Chapter 170: The Drowned Road

For the first twenty steps, Logan walked by his feet alone.

He could feel the stair under his boots, and he could feel Alice’s fingers locked through his. He could see neither.

When he held his free hand in front of his face, it was a grey shape with no edges. At the full stretch of his arm, it was gone.

Only the candles cut the white. When he turned his head, Alice’s face hung beside him under her seven flames. It was dim and gold, like a face seen by a nightlight.

Behind them, he heard the second half of the ring come down off the stair and close the circle.

Then the stair ended, and his boot came down on a surface that gave a little.

[ New area: The Shallows ]

He crouched and put his palm on it. It was grit, as fine as flour and as cold as the Silver, and it lay in long ripples like the bed of a stream.

’The ground of the second layer,’ he thought. ’I am standing on it, and an arm’s length at a time is all of it I will ever see.’

The Silver pressed gently between his shoulder blades, like a hand. It was pushing him the way they meant to go.

He learned to read the candles before he had gone a hundred paces.

A ring that hung large and bright was close. A ring that hung small was further off. Alice’s seven burned at his left shoulder. Ahead of him floated two rings side by side, and those were his mother and father.

Two more hung out to the right, close together. Those were Garen and Isolde.

In front of his parents, a ring of eight bobbed along at the height of a man’s shoulder. A ring of nine moved beside it.

Two of those nine still pointed down. They pointed into the grit now, and through it, and Logan made himself stop looking at them.

Vina’s eighth flame leaned back over her head. It pointed up and behind, toward a cliff he could no longer see.

’Teska is still there,’ he thought. ’Vina will check that flame every time she is in this. So will I.’

There was one more thing in the white that had a direction. It was a single clear note. It came from just ahead of him, steady and unhurried, and every unit in the party was walking in a ring around it.

He could not see one of them.

The ground was not empty.

Things came out of the white at arm’s length and were gone again one step later. A trunk as pale as bone slid by on his right, forking overhead into branches he could not follow.

A shell lay half buried in the grit, ribbed and curled, and it was as wide as Terry’s chest.

Once his boot knocked against a curved bar of ivory that stood up out of the ground. There was another beside it, and another. He walked down a whole row of them before he understood that they were ribs.

"Logan." Alice’s voice was close and flat. The Silver took the echo out of everything. "How big was the thing those came from?"

"Bigger than anything I want to meet with my candles lit."

"That is not a number."

"No," he agreed.

Every hundred paces, a dull red glow swam up close on the left and fell behind. Pebble was laying his cairns.

Logan found that he knew where each of them lay, all the way back to the foot of the stair, as surely as he knew where his feet were.

Billy’s voice came out of the comm sigil on his collar. It was sulky.

"Boss. I am rolling in a circle around a song, and I cannot see my blades. I am not complaining. I am informing you."

"I am informed, Billy."

"Do not chatter," said Rishin’s voice from the same sigil.

"That was not chatter," said Billy. "That was a report."

Sonic’s voice came next, and it was not sulky at all.

"Seam! On the left of the candles, a long throw out. It is thin and it is fast, and it has turned straight at you."

Logan’s hand tightened on Alice’s.

"Nyriel," he said.

The answer arrived the way Nyriel’s answers always did, laid straight across his sight. It was a line. It ran from the open Silver to the middle of the candles, as true as a taut string, and it crossed the ring at one place.

"Billy. A pike is coming in, and it will cross the ring right where you are. Stay there."

"It cannot see me, boss?"

"It cannot see you."

"Then I will not even roll," Billy said thoughtfully. "I will only spin."

Logan heard it. It was a low hum from the left, rising, as if somebody had set a great top going in the fog. He opened Sword Intent. A single taut thread was racing in toward the candles from far out.

It met a wheel of blades that it had no way of knowing was there.

The sound was short and wet. The thread snapped.

[ Glassjaw Pike slain. ] [ Logan Wolf: +150 Tower Points ]

"Boss," said the sigil. Then, a great deal louder, "BOSS. It ran into me. It ran right into me, and it never even looked."

"I told you it would not."

"I did not do anything! I was standing still!"

"You were spinning."

"I was standing still and spinning." Billy’s voice had filled with a slow, terrible joy. "Boss. I have changed my mind about this layer."

On Logan’s left, Alice was laughing so hard that her seven candles shook.

