Chapter 179: Seven

Nobody tried to talk him out of it.

Alice did not let go of his hand. His mother looked at him over Vina’s head with a white face, and she nodded once. Garen put a hand on Logan’s shoulder and left it there.

They stood on the slope until the push at their legs began to weaken. Then Ansel called them down, and they went down below the rise as they had before, and Xairon raised the house.

The flood came out of the Sink with its long low hiss. The walls shook, and the runes held, and Halden reported every unit at the wall.

There were twelve of them in the house now. The dwarves’ corner was empty.

Rishin waited until the others had settled before he came to sit beside Logan.

He laid Stay across his knees. He listened to the flood outside before he spoke.

"You have seen what it does," he said at last. "So I will tell you only two things."

"Go on."

"Cut the hardest one first. Do it while your arm still belongs to you." The old man’s eyes were steady on his. "Every face after that is easier. Every face you leave for last grows heavier while you wait."

Logan nodded slowly.

"And the second thing?"

"Count them as they go. There will be seven. When you have cut seven, there are no more, whatever you hear after that."

"Whatever I hear," Logan repeated.

"It will not stop talking because it is losing." Rishin rose with a hand on the wall. "It will be talking to you with the last face it has."

Vina came next.

She did not ask permission. She crawled across the floor and sat down on Logan’s boots, and she looked up at him with her chin set.

"If it has my face," she said, "cut that one first."

"Vina."

"I mean it. It is not me." She tapped the stone through her collar. "I will be back on the slope holding Grandpa’s sleeve. I cannot be called, so it is not me. Even if it says it is. Even if it cries."

Logan’s throat closed on whatever he had meant to say.

Vina waited, and when nothing came, she nodded as though he had agreed. Then she put both arms around his neck and squeezed until his ears rang.

"Cut mine first," she said into his collar. "Promise."

"I promise," said Logan.

Alice lay down beside him when the others slept.

She did not talk about the lip. She talked about the cafe, and about their parents’ new house, and about nothing at all to do with the lip.

Her voice was quiet and ordinary, and he understood that she was giving him a thing to hold that was not seven faces.

When she stopped, he thought she had fallen asleep. Then her hand found his face in the dark.

"When it says your name," she said, "it will say it the way I do."

"I know."

"So listen for the difference." Her thumb moved once along his cheekbone. "When I say it, I am never asking you to come to me. I am telling you I am already there."

[ Time remaining: 351 days ]

Halden woke them at the ebb.

They went up the slope in the first of the ebb. The Silver ran around their waists toward the edge, and their heads were in the open air, and all of their candles leaned ahead of them toward the lip.

Rishin stopped at the same place as before. The family stopped with him.

Logan did not.

Halden walked on at his right side, with Tinkerbell standing on his shoulder plate. Terry walked on his left. Billy rolled ahead of him, and Pebble came behind with a red stone already in the cradle of his sling.

"I know it cannot touch us, boss," Billy said. "I am coming anyway."

"I know you are."

"I want to see the bottom first. Before Terry."

"I have no wish to see it first," said Terry.

Logan heard Alice say his name behind him. He did not turn around. He kept walking until the slope ran out under his boots and there was nothing ahead but the long, smooth pour of the Silver over the edge.

He stepped onto the lip.

The Silver streamed around his knees and poured away into the dark in front of him.

He looked up.

His seven flames were leaning forward over the edge. They stretched toward the dark, all of them together, like the flames of candles in a doorway when a door slams somewhere deep in a house. They tugged.

Then they were gone, and there was nothing over his head but grey air.

Behind him, on the slope, he could still see his family’s candles plainly. All of them were leaning past him into the Sink.

He drew Grimlord’s Blade.

It came up out of the Sink.

It was bigger than the thing that had risen for the dwarves. It climbed against the fall of the Silver until it stood over him like a pale wall. Seven small flames burned on its front.

Under each one there was a face.

Alice was at the top, looking down at him. His mother was below her, and his father beside her. Garen’s face was there, and Isolde’s. The old man’s was there too, lined and calm.

Vina’s was lowest of all. It was almost level with his face.

They were all looking at him.

"Logan," said Alice’s voice.

It said it exactly as she said it, with the same small lift at the end.

"Logan, come here. I cannot see anything. Please."

He opened Sword Intent.

The pale wall went dim and grey under it, the way everything did. Seven knots burned in it, one behind each face, each no larger than a thumbnail. They were the places where the whole thing was tied together.

’Hardest first,’ he thought. ’While my arm still belongs to me.’

But the hardest one was not Alice.

