Chapter 183: Two Pairs of Hands

They rested, as the old man had told them to.

They climbed out of the pool onto the dry shelf, and their candles went out one ring after another. Martha and Winsmoke unslung their pots.

Xairon, who had nothing to build for once, folded itself into a corner and watched the column of Silver thin overhead.

The ebb ended. The flood drew the whole pool back up into the Sink with its long hiss, and the cave went dark.

In the dark, the circle in the floor beside the black door gave off its faint blue glow. Tinkerbell’s spark burned on Halden’s shoulder.

Vina tipped the last beads out of Logan’s twist of cloth into a heap on the rock, and their white light lay over every face.

Rishin had come up out of the pool when his candles went out, and he had gone straight back to the head of the stair. He sat there with Stay across his knees and his back to all of them.

Vina looked over at him twice while she ate, but she stayed with her mother this time.

Garen ate quickly and then got up and walked to the circle.

He stood looking down at it with his hands on his hips. The blue light came up under his chin and made him look older.

"Five hundred," he said aloud.

Isolde looked up from her bowl. "Dear?"

"Five hundred points. Off the back of a fish I never touched." He turned around. "And here is a circle, and here are two people in this family who have walked two layers of the Abyss without a single unit to their names."

Helen had stopped eating. So had Daniel.

"Garen," said Helen. "No."

"I did not ask you yet."

"You were going to."

"You have eleven Mythics asleep in your cards," said Daniel, very low. "I have heard you say so."

"I have." Garen did not look away from him.

"And they are for the day this place puts a thing in front of us that only a Tier-9 can answer. You will want them awake that day as much as I will. These five hundred are for you, today."

"I was," Garen agreed. He came back and crouched down in front of the two of them, so that his face was level with theirs.

"You stood on that lip," he said.

"Both of you. You did the hardest thing I have ever watched anyone do down here. I am not going to watch you walk onto the next layer with empty hands."

Daniel looked past him at the old man by the stair.

"Senior," he said. "Is it wise?"

Rishin did not turn around. But he answered.

"Points do nothing in a purse," he said. His voice was hoarse. "A beast walks beside you. Spend it."

Garen stood up.

"There," he said. "Even the old man agrees with me."

It was simple, once they had decided.

Garen had five pulls in him. Helen had two hundred and twenty points, which was two pulls and twenty left over. Daniel had a hundred and ninety-five, which was one.

"Eight," said Logan. "Eight cards between the three of you."

"And what do eight make?" asked Helen.

"That depends on what comes out of the circle."

Garen went first. He laid his palm on the ring without ceremony.

[ Summon: Combat Unit x5 ] [ Cost: 500 Tower Points ] [ Remaining Tower Points: 0 ]

Five columns of light rose out of the stone. Two of them settled into men with short spears and plain round caps. Two more became a pair of lean grey hounds that sat down at once and looked at Garen with great interest.

The fifth was slower. It became a tall woman in a long coat of scale, with a curved blade at her hip.

[ Pull result: 2x Normal | 2x Uncommon | 1x Rare ]

"One Rare," Garen said. "I will take it."

Helen came next.

She stepped up to the ring as though it might bite her. Daniel stood at her shoulder. She put her palm down flat, the way she put it on a wound before Mending Spring, and she shut her eyes.

[ Summon: Combat Unit x2 ] [ Cost: 200 Tower Points ] [ Remaining Tower Points: 20 ]

The first light became a girl with a wooden yoke across her shoulders and a bucket swinging from each end. She looked at Helen, and then at the buckets, and she seemed pleased with both.

The second became a moth the size of a cat. Its wings were dusty brown, and a soft yellow glow pulsed in its body like a lamp turned low.

[ Spring Carrier (Normal) Summoned ] [ Dusk Lantern Moth (Uncommon) Summoned ]

Helen opened her eyes and stared at the two of them in plain astonishment.

"They are mine?" she said.

"They are yours," said Logan.

Daniel did not shut his eyes. He set his big hand on the stone and waited, and the light came up under it.

[ Summon: Combat Unit x1 ] [ Cost: 100 Tower Points ] [ Remaining Tower Points: 95 ]

It rose slowly. When it faded, an ox stood in the circle.

It was grey and very broad, with short thick horns and a hide that looked like weathered stone. It stood with its legs planted square.

It looked at Daniel out of one patient eye, and then it lowered its head and blew out through its nose.

[ Stonehide Ox (Rare) Summoned ]

Daniel laughed out loud. It surprised all of them, him most of all.

"Well," he said. "Look at you."

