Chapter 168: Where It Is Tied

Vina looked from the two flat flames to the old man’s wet face.

"Who are they?" she asked.

Rishin did not answer her at once. He was still sitting on the step with the Silver up to his chest, and Daniel’s hand was still under his elbow.

"Two people I walked down here with," he said. "A long time ago."

"Are they waiting for you?"

"I do not know what they are doing, little one. I only know which way they are." His voice cracked on the last word. "Until I put my feet in this, I did not know even that much."

Vina opened her mouth to ask the next thing.

"Vina," Helen said from the dry rock above them. Her voice was gentle. "That is enough for now. Let him be."

She was looking at Rishin as she said it. Logan had seen that look on her once before, in a doorway at Hollowreach, with her fingers on a row of knife marks.

Isolde had both hands pressed flat against her chest.

"Senior," she said. "That is why. The crystal. That is why you gave all of it back."

"That is why."

"You could have told us," Garen said hoarsely.

"And you would have carried it down eleven ribs for me." Rishin shook his head. "You had enough in your arms."

Logan was remembering a stone bench on a mountain.

’He told us there that he reached the bottom without the people he loved,’ he thought. ’He said they paid for it. He never once said they were gone.’

Alice had gone back further than that. Her eyes were narrow.

"On the first shelf, you told Tavi that the Abyss does not give back what falls into it," she said. "I asked you afterward whether it was true."

"It is true. It gives nothing back." Rishin looked down the stair, along the line that two of his flames had drawn. "It keeps what it takes."

Alice’s eyes went to the Silver, and then quickly away from it.

Rishin tried to rise, and his legs would not do it. He looked up at the man holding his elbow.

"Help me up, Daniel," he said. "I am sitting in a bonfire, and I have just taught your children why that is foolish."

Daniel lifted him the way he had lifted him off the lawn. The three of them climbed above the line together. Twenty-four small flames went out, and nine of those had been standing over one white head.

He stood on the black rock and wiped his face with the heel of his hand, once.

"Now you know why an old man ate a crystal in your garden," he said. "I am going to them. I do not intend to arrive the way I am."

He turned toward the camp.

"Synthia. Is it done?"

Synthia had been waiting behind the fire rings with a bundle of cloth across her arms. Vulkarn stood at her shoulder, rumbling. She came forward and unwrapped it.

It was a short sword with a single edge.

There was no gold on it and no jewel. The steel was plain grey, and Logan knew at a glance that Vulkarn’s grubs had chewed it out of the cliff during the sleep. The grip was wrapped in a strip of the Elder’s hide.

"Xairon wished to do more," Synthia said. "Draventh wished to do a great deal more. I told them what you told me."

"Plain," Rishin said. "And light enough for an arm with no levels in it."

He took it. The point dipped, and he brought it up again with an effort that Logan could see in his wrist.

"And the rune?"

"One. The one you asked for."

[ Plain Sword ] [ Rune of Binding: At its bearer’s will, the blade holds its place for one full second against any force. ]

"Daniel," Rishin said. "Push it."

He held the sword out level in front of him. Daniel looked doubtful. He set both palms against the flat of the blade and leaned, gently at first and then with his whole weight.

The blade did not shift by the width of a hair. Daniel’s boots slid backward on the rock instead.

Then the second ran out. The blade swung aside all at once, and Daniel staggered two paces before he caught himself.

"You could not push me over in the garden," he said. He was rubbing his hands. "Now I cannot push your sword."

"It is the same lesson," said Rishin. "You have simply had it from both ends."

Vina had come close to look.

"What is its name?"

"It is a sword. It does not need one."

"Everything needs one. You said so." She folded her arms. "You told Logan to name every one."

Rishin looked down at her. Garen turned a laugh into a cough.

"I did say that," the old man admitted. "Then you had better name it."

Vina studied the grey blade.

"Stay," she said.

"Why Stay?"

"Because that is what it does."

Rishin’s thumb moved along the plain grip.

"Yes," he said. "So it does."

Synthia pressed her thumb to the flat of the steel, and the first line of the panel changed.

[ Stay ]

"I have nine," Rishin said.

He had walked back to the head of the lower stair. The sword hung in his right hand with the point just clear of the rock.

"None of you will ever burn brighter in this layer than I do. Whatever comes to that stair will come to me before it looks at anyone else. I may as well be holding a sword when it arrives."

"You are Level 1," Logan said. "If it so much as brushes you, you are dead."

"Then see that it does not brush me." Rishin’s eyes were perfectly calm. "I am not asking you to stand aside, boy. I am asking you to leave me the last hand’s width."

Logan looked at Alice. She looked at her mother.

"If I see teeth go past that sword," Isolde said, "there will be a wall in front of him before they close. I am telling you that now, Senior, so that you do not scold me afterward."

"That is fair."

"And if it is one of the great ones?" Garen asked. "The kind that is longer than a ship?"

"Then I step out, and we wait for a smaller fish." Rishin’s mouth twitched. "I am old. I am not a fool."

So they set it up his way.

Halden waded in and stood to the right of the third bright step, with the Silver at his thighs. Terry stood to the left. No flame burned over either of them, and nothing in that layer would know they were there.

Nyriel’s constellation spread itself over the stair. Skyveil held her one clear note. Maren had cut arrowheads from the bright rock while the Silver was still out, and a dozen arrows tipped with them lay ready at Alice’s feet.

Helen stood on the last black step with her palm lit. She laid Mending Spring on Rishin before he went down, as she had learned to do for Daniel. He drank the green vial that Thessaris had given him.

