Chapter 214: What She Carries

Logan did not argue with her again.

"Sonic," he said.

Sonic dropped out of the air beside him, crackling. He had a long scrape down one arm where a cat had caught him in the crack, and his eyes were bright.

"Down?" he said. "Boss, I just came up."

"Down. Follow the thread I tell you to follow. Do not let go of me."

Alice caught his arm before Sonic could take him. Her lips had gone pale.

"I cannot come," she said. "Can I."

"Every cut you take comes to me." He put his hand over hers. "Keep her busy up here. Keep her off Mom."

Alice let go. She turned back to the Brood Mother, and she already had an arrow on the string.

Sonic took him under the arms and went over the edge.

The crack swallowed them. The ember light of the bowl shrank to a red stripe overhead, and the noise of the falling river filled everything.

Logan kept Sword Intent open.

The thread ran down ahead of them, red and taut. It ran along the far wall of the crack beside the falling water, deeper and deeper. Beside it, a little apart, the old man’s thread went down too.

Logan did not look at that one.

The cats came at them on the way down.

They came off the walls in leaps, glittering, and Sonic’s lightning met them in the air. Two fell burning. A third came in under the light and went for Logan’s legs.

He cut it down in mid-leap with Grimlord’s Blade.

He did not see the second one. Its claws went across the back of his shoulder as it passed, and the glass bit in.

It was not deep. He knew, as he felt it, that it was only half as deep as it should have been.

’She has the other half,’ he thought. ’Up there. Right now.’

He set his teeth and kept his eyes on the thread.

The thread went in behind the falls.

Sonic followed it. They went through the edge of the falling water in a burst of cold spray, and then they were out of it, in a cave cut back into the rock.

It was low and wide, and it was full of bones.

They were cat bones, mostly. Glass plates lay among them, old and dull. The floor was red gravel. In the middle of it lay the one the thread was tied to, curled on its side with its back to the falls.

It was a Shardcat. It was bigger than the others, and it was old. Its plates had gone pale, almost white, and they were covered in scars.

They were covered from its nose to its tail in scars, more scars than plates. Logan had thought Corran was covered. Corran had nothing on this.

As he watched, a new wound opened in its flank. It was a long clean cut, half a hand deep, and it bled.

The cat did not move. It only shivered.

’Alice’s arrow,’ Logan thought. ’That was half of Alice’s arrow. It has been lying here taking half of every wound she ever got.’

[ Shardcat Firstborn ] [ Level: 58 ] [ Rank: Legendary ]

Sonic set him down on the gravel.

"Boss," he said, low. "It is not even fighting."

"No."

Logan walked toward it. The old cat lifted its head as he came. Its eyes were the same dull ember as its mother’s, and they were clouded with age.

It looked at him. It did not get up.

Another wound opened across its shoulder, ragged this time. Garen’s shot, Logan guessed. The old cat flinched, and then it put its head back down on the gravel.

Logan stood over it with his blade in his hand.

He could kill it. It would not stop him. One stroke would do it, and five hundred points would come with it, and the thread would end because the thing at the end of it was dead.

He looked at the scars. He thought of Corran smiling in his doorway at a new cut on his knuckles.

’It loves her,’ he thought. ’That is all it has ever done. Lie here in the dark and love her, and carry it.’

He lowered the point of his sword. He looked at the thread instead.

It came out of the old cat’s chest, red and taut, and it ran up through the falls toward the bowl. Where it left the cat’s body, it was knotted. The knot was small and tight, and it burned.

Logan set the point of Grimlord’s Blade against it.

[ Broken Chain ]

The thread parted.

It made no sound. It simply let go, the way a rope lets go when the last strand is cut. The loose end whipped away into the falling water and was gone.

The old cat shuddered all over.

Then it lifted its head, slowly, and looked at him. Its clouded eyes found his face and stayed there.

It opened its mouth. It did not snarl. It made a long, low sound like a cat crying for a kitten that has gone.

Then it got up on its scarred legs, and it walked away from him into the back of the cave, and it lay down again in the dark.

Logan let it go.

Far above, through the roar of the water, a scream came down.

It was the Mother. Logan had never heard a sound like it. It came down the crack from the bowl, high and enraged and full of pain, and it did not stop.

"She felt it go," said Sonic.

"Take me up," said Logan. "Fast."

They burst from the crack into the red light, and Logan saw the bowl.

The Brood Mother was cracking.

Every wound the family had given her was opening wider. It was as if all the half-wounds that had been carried away were coming back at once.

Red glass split along her flanks. Alice’s three arrows stood in her neck, and the plates round them had shattered.

She was not fighting the units any more. She had turned away from all of them.

She was going for Helen.

Daniel stood in front of his wife with his rock in his hand and his feet planted. Hob stood beside him with his head down. Isolde’s dome had gone up round all three of them, cracked and flickering.

The Mother reared over it, and her claws came up.

Sword Intent showed him where she was tied.

It was in her chest, low down, behind the great glass plates over her heart. It burned brighter than anything in the bowl.

"Sonic," said Logan. "Under her. Now."

Sonic dropped him.

Logan fell the last stretch and landed on the gravel under the Mother’s raised chest, in the shadow of her. The plates were right above his head.

[ Grimspire Lance ]

Grimlord’s Blade drew out to eleven feet and thinned to a needle. He drove it straight up between the plates and into the knot.

The Mother screamed once more.

Her claws came down. They did not come down on the dome. She swung them round under her body, at the thing that had hurt her, and they raked across Logan’s side as he tore the blade free.

He felt the glass go in along his ribs. He felt how deep it went, and he knew that it should have gone deeper.

Behind the dome, his mother cried out.

The Mother did not fall. She split.

Her plates came apart along every crack at once, from her chest outward. They fell away in great red shards onto the gravel, ringing like bells. Under them there was nothing at all, only the dull glow of her eyes going out.

[ Redglass Brood Mother slain. ] [ Logan Wolf: +800 Tower Points ] [ Warden of the Sixth Layer slain. ] [ The Seam is open. ]

The cats went back into the walls.

All round the bowl and down the crack, Logan heard them go. They slid back into their cracks one by one and went still.

Logan was on his knees on the gravel with one hand pressed to his side. Blood was coming through his fingers.

The dome came down. His mother was already moving.

She came across the gravel to him holding her side, in the same place. Her shirt was wet there. Her face was white, and she was smiling.

"Let me see," she said.

He took his hand away. She put her glowing palm over the cut.

[ Mending Spring ]

The wound closed under her fingers. Then she put her palm over her side, and cast it again, and that one closed too. She found the cut on his shoulder after that, and its twin on hers, and closed those as well.

Helen sat down on the gravel beside him.

"There," she said. She was a little winded. "Now we match."

Logan looked at her. Then he put his arms round her, and she held on to him, and for a time neither of them let go.

Tavin was standing at the edge of the Seam when Logan let go of his mother.

The young man was on his feet, swaying, with his broken sword in one hand and his clawed shield in the other. Link had given it back to him.

He was looking down into the crack, where the falls went over.

"The way down is in there," he said. "Behind the water. I saw the steps. I was trying to reach them when I fell."

"Will you come?" asked Vina.

Tavin met her eyes. Then he looked back up the wide canyon, the way they had come.

Rishin answered before he could.

"Go back up," said the old man. "Three sleeps. He sits in his doorway and counts every cut you get."

Tavin held the old man’s gaze. Then he nodded.

Rishin turned away from him. He walked to the edge and stood there, looking down past the falls into the dark.

Logan did not need Sword Intent to know what he was looking at.