Logan did the sum while they were still staring.

’Three Normals and three Uncommons, and two Rares,’ he thought. ’Two Epics, if I split it right. One for each of them.’

"Garen," he said. "Hand them over."

Garen looked at his five. The two spearmen, the hounds and the tall woman in scale looked back at him.

"Senior made us name every one of you last time," he said to them. "I will not hand you over as strangers."

So they named them, the way they had at Tidemark. Vina did most of it, and nobody argued with any of her choices.

Then Logan told the six who were going in what he had told the sixteen before them, and the woman in scale was the first to nod.

He drew the five cards out of the light and held them out. Helen took one spearman and the woman in scale. Daniel took the other spearman and both of the hounds.

The cards changed hands, and the units stood up in the circle again beside their new owners. It was as quiet as passing a cup.

"Choose the one you want to keep," Logan told his mother. "The others go into it. It stays itself."

Helen did not have to think.

"The girl with the buckets," she said.

Daniel laid his hand on the ox’s broad neck.

"Him," he said.

Logan set his will on the girl first. Each merge cost him five hundred MP, and he did not count them.

The spearman went into her, and she came out of the light an Uncommon.

The moth went in after him, and she came out a Rare. She was taller now. The woman in scale went in last.

[ Merge Complete ] [ Spring Carrier (Normal) + Spear Guardian (Normal) + Dusk Lantern Moth (Uncommon) + Scaleguard Duelist (Rare) ] [ Lanternyoke Bearer (Epic) Created. ]

The light faded, and the girl stood on the stone.

She was still small. She still had the same round, cheerful face. But the yoke on her shoulders had become a bar of white metal as long as she was tall.

Two lanterns of clear glass hung from either end of it where the buckets had been.

The left lantern was full of water that glowed faintly blue. A soft yellow light pulsed in the right, in time with her breathing.

She wore a coat of fine grey scale now, and a short curved blade hung at her hip.

"Mistress," she said to Helen. She had a light, sensible voice. "I am to carry what you pour, and to pour it where you point. And the duelist says I am to keep you out of trouble."

Helen pressed both hands to her mouth.

The ox was slower to change, and that seemed right to Daniel.

The two hounds went into each other first and came out of the light as a single great grey dog, a Rare. Then Logan chose the ox and fed the dog into it. The last spearman went in after them.

[ Merge Complete ] [ Stonehide Ox (Rare) + Greyhunt Hound (Uncommon) + Greyhunt Hound (Uncommon) + Spear Guardian (Normal) ] [ Deeproot Aurochs (Epic) Created. ]

When the light faded, the ox was taller than Daniel at the shoulder.

Its stone-grey hide had cracked into broad plates, like the bark of an old tree, and pale roots trailed from beneath them to the rock.

Its horns had lengthened and swept forward. A spear-length of grey iron was bound along its right side in leather, as though it had been issued one.

It looked at Daniel exactly as the ox had. Then it put its great head down against his chest and leaned.

Daniel staggered. Then he planted his feet and stopped moving, and he did not give another inch.

"Rooted Stance," said Isolde, smiling. "He is going to like you."

They opened the panels together.

[ Lanternyoke Bearer ] [ Rank: Epic ] [ Lifespan: 1,460 days ] [ Lifespan may be exchanged for Abyss Points at any Relic Shop. ]

[ Deeproot Aurochs ] [ Rank: Epic ] [ Lifespan: 1,460 days ] [ Lifespan may be exchanged for Abyss Points at any Relic Shop. ]

"Four years," said Helen. "Each."

"Four years each," Logan agreed.

Helen studied the girl with the lanterns. Then she said, "Wren," as if the name had been waiting for her.

"Wren," the girl repeated. She sounded satisfied.

Daniel scratched the aurochs between the horns. It leaned harder.

"Hob," he said.

Vina had been watching it all from the heap of beads with her chin on her knees. She got up, walked all the way around the aurochs, and stopped in front of its face.

"Hob," she agreed. "He is very good."

They slept after that, in a heap along the wall, with two new shapes in it.

Logan woke once in the dark. The beads had dimmed. Across the shelf, at the head of the stair, the old man was still sitting with his sword across his knees.

Logan got up and went to sit beside him.

Rishin spoke first, without turning his head.

"I have done it twice now," he said. "I hoped the second time would be easier."

"Was it?"

"No." The old man kept his eyes on the dark stair. "Go back to sleep, boy. It is a long way down."

Logan sat with him until the beads went out altogether. Then he went back to Alice.

[ Time remaining: 347 days ]