Chapter 202: Hollowthroats

"Nyriel," said Logan.

The word came out. He had said it because Edda was out there and Alice had gone white, and that was enough.

Nyriel laid the columns across his sight as a forest of dark lines. Among them, far off to the left, there was a single small point standing still. It was Edda.

All around her, other points were moving. There were twenty of them, then thirty. They drifted toward her out of the deep mist from every side, as slow and patient as settling ash.

The panel opened beside the nearest of them.

[ Hollowthroat ] [ Level: 41 ] [ Rank: Epic ]

[ Attack: 1,600 ] [ Speed: 2,200 ] [ Constitution: 1,900 ] [ Arcane: 900 ]

’Weak, one at a time,’ Logan thought. ’But there are thirty of them, and she has not stopped calling.’

He turned to the units.

He could not give them an order the way he always had. He knew that already. An order given for nothing but itself would vanish into the mist like Daniel’s question about the river.

So he said it the other way. He said it because he meant it.

"Halden. Billy. Terry, Solveig, Sonic. All of you," he said. "There is a girl out there that Alice cares about, and I do not want to lose a single one of you getting her back. Come with me, and come home."

He said it low. Every word was heard. He saw it land on them. Halden’s grip shifted on his halberd, and Billy’s blades came out with a soft hiss.

Then they went into the columns, all of them together.

Rishin caught Logan’s sleeve as he passed.

The old man did not speak. He put one finger against his lips and pointed after the units, and then at his ear.

Logan understood a few steps later, and he wished he had understood sooner.

’They are coming to her voice,’ he thought. ’Not to her. To the words.’

He looked at Billy rolling ahead of him between the columns, at Terry’s broad back and at Sonic flickering overhead in the mist.

’They cannot hear the units at all. The units have no words here.’

He caught Alice’s eye and put his finger to his lips, as the old man had. She nodded once. Behind her, he saw the same understanding go back along the line of the family, one face at a time.

They ran the rest of the way without a word.

They found her backed against a column at the edge of a clearing.

The ground there was bare stone, and the columns stood round it in a rough ring. Edda had her back to the biggest of them. She had a knife in each hand, and her soot-black braids had come half undone.

There was blood on her sleeve. Her face was grey with exhaustion, but her chin was up.

"Papa!" she shouted into the mist. Her voice cracked in the middle of it. "Papa, I am here! Answer me!"

The Hollowthroats stepped from between the columns all round her.

They were tall, taller than Halden, and thin as poles. Their skin was the grey-white of the mist. Their arms were long enough to brush their knees, and their fingers were longer still.

They had no eyes. They had no mouths either. Where a mouth should have been, there was only smooth skin from the nose to the chin. Instead, they had ears, two great pale cupped ears like a pair of open hands.

Every one of those ears was turned toward Edda.

The units hit them from behind.

Not one Hollowthroat turned. Billy went through the first three at the height of their knees, and they folded without a sound. Halden’s halberd took the head off a fourth.

Terry closed one hand round the long neck of a fifth and simply squeezed.

Sonic came down out of the mist in a crack of white lightning, and two more went over in smoking heaps.

The rest kept walking toward Edda. They did not know anything was happening to them. They could not hear it.

But Edda had heard Billy’s blades. She turned her head toward the noise, and Logan saw her mouth open to call out.

Alice moved first.

She broke from the columns at a run, straight across the open stone, and she made no sound. She reached Edda before the shout could come, and she clapped her hand over Edda’s mouth.

Edda went rigid. Her knife came up toward Alice’s ribs.

Then she saw whose face it was. The knife stopped.

Over Alice’s shoulder, the nearest Hollowthroat had stopped too.

It stood three paces away with its long hands half lifted, its great ears turning slowly from side to side. Edda had gone quiet. It had lost her.

It did not come on. It stood there, listening for her.

Behind it, the units went on killing in perfect quiet. Logan could see that it would not be quick enough. There were still more than a dozen, and they were all standing round the two of them now, close enough to touch.

