Chapter 207: The Day He Needs It

The whirlpool turned for the rest of that waking.

The family sat on the second ring and watched the lake go down. It went slowly at first, a finger’s width at a time against the grey steps. Then it went faster.

The black water drew back from the lowest ring and showed wet stone underneath.

It bared the column’s foot and a round dark opening in the lake bed, as wide as a house, where all the water was pouring down and away.

All round the basin, the people of the Fifth Layer were finding each other.

Logan watched them do it. A man ran down three rings and caught a woman in his arms, and they stood holding each other on the steps without moving.

Two old men sat side by side on the lip of the fourth ring and talked to each other in low voices. Every word they said came up the basin clearly.

Others were alone.

They stood on the rings and called names, and no one called back. Some of them kept calling. Some of them stopped, and sat down where they were, and did not call again.

Vina watched them too. She did not say anything. She held the old man’s hand and watched.

They slept on the ring.

Logan lay with his head in Alice’s lap and listened to the water draining away below. His ear did not hurt any more, but he could still feel where it had.

The last thing he heard before he slept was a woman somewhere far round the basin, singing a song with words in it. It was a child’s song, slow and simple. Every word of it came across the dark to him.

’She is singing it to somebody,’ he thought. ’Or it would not carry.’

[ Time remaining: 335 days ]

When he woke, the lake was gone.

The basin was a great dry bowl of grey steps going down and down, ring after ring, to a floor of wet black stone.

In the middle of the floor stood the bare column, taller than anything else in the basin, its crown lost in the mist.

At its foot was the Throat.

It was a round shaft cut straight down into the rock.

The river came over the lip of the basin as before and ran across the floor in a shallow stream, and the stream poured over the edge of the shaft and fell away into the dark.

Logan could see steps going down inside it. They were cut into the wall of the shaft, spiralling round and down beside the falling water.

Beside the shaft, there was a door.

It was black wood, plain and old, set into the foot of the column. An amber lantern burned beside it. And in front of it, a plain ring had been cut into the floor.

Rishin was already awake.

He was sitting on the edge of the second ring with Vina asleep against his side, and he was looking down at the circle on the lake bed. He had been looking at it, Logan thought, for most of the sleep.

Link sat on the step behind him with his torch across his knees, and it was burning again in the cold blue air.

Rishin turned his head. He saw that Logan was awake, and he did not look away.

"Boy," he said.

It came out. Logan sat up.

"On the shelf above the Silver, you told me you could put years on him," said Rishin. "I told you I would ask you on the day he needed it, and not before."

He looked at Link. Then he looked down at the girl asleep against him.

"It reached past me for her," he said. "When it could not have her, it took me instead, and it nearly walked me into that water. If it had, she would have come after me."

His voice was very low, and all of it was heard.

"I am asking," said Rishin.

Logan had a hundred things he could have said. None of them would have carried.

He only nodded.

"How many points do you have?" asked Rishin. He asked it for Vina’s sake, and so it carried.

Logan could not answer that way. A number was only a number. He opened his panel instead and turned it so the old man could see the four hundred and sixty on it.

"I have thirteen hundred."

Alice had woken. She sat up behind Logan with her hair full of the dried blood from her ears. She said it for the old man, as if she had been waiting to, and all of it carried.

"Eight hundred of them came off that thing," she said. "It took your voice, Senior. I would like to spend them on the next time a thing like that tries."

Rishin looked at her. Then he looked at Logan.

"That is too much," he said.

"It is thirteen hundred points," said Alice. "Out here they do nothing in a purse. Somebody told my father that once."

The corner of the old man’s mouth moved.

"Name them first," he said. "Every one of them."

They went down the rings to the circle together.

The floor of the basin was still wet and cold underfoot, and the stream ran past them toward the Throat with a quiet rushing. The lantern burned beside the door with its flame quite still.

Nobody looked at the door.

Alice put her palm on the ring.

[ Summon: Combat Unit x13 ] [ Cost: 1,300 Tower Points ] [ Remaining Tower Points: 0 ]

Thirteen columns of light went up beside the Throat. They settled one by one into shapes.

There was a man with a spear and a girl with a bucket, a hound and a hawk, a boy with a sling. There was a heavy woman in plate with a hammer.

The last of them was slower than the rest. It became a lean figure in a coat of dark feathers, with a curved knife at each hip and a kestrel’s yellow eyes.

[ Pull result: 5x Normal | 5x Uncommon | 2x Rare | 1x Epic ]

Logan put his palm down after her.

[ Summon: Combat Unit x4 ] [ Cost: 400 Tower Points ] [ Remaining Tower Points: 60 ]

[ Pull result: 2x Normal | 1x Uncommon | 1x Rare ]

Seventeen of them stood beside the Throat.