Then he walked down to the third bright step alone, and nine candles lit above him.

Logan stood above the line, three steps up from him. He had Grimlord’s Blade drawn, and he opened Sword Intent.

On the mountain, thousands of threads had run out of this man into the pond and the stone and the whole peak. In the garden, Logan had watched every one of them unhook.

There were ten now.

Nine of them were the candles. He could see each one running from the old man’s chest to a flame and on toward its person. Two of them went down through the stair, and he could not find the end of either.

The tenth ran from the point of the sword out across the Silver. It was as fine as a hair, and it hung slack.

’He has tied a line to a thing that is not here yet,’ Logan thought.

The Emberlynx growled.

Far out, a seam had opened in the bright surface. It was thin and it was quick, and it was nothing like the slow ridge from before. It ran straight at the stair, and Nyriel’s constellation had read it before it was halfway there.

[ Glassjaw Pike ] [ Level: 17 ] [ Rank: Rare ]

[ Attack: 210 ] [ Speed: 260 ] [ Constitution: 140 ] [ Arcane: 30 ]

’A Rare,’ Logan thought. ’I could stop it with my boot. And every number on that panel is far beyond anything he has.’

"Small enough," Rishin said. He did not open his eyes. Logan had not seen him close them.

The hair-fine thread drew tight.

It came out of the Silver three paces from the step.

Logan saw it whole for a single instant. It was a fish as long as a rowing boat, and it was as clear as window glass.

He could see the stair through its body. He could see its spine like a pale rope, and a long jaw hinged far back behind the eye.

Behind that hinge sat a knot of light the size of a thumbnail. It was the place where the jaw and the spine and the whole rush of the thing were tied together.

The thread from the sword ended there.

Rishin did not swing. He was not fast enough to swing, and he had not tried to be.

He lifted the point one hand’s width, set it in the air, and let go of everything except the grip.

"Stay," he said.

The pike struck the point with all of its two hundred and sixty.

The sword did not move. The fish did. It drove itself onto a blade that would not give, exactly at the knot, and its speed carried the length of its body along the edge.

It opened from the jaw to the tail like a letter under a knife.

What was left was still coming, dead and heavy and as fast as before. It would have gone through the old man like a cart through a fence.

Halden stepped in front of it.

He took the whole weight on the shaft of his halberd and turned it. The carcass slammed down across the steps an arm’s length to Rishin’s right. Terry dropped one hand on the tail and held it.

A sheet of cold clear fluid slapped across Rishin’s coat. Nothing else touched him.

[ Glassjaw Pike slain. ] [ Rishin: +150 Tower Points ] [ Rishin: Level 1 → 7 ]

The rune let go. The sword came free of the air, and its point dropped and rang on the step.

Rishin’s whole arm was shaking. He opened his eyes and looked at the long clear body lying beside him. Then he raised his eyes to Halden.

"You stayed standing," he said.

"It is what I am for," said Halden.

"It is a good thing to be for."

Logan let Sword Intent close. His heart was going hard, and he had not swung once.

’He did not cut it,’ he thought. ’He chose the place and the instant, and he let it cut itself. That is the fourth technique. I have been trying to do it with speed, and he just did it with none.’

"Six levels," he said aloud. "The same as me."

"Yours cost you a warden. Mine cost me a fish." Rishin bent and picked up his sword. "The first steps are always the cheapest ones. Do not be impressed."

"I am a little impressed," said Garen.

Isolde had not raised her wall. She let her hands down slowly.

"He has not lost any of it," she said to her husband. "He only lost the strength to carry it."

A panel had opened in front of Rishin. He did not study it. He moved two fingers through the air like a man dealing cards, and it closed again.

’Thirty points,’ Logan thought. ’And he placed them without reading where.’

Rishin climbed out of the Silver. He took the bright steps one after another, and then the black ones, and he did not put his hand on his right knee.

It was the first stair he had climbed that way since he ate the crystal.

Vina was waiting at the top with Solveig.

"Did you get some of it back?" she asked.

"A spoonful, little one."

"Is a spoonful good?"

"It is where everything starts."

Xairon had reached the pike before the Silver finished settling.

"This one did not fall," it announced to the camp at large. "Nobody has taken it back. I intend to have every bone of it, and I would like to see somebody stop me."

Vulkarn was already kneeling at the tail, rumbling.

"Boss," Billy said. He had watched the whole fight from the first bright step, with half his rim in the Silver. "I could not see it coming. It could not see me standing there. This is a stupid layer."

"You may be right, Billy."

"I am going to be very good at it," Billy added darkly.

Sonic landed beside them. He pointed past the hedge.

"Boss. It is going out."

Logan looked. The bright rock showed a full step lower than it had when they first waded in. The Silver was drawing away from the line as silently as it had come.

Rishin had seen it too. He nodded once. Then he opened the panel that every new arrival opened sooner or later, and he turned it so that Logan could read it.

[ Tower Points: 150 ]

"I told you in the gallery that I named every one of mine," he said.

"You did."

"It has been a very long time since I had one to name."

He walked across the camp toward the Summoning Circle. He still walked like an old man. But the sword rode easily in his hand now, and his back was straight.

Vina trotted after him.

"What will you call him, Grandpa Rishin?"

"I will have to meet him first."

He knelt at the edge of the ring. The pale blue symbols shone up into his lined face, and he laid his palm flat against the stone.

[ Summon: Combat Unit x1 ] [ Cost: 100 Tower Points ] [ Remaining Tower Points: 50 ]

The symbols brightened from blue to white.