"He killed a fish by being in its way," she said. "Of course he did."

"Another, boss," Sonic called. "On the right this time."

"Not the wheel," Rishin said from somewhere ahead. "Have it held, and have it brought to me. Helen. Your wage."

Logan gave the line to Terry.

He never saw the catch. He heard a heavy slap, like a side of meat thrown onto a table, and then the long scrape of plated feet coming inward through the grit.

A wall of scored armor loomed up an arm’s length from him.

Terry had the front half of a pike locked against his chest. The rest of it went back into the white behind him.

One of his arms was clamped around its body, and the other hand held its long jaws shut. It was thrashing hard enough to throw his shoulders from side to side, and his feet did not shift.

It was like a fish blown from glass. Logan could see the plates of Terry’s arm straight through it.

"Held, ma’am," Terry said.

Seven candles had come up on Logan’s right. Helen’s face showed beneath them, pale and set. Daniel’s ring hung just behind hers.

Rishin was there too, under his nine. He had not let go of Vina. Her eight flames burned at his shoulder, and the gold of them showed a gauntlet resting on her other arm.

The old man lifted his sword in his right hand. He laid the tip very lightly against the pike, just behind the hinge of its jaw.

"Here," he said. "All of it is tied together in this one place. It is no wider than my thumbnail. Put your palm where the point is."

Helen put her palm there. Her hand was shaking. Rishin drew the sword away.

"It is looking at me," she said.

"It is looking at your candles. It has never once seen your face." His voice was quiet. "Now."

[ Spring Lance (Lv1) ]

The jet hissed against the clear skin and went in.

The pike went rigid from end to end. Then all of the fight ran out of it, and it hung over Terry’s arm like a wet coat.

[ Glassjaw Pike slain. ] [ Helen Wolf: +150 Tower Points ] [ Helen Wolf: Level 4 → 8 ]

Helen stared at the panel. She looked up at the scored faceplate above her.

"That was yours, Terry," she said. "You did every part of it."

"The last part was yours, ma’am." Terry lowered the body to the grit. "I was told that is the part this place pays for."

"Twenty points," said Rishin. "Put them all into Arcane. Your spring is your sword arm."

The third pike was Daniel’s.

Halden held that one. He pinned it to the ground under the shaft of his halberd, and Rishin found the place behind the jaw again and touched it with his sword.

Daniel did not ask whether it was looking at him. He knelt in the grit and brought his rock down on the mark twice.

[ Glassjaw Pike slain. ] [ Daniel Wolf: +150 Tower Points ] [ Daniel Wolf: Level 4 → 8 ]

"Well," Daniel said. He was breathing hard. "That works. It is a strange way to earn a living."

"You have carried other men’s loads all your life," Rishin said. "Let somebody hold one for you."

Daniel did not reply. Logan saw his father’s seven candles dip as he bowed his head.

Garen’s voice drifted over from the right, mournful and close.

"I am a Tier-9 player. I am walking in a fog, holding my wife’s hand, while a wheel does my work."

"You are doing it beautifully, dear," Isolde said.

After the third seam, the Silver left them alone for the length of four cairns.

That was when the small ones came.

Logan saw them first around his mother’s ring. They were sparks at the start, a few points of gold that had not been there before. Then there were dozens, and they were all around him as well.

They were fish, none of them longer than his finger, and they were as clear as the pikes had been. They swam up in a cloud and gathered beneath the candles. Each flame lit a handful of them from within, like drops of honey.

Vina’s laugh rang out ahead. It was the first loud sound any of them had made on purpose since the stair.

"They are in my hair! Grandpa Rishin, they are in my hair!"

"They will not hurt you, little one."

"What do they want?"

"The light. They are the one thing in the Silver that asks for nothing more than that."

Alice had lifted her free hand into the cloud. The little fish parted around her fingers and closed again. Under her candles, Logan could see her smiling.

’A whole layer built to hunt us by the people we love,’ he thought. ’And there is this in it as well.’

His chest hurt, and he was smiling too. He could not have said which had come first. He walked on, with small bright things swimming in and out of his candles.

The push between his shoulders began to slacken.

He noticed it as a missing weight. Then the Silver was not moving at all, and the wisps in front of his face hung where they were.

"It is turning," Rishin called. "Stop here. Xairon."