Vina had woken when they went down the steps. She came down the rings with Edda and stood looking at the seventeen with her hands on her hips. Then she looked at Rishin, and he nodded.

So she named them. It took her the whole of Martha’s breakfast. She went to each one in turn and looked at it carefully, and then she told it who it was.

Edda followed her down the line and mouthed every name after her, nodding.

The man with the spear was Prod. The girl with the bucket was Fern. The hound was Rue and the hawk was Kite. The woman with the hammer was Anvil.

The figure in dark feathers was the last. Vina stood in front of it and studied its yellow eyes.

"Ash," she said finally. "Because you are the color of the end of a fire."

The figure bowed its head to her.

Logan handed the cards over to Rishin one at a time, Alice’s thirteen and his four. Rishin took each one carefully.

When he held all seventeen, the units stood up again beside their new owner, the way they had stood up beside Oswin under the willows.

Then the old man turned to Link.

Link had stood up from the step. He was holding his torch in both hands, the way he had held it beside the hedge on the day he was named.

"These are going into you," said Rishin. "All of them. You will stay yourself. You will have more of them in you than you have ever had of anything."

Link’s lips moved. No sound came out of them, because nothing a unit said could be heard on this layer. But Logan could read the words on them, and so could the old man.

Will I still hold the light, Grandfather?

"That is the reason," said Rishin.

Link thought about it, frowning. Then he nodded once, and his lips shaped three more words. I am ready.

Logan did the sum before he started.

’Link and seven Normals make eight. Four Uncommons. Add the six from the circle, and there are ten, which make five Rares. Add three, and there are eight Rares, which make four Epics.’

’With the one in feathers, five Epics. Two Legendaries and one Epic left over. The two Legendaries make a Mythic. The last Epic goes in at the end.’

’Seventeen merges. Eight thousand five hundred MP.’

He had done sixteen once before, in the dome on the Second Layer. He knew how it would feel.

He set his will on Link, and he began.

It went in stages, the way it always did.

The Normals went first, pair by pair. Link took the first of them. He rose from the light a little taller, an Uncommon with the torch blazing higher.

Then the Uncommons went, and Link went from Uncommon to Rare with Prod and Fern inside him. Then the Rares, and Rue and Kite and Anvil went in with them.

When Link stood up an Epic, he was standing differently. He set his feet the way Anvil had set hers. He turned his head once, sharp as a hawk, and Logan saw Vina notice it.

Ash went in at the fourth stage. The Epics became two Legendaries, and Link was one of them.

Logan’s head was pounding by then. His sight was going dark at the edges, and he could feel his MP draining away like water out of the bottom of a cracked jug.

He put the two Legendaries together.

Then he took the last Epic and folded it in after them, and he let go.

[ Merge Complete ] [ Torch Bearer (Normal) + 7x Normal + 6x Uncommon + 3x Rare + 1x Epic ] [ Hearthflame Torch Warden (Mythic) Created. ]

The light went out of the circle slowly.

Link stood where the Torch Bearer had stood.

He was the same young man. He had the same face and the same furrow when he thought. But he was taller now, and broader in the shoulder.

He wore a long coat of feathers as dark as Ash’s over plate that gleamed like a hammered pot. A curved knife hung at each hip.

The torch in his hand was no longer a torch. It was a long staff of black iron, as tall as he was, with a cage of iron at its head.

A flame burned inside the cage. It was not yellow any more. It was the deep red of the heart of a forge.

The light of it fell across the wet black lake bed, and it went a long way. It reached the foot of the steps. It reached the lip of the Throat.

Link looked down at the iron staff in his hands. Then he tilted his head to one side, exactly as Pebble did, as if somebody were speaking just behind his ear. He lowered the staff a little, and then he raised it again.

"Hold it where I can see it," said Rishin.

Link lifted it. He turned to the old man, and he went down on one knee on the wet stone in front of him.

His lips moved again. Logan did not have to read them this time. It was the question Link had asked beside the hedge, and the old man had heard it there.

Where do you want the light, Grandfather?

Rishin opened the panel. Logan saw him read it.

[ Hearthflame Torch Warden ] [ Name: Link ] [ Rank: Mythic ] [ Lifespan: 6,547 days ] [ Lifespan may be exchanged for Abyss Points at any Relic Shop. ]

The old man read the number. He did not close the panel straight away this time.

"In front of her," said Rishin. His voice was rough. "Wherever she goes, in front of her. And then in front of me."

Logan sat down hard where he stood. He did not think he could have stood up again if he had tried. Alice sat down beside him and put her shoulder against his, and they watched the red flame burn beside the Throat.