Chapter 241: The First Asking

Vina looked at the glowing stones. Then she peered into the dark below, and back at the stones again.

"They are saying hello," she said.

Rishin closed his hand. The glow showed faintly between his fingers, pale against the red of Link’s flame, and he held his fist to his chest.

"Yes, little one," he said. "I think they are."

Helen had come up behind them. She put her hand on the old man’s shoulder and left it there, and he did not shake it off.

The ledge did not end at the drop.

On the left, where the rock wall curved away into the dark, a path had been cut into its face. It was narrow, no wider than two people walking side by side, and it went down along the wall in a long slope before turning back on itself.

Logan leaned out and followed it with his eyes. It turned again below, and again, until it was too far down to see.

"That is the way," said Rishin. "There is no other."

"How far?" asked Garen.

"Far."

Billy went first again.

He rolled onto the path with his blades tucked in and his rim close enough to scrape the wall. Halden and Terry came after him, and then the rest of the units in a long line.

Hob had to turn his great body sideways at the first bend, and Daniel walked beside him with a hand on his plates.

Pebble went near the front.

At every turn of the path he stopped and set three small stones one on another against the inner wall. Logan watched him do it at the next bend, and the one after, and the one after that.

"So we can find the way back," Pebble said, when he saw Logan looking.

Logan did not ask him who he thought would be coming back.

The lights grew larger as they went down.

After the fourth turn, Logan could see that they were not scattered at random across the dark. Many of them lay along the paths. Some were set into the rock wall itself, as if they had been pressed there.

They passed one at the sixth bend.

It was close enough to touch. It was a soft steady light the height of a person, and inside it there was a shape. It was a woman, kneeling, with both her arms stretched out in front of her as if she had pushed someone away from her and down the