Chapter 182: Twenty-Five

The light woke all of them at once.

The white thread came down out of the dark, and thickened, and became a column. The Sump began to fill.

They got up off the shelf together and walked down the slope into the rising Silver, and they stood in a row at the edge of the pool with their hands linked.

Logan was in the middle. Alice held his left hand and his mother his right. Isolde stood on Alice’s other side, and Daniel stood at the end with his free hand already curled around his rock.

Candles came up over all five of them.

Logan did not look at his other four. He looked at the three that leaned up into the falling Silver.

Garen. The old man. Vina.

Every one of them in that row had the same three. Logan could see them burning over the whole row, fifteen small flames all leaning the same way, all pointing up the long white slide at a lip none of them could see.

’Twenty-five,’ he thought. ’On one thing. And two of the faces on it are the ones he came back for.’

The flames did not move.

They did not move while the pool rose to their knees, or to their waists. They did not move while Helen whispered Vina’s name, over and over.

None of them mentioned the wrong end of the ebb. They had all watched Isolde and Daniel come out of the last of the column.

Isolde stood very straight. She was holding Alice’s hand so hard that Logan could see her knuckles shining.

"He said he would be quick," she said. She was not talking to any of them. "He is never quick when it is me."

Alice did not answer her mother. She was looking at Vina’s flame.

Vina had her eyes shut.

Grandpa Rishin had told her to shut them on the slope, before they went up to the lip. He had knelt down in the Silver in front of her and put his hands on her shoulders.

"You will not look," he had said. "Not once, not even at the end. You will hold my hand, and you will keep your eyes shut, and you will listen to Garen. Do you understand me?"

"Why can I not look?"

He had not answered that. He had only waited until she said yes.

The units had stayed down the slope, as they had for the dwarves. They would come over the edge after.

So she did not look.

She felt the lip under her boots, and the Silver running past her knees. She felt her candles go.

It was a strange feeling, like a hat lifting off in the wind. Grandpa’s hand was dry and hard in hers, and Garen’s big hand was on her other shoulder.

Then the voices began.

She heard Mom first.

It was Mom’s voice saying her name, and saying that she was lost and could not find the way. Vina listened to it.

It was exactly Mom’s voice. It was like hearing somebody read Mom’s words out of a book, and it did not pull at her at all.

’The bearer cannot be called,’ she thought, and she held on to Grandpa’s hand.

She heard Logan’s voice, and Alice’s, and Dad’s. She heard Teska calling her, and Mister Ansel saying that he had come down after all. None of them pulled.

She heard the hum of Garen’s pistols beside her, and after every shot a sound like a soap bubble popping. Every time it happened, Garen counted aloud.

"Four," he said. "Five. Six."

Then she heard the other two voices.

They were not calling her.

They were calling Grandpa, and they were voices she had never heard.

Grandpa’s hand moved in hers.

He took a step. Vina’s arm went out straight in front of her, and her boots scraped forward over the stone.

"Senior!" Garen shouted. His pistols went on humming beside her, and he did not stop firing.

Grandpa took another step. He did not answer. He was pulling Vina along behind him the way the Silver pulled at her legs, steadily, without any hurry at all.

Vina did not open her eyes. She remembered a different thing he had told her, on the cliff above the Silver, before any of them had gone in.

So she sat down.

She sat down right there on the lip with the Silver running around her, and she held on to his hand with both of hers, and she did not let go.

"If you fall down," she said loudly, "I fall down with you. You said. And Solveig is not here to pick us up, so you had better not."

Grandpa stopped.

She felt it go through his arm. It went all the way down into his fingers, and his hand closed on hers so hard that it hurt.

The two voices went on calling him, and none of them answered.

Then Grandpa said, "Garen. Leave me those two."

"Senior..."

"Leave me those two," said Grandpa. "Cut the rest. Those two are mine."

His hand stayed in hers. She felt him lift his other arm.

There were two soft pops, very close together. Then Grandpa made a noise she had not known a person could make. It was not crying. It was quieter than that, and worse.

