Chapter 184: Held

They went down the stair at the next ebb, while the Silver was pouring into the Sump behind them and the cave was full of light.

Rishin went first. He had not said much since the lip, and he did not say much now.

He only stood up at the head of the stair when the column came down out of the roof, and he looked back at all of them once, and he started down.

Vina went at his left hand, as she always did. Solveig went behind her.

The stair was cut into the rock in a long spiral. Each step was worn into a shallow dip in the middle, the way old steps are worn when a great many feet have used them.

The light of the Sump followed them a little way down. Then the rock closed in overhead, and the glow faded to grey, and after that they walked by Link’s torch and Tinkerbell’s spark.

Wren’s lanterns swung further back, and the Emberlynx’s fur burned low at the rear.

The stair went down and down.

Logan walked with Alice’s hand in his and listened to the sounds of the family behind him. He could hear Hob’s hooves on the stone, slow and heavy, and the faint clink of the lanterns on Wren’s yoke.

Billy had been told to roll and not to spin, and he was rolling with an air of great suffering.

’Hulda went down here,’ he thought. ’Or whatever lives down here took her. And Rishin’s two are somewhere at the bottom of it.’

He found himself wondering where the two flat flames would point now. Then he remembered that the candles only woke in the Silver, and this stair was dry rock all the way down.

Whatever the Third Layer was going to do to them, it was not going to do it with candles.

Twice they passed places where somebody had rested on the stair. The first was a ring of soot on the wall where a small fire had burned.

The second was a knot of frayed rope tied around a spur of rock, and Logan did not like to think about why it had been needed.

They slept once, sitting on the steps with their backs to the wall, and went on when they woke.

[ Time remaining: 346 days ]

The stair ended at an arch.

It was not carved like the steps. It looked as though the rock had simply grown into that shape, two smooth black pillars leaning together at the top. Beyond it there was nothing at all.

It was not shadow. Link held his torch up into the opening, and the light went into it and did not come back.

The flame burned on the end of the stick exactly as brightly as before, but it lit nothing past the arch. It was like holding a lamp up to a wall painted black.

Tinkerbell’s spark did the same. It was a hard blue point on Halden’s shoulder, and that was all it was.

Wren lifted her yoke to the opening, and the Emberlynx put its burning head past the pillar. Neither of them lit a single stone beyond it.

Rishin stopped under the arch. He did not turn around.

"Hold hands," he said.

Helen’s eyes went to Daniel.

"Every one of you," the old man said.

"Hold on to somebody you love, and somebody who loves you back. If you are holding nobody when you step through that arch, you will be holding nobody on the other side, and you will not see your feet."

They did it the way they had walked down to the Silver.

Logan already had Alice’s hand. Alice reached back without looking and found her mother’s. Isolde already had Garen. Helen and Daniel came together, and Helen put out her free hand and took Garen’s, so that the line ran unbroken from Logan to Daniel.

Rishin held out his right hand behind him. Logan took it.

That put the old man at the front with Vina on his left, and the whole family in one line behind him.

Logan had a hand in each of theirs and Grimlord’s Blade on his back, and he knew that he could not draw it. Neither could the old man.

"Units behind," Rishin said. "Close behind. Every one of you keeps a hand on the one in front, or a hoof, or a wheel. You will not be able to see anything at all."

"Not even the light?" asked Billy.

"You will see our light," said Rishin. "You will not see each other."

Billy swallowed his next remark. He rolled up until his rim was touching the back of Logan’s boot.

"Pebble," Rishin said. "A cairn under this arch, and one every hundred paces after it. Your stones will be the only thing on this layer that the units can find."

"Yes, sir." Pebble’s sling hissed once in the grey. A dull red stone thumped onto the rock just past the left pillar, and its glow died the instant it landed.

Logan felt it all the same. It sat in his mind as clearly as the cairn at the bottom of the Sink.

"I have it, boss," said Pebble. "Every one of us has it."

Rishin stepped through the arch, and the rest of them went after him.

[ You have entered the Third Layer. ] [ Blessing of the Third Layer: Held ] [ Curse of the Third Layer: Held ] [ Where two who love each other touch, there is light. ]

The light came up out of their hands.

It did not flare. It rose the way warmth rises from a hand held against cold glass.

It began where Logan’s fingers were locked through Alice’s and where Vina’s small hand was wrapped in the old man’s. Then it spread outward along the line, pair by pair.

