Chapter 197: Plenty

The man on the bench got to his feet.

The woman beside him caught his sleeve. He paid it no attention. He stood under the willow arch with his mouth open and watched Rishin walk away down the street, and he did not say anything else.

Logan looked back twice. The man was still standing there both times.

Vina had looked back too. Now she looked up at the old man whose hand she was holding.

"Grandpa," she said. "Do you know him?"

Rishin walked a few more steps before he answered.

"He may have seen me once," he said. "It was a long way back up, little one. I do not remember his face."

It was not an answer, and Logan knew it was not. But he noticed that it was not a lie either. In all the layers they had walked, he had never once heard Rishin lie to her.

Plenty was bigger inside than it had looked from the road.

The street ran down beside the river between two rows of white houses. Every few houses a bridge crossed the river to a second street on the other side.

The bridges were stone, and somebody had planted flowers along the tops of their walls. Washing hung between the upper windows. Doors stood open on kitchens where pots were steaming.

Long tables stood down the middle of the lanes. People sat at them in pairs and fed each other, and talked, and laughed.

Nobody was in a hurry. Nobody was carrying anything heavier than a basket.

A fiddler sat on the wall of the third bridge with his eyes shut. A woman perched next to him and held a cup to his lips between tunes.

"Going far?" a man called from one of the tables. He was cracking nuts and passing them across to his wife one at a time.

"Through," said Rishin, and he did not slow down.

The man laughed as if Rishin had made a joke. "That is what everybody says," he said comfortably, and went back to his nuts.

They passed an empty house halfway down the second street.

Logan would not have noticed it, except that Alice stopped.

It was like all the others. It was white, with a green door that stood open. Through the door he could see a kitchen with a scrubbed table and two chairs, and a window that looked out over the river.

There was nobody in it. The hearth was swept and cold. Two cups stood upside down on a shelf, side by side.

Alice only stood and looked at it, with her hand in Logan’s.

He looked too, and he felt it pull at him.

’Two chairs,’ he thought. ’A window on the river. Nobody hunting us, and nobody counting the days. I could wake up in that kitchen every waking for the rest of my life and hand her a cup.’

Beside him, Alice shut her eyes and opened them again.

"That is how it does it," she said. Her voice was very even. "It does not ask you to stay. It just shows you the house."

"I know."

"I wanted it." She turned her back on the open door. "For the length of three steps, I wanted it more than the bottom. I wanted you to know that."

Logan squeezed her hand. They walked on, and neither of them looked back at the house.

It was a boy who told them about the Table.

He was running along the riverbank with a hoop and a stick. When he saw Bread, he stopped dead and stared at the great grey dog as if it were a horse.

Vina let go of Rishin’s hand long enough to stand beside Bread and look important.

"Is he yours?" the boy asked.

"He is Oswin’s," said Vina. "I named him."

The boy looked at Oswin, walking alone behind the family with his sword on his back. The wonder went out of his face. He took a step back from the dog.

"Is he by himself?" he asked Vina in a whisper.

"He has us."

"You are not his." The boy shook his head with the certainty of a child repeating what everybody knows.

"You must not let him go to the end. That is where the alone people go. They sit at the Table, and they do not come back."

"What table?"

But the boy had already picked up his hoop. He ran off up a lane between two houses without another word.

Rishin had heard every word. So had Oswin.

"Senior," said Garen. He said it low, from just behind the old man’s shoulder. "Is it the warden?"

"It is," said Rishin.

"And it takes the alone."

"It feeds them." Rishin kept walking. "That is the word they would use for it here. It is the only thing on this layer that will give anything to a person who has nobody."

Oswin had heard that too. Logan saw his hand close on the strap of his sword.

"Can we go round it?" asked Daniel.

"The way down is behind it. There is no round."

"Then we go through it," said Daniel. He said it the way he had said "Him" over a grey ox in the Sump.

Rishin looked back at him. Then his eyes went to Oswin and the dog at the back of the line.

"Vina," he said. "Go and walk with Oswin. Hold his hand, and do not let go of it until I tell you."

Vina went at once. She did not ask why.

Oswin looked down at the small hand that had taken hold of his. He did not shake it off.

The houses stopped at the last bridge.

Beyond it, the street opened out into a broad yard of flat grey stone that ran right across the narrows from wall to wall.

The cave roof came down low over it. At the far side, the river ran under a lip of rock and poured down into the cleft with a deep, steady roar.

Beside the falls, a stair was cut into the rock, going down. It was wide enough for four to walk abreast. Logan could see its first steps from the bridge and nothing after that.

Between the bridge and the stair stood the Table.

It was long. It ran almost the whole width of the yard, and it was covered with a grey cloth that hung down to the stone.

There were people sitting along both sides of it. There were dozens of them, and every one of them sat alone.

There was an empty chair between each of them and the next.

They were thin. Some were thinner than Oswin had been under his tree, so thin that their faces were all bone and eye.

In front of each of them stood a bowl. Each bowl was full of grey ash, and they were eating it.

They ate it slowly, with spoons, the way people eat soup. They swallowed it. Then they smiled, and they lifted their spoons again.

Logan looked back at Plenty.

Every bench along the last street had been set facing away from the yard. Every window on that side of the last houses had its shutters closed.

’They know,’ he thought. ’Every one of them knows it is here. They have turned their chairs round so they do not have to see it.’

At the head of the Table, a tall grey figure was serving.

It was taller than Halden, and it was thin, and it was the grey of cold ash all over.

It wore a long grey apron that hung to its feet. It had a face, but the face was smooth and round and blank, like the lid of a pot.

In one long hand it held a ladle. In the other it held a great iron pot, grey with ash.

It went slowly down the Table, and it filled every bowl that was getting low. As it filled each one, it bent and laid its free hand on the eater’s shoulder, very gently.

Each of them leaned into the touch. Each of them smiled up at the blank face.

Then the thing came to the end of the Table, and it stopped.

At the last place, the bowl was empty, and so was the chair. The thing set the pot down on the cloth. It filled the empty bowl with ash, very carefully, right to the brim.

Then it turned its blank face toward the bridge, and it spoke.

The voice was a woman’s voice. It was low and warm and a little hoarse, as though she had been laughing.

"Os?" it said. "Os, there you are. I saved you a place."

Oswin made a sound.

It was not a word. It was the sound a man makes when he steps on a stair that is not there.

"Lysa," he said.

"Come and sit with me." The voice was so gentle. "You must be starving. I have been waiting for you so long, Os. Come and eat."

Oswin took a step toward the Table.

Vina’s hand was still in his. She was pulled forward a step with him, and her boots skidded on the stone.

"No," she said. She threw her whole weight back against his arm. "No. It is not her. It is not her, it is the thing."

Oswin took another step. He did not seem to know that Vina was there.

Bread whined. The great dog moved in front of his master and set his broad feet on the stone, and Oswin walked into the dog’s scaled shoulder and pushed against it.

"Os," said the voice from the Table. "Please. Do not make me wait any more."

Rishin drew Stay.

"Everyone," said the old man, "listen to me now. You have very little time to understand this, and if you do not, you will lose him."