The two voices stopped.

Vina kept her eyes shut and held on to his hand, and she listened to Garen counting all the way up to twenty-three.

The pool was only at their waists when the three flames moved.

All fifteen swung together over the row and stood straight up the column, and Alice’s grip on Logan’s hand jerked tight.

Garen came out of the white first, with his pistols in his fists and Lisbell flat against his collar like a scrap of black fur. The old man came after him.

He came out of the column with his sword in his right hand and a girl’s two hands locked around his left, and he set her on her feet in the pool still holding on.

Vina’s eyes were screwed shut.

"You can open them," Rishin told her. His voice was rough. "It is over, little one. We are down."

She opened them. She saw her mother wading toward her through the Silver, and she let go of the old man’s hand for the first time since the slope.

Then the units came.

They fell out of the column one after another as the ebb carried them down. Solveig came, and Link with his torch held high and still lit.

Xairon came, sliding between shapes as it fell. Vulkarn, Draventh and the Seed Courier came after it. Skyveil followed them, then Martha and Winsmoke with their pots, and then Synthia and Nyriel.

Sonic came last of Logan’s, whooping louder than Billy ever had, with Burr behind him and the falcon on his arm. Garen’s harpy and his man in black came down together, with the rest of the Rezvolts’ units after them.

"That is everybody, boss." Billy had been counting. "Everybody who went up there is down here."

Vina had gone into her mother’s arms and then into her father’s, and now she was standing in front of Logan in the Silver with nine flames over her braids.

"I kept them shut," she said. "The whole time."

"I know you did."

"I heard yours. It sounded like you were reading out of a book." She considered this. "Your voice is better."

Logan laughed, and had to look away from her.

He looked up at her candles. Seven of them leaned toward the family around her. One leaned up the white column, toward Teska on the First Layer.

The ninth leaned up the column too.

"Mister Ansel stayed," Vina said. She had seen him looking. "I asked him again on the slope, like he said. He said Bide is hungry, and he is going to learn to hunt with a candle."

"And?"

"And he said he will sit at the Watch now. On the edge of the column, beside Saba." Vina touched the stone at her collar. "And look at his."

Rishin had walked out of the pool onto the shelf, and his candles had gone out.

He sat down at the head of the dark stair with Stay across his knees. Nobody went near him. Garen looked at him once from the edge of the Silver, and then looked away and found his wife instead.

"Twenty-five," Garen said into Isolde’s hair. "I cut twenty-three of them."

"And the other two?"

"His." Garen’s jaw was tight. "That is all I will say about them. That is his to tell."

Isolde drew back far enough to see his face.

"How big was it?"

"As tall as a rib of the Narrows." Garen shut his eyes. "Nearly every face on it was somebody I would die for, and I cut them as fast as I could fire. I did not let myself see one of them twice."

It was Vina who went to the old man in the end.

She climbed onto the dry rock, and her nine flames went out, and she walked along the shelf and sat down beside him at the head of the stair.

She leaned against his arm, the way she had in Bide.

Rishin did not look down at her.

"You sat down," he said at last.

"You said. On the cliff."

"I did say." His hand came up and rested on top of her head. "I said a great many things on that cliff. I did not think you were listening to half of them."

"I listen to all of them," said Vina. "Even the ones you say to Logan."

The old man made a sound that was nearly a laugh. Then he sat with his hand on her head and his eyes on the dark stair. From the pool, Logan saw the old man’s shoulders loosen.

Then Rishin got up. He walked down off the shelf and into the edge of the pool, until the Silver was over his bare feet, and nine flames came up over his white head.

Seven of them leaned toward the people in the pool.

Two lay flat and pointed down, as they always had. But they no longer pointed into the floor of the bowl, or over the lip of the Sink.

They pointed down the dark stair at the head of the shelf, into the rock.

Rishin kept his eyes on them. Then he looked at the stair.

"That is the way on," he said. "Third Layer. Rest first. All of you."

He did not move from where he stood.