Chapter 174: What Rises

Saba crossed the shelf with her stick striking the stone at every step.

She stopped in front of Ansel. Her eye went to the sleeve of his coat, as dry as if it had never been in anything, and then to the staff in his fist.

Then it went up to the empty air over his head, where the flame had stood.

"How long was your arm in it?" she asked.

"Long enough to catch a stick."

"Long enough for every fish under this column to see a light where there has never been one."

Behind her, the Silver had begun to slide back down the face of the column. It went without a sound, as it always did.

Ansel did not look down at it. He was looking at Saba, and his pale eyes were steady.

"Haskel let somebody in," Saba said. "Do you remember?"

"I remember."

"He walked out at the next flood with one candle over his head, the way he had walked out a hundred times without one. He did not come back up the stair."

"I found his staff," said Ansel. "I carried it up this stair myself."

"Then do not make me carry yours."

Ansel bent his head. When he lifted it again, the corner of his mouth had turned up a little.

"I will be more careful than Haskel was."

"Haskel told me the same thing." Saba’s knuckles had gone white on the head of her stick. "In that same voice, Ansel. Standing about where you are standing now."

Logan had come to his feet against the wall. Alice rose beside him, and so did his mother.

’We did this,’ he thought. ’We walked onto this stone with fifty-nine candles, and we took him from her without even trying.’

"Saba," he said. "If there is anything my family can do for Bide before we go, tell me what it is."

Saba turned her head. Her good eye went over all of them and came back to Logan.

"It is not yours to carry, boy," she said. "Everybody on this stone tries not to let anyone in. Nobody manages it forever. Not even Ansel."

She thumped her stick down once.

"Go to your house. Ansel, you are coming with me. We have a list to make of who will walk at the flood now, and it is shorter than it was."

Ansel went with her as far as the stair. There he stopped and looked back at Vina.

"I will come and find you after the ebb," he said.

"Do you promise?"

"I have never broken a promise in the Silver." He shifted his grip on the staff. "I have not had anybody to make one to."

Then he climbed the stair after Saba and was gone into the trees.

The family followed more slowly. The townsfolk had already scattered back to their round houses, and the paths under the coral trees were empty. The beads on the branches gave off their faint white light over nobody at all.

Vina walked between Rishin and Helen with a hand in each of theirs. She was quiet for once. Logan watched the back of her head and the braids bouncing against her coat.

’She has nine now,’ he thought. ’She has not even seen them yet.’

Alice’s shoulder bumped his as they walked.

"He looked so happy," she murmured. "And she looked as if she had just watched him walk off the lip."

"Both of them are right."

"I know." Her fingers found his. "That is the part I cannot stand."

The empty house beside the stair had a cold hearth in the middle of its floor and a round hole in its roof slab above the hearth.

Nobody lit a fire. Vina heaped the last of Ansel’s ripe beads beside the hearth instead, and they gave off a soft white glow. It was enough to see faces by.

Rishin lowered himself to the floor against the curved wall. He laid Stay across his knees and rested both hands on it, the way another old man might rest his hands on a walking stick.

The rest of them sat down where they could see him.

"You asked me how I crossed it," he said to Garen. "I told you not on that shelf."

"Why not on the shelf, Senior?"

"Because every person sitting on it has a reason why they could not do what I am going to tell you I did." Rishin looked at the doorway, where the light of the beads lay across the threshold.

"Some of them tried. Some of them never got to try. I would not say it in front of them."

Garen nodded slowly.

"When the Silver goes out, it all goes down into the Sink," Rishin began.

"It runs to the lip from every side of the bowl at once. It pours over the edge the way water pours into a drain. It would carry anybody on the lip down with it, if nothing rose to stop them."

"That is the way on?" Isolde asked.

"That is the only way on. You go over the lip at the start of an ebb, and you have to be at the bottom before it turns."

He glanced at the doorway again. "Ansel’s family went over at the wrong end of one. You heard what that cost him."

"But first you have to step onto the lip itself," Rishin went on. "Stand back from it, and your candles only point into the Sink. Step onto it, and they leave you."

Logan sat up. "Leave us?"

"They go down ahead of you. Every flame over your head leans toward the hole and stretches out long, the way a flame stretches in a draft. Then it is gone.

"You are left on the lip with nothing over your head, and the Silver is running past your knees."

Alice’s hand had tightened on Logan’s.

"And then?" she asked.

"Then it comes up."

Rishin told it plainly.

"It comes up out of the Sink against the run of the Silver. It is the color of the Silver, and it is as big as the number of candles it took from you.

"Your candles are on it. Each of them is burning on it, and under every flame there is a face."

"Whose face?" said Helen.

"Whoever the candle pointed at."

Logan knew his seven by heart.

’Alice,’ he thought. ’Mother and Father. Vina. Garen. Isolde. Him.’

He saw them as Rishin said it. He saw seven faces in a wall of white, each one lit gold from above, and all of them turned toward him.

"It calls you," Rishin said.

"Every face on it has a voice, and every voice is the right one. It calls you by the name they use for you.

"It tells you that it is cold, or that it is frightened, or that it has been waiting for you to come."

Alice’s head came up. Logan knew what she was seeing, because he was seeing it too.

A pale body was surging up over the edge of a ledge, with a gold light swinging on a stalk above a mouth full of needles. Two small girls lay flat on the stone a single stride from the drop.

