Chapter 176: Longer Than A Ship

Below the column of Bide, the floor of the bowl began to tilt.

Logan felt it in his calves before he had gone two cairns. The grit no longer lay in ripples.

It had been combed into long grooves that all ran the same way, as if every ebb that had ever drained this layer had dragged its fingers through it.

The push between his shoulders grew into a shove. Twice it hurried him a step faster than he meant to go, and he had to set his heels to stop.

"Lean back into it," said Ansel’s voice, a little ahead of him in the white. "Walk on your heels, and let your knees bend. The walkers of Bide call this stretch the Race."

[ New area: The Race ]

"Why the Race?" Vina asked.

"Because the Silver runs here, little one. It is hurrying to the Sink, and it would like you to hurry with it."

Logan could see the old man’s nine and the girl’s nine moving side by side in front of him.

He could see Ansel’s flame as well, now that he was close. It was small and pale, and it rode a hand’s width above the ragged hair.

Every few steps, the single flame dipped as Ansel tipped his head back to look at it.

’He cannot stop checking,’ Logan thought. ’As if it might go out when he is not looking.’

Nothing came at them on that ebb.

Sonic’s voice reported furrows twice from high overhead. Both times they ran away across the bowl and did not turn. Pebble’s red cairns fell behind them one after another, until Logan felt the whole line of them at his back like a string of beads.

Alice walked at his left shoulder. She had not let go of his hand since the stair.

"You are thinking about the lip," she said.

"I am thinking about my feet."

"You are thinking about the lip with your feet." Her fingers squeezed his. "I can tell. You walk heavier."

He did not deny it. Under her seven flames, her face was set and pale.

’Three ebbs,’ she was thinking, although she would not say it aloud.

’He will sit at the bottom of a hole for three ebbs, watching my candles. And I will stand on that lip and hear his voice coming out of a thing I have to cut.’

When the push slackened at last, Xairon raised the house.

It went up faster than the others had, because Vulkarn’s grubs had learned the shape of it. The Seed Courier moved its root. Skyveil blew the room clear, and the slab ground shut, and Draventh ran blue light along every seam.

Twelve of them sat down in the dark around Link’s small flame. Ansel took the place nearest the door.

He folded his long legs under him and laid his staff across his lap, and he looked around at the walls with the same wonder as before.

The flood was still climbing when Nyriel spoke.

It did not speak in words. It laid a pattern across Logan’s sight, the way it had laid the line of a pike across the white. Logan had been half asleep against the wall, and he sat up so fast that Alice woke too.

"There are people out there," he said.

The whole room came awake.

"Where?" said Rishin.

Logan turned his head, following the pattern. It was a cluster of three points, faint and steady. They lay off toward the long side of the bowl, less than a thousand paces from the house.

"Three players," he said. "None of them is moving."

"Under a roof?" asked Isolde.

"Nyriel cannot tell me that."

"There is no roof out that way," said Ansel. "There is a stack of rock, and nothing else as far as I have ever walked. If they are not moving, they are sitting on top of it."

None of them needed it explained. Every one of the family had heard Rishin’s rule at the cliff.

Then Sonic spoke from high above the house. His voice was thin and fast.

"Boss, there is a furrow out past the house. It is a big one. The biggest I have seen." The voice dropped. "It is going round and round the same place. And every time it goes round, it comes in closer."

Ansel’s hands had stopped moving on his staff.

"A great one has found them," he said. "That is how the great ones hunt. They circle a light until they are sure of it, and then they come straight in."

"How long?" Logan asked.

"Three rounds. Four, if the light is small." Ansel looked at the slab.

"I have walked past what is left of the ones who were caught in the open at the flood. There is never very much."

Logan looked at Rishin. The old man was already looking back at him.

"Your units cannot be seen," Rishin said. "Send them, if you are going to send them. The door stays shut until they come back."

"I am sending them."

"Then send enough of them, and send them quickly. And tell them where a great one is tied." Rishin’s hand closed on Stay.

"It is the same place as on the pike, behind the hinge of the jaw. On one of these, the hinge is the size of a cart."

Garen had sat up beside Isolde.

"Take mine as well," he said. "The one in black. He has thrown a spear through worse than a fish."

"And Emberlynx," Alice said. "Its fur burns. Fire shows three paces in the Silver, and three paces is more than any of them has out there."

Logan spoke to his collar.

"Halden. Take Tinkerbell and lead. Terry and Billy go behind her, with the man in black and the Emberlynx. Follow her spark. Pebble, a cairn every hundred paces so they can find their way back to this wall."

"Yes, Lord," said Halden.

"Sonic. Keep your eyes on that furrow and tell me every time it turns."

"Yes, boss!"

Nyriel laid the line, and Logan gave it to them a piece at a time. He sat in a stone box with his eyes shut and told a handful of blind units where to put their feet.

"Halden, bear left. Two hundred paces."

"There is a ridge on that line," Ansel said, leaning toward Logan’s collar. "Go over it, not round it."

Billy reported the ridge with great indignation. Terry reported nothing at all, which meant that Terry was walking.

"It has gone round again, boss," said Sonic. "Closer. It is a long way closer this time."

"Faster," said Logan.

He could feel each new cairn land behind his units, and he could feel the distance shrink between the last of them and the three faint points on the rock.

Halden’s voice came back low.

"Lord. I have found the rock. There are candles on top of it. Six of them, over three heads. I am close enough to touch the rock, and I can see them now."

"Are they hurt?"

"They are frightened. They cannot see us, Lord, but they can hear us." A pause. "One of them has just struck Terry with an axe."

"It did not hurt," said Terry’s voice. "She is very small."

"Tell them who you are," said Logan.

