Chapter 169: Link

The circle gave up a single thread of white light, no thicker than a wrist.

Rishin did not take his palm from the stone. He knelt there with the glare on his lined face, and he watched it climb.

It spread at the top first. It made a round head and a pair of broad shoulders, and then one arm held out to the side. There was a flame at the end of that arm before there was a hand to hold it.

The glare faded from the rest, and the flame stayed.

The figure in the circle was a young man, short and thick through the chest. He wore a quilted jacket with scorch marks up both cuffs.

His hair was cropped close, and a smear of soot ran across his forehead, as if he had wiped it with a dirty wrist.

In his right fist he held a torch of bound pitch as long as his forearm. It burned yellow, and against the silver light of the camp it looked very small.

[ Torch Bearer (Normal) Summoned ]

He did not look at Rishin first. He looked at the torch, and he turned it in his fingers until he seemed satisfied with the flame. Only then did he look down at the old man kneeling at the edge of the ring.

"Master," he said. His voice was low and careful. "Where do you want the light?"

"Not Master," said Rishin.

He got up off his knees. The Torch Bearer waited for him.

"I have been called a good many things," Rishin said. "I handed them all back with everything else. The little one here calls me Grandpa. You may choose for yourself."

The young man thought about it with a crease between his brows.

"Grandfather," he decided. "Where do you want the light, Grandfather?"

Vina clapped both hands over her mouth.

"Hold it up," Rishin told him.

The Torch Bearer lifted it to the full stretch of his arm. He did not ask how long.

"Now suppose I told you to put it down and run."

The crease deepened. The young man looked through the hedge at the shining floor beyond it, and then back at Rishin.

"First I would put it where you could find it," he said. "Then I would run."

Rishin’s eyes creased at the corners.

"Link," he said.

"Like a chain?" Vina asked.

"A link is an old word for a torch, little one. There was a time when a boy with a link walked ahead of travellers in the dark, and they followed his fire home."

"It is a piece of a chain as well."

"It is that as well." Rishin looked at the young man. "Both will do."

"Link," the Torch Bearer repeated. He nodded slowly. He looked like a man who has been handed a tool and found that it fits his hand.

Rishin opened the panel to set the name. Logan watched him read it.

[ Torch Bearer ] [ Name: Link ] [ Rank: Normal ] [ Lifespan: 365 days ] [ Lifespan may be exchanged for Abyss Points at any Relic Shop. ]

The old man’s eyes stopped on the last line. He closed the panel with one finger.

"Three hundred and sixty-five," he said to Link. "That is seven more than I have. Try not to spend them on me."

"I do not know how to spend them, Grandfather."

"Good. Stay ignorant for as long as you can."

Logan had come up beside the ring.

"When I have a hundred points again, I can put a second year on him," he said. "On every one you name. You only have to ask."

"I know what you can do, boy." Rishin did not turn his head. "I will ask you on the day he needs it, and not before. A man who is handed years stops counting what they are for."

Billy had rolled in close to inspect the newcomer. He circled him once.

"He has a torch," Billy announced. "In the fog. Boss, that is actually useful. We had a torch once. We put him in Pebble."

Pebble had come to look as well. He tilted his head, as if somebody were speaking just behind his ear.

"Wick says the grip is right," he reported. "He says to hold it higher."

Link raised the torch a hand’s width without a word.

"Fire shows three paces in the Silver and no further," said Xairon. It had left the pike to come and see. "I tried it at the stair while all of you were admiring candles."

"Three paces is three times what the rest of you will have," Rishin said.

By then the bright rock showed nine steps below the line, and the Silver was still falling.

Rishin called them all to the head of the lower stair. He crouched there, and with the point of his sword he scratched three marks on the black stone.

The first was a short upright stroke. The second was a long line that sloped away from its foot. The third was a small ring at the far end.

"This is the cliff, and we are on it," he said. He touched the upright stroke.

"The floor of this layer is a bowl. It is a very wide one, and we are standing on its lip. The lowest place lies a long way out. That is where the layer ends."

He tapped the ring.

"When the Silver goes out, it runs downhill toward that place. You will feel it pushing between your shoulders. When it comes in, it runs back into your face."

"So nobody needs a map," he went on. "You walk with it while it is leaving, and you stop when it turns. At the slack it only slides along the cliff, as it was sliding when you first saw it. Do not follow it then."

"How many ebbs is it to the low place?" Garen asked.

"The first time, it took me more than a dozen. I was slower than you are going to be."

"And when it turns?"

"You are under a roof before it is full." Rishin looked up at them.

"The small hunters swim at every tide. The great ones come in with the flood. I do not want any of you standing in the open with your candles lit when they arrive."

"I can roof us," Isolde said. "I could roof us the whole way, if it comes to that."

"You could roof us for about as long as the Ribs took you. Then somebody would have to carry you." Rishin shook his head.

"And it would do no good. The Silver comes through light the way water comes through cloth. I have seen stronger walls than yours tried against it. A wall of that kind stops what strikes it, and the Silver never strikes. It only leans."

Isolde frowned at her hands.

"People have tried light and glass and prayer against it," the old man went on. "What keeps it out is stone with every gap closed. Then you need somebody patient enough to find the gaps."

Xairon had begun to slide between shapes.

"A house of stone, raised in the middle of that, and sealed. I will need Vulkarn’s grubs for the blocks. I will need Draventh on every seam."

Several of its eyes swiveled toward Alice. "And I will need your singer’s wind to blow the house empty before the door is shut."

Skyveil’s hum rose half a note. She looked pleased to be asked.

"It need not stand still," Xairon added. "I could build it small and have it carried. A box for those who shine. Nothing in that layer would ever know it was passing."

