Chapter 204: The Choir

The old woman was waiting by the river when they came out of the empty house.

She had her slate under her arm. She did not write anything this time. She only looked at Edda, and then she put out one dry hand and touched the girl’s cheek, very briefly.

Then she turned and went back to her house without looking round.

Edda stood on the path with her hand pressed to the place. Alice touched her shoulder, and they went on down the river.

The singing grew louder as they went.

At first it was only a thread under the noise of the water. Then it was a sound Logan could hear even when the river ran over stones.

By the time the family had been walking for half the waking, it filled the mist ahead of them from one side to the other.

There were no words in it. There had never been words in it. It was the sound of a great many people singing one long note that never ended, rising and falling like the sea.

And under it, every so often, one voice would lift out of the rest and sing a single word. It was always a name.

Logan heard a woman’s voice sing "Tomas" twice, high and clear. He heard a child’s voice sing a name he did not know. He heard an old man’s voice, cracked and slow, sing "Bettany" so tenderly that he had to look away from the river.

Then the deep rough voice came up through all of them again.

"Edda."

Edda walked faster. Alice walked faster with her.

They began to pass the walkers a little after that.

The first one was a young man. He was standing in the middle of the path with his back to them, facing downriver. He rocked on his feet, and then he took a step, and then another.

Logan went past him carefully. He looked at the young man’s face as he did.

The eyes were open. They were fixed on the mist ahead. The mouth was open too, and the lips were moving very slightly, shaping the long note of the song. No sound came out.

There were more after him. There were pairs and single walkers, men and women and once a boy no older than Vina. They walked slowly, all in the same direction, and none of them looked at the family as it passed.

Edda went to each of them in turn. She looked into each face, and then she went on.

None of them was her father.

The columns grew taller as the river went down.

They were so tall now that Logan could not see the moss on their crowns at all, only a faint blue haze high in the mist where it must be.

The path went down beside the water in a long gentle slope, and the walkers went down it with them.

Then the columns ended.

The river ran out from between the last of them and fell away over a lip of stone in a shallow, glassy curtain. Below it, the ground dropped into a basin.

It was the biggest space Logan had seen since the gold fields of the Fourth Layer.

The basin was round. It went down in great broad steps of grey stone, one ring below the next like the seats of an arena. At the bottom of it, filling the middle, there was a lake of black water.

In the middle of the lake, on an island of stone, stood the thing that was singing.

Logan’s first thought was that it was a hill.

It was grey-white, the color of the Hollowthroats, and it was enormous.

It had grown up round the trunk of a single stone column, so thick and so high that the column only showed at its very top, like the stalk of a mushroom poking through the cap.

Then he saw that the hill was covered in mouths.

There were hundreds of them. They covered it from the waterline to the crown, all of them open and all of them singing.

They were all different. There were wide mouths and narrow ones and small round mouths like a child’s. Some had beards round them. Some had lips that were cracked with age.

Every one of them was a mouth that somebody had once spoken with.

Long pale arms grew out of the mass between the mouths. They lay folded against its sides like the legs of a sleeping spider.

At its crown, two great cupped ears stood above everything else. They turned slowly from side to side against the mist, listening.

The steps of the basin were full of people.

They stood on every ring from the lip down to the water, shoulder to shoulder, thousands of them. All of them faced the island.

All of them swayed gently, and all of them had their mouths open, shaping the song without a sound.

Hollowthroats moved among them. They walked down the rings toward the water with their long arms hanging, and then they waded out into the lake.

Logan watched one reach the island. It laid its long hand flat against the grey hill, between two of the singing mouths.

The flesh there split open. A new mouth formed in it, a young woman’s mouth with a chipped front tooth. It opened, and it began to sing.

On the third ring down from the lip, a young woman with that same chipped tooth shut her eyes.

"Nyriel," Logan breathed.

He said it for Edda. It was barely louder than the falls, and it came out.

[ Many Mouthed Cantor ] [ Rank: Mythic ] [ Scaled to: Tier-9 ]

[ Attack: 34,000 ] [ Speed: 5,500 ] [ Constitution: 180,000 ] [ Arcane: 72,000 ]

’It does not need to move,’ Logan thought. ’Everything comes to it.’

Garen read the panel over his shoulder. He kept his mouth shut. He only looked at Isolde and drew one finger slowly across his throat.

Edda had found him.

Logan did not see her go. She had been at Alice’s side at the lip of the basin, and then she was three rings down, pushing between the silent people.

Alice went after her. Logan went after Alice.

Bram was standing on the fourth ring. He stood between a tall woman and an old man, with his split shield on his back and his hammer hanging from one hand, so loosely that its head rested on the stone.

His eyes were on the island. His mouth was open. His beard moved a little as his lips shaped the long note.

Edda stopped in front of him. She put her hands on his chest.

He did not look at her. He did not seem to feel her hands at all. He swayed a little, the way they all swayed, and looked over her head at the thing in the lake.

Out on the island, high on its left flank, a deep rough mouth in a dark beard sang "Edda" again.

Edda’s face broke.

Logan put his hand on her arm. He did not dare speak.

Rishin had come down behind them with Vina. The old man looked at Bram for a beat. Then he crouched down beside the girl and spoke to her, very low.

Logan could tell he was saying it to Vina. He was saying it to her because she was frightened and he loved her, and so all of them heard it.

"Every voice on that hill was taken from somebody who is standing here," said Rishin.

"Each one of them still knows who it belongs to. If somebody who loves the owner calls it by name, it will turn to them. It will want to come home."

"Will it come?" whispered Vina.

"If it can tear itself free. When it does, the mouth that held it closes, and the thing is weaker." Rishin’s eyes went to the island.

"But the call is a word spoken in love. It will hear that word above every other sound in this place. So will every Hollowthroat here."

He looked up at Edda.

"Whoever calls," he said, "it will reach for."

Edda did not hesitate.

She took her father’s limp hand in both of hers. She turned to face the island.

Behind her, Logan saw the family understand. He saw Garen draw both pistols and Isolde’s chakram come up out of her palm. He saw his father set his feet on the stone and close his hand on his rock.

Helen’s palms were already glowing green. Alice had her bow in her hand, and she was looking at the island the way she looked at every target, as though it were already dead.

He looked at the units behind them on the rings, silent and ready. He raised his fist, the way Garen had taught them, and then he opened it.

Go when she does.

Halden nodded. Billy’s blades slid out.

Edda filled her chest until her shoulders lifted.

"Papa!" she called.

It rang out across the basin like a bell.

The song stopped.

All of it stopped at once. Every mouth on the island closed together, hundreds of them, as if a hand had been laid over the whole hill.

The quiet that came after was worse than anything Logan had ever heard. Only the water made a sound, falling over the lip into the basin.

Then, at the crown of the island, the two great ears turned. They turned slowly, together, until they were both pointing at the fourth ring.

They were pointing at Edda.

Every Hollowthroat in the basin stopped where it stood and turned too, down the rings and along the waterline and out in the lake.