Chapter 237 Fight and Talk

The blind head came down over the deck.

Terry was already moving. He had lost his oar, but he still had his shield, and he threw himself across the planks in front of Garen and Isolde. The Gleaner’s jaw struck the shield with a sound like a falling bell, and Terry slid back half the width of the barge.

"Ninety-one," Alice said in Logan’s ear. "Ninety-one. Say it."

"Ninety-one." Logan drew his sword. "Kaevan Dross, four."

"Serai Vokh, two."

"Idresh Kaan, two." He got to his feet. "Vessa Quill, one."

Garen fired both pistols into the blind white head.

The shots punched into the white skin, and it split like wet paper. Pale lights spilled out of the wounds and fell back into the Mere, and the Gleaner did not even flinch.

"Talk to me!" Isolde had her chakram in her hand. Her face was wet. "Garen! I lost a piece! I do not know what it was!"

"The jaws closed," Garen shouted. He fired again. "It was white on every side and cold, and I knew you were out there, not looking at me!"

"I was not looking!"

"You hated it!"

"I hated it!" Isolde threw. The chakram cut a long line down the Gleaner’s neck and came back to her hand. "Keep going!"

The barge rocked.

The Gleaner’s body was sliding past under them now, longer than the barge. Its back broke the surface on the far side and the whole deck tilted. Bram grabbed Edda round the waist. Helen went down on one knee, and Daniel caught her arm before she slid.

The units at the oars braced their feet. Halden planted the butt of his halberd in the planks and held the rail with his free hand. Solveig had Vina by the back of her coat.

Lights were falling from everyone now. They were falling faster as people grabbed and shouted and forgot to speak.

"Talk!" Rishin roared from the stern. "Every one of you! Hold it!"

Edda started singing.

She sang the walking song at the top of her voice, flat and hard and furious. After the first line Bram joined her, and then Helen, and then Vina. The song went over the deck in a ragged chorus, and Logan saw the lights falling from them slow.

’It is the same song,’ he thought. ’They all know it now. They are all holding it together.’

He looked at Alice.

"The cafe," he said. "Terry and Winsmoke."

"They started answering to me." Alice had her bow up and an arrow on the string. "Your units. Since the cafe."

Logan opened Sword Intent.

The Gleaner became a long white shape threaded through with pale lines. They were not like the threads of the Strider or the grey threads of the Keeper. These were thin and countless, and every one of them ran forward to the same place.

It was the throat. Every light the Gleaner had eaten had gone down that long open mouth into a dense, bright knot deep in its gullet. In Sword Intent, the knot burned so brightly that he had to squint.

"The throat," he said. "Everything it eats goes to one place in the throat. I can see it."

"Can you reach it?"

"Only if it opens its mouth for me."

Helen had heard him.

She was still on one knee on the tilted deck, singing between breaths. Wren stood beside her with the white metal yoke across her small shoulders and a lantern hanging from each end. One lantern held glowing water. The other held a steady yellow light.

"It is blind," Helen said. She stopped singing to say it, and a light fell from her before Daniel took her hand. "It goes for the lights. That is all it can see."

She looked at Wren’s yellow lantern.

"Wren," she said. "To the front. Hold it high."

Wren went.

She ran down the length of the tilted barge with the yoke bouncing on her shoulders. She climbed onto the bow past Billy and lifted the yellow lantern high over her head with both hands.

It shone out over the white water like a fallen star.

The Gleaner’s head turned.

It swung away from the deck and away from the family and their falling lights. It came along the hull toward the bow in one long smooth glide, and its mouth opened wider and wider as it came.

"Halden," Logan said. "Terry. The jaws."

They went forward together.

Halden reached the bow first. As the Gleaner lunged at the lantern, he drove his halberd up into the roof of its mouth and set the butt against the planks. Terry came in under the lower jaw and jammed his shield there.

The Gleaner’s mouth stuck open.

It thrashed, and the barge bucked under them. But the halberd held, and the shield held, and Wren stood behind them both with the lantern still held high and did not move an inch.

Logan ran along the rail.

"Alice," he said as he ran. "Talk to me."

"You are on the rail." Her voice came from behind him, steady and loud. "You are running to the bow. You love me. Your parents and Vina are in this boat. Rishin carries two stones. You do not ask him."

He reached the bow.

The throat opened in front of him like a white tunnel, lined with light. Far down inside it, the knot burned.

"Say it back!"

"I love you," said Logan. He set his feet. "My parents and Vina are in the boat. Rishin carries two stones."

[ Grimspire Lance ]

His blade lengthened to eleven feet and thinned to a needle at the tip. He drove it straight down the gullet, past Halden’s halberd and over Terry’s shield, into the burning knot.

The knot split.

Light poured out of it. It came up the throat in a flood and burst from the open mouth, hundreds of small pale lights scattering into the mist. The Gleaner shuddered along its whole length.

But it did not die.

It wrenched its head sideways. Halden’s halberd scraped loose. Terry’s shield slid an inch.

"Wren!" Helen cried. "Into its mouth! Now!"

The little unit did not hesitate. She swung the yoke off her shoulders and threw the yellow lantern underhand, straight past Logan and down the open throat.

It struck the torn knot and broke.

Fire ran down the inside of the Gleaner.

Logan saw it go through the white skin from within, yellow and spreading, all the way down the long body under the water. Steam rose off the Mere around it.

The Gleaner’s jaws went slack. Terry’s shield fell free. Halden wrenched his halberd free, and the long blind head slid back from the bow and sank into the white water.

[ Paleveil Mere Gleaner slain. ] [ Helen Wolf: +800 Tower Points ] [ Warden of the Tenth Layer slain. ] [ The far shore is open. ]

Helen sat down on the deck.

Daniel had his arm round her. Wren came walking back along the barge with the empty yoke over one shoulder and a single lantern of glowing water swinging from it, and she stopped in front of her mistress and bowed.

Helen pulled the little unit into her arms and held her.

All around the barge, the lights were still in the air. They had not fallen back into the water. They hung in the mist like sparks above a fire, and then they moved.

One came drifting toward Logan. It touched his chest and went into him.

He knew what it was at once.

Across the deck, the coin of light Isolde had lost came back to her. She put her hand to her chest and turned to Garen, and her face crumpled. It was the thought he had lost as they pushed off from the bank, the first one, and he had it back whole.

’Whatever is at the bottom,’ he had been thinking, ’I will be there with him when he gets to it.’