Even where Helen held Garen’s hand, a thin gold seam rose between their fingers, and Helen looked down at it in surprise.

It was gold, the same pale gold the candles had been.

Soon it had grown into a soft round glow around each of them, perhaps three paces across. Where the glows touched, they ran together.

The light lay on everyone who was holding on and on the stone around them. It did not touch Billy’s rim at Logan’s heel, or anyone whose hands were empty.

The whole line of the family stood in one long pool of warm light, and beyond its edge there was the same painted black as before.

Logan looked down at his feet.

They stood on stone. It was smooth and dark, almost black, and it was not flat. It ran away from them in long low ridges, like a sand dune that had been turned to rock in the middle of a wind.

There were marks pressed into it.

He crouched, still holding Alice’s hand and still holding the old man’s, and looked.

They were hands.

They were hundreds of handprints, sunk into the dark stone as if it had once been soft clay. They were pressed in pairs.

Every pair was two hands laid palm down side by side with their fingers laced, as though two people had pressed their joined hands flat against the stone. Some were a large hand with a small one, and some were two of a size.

They ran away along the ridge in every direction, out to the edge of the light and past it.

"People," said Daniel slowly. "These were people."

"People rested here and put their joined hands down," Rishin said. "The stone keeps the shape of any touch that made light on it."

"Everybody who came this way," said Helen.

"Everybody who held on."

Vina had crouched down beside Logan. She put her free hand flat into one of the small prints, and it fitted her exactly.

"Somebody my size," she said.

Helen’s hand tightened on Daniel’s.

Logan looked at the prints running away into the dark. He thought of Hulda’s hand locked around Edda’s wrist on the lip, and of the two who had come down this stair without her.

’They have been here,’ he thought. ’Bram and Edda. Somewhere in all of this there are a father’s hand and a daughter’s, both broad dwarf hands. They were pressed into the stone a few ebbs ago.’

"And the curse?" Garen asked.

Rishin had straightened up. He was looking out past the rim of their light, into the black.

"The curse is the same word," he said. "Let go, and there is no light. And this layer does not leave anything alone in the dark for long."

"What is in the dark?"

"Whatever lives here." The old man’s grip tightened on Logan’s hand. "It does not come into the light. It never has. It waits for somebody to let go."

"And the units?" asked Logan.

"They have no part in the light. Keep them touching each other, and keep them close."

Vina was still crouched by the handprint. She was looking out at the black with her head on one side, the way she looked at everything she did not understand yet.

Then Rishin turned toward the black to point the way, and her small hand slid out of his.

The light went out around her.

It did not fade. It was simply gone, as though somebody had shut a door. One instant she was crouched in the gold beside Logan’s knee.

The next, there was only a child-wide patch of black, and Logan could not see her at all.

He heard her gasp.

Then he heard a second sound. It was a soft dry sound, like a sleeve brushing stone, and it was very close.

Rishin did not let go of Logan. He dropped to one knee and plunged his free hand into the black where Vina had been.

’Her hand was right there,’ Alice thought, frozen at Logan’s side. ’It was right there, and it was gone.’

He brought her up out of it by the wrist.

The gold bloomed around the two of them again. Vina was white to the lips. She stared up at the old man, and then she looked down at her other wrist, the one he had not been holding.

There was a mark on it. It was a faint grey line across the skin, as though a cold finger had been drawn across it.

"Something touched me," she whispered.

Rishin pulled her in against his knee. He did not let go of her or of Logan, and Logan felt the old man’s hand shaking in his.

"Never again," he said. "Do you understand me? Not to look, not to wave, not to scratch your nose. You do not let go of me on this layer. Not for anything."

"Not for anything," Vina whispered.

They stood in the light after that, holding on, and none of them looked at the edge of it.

Then Alice made a small sound.

"Logan," she said. "Look."

She was gazing across the dark, past the old man’s shoulder. Logan looked where she was looking.

Far away, so far that he could not have said how far, there was a light.

It was a single small gold smudge, a little wider than it was tall, and it was moving slowly away across the black.

"Two people," Alice said. "Holding hands."

"Bram," said Logan. "And Edda."

He watched the tiny light go. It rose over what must have been a ridge, and then it sank from sight, and the dark closed over the place as if it had never been there.

Rishin got to his feet with Vina’s hand locked in his left. His right had never left Logan’s.

"That way," the old man said, and he started to walk.