Logan saw almost nothing of the building. He heard it.

There was a deep grinding under the ground as Vulkarn’s grubs went to work. Blocks thudded into place, one against another, very fast. Now and then one of Xairon’s many hands appeared with a slab in it and went away again.

A dark wall rose an arm’s length in front of him. He followed it with his palm to a corner, and then to a low doorway.

"Inside," Xairon said. "All of you who shine. The knight and the singer as well, and the boy with the torch."

They ducked in one after another. The Silver had come in with them, and their candles still burned under a ceiling that Logan could not see.

A long root hand reached in through the doorway beside his boot. The Seed Courier pushed two fingers into the joint between two floor slabs, and a pale shoot came up between them.

[ Home Root set: The Shallows ] [ The root at Tidemark has withered. ]

It took the old pod back from each of them and handed in a fresh one. Then the hand withdrew.

"Now," said Xairon.

A wind began at the back of the room.

It was soft and it was enormous. It took the Silver and rolled it toward the door like smoke toward a chimney. The white thinned around Logan until he could see walls.

It was a single room of fitted stone, eight paces long. Skyveil was walking down the middle of it with her back to him.

Her wings were made of clear wind, and he had never seen them open fully before. They reached from wall to wall.

She drove the last of the Silver out through the doorway and stopped on the threshold. The wind did not slacken.

A slab ground across in front of her, a hand’s width at a time, and she blew through the narrowing gap until there was no gap left.

Blue runes ran around the edge of the slab and across every seam in the walls. One ringed the foot of the green shoot. Draventh was sealing them from the far side, and each mark faded as it took.

Fifty-nine candles went out together.

Link’s torch was the only light.

He had pinched it down until the flame was no bigger than an acorn. It sat in a notch that Xairon had cut for it beside the door. By that small glow, Logan could see his mother’s face. There was grit on her cheek.

He could see his father, and Vina, and the lines around Rishin’s eyes. Garen had an arm around Isolde, and her head had dropped onto his shoulder. Skyveil folded her wings and settled against the slab with her hum sunk almost to nothing.

Alice’s eyes went over his face as though he had been away on a long journey.

"There you are," she said.

Helen sat down against the wall and began to laugh, quite helplessly. Daniel sat down next to her.

"It holds air for one sleep and a little over," Xairon said through the stone. "I have counted eleven of you and one very small fire. Do not waste it on speeches."

"Every unit has a hand on the wall, Lord," Halden added from the sigil. "We will be here."

Logan opened his panel.

[ Tower Points: 160 ]

His mother had two hundred and twenty. His father had a hundred and ninety-five, and both of them had doubled their levels in one walk.

’The first layer made us hunt for every point,’ he thought. ’This one sends them to us. All it asks is that we stand in the open and be seen.’

He glanced at Rishin. The old man had sat down beside the sealed door with his sword across his knees. His head was bent a little toward the floor.

There were no candles in this room to show where he was looking. Logan knew all the same.

Vina had taken the grey stone out of her collar to make sure of it. She put it back.

"Teska was still there," she told nobody in particular. "I looked before the door shut."

Then she lay down with her head on Solveig’s knee. She was asleep before Daniel had unpacked the food that Martha had sent in with them.

Logan woke to Halden’s voice.

It came from his collar, pitched low, and it was as level as it always was.

"Lord. Are you awake?"

"I am now."

He opened his panel out of habit as he sat up.

[ Time remaining: 357 days ]

The torch still burned its one small flame. Around him the family slept in a tangle of coats. Rishin had not moved from his place beside the door.

"The Silver is full, Lord. Nyriel has counted two of the great ones over the house since you slept. Neither of them slowed."

"Is that what you woke me for?"

"No, Lord. A man has walked onto the point of my halberd."

Logan was on his feet with his hand on Grimlord’s Blade.

"A man. Out there, at the flood."

"Yes, Lord. I did not see him until I had gone up the shaft to his chest. He stopped when the steel touched his coat. He has asked me, very politely, whether there is a door."

"Is he alone?"

"I have felt all around him. He is alone."

Logan looked at the sealed slab, and at the old man sitting beside it. Rishin’s eyes were open. He had heard every word.

"How many candles does he have, Halden?"

"None, Lord," said Halden. "I have looked from a hand away. There is nothing over his head at all."