"Like the thing under Orvan’s ledge," Alice said.

"That thing had one voice," said Rishin. "This one has a voice for every candle you brought."

Daniel had been listening with his elbows on his knees. Now he raised his head.

"What happens if a man goes to it?"

"It takes him in. It goes back down with the ebb, and he goes down with it." Rishin’s hands did not move on the sword. "I have never seen anybody come back out."

"Can it be killed?" Garen asked.

"It can be cut. Each face is a weak place, the way the pike is weak behind the jaw. When you cut a face, the candle that was burning over it comes back to you."

"And when you have cut them all?"

"Then there is nothing left of it, and the way down is open."

"How strong is it?" Isolde asked.

"Not very. A pike would give you a harder fight." The old man looked around at all of them. "It does not need to be strong. Nobody dies at the Sink because it is strong."

Garen sat back against the wall.

"Then why does anyone die there at all? We have forty units with us, Senior, and nothing in the Silver can see a single one of them."

"And this is made of nothing they can touch."

Rishin said it flatly. Garen’s brows drew together.

"It is candles," Rishin said. "All of it, from the bottom to the top. Your beasts have never had one. Their blades will pass through it like a hand passing through lamplight, and it will pass through them the same way."

"So only we can cut it," Logan said.

"Only the ones whose candles it wears. Nobody else on that lip can lift a finger to it."

Isolde had been very straight-backed and very calm for all of this. Logan saw her lean forward now.

"And if there are two of us on the lip together?"

"Then one of the voices calling your name is real." Rishin met her eyes. "So you cannot shut your ears."

"You are standing on the lip with that thing over you, and it fills your eyes. Your husband calls to you, and so does the thing that wears his face. They call in the same voice."

"You stop to listen for the real one," he said. "That is all it needs from you."

Isolde sat back. Garen’s arm went around her shoulders.

"In the Sink, the candles are the lies," said Rishin. "Every one of them."

Logan found that his mouth had gone dry.

"You went alone," he said.

"I went first, and I went alone." Rishin looked down at the sword on his knees. "There was nobody on that lip but me. So I knew that every voice was false."

"Ansel was alone too," said Logan.

"Ansel knew it as well as I did. Knowing does not raise your arm. He could not lift his staff to Merel’s face, or to his children’s."

"If you will not cut it and you will not go to it, it waits for the turn. Then it sinks, and it gives your candles back, and the flood carries you off the lip and away across the bowl."

"That is what Ansel means by turned back," he said.

"How many faces did yours have?" Logan asked.

"As many as I had candles." The old man’s thumb moved once along the flat of the blade. "Two of them were theirs."

Vina had worked her way across the floor while he talked. She was sitting against his side now, with her hand on his sleeve, and she looked up at him.

"Did you cut them, Grandpa Rishin?"

"Yes."

"Every one?"

"Every one. When the last of them was gone, the Silver took me over the edge. I reached the bottom with the ebb still running."

Helen’s hand had gone to her mouth.

"And the two of them?" she asked through her fingers.

"They came over the lip together, one ebb after me. What rose for them wore my face, and each other’s." Rishin said it to the beads glowing on the floor.

"I sat at the bottom of the Sink and watched my two candles. They did not move for most of that ebb. Then they came down to me."

Isolde’s lips parted. Logan saw the next question come into her face, and he saw her decide to ask it.

"Senior," she began. "Who were..."

"I will tell you how," Rishin said. "I will not tell you who."

He did not say it unkindly. Isolde inclined her head, and she let it go.

Vina was looking up over the old man’s white head, and Logan knew she was seeing nine flames there in her mind.

"I would not cut you," she said fiercely. "Not even if it had your face. Not even if it asked me to."

"You will not have to, little one." Rishin’s hand came down on top of her head.

"There is a stone around your neck. Do you remember what it says?"

Vina’s fingers went to her collar. She did not take the stone out this time. She only pressed it through the cloth.

"The bearer cannot be called," she said.

Alice turned to look at Logan. Her fingers were touching her collar, at the place where Vina wore the stone.

’He named the price on the first layer,’ Logan thought. ’He sat on the steps across the terrace from that door with his hands in his sleeves, and he already knew he was sitting a whole layer away from this.’

"That is why you knew the price of the stone," Alice said aloud.

"That is why," said Rishin. "Ask anyone on that shelf. The children always answer first."

"You could have told us at Tarry."

"At Tarry, you could not have paid for it." Rishin shrugged. "I would only have handed you a fear that you had no way yet to buy off."

Isolde pressed her palms flat on her knees. Then she straightened up out of Garen’s arm.

"So we split," she said again. It was a plan this time. "Into how many pieces?"

"As many as you can bear to wait for," said Rishin. "And every piece needs somebody in it who can lift a sword against a face."

The heap of beads glowed on the floor between them.

Logan looked around the circle. His mother had both hands pressed together in her lap. His father was looking at his mother. Garen and Isolde were looking at each other, and neither of them was smiling.

He thought of seven faces under seven flames, and of a voice in the white saying his name in exactly the way Alice said it.

He made himself think it all the way through. He thought of lifting Grimlord’s Blade against her face, and against Vina’s, and he held on until his hands stopped wanting to shake.

’If I am alone,’ he thought, ’then none of them is real. Not one. I would know that.’

He looked across at the old man.

"I will go first," Logan said. "Alone."