Daniel looked up with real interest. Rishin shook his head a second time.

"Build one, and keep it ready for the day somebody is hurt. Not before." He nodded at Helen and Daniel. "The Silver is the one place on this layer that pays, and it pays only for what it can see."

"Carry these two across in a box," he said, "and they will meet the wardens at the far side exactly as weak as they left the cliff."

"And the little one?" Isolde asked.

"She walks with her hand in mine. Nine more layers lie under this one. A child who is carried past the second learns nothing that will keep her alive in the third."

"I can walk," Vina said, with dignity.

Rishin stood, and he set them in their places.

Draventh went down the line while he spoke. It pressed a thumb to each collar in turn, and a small blue mark sank into the cloth or the plate and stayed there.

Logan knew them. Half of Aegis Isle had worn a comm sigil through the Warlord match.

"Speak, and every sigil hears you," Rishin said. "So do not chatter."

"I never chatter," said Billy.

"Under the Silver, your units are blind past the length of an arm. So each of them keeps a single thing in mind."

The old man pointed with the sword. "Halden walks at the front. The fairy rides on him with her light lit. Whoever is behind Halden follows that spark."

Halden’s helm turned toward Logan. Logan nodded, and Halden planted the butt of his halberd on the rock.

"Skyveil walks in the middle, with the family. Every unit keeps her note at the same distance, the way a ship keeps a lighthouse. That makes a ring, and the ring moves when she moves."

He turned to Pebble.

"A cairn every hundred paces. If the ring breaks, every one of you walks back to the last cairn and waits there."

Pebble touched two fingers to his brow.

Sonic had been edging forward the whole time. Rishin looked at him.

"You saw their backs from the air. From up there, you will see their furrows a long way before they reach us. You and the falcon fly above the Silver for the whole of the march."

"When a seam turns toward the candles, you say so into the sigil," he added. "You say where, and you say how fast."

Sonic’s whole face lit.

"The whole march," he said. "In the air."

"The whole march."

"Boss, I like this layer," said Sonic.

"I do not," Billy muttered.

"And me?" Alice asked. She had one hand on her bow. "I cannot shoot what I cannot see."

"You shot the Matron through ten thousand birds without looking," Rishin said. "Ask the arrow where it wants to go, as you did then. And keep your units to their half of the ring. They know your voice best."

Alice took her hand off the bow. She looked a little less grim.

Rishin came to the family last.

"You walk close enough to touch. Each of you has a pod, and each of you knows whose candles are whose. If the worst happens, you do not run toward a light. You break the pod."

He held his left hand down to Vina, and she took it.

"You do not let go of this in the Silver," he told her. "If I fall down, you fall down with me, and Solveig picks up the pair of us."

"What if you let go?"

"I will not," Rishin said. He shifted his grip on the plain sword in his other hand. "That is what this is for."

Then he turned to Logan’s parents.

"You two have a pike each to kill before the Silver turns."

"A what?" said Daniel.

"You are Level 4, on a layer where the small fish are Level 17. That is the first thing we mend." The old man’s voice was matter-of-fact.

"On the first shelf, I made you fight for every point. There was a thing there small enough to teach you. Nothing in the Silver is small enough. So here the units hold, and you finish."

"That does not sound like a lesson," Helen said slowly.

"It is not one. It is a wage. Take it, and do not be proud about it."

Daniel hefted his rock and said that he had never been proud about a wage in his life.

They went down the bright stair with the ebb.

It was a long descent. The polished rock gleamed like wet pearl under their feet, and it was not slippery. Logan stopped counting steps at six hundred.

The lower they went, the quieter it grew. The Silver took sound the way deep snow takes it. Before long, he could hear Billy’s rim on the stone and very little else.

The surface fell away below them as fast as they walked. On the left, the stone columns came back up out of it one by one, dark and streaming.

He passed level with their flat tops. What grew there were trees of a sort. They had no leaves. Their white branches forked and forked again like coral, and every twig ended in a bead that held a little of the silver light.

Vina wanted one of the beads. She was told no.

Far out over the Silver, a white spark and a smaller pale one were turning slow circles. Sonic’s voice came out of the sigil on Logan’s collar, thin and clear and very happy.

"Nothing yet, boss. It is all flat."

The dry steps ran out before the Silver had finished falling.

Halden halted on the lowest of them, with Tinkerbell standing on his shoulder plate. Her hard blue light came on.

"Lord?"

"Go," Logan said.

Halden walked down into the Silver. It took him at the knee and then at the chest, and then his helm went under. The blue spark sank with him. Logan could follow it for three steps and no further.

Terry went after him, and then Billy. Half the units followed them in a long file, one by one and without a sound.

Skyveil went next, with her note held steady. The family went with her.

Link walked just ahead of Rishin with his torch held high. The yellow flame went into the Silver and became a smudge of gold. Then that was swallowed too.

Helen and Daniel went hand in hand. Fourteen flames woke over the two of them and sank out of sight.

They were not lost. Logan could still see every one, hanging in the brightness like stars behind thin cloud.

"Shut your eyes," Rishin told Vina. "Open them when it is over your head. Then look for your mother’s candles."

He walked her in, with Solveig on her other side. Nine flames lit above the white head, and eight above the braids.

Garen and Isolde went after them.

Alice’s fingers closed around Logan’s.

"Together," she said.

The cold climbed his legs. It reached his chest and his throat, and he took one breath out of habit, although the Silver had never yet stopped anyone breathing. Then it closed over his head.

There was no stair any longer, and no cliff. There was only white.

In the white hung fifty-nine small flames, and every one of them was pointing at somebody who was loved.