Halden turned his helm toward the rock and raised his voice. The sigil caught it at full strength, and Vina flinched.

"Peace. We are not hunters. Our lord has a house close by, and he has sent us for you. Stay where you are and keep your heads down."

Somebody on the rock answered him in a harsh voice that the sigil only half caught. It sounded like an old woman, and it sounded like a refusal.

Then Sonic shouted.

"It has turned! It has turned in, boss! It is coming straight at the rock!"

The line came across Logan’s sight again. This time it was not a taut thread, as it had been for the pike.

It was a band as wide as a road, and it was coming in through the white toward three small points at a terrible pace.

A panel opened beside it.

[ Floodwake Hullback ] [ Level: 29 ] [ Rank: Legendary ] [ Attack: 980 ] [ Speed: 300 ] [ Constitution: 2,400 ] [ Arcane: 60 ]

"Terry," said Logan. "In front of the rock, right where the line crosses it. It is going to put its jaw into you. Hold it there."

"Yes, Lord."

"Halden, as soon as it stops, get your halberd into the hinge and hold that. Billy, its side, as far back as you can reach. Emberlynx, onto the jaw and burn, so they can see what they are cutting."

"And the man in black?" Garen asked aloud.

"The man in black waits for the light," said Logan.

Garen leaned to his collar. "You heard him. Wait for the light."

The band on his sight came on. He watched it reach the rock. Beside him, Alice had an arrow on the string and nothing to shoot. Across the room, Vina had stopped breathing.

Then the sigil filled with noise.

It was a sound like a ship running aground.

There was a crash of stone and steel together. There was a long grinding scrape that went on and on, and under it Logan heard Terry’s voice, steady and strained.

"Holding."

"It is the jaw!" Billy’s voice was shrill with delight. "It is the whole front of it! Boss, it is as big as a house! It hit Terry, and it does not know why it stopped!"

Logan built the picture out of their voices. Terry had dug both heels into the grit, and the grit had given, and he had gone back three strides with a furrow behind each foot.

The Hullback’s lower jaw lay against his chest plate. The rest of it went away into the white, further than any light could reach.

It could not see what had stopped it. It thrashed blindly, and every lunge drove Terry back another stride toward the rock.

"Emberlynx," Alice said into her collar. "Now."

Fire bloomed in the white.

Two blurs of flame went up the side of the jaw and spread themselves across it. In the three paces of orange light, Halden saw the hinge. He drove the curved head of his halberd in behind it and hauled down with his whole weight.

"Lord," he said. "I have it. It is tied here. I can feel it pulling."

"Garen," said Logan.

"Now," Garen said into his collar.

Nobody on the rock could have seen the throw.

Logan did not see it either. He heard it through Halden’s sigil. There was a noise like a sail tearing, and then a deep wet crack. Billy yelled that the whole Silver had shuddered around him.

The grinding stopped. Terry stopped sliding.

The band of light on Logan’s sight went loose and slack, and then it was gone.

[ Floodwake Hullback slain. ] [ Garen Rezvolt: +500 Tower Points ]

Garen stared at the panel.

"Five hundred," he said slowly. "I have not lifted a finger since the cliff, and I have five hundred points."

"You lent them your man in black," said Isolde. "That was a finger, dear."

Billy’s voice was shaking with outrage and joy together.

"Boss. Boss. It was longer than our whole ring. I went all along it, and I never found the end. And the man in black did it with one spear!"

"Terry," said Logan. "Are you hurt?"

"My chest plate is bent, Lord," Terry said slowly. "I will ask Synthia about it."

They let the three of them in the way they had let in Ansel.

Halden led with Tinkerbell’s blue spark, and the three on the rock followed it. They had no choice. Pebble’s cairns pulled the units home along the line they had come by, and the white gave up its strangers at the wall of the house.

Xairon opened the slab a hand’s width at a time. Skyveil’s wind held the Silver at the door. Three short and broad figures squeezed through the gap one by one with their heads down. The slab closed behind the last of them.

They were dwarves.

The first was an old woman with iron-grey braids bound in copper wire. She had an axe in one fist and she kept it there.

Behind her came a man with a heavy beard and a shield split nearly in two, and last came a young woman with soot-black braids and a bleeding scrape across her cheek.

All three of them stood with their backs to the slab and stared at the room. They looked at the knight with wings of light and the singer with wings of wind, and at the nine people crowded between them around one small torch.

"You are the ones who sent the voices," the old woman said.

"I sent them," said Logan.

She studied him with narrowed eyes. Then she lowered the axe and struck its butt once on the floor, the way Saba struck her stick.

"Hulda," she said. "Of Coppervein. This is my son Bram, and this is his girl, Edda. We owe you three lives."

Bram sank down against the wall as though his legs had been cut. Edda knelt beside him. Helen was already kneeling beside the girl with her palm lit.

"Fifteen," said Xairon through the stone. "The wind has changed your air, but not by much. You have one sleep in it, and nothing over."

Hulda did not sit. She looked at the walls and the floor and the sealed door, and then she looked at Rishin, because everyone else in the room had looked at him when she spoke.

"Where are you bound?" Rishin asked her.

"Where else? To the Sink." Hulda jerked her chin at the slab. "Another two ebbs, by our reckoning. We will be on its lip by the end of the second one."

"The end of an ebb is the wrong end to arrive," Ansel said. "And will you go over all three together?"

"All three of us." Hulda planted her axe again. "We are a small family. A small family meets a small guard, or so a stayer on the Sill told us. Coppervein does not leave its kin at a door."

Rishin let her words stand without answering. Then he looked at Logan, and Logan understood what he was being asked to see.

’Six candles,’ he thought. ’Every one of their faces twice over, rising beside the real ones in the white. And they still think the only thing on that lip is a guard.’