Chapter 188: The Stair

Tamsin walked them to the edge of Clasp when they woke.

Two sitters on the crest lifted their joined hands, as two others had when the family came in.

The family stood before the arch they made and took each other’s hands again before they stepped through. Logan felt the old weight of it settle back into his fingers. Rishin. Alice. The long line behind.

"Downhill," said Tamsin. "Always downhill. You will know the crack when you reach it. There are more statues near the top."

"Thank you," said Helen. "For the food, and for Harl."

"Your cooks fed my whole hill." The keeper looked at Vina, and her closed face opened very slightly. "Go quickly, child. Do not stop to look at anything."

Vina nodded. Then she looked past Tamsin, up the slope, and waved her free hand.

Pell was standing beside a fire near the top of the hill. She waved back with both arms, and she did not stop until the family had gone under the arch and out into the dark.

They walked downhill for the whole of that waking.

The ridges grew steeper. The handprints on them grew thicker, until in places there was hardly a hand’s width of bare stone between one joined pair and the next.

Logan understood what that meant without being told. A great many people had come this way, and a great many of them had stopped here to hold on before going on.

There were more statues too.

They stood on the ridges alone and in pairs. Most of them faced downhill. A few faced back the way they had come, with their arms stretched out behind them.

They had turned back for somebody, as Harl had, and nobody had come down to them.

Vina did not look at them. She walked with her eyes on the light at her feet and her hand in the old man’s, exactly as Tamsin had told her to.

They slept on the slope in their pairs, inside the units’ ring.

[ Time remaining: 342 days ]

They found the crack when the edge of their light climbed onto a wall of rock.

It was a cliff. The slope ran down to the foot of it and stopped, and the rock rose up from there out of the reach of their light.

In the face of it, a split ran up from the ground. It was a little wider than a man’s shoulders. The edge of the gold reached into it a single step and no further.

A step had been cut there. Beyond it, another step turned sharply to the left and was gone.

Rishin stood in front of it with Vina’s hand in his and looked at it. Then he turned around to face all of them.

"The units go first," he said. "All of them. They are not held, so it does not matter how long they take, and a few of us ought to be standing at the bottom when the rest of us come out of it."

Logan spoke into his collar. Halden answered for all of them.

"Yes, Lord. We will hold the bottom."

They went in one at a time.

Logan could not see them go. He heard them. He heard Halden’s heavy tread, and the scrape of Billy’s rim taking the first turn with great care, and Terry’s plates grinding against the walls.

Hob could never have fitted. Daniel folded him down into his card and put it inside his coat, and the other big ones went the same way into their owners’ cards. Pebble went with his sling in his hand.

"One cairn at the top," Pebble said through the sigil. "One every turn, tight against the inner wall, where a hand will find it before a foot does. You will feel them in the dark, boss. All of you will."

Logan felt the first one land on the step just inside the split. It burned in his mind like a lamp behind his eyes.

The last of the units went in. The scraping and the tramping went down and down into the rock, fainter at every turn. Then it was gone.

When the last of Pebble’s cairns had landed in his mind, Halden’s voice came out of the sigil.

"Lord. I am at the bottom. My hand has gone off the wall, and my steps come back from a long way off. It opens out down here. The hands in the stair touched every one of us and let go."

A pause. "There is a thing breathing at the far end. By the sound, it is large. It has not moved."

"Do not go near it."

"No, Lord."

Then it was their turn.

Rishin set them out the way Harl had told them.

Garen first, because he was the fastest. Isolde on his heels. Then Helen, and Daniel behind her. Then Alice. Then Logan.

Then Vina.

"And I come last," said the old man. "Behind her, all the way down. If she stops, I will be the one who tells her to keep going."

Then he looked at Garen. "On the stair, only you speak on the sigils. When you reach the bottom, you call each of them to your hand. The rest of you listen to your feet."

Vina looked up at him with her chin set, and then she nodded.

Daniel reached across and took Vina’s free hand, and the line closed. They did not let go until each one stepped into the split.

Garen let go of Isolde last of all. He held on until he stepped into the split, and then his hand slipped out of hers, and the light where their fingers had met went out.

He was dark. Logan could not see him at all.

They heard him take the first turn at a run.

Isolde stepped in after him without waiting. Helen leaned past Daniel and kissed Vina’s hair once, very quickly. Then she let go of Daniel’s hand and went, and Daniel followed her.

Alice turned to Logan at the mouth of the crack. She pressed her forehead to his, and the gold lay steady over both their faces.

"I will be waiting," she said.

Then she let go, and she was gone into the dark, and he could hear her boots on the stone going down.

Logan turned to his sister.

Vina stood in the last of the gold with her hand in the old man’s. Behind them, the slope of handprints ran up into the black. The top of her head did not reach the old man’s belt.

"I will be right in front of you," he told her. "Every step. Just keep coming."

"I know." Her voice was steady. "I held Grandpa on the lip with the Silver pulling. Stairs do not even pull."

He laughed. He could not help it. Then he let go of the old man’s hand, and the light around him went out.

The dark came down over him like water.

He had his left hand on the wall, as Harl had said. It was the only thing he had. The stone under his palm was cold and smooth and curved away from him, and he followed it down.

The first step. The second. The turn.

On the fourth step, a hand took hold of his ankle.

It did not pull. It did not grip hard. It was cold and dry and patient, closed loosely around the bone above his boot. When he took the next step, it let go. Another one took hold on the step after.

By the second turn they were on his shins as well. Small hands and large ones, coming out of the stone and closing and letting go and closing again.

He felt the cold go into his feet.

It was not like the cold of the Silver. It went in and stayed. He could feel his toes inside his boots, and then he could feel them less.

He went on.

Behind him and above him, round the turns he could not see, he heard Vina’s small boots on the stone. She was walking steadily. He heard her breathing. Once, far back, he heard the old man’s voice.

"Keep walking, little one. That is all. One and then the next."

’One and then the next,’ Logan thought, and he went down.

He lost count of the turns. He did not lose count of Pebble’s cairns.

Each one sat in his mind where it had landed, and as he passed each, he felt it slide behind him and the next one draw nearer below.

It was the only measure he had. The cold was past his ankles now. It was climbing his shins. His feet were blocks of stone that he swung forward one after the other by habit.

Then there was light below him.

It was faint and gold, and it lay across the last steps at the bottom of the stair.

Garen’s voice had been calling his name in the sigil for the last three turns. He came round the final turn on legs he could hardly feel, and he saw them.

Five of them were standing in a line in the opening at the foot of the crack, holding hands. Daniel held Helen, Helen held Garen and Garen held Isolde. Alice was at the end of the line, holding her mother and facing the stair.

Garen was grey to the knee. The others were grey to the shin.

Her free hand was already reaching for him.

He took it. The gold closed over him. The cold in his legs stopped where it was, a hand’s width below his knees, and stayed there.

Alice pulled him out of the crack and into the line, and she did not let go.

They turned and faced the stair together.

Logan stood with Alice’s hand in his and his free hand open, ready. The opening of the crack was black in front of them. They could hear nothing in it at all.

’She is slower than me,’ he told himself. ’She is shorter. She has more steps to take.’

Somewhere behind them, at the far end of the space Halden had found, there was a very slow and very heavy sound. It was like a great weight being shifted on stone.

"Lord," said Halden through the sigil. His voice was low. "The thing at the far end. It has started to move."

Logan did not turn round. He was listening to the stair.

Far up inside the rock, small boots were coming down. He could hear them now, faint and steady, one step and then the next.

Then they stopped.

"Vina," Logan said into his collar.

No answer came out of the stair.