniel. His voice was thick.

Vina let the stone swing on its string in front of her nose. She looked past it at her mother and at Billy. She looked at Garen, who waved. Then her eyes found Pebble, and the stone stopped swinging.

"Your hair went grey," she said. "Just there."

Pebble put his hand over the place.

"I bought something, miss."

"What did you buy?"

He nodded at the stone in her fingers.

Vina looked down at it, and then at his hair again. She walked over to him and put both arms around his waist, which was as high as she could reach, and she pressed her face into the front of his coat.

Pebble stood with his hands held out to either side. He looked at Logan in open alarm.

"You hug her back," Billy told him. "Honestly. I have to teach him everything."

Pebble put his hands very carefully on her shoulders.

Helen was crying without any noise. She pulled his head down and kissed the grey lock at his temple. After that there was nothing Pebble could do except stand there and be thanked.

Rishin did not stay for it.

Logan saw him get up from the fire ring while everyone was looking at Pebble.

The old man walked to the hedge at the lip of the shelf and sat down in front of it, with his back to the camp and the Silver shining through the thorns.

It was how he had sat on the ledge at Hollowreach, after Helen found the marks on a doorframe.

This time, Vina followed him.

She did not ask whether she was allowed. She sat down beside him and put the stone to her eye, and she looked at the Silver through the hole.

"What can you see?" Rishin asked. His voice was rough.

"All of it. But round."

He laughed. It came out short and cracked, and he put his hand on top of her head and left it there.

Logan sat down a little way behind the two of them. He did not speak. He had learned on a mountain that the old man answered what he chose to answer.

"I once stood in front of that shelf for the length of a whole sleep," Rishin said. He did not turn around.

Logan waited.

"That is all I am going to tell you about it today."

"All right," Logan said.

"What did it leave him?"

"Four thousand nine hundred and fifty-one days."

"Good. That is a long road, even at the price it charges." Rishin’s thumb moved once across Vina’s hair. "Did it try to keep you?"

"The door would not open at first. Then it did."

"Then it has not decided what you are. Do not go in again on this layer unless somebody is dying."

He took his hand from Vina’s head and got to his feet. It took him two tries, and he would not let Logan help.

Then he held his hand down to her.

"You may go down the stair now," he said. "Bring your mother and your father. It is time all of you learned what that panel meant."

Vina took his hand. She looked through the thorns at the shining floor four steps below.

"Are we going in it?"

"To your knees, little one," said Rishin. "And not one step further."