Chapter 189: Backward

"Quiet, Logan," Garen said. Then, into the sigil, with all of the voice that was the only one allowed on the stair: "Vina. Answer me."

Alice’s hand had closed on Logan’s so hard that his fingers went numb. Down the line, Logan heard his mother make a sound and swallow it.

Behind them, in the dark at the far end of the cave, the heavy thing shifted again. Stone ground on stone, slow and enormous.

Then the sigil spoke in a voice that was not Vina’s.

"I made that rule, and I am breaking it once." Rishin’s voice was rough and very low. "She is with me. She is not hurt."

Logan’s knees nearly went.

"Senior," Garen said. "What happened?"

"We are coming down," said the old man. "Slowly. Do not call her again. She will not answer you, and it will only make her want to."

Vina had heard him fall.

She had been walking the way Grandpa had told her. One step and then the next, with her left hand on the wall, the cold line on her wrist pressed against the stone.

The hands had come out of the stone to take her ankles, the way the man in the chair had said they would. They were cold and soft, like a grown-up’s hands in winter, and she had not stopped to fight them.

Behind her, round the turn she could not see, she had heard his bare feet on the steps. They were slow and steady.

Now and then he said the same words so that she would know he was there. "One and then the next, little one."

Then she heard him stop saying it.

She heard a scrape and a hard knock, like a sack of grain falling against a wall. Then she heard a hiss of pain through his teeth.

"Keep going," said Grandpa’s voice. It was further away than it should have been. "Do not stop. Keep going down."

Vina stopped.

She stood on the step in the black with the cold hands on her ankles and listened.

"Grandpa?"

"Keep going." His voice was very calm. It was the voice he used when a thing was wrong and he did not want her to know. "I sat down. That is all. I am old, and I sat down."

"Can you get up?"

He did not answer that.

Vina thought about the man in the chair in Clasp. She thought about his legs, lying in front of him like two pieces of a statue.

Then she turned around on the narrow step, and she put her right hand on the wall, and she went back up.

"Vina." His voice changed. "No. Go down."

"You said you would be behind me all the way down," said Vina. "So you have to be behind me."

She came round the turn on her hands and knees, feeling for him in the dark. She found his foot first. It was bare, and it was as cold and hard as the step it rested on.

She found his hand after that, and she took it.

The light came up between them.

It was small, because the walls of the crack pressed it close. But it was gold, and it lit the turn of the stair and the old man sitting slumped against the inner wall with both legs straight out across the step.

His feet were grey stone. The grey went up both his shins and stopped at the knee, as clean as a line drawn with a ruler.

Her boots felt heavy too. When she wriggled her toes, she could not feel them, and the cold had stopped just above her ankle bones.

The hands in the wall had let go of him. Vina saw them pull back into the stone as the light reached them.

There were dozens of them, small and large. For an instant she saw the shapes of the people they belonged to, pressed flat inside the rock like flowers in a book.

She did not look at them for long.

"I fell," said Grandpa. He was looking at their hands. "My feet would not feel the step on the turn. I put one down on nothing, and I could not get my legs under me again."

"Then I will take you down."

"Little one. Two cannot walk this stair. Tamsin told you. You cannot hold a hand behind you round these turns."

Vina looked at the turn below her and then at him. Then she looked down at herself. She was small enough to stand sideways on the step with room to spare.

"I do not have to hold behind me," she said. "I can hold in front."

She showed him.

She turned so that her back was to the drop and her face was to him. She stepped down one step, backward, with her right hand on the wall and her left hand holding his. Then she pulled, gently.

"Now you," she said.

The old man stared at her.

Then he understood, and his face changed. Every step on the stair was a wedge, wide at the outer wall and almost nothing at the inner one.

A grown man had to walk the wide end, a full arm’s length round the curve from anyone below him.

But the narrow end was just wide enough for a child’s boot. A small girl standing there, facing up, was tucked inside the curve right under his hand.

Rishin set his free hand on the inner wall and took his weight on it. Then he swung one straight leg out over the edge of the step and let it drop onto the step below, and the other after it.

The light came with them.

"Good," said Vina. "Again."

At the bottom of the stair, Logan heard a slow knock far up in the rock under the grinding from the cave. Then he heard another. He did not know what it was.

The grinding came again, closer. It was not footsteps. It was heavier and slower than footsteps, like a whole building trying to walk.

Garen had turned his head toward it.

Logan dropped his voice to a murmur. Vina would hear every word on the sigils, and he could not help that. "Nyriel. Can you read it?"

Nyriel laid a single point across his sight. It was far larger than any point it had ever shown him, and it was crawling toward the six of them.

Then a panel opened in front of all six of them.

[ Greyhold Colossus ] [ Rank: Mythic ] [ Scaled to: Tier-9 ]

"Warden," Isolde murmured.

"Of course it is." Garen shifted his feet. They were stone to the knee, and they did not shift far. "At the bottom of the stair, where everybody has just let go and come out grey. Of course."

The numbers came next.

[ Attack: 48,000 ] [ Speed: 2,400 ] [ Constitution: 140,000 ] [ Arcane: 0 ]

"Slow," said Logan. "Very slow. And very, very hard."

"We cannot move either," said Daniel. He looked down at his grey shins. "Not far."

"We cannot let go either," said Alice.

Logan looked along the line. Daniel held Helen. Helen held Garen. Garen held Isolde, and Isolde held Alice, and Alice held him. Only he and his father had a hand free.

’Six people,’ he thought. ’Two free hands. Grey to the shin. And it is coming toward the only light in this cave.’

"Split," said Isolde. "Into pairs. Pairs make light."

They did it carefully, one hand at a time, so that nobody went dark at all. Helen let go of Garen and kept Daniel. Isolde let go of Alice and kept Garen. Alice kept Logan.

Three pools of gold stood in a row at the mouth of the stair, touching at their edges. Every one of them now had one free hand.

Garen drew a pistol. It hummed in his fist.

Isolde’s chakram came up out of her free palm in a ring of pale light. The light of the ring did not reach past her fingers, but it was there.

Daniel hefted his rock. Helen lifted her free hand with Mending Spring already pooling green in it.

Alice looked down at the bow on her back, which needed two hands to draw, and her jaw set. Then she closed her grip on Logan instead.

"You fight," she said. "I hold."

Logan drew Grimlord’s Blade with his right hand.

"Halden," he murmured. "Every unit. It is coming to us. It cannot see you. Go and meet it in the dark."

On the stair, far above, a small gold light was coming down one step at a time.

Vina went backward with her right hand on the wall. She counted the steps in her head and said them aloud for the old man, because it seemed to help him.

"Forty. Forty-one. There is a stone by my hand. That is Pebble’s. It is coming to yours."

Rishin’s hand found it on the wall and passed it.

Every time his stone feet came down on a step, the sound went through the rock like a hammer on an anvil.

He did not complain. The only words he spoke were "Yes" when she told him to step, and "Good" when he had.

They had passed four of Pebble’s cairns when the stair shook.

It was not his feet. It came from below, from the bottom of the crack. It was a deep long boom that she felt through the soles of her boots and the palm of her hand on the wall. Dust sifted down onto her braids.

Vina stopped.

"What is that?"

The old man’s hand had closed on hers. He was looking past her, down the black turns of the stair.

"That is your brother," said Rishin. "He is fighting a thing down there. Keep walking, little one. Backward. And faster, if you can."