Chapter 205: Called Home

The arms unfolded.

They came away from the sides of the hill one after another, the way a spider’s legs come out from under it. There were dozens of them, long and pale and jointed in too many places.

They rose over the island against the mist. Then they leaned out across the black water toward the fourth ring, and they kept on growing longer as they came.

The Hollowthroats came too. They turned up the rings from the waterline and began to climb toward Edda, pushing between the silent people with their great ears forward.

Edda did not look at any of them. She stood holding her father’s hand with her eyes on the hill in the lake.

"Papa," she called again. "Papa, come home."

The units met the Hollowthroats on the rings.

The grey creatures never saw them coming. Halden’s halberd took two of them on the third ring before either knew he was there.

Billy went along the second ring in a screaming line, low and fast, and the long legs folded in front of him like reeds. Terry simply stepped into the path of the next four and let them walk into his arms.

The silent people on the steps did not move out of the way. Nothing that was happening reached them. The units went round them and between them, and not one of the walkers was touched.

’They are careful,’ Logan thought. ’Even now, with nobody able to tell them to be.’

The first arm reached the fourth ring.

It came in over the water higher than a house, and its hand opened as it came. The hand was as broad as a cart. Every one of its long fingers was pointing at Edda.

Isolde’s dome went up over the girl and her father.

It rose round them in clouded light, so suddenly that it caught the hand as it was closing. The long grey fingers struck the curve of it and spread out across it, feeling for a way in.

Garen fired twice into the wrist without a sound. Grey flesh burst open. The hand jerked back, and then it came down again on the dome.

Logan was already moving.

[ Grimspire Lance ]

Grimlord’s Blade drew out to eleven feet and thinned to a needle. He drove it up through the arm just behind the wrist and cut outward.

The hand came away and fell onto the rings. Its fingers kept moving for a little while after it landed, opening and closing on the stone.

More arms were coming. Logan counted six before he made himself stop counting.

They swept toward the rings at different heights. Some came high and some low, skimming the water. They were all reaching for the same place.

Daniel stood at the edge of the dome with his feet planted. When the next hand came down on it, he set his shoulder against the clouded light from the inside and took the weight with Isolde.

The dome bent. It held.

Helen’s hands were on his back, and green light poured out of them into him. Logan saw his father’s knees straighten under the load.

Alice had not drawn yet. She was standing two paces back from the dome with an arrow on the string, and she was not looking at the arms at all.

She was watching the hill.

Out on the hill, a mouth was fighting.

Logan saw it when he cut his way clear of the third arm. It was high on the left flank, in a nest of dark beard. It was the mouth that had sung Edda’s name all the way down the river.

It was not singing now. It was straining. The lips were drawn back and the jaw was working, as if it were trying to pull itself out of the grey flesh around it.

"Papa!" called Edda from inside the dome. Her voice was raw. "Papa, I am here! Come home!"

The mouth tore free.

Logan heard it go. It sounded like cloth ripping. The grey flesh round it split, and a sound came out of the split and across the water.

It was one word, in a deep rough voice. It skimmed the black lake like a stone thrown flat, and it came up over the rings and through the clouded light of Isolde’s dome as if the dome were not there.

"Edda."

It went into Bram’s open mouth.

Then the thing on the island screamed.

Every mouth on it opened at once and screamed. There were hundreds of different voices in it, men and women and children and the old, and all of them were screaming in pain.

The sound hit the basin like a wave.

Logan was thrown off his feet. He landed on his shoulder on the stone and lay there with his hands over his ears.

It made no difference. The scream came through his hands and his skull, and it went on and on.

He felt a warm trickle run out of his left ear and down his neck.

On the rings below him, the silent people swayed and did not fall. They were the only ones still standing. Even Halden had gone down to one knee.

Isolde’s dome cracked from top to bottom like a dropped plate, and it held only because she was still kneeling inside it with both hands raised.

Alice had not fallen.

She stood braced on the stone with her bow drawn to her cheek. Her eyes were on the crown of the island. Blood was running from both her ears, and her arm was absolutely steady.

Logan followed her eyes.

At the crown of the hill, between the two great ears, there was a mouth he had not seen before.

It was bigger than any of the others. It had no lips and no teeth. It was only a dark slit in the grey flesh, and it had been closed until now.

It was open. It was the only mouth on the whole island that was not screaming. It was simply gaping, wide and black and silent, while all the others screamed round it.

Alice loosed.

Her arrow flew out over the black water. Logan watched it go.

It was halfway across the water when the scream ended. The slit at the crown closed as suddenly as an eye. The arrow struck grey flesh beside it and stood there, quivering, harmless.

Alice lowered the bow. She was breathing hard.

She looked round at Logan. She could not say anything to him that would carry, because what she wanted to say was not love.

It was a target. So she put two fingers to her eyes and pointed at the crown, and then she held up one finger.

When it screams. Only then.

Logan nodded.

Inside the cracked dome, Bram had dropped to his knees.

He was holding his throat with one hand and his daughter with the other. His mouth was open, and he was breathing in great ragged gulps, and Logan could hear every one of them.

"Edda," said Bram.

It came out of him rough and hoarse and certain. Edda made a sound like a sob and a laugh at once, and threw both arms round his neck.

Then Bram’s eyes went past her to the water.

He looked at the island with its hundreds of mouths. He looked at the thousands of silent people standing on the rings round him.

Logan saw him understand where he was, and what he had been, and what was still standing on every step of the basin.

Bram picked up his hammer.

The arms were coming again.

The scream had driven them back, and now they were reaching out across the lake once more. There were more of them than before, and they were moving faster.

They were not reaching for Edda this time.

’The scream,’ Logan thought. ’Every word we say now, it can hear. And it is angry.’

One arm came in low over the water toward the second ring, where Rishin stood with Vina.

It was not aimed at the old man. It was aimed at the girl beside him. It came in fast and low, with its long fingers spread.

Vina had not seen it. She was looking at Logan, at the blood on his neck.

Rishin saw it.

"Vina," he said. "Down."

Vina dropped flat on the stone, the way he had taught her on the lawn at home, before any of them came into the Abyss.

The hand closed on the place where her head had been. It found nothing. Then it turned, quick as a striking snake, toward the voice that had warned her.

It closed over Rishin’s face.

Logan was moving before he understood what he had seen. He came up the rings with the lance still drawn and severed the arm at the forearm, and the hand fell away from the old man’s face.

Logan knew it was too late before the hand landed.

Rishin stood on the second ring with his eyes wide and his mouth open. He did not make a sound. He lifted one hand to his throat.

Out on the island, low on the right flank, the grey flesh split. A new mouth opened there, an old man’s mouth in a white beard. It began to sing.

"Vina," it sang. "Vina. Vina."

Rishin turned away from them.

He turned toward the lake. His eyes had gone fixed and far away, like the eyes of every other walker in the basin. Then he took a step down from the second ring to the third.

Vina came up off the stone and grabbed his hand.

He did not stop. He did not seem to know she was there. He took another step down, and she was pulled down after him with her boots skidding on the stone.

Logan reached her and caught her other arm. Between them they held the old man still. He leaned against their grip toward the water, and his mouth moved in time with the singing.

Vina looked up at Logan. Her face was white. Her braids had come loose, and there was a scrape on her chin where she had hit the stone.

Logan knew what she was asking him.

’If she calls him, it will reach for her next,’ he thought. ’Every hand on that island will come for her.’

He looked at her face, and then at the old man’s, and he nodded.

Vina turned to face the island. She filled her chest until her shoulders lifted, the way she had watched Edda do it.