He knew it as soon as he looked down at the lowest face. It was not crying yet. It was only looking at him, with her braids and her chin and the stubborn set of her mouth.

He had promised.

He took one step toward it, and his arm would not lift.

"Big brother," said Vina’s voice. It was small and frightened, and it was exactly right. "Big brother, I lost the stone. I cannot find it. Help me look."

Logan’s sword arm hung at his side like somebody else’s.

’It is not her,’ he told himself. ’She is behind you on the slope. She has the stone. She told you.’

He knew it, and his arm did not move.

The pale wall leaned.

It came down toward him like a cliff face coming away, slow and enormous. Every face on it turned toward him and smiled.

Billy’s blades went through its side in a blur of steel and came out the other side without touching anything at all.

"Boss!" Billy shrieked. "I cannot hit it! Boss, move!"

Logan stood rooted. The small face held out its hands to him.

"DOWN!"

The voice came from behind him, from the slope.

It was high and fierce and very loud, and it was not asking him to come to anybody.

Logan dropped.

He did not decide to. He had watched her drop to that word on the lawn at home until it was a game, and he had dropped to it himself on the shelf under the hookwings.

Now it was her voice saying it, and his knees answered before his mind did.

He went flat on the lip with his arms over his head, and the Silver poured over his back toward the edge.

The leaning wall closed on the air where he had been standing.

He rolled onto his back under the running Silver. He could see nothing past his arm, but the face that wore his sister’s braids hung inside that reach under its flame. Sword Intent showed him the knot behind it, burning.

’Cut mine first,’ she had said. ’Promise.’

[ Broken Chain ]

Grimlord’s Blade went up through the knot.

The face broke apart like a reflection in struck water. Its small flame leaped off the pale front and flew to him, and it settled over his head again, leaning back down the slope.

He knew where it pointed without looking back. He looked anyway.

Far down the slope, a small girl stood waist-deep in the Silver with both hands cupped around her mouth. Nine flames burned over her braids, all of them leaning past him into the dark. The grey stone swung at her collar.

After that it was only work.

He came up off the stone and stepped in to the pale wall. Sword Intent found the next knot, and he cut it.

His mother’s face burst and her flame came home. He did not let himself hear what it had been saying.

His father’s face said, "Son," in a voice like a hand on his shoulder. Logan cut it while the word was still in the air.

Garen’s face laughed at him, and Isolde’s face said his name, calm and cool. He cut them both. Each flame flew back to him and leaned down the slope toward the person whose face it had worn.

[ Reaper’s Stride: 5 stacks. Speed +30%. ]

The thing was shrinking. It shrank with every face it lost. The Silver began to run through it toward the edge.

The old man’s face was next.

"Boy," it said. It sounded tired. "Leave me the last hand’s width."

Logan cut it.

Then there was only one face left, at the very top of what remained.

It was Alice’s.

It hung over him under the last flame, and it was watching him with her eyes. Its mouth was the same shape as hers when she was trying not to smile.

"Logan," it said. "Come here."

He stood under it with the blade raised, and he listened to it as she had told him to.

It was her voice, with her little lift at the end of his name. It was asking him to come.

’When I say it,’ she had said in the dark, ’I am telling you I am already there.’

"You are not her," Logan said aloud.

[ Broken Chain ]

The last face burst.

The seventh flame came back to him, and the thing slumped into the running Silver and was gone. There was only the Silver running past his knees toward the edge. Beyond it lay the grey air and the dark past the lip.

[ Insight gained. ] [ Sword Intent: 54% → 57% ]

No other panel opened. The Sink did not pay for what it had cost him. He had not expected it to.

Logan turned around.

Seven flames stood over his head. All seven leaned down the slope, toward seven people a long throw away. Their candles still leaned out over the lip beyond him.

Alice had both hands pressed over her mouth. His mother was holding on to his father. Garen had his arm around Isolde, and the old man stood very straight with a small girl hanging on to his sleeve.

Vina waved.

Logan lifted Grimlord’s Blade over his head so that all of them could see it.

The push at his legs grew stronger. The Silver was running hard now, and the lip had nothing left on it to hold him there.

"Boss," said Billy reverently. "Now we go first."

"Now we go first," said Logan.

The ebb took him off his feet.

He went over the edge with the Silver. Billy went whooping beside him. Terry’s great plated shape fell after them, and Halden followed with Tinkerbell’s blue spark on his shoulder.

Pebble came last, his sling ready for the bottom. Logan went down into the dark of the Sink with seven small flames over his head, and every one of them was pointing home.