’If any of us speaks,’ he thought, ’they will all turn to it at once.’

His eyes went to Alice. She was looking back at him over Edda’s head, with her hand still pressed over the girl’s mouth. She could not draw her bow without letting go.

Logan made up his mind.

He stepped out into the clearing, away from the two of them, and he spoke.

"Alice," he said. "I love you. Stay down."

Every great pale ear in the clearing swung toward him.

The Hollowthroats turned away from Alice and Edda all together, as if a string had been pulled. Then they came for him, faster than they had moved toward Edda, with their long arms reaching.

Logan drew Grimlord’s Blade.

He had Sword Intent open, and a dozen tall grey shapes were walking straight into it with their ears out like flags.

He cut the first one across the middle as it reached him. He stepped inside the arms of the second and took it through the chest.

The third had its long fingers almost at his face when Alice’s arrow came over his shoulder and went through the hollow between its ears.

He had not heard her draw, or let go of Edda. She had done both without a sound.

[ Hollowthroat slain. ] [ Logan Wolf: +300 Tower Points ]

[ Hollowthroat slain. ] [ Alice Rezvolt: +300 Tower Points ]

The rest went down between the units and the family.

Garen shot two without a word. Isolde’s chakram went round the clearing once and came back to her hand. Daniel threw his rock at the last one standing. It struck the creature between the ears, and the creature folded over and did not get up.

[ Hollowthroat slain. ] [ Daniel Wolf: +300 Tower Points ]

Daniel caught the rock as it slapped back into his palm. He looked down at the panel in astonishment.

Then the clearing was still. Grey bodies lay all over the bare stone, long and thin, with their great ears spread out flat.

Edda stood against her column with her knives hanging from her hands. She was staring at Alice.

Her mouth shaped a word. Logan could read it on her lips.

’Thank you.’

No sound came with it. Edda’s face crumpled. She tried again, harder, and again nothing came.

Alice put her arms round her.

They sat in the middle of the clearing among the dead, close together, and they kept their voices down.

It was Edda who spoke first. Her voice was a hoarse thread, but every word came out.

"I can only talk about him," she said. "Anything I say for Papa, they can hear. Anything I say for me, it goes. I found that out on the stair."

"Tell us about him, then," said Alice softly. Her words came out, and Logan saw Edda notice.

"We came down beside the falls. We were talking. We did not know." Edda looked at the bodies on the stone.

"They came out of the columns while we were walking. One of them put its hand over Papa’s mouth. Like that. Just held it there."

She put her hand over her mouth to show them. Then she took it away.

"When it let go, he opened his mouth to tell me to run, and nothing came. Not even his breathing. It was as if it had taken the sound out of him and kept it."

Helen made a small noise.

"Then he turned round," said Edda, "and he walked away into the columns after them. He did not look back at me. It was like the faces on the lip. He was following it."

"Following what?" Garen asked.

His lips moved, and nothing came out. Isolde touched his arm. He shut his mouth.

"His voice," said Rishin, very low.

Edda turned to the old man.

"They do not eat the voices they take," said Rishin. "They carry them. There is a place on this layer where all of them are kept. The people they were taken from walk after them until they get there."

"Then I am going there," said Edda.

She said it for her father, and so they all heard it.

Alice opened her mouth. Before she could say anything, Vina lifted her head from Rishin’s arm.

"Listen," she whispered.

They listened.

It was very faint. It was so far away that at first Logan thought it was the river. It came from deep in the forest of columns, from the direction the river ran.

It was singing.

It was a great many voices singing together without any words. There were men and women and children in it, high voices and low. It rose and fell through the mist like a wind through a broken house.

Then one voice came up out of all the others.

It was a man’s voice, deep and rough. It was singing one word, over and over.

"Edda. Edda. Edda."

Edda was on her feet before anyone could stop her. Her knives were in her hands again, and her face had gone white to the lips.

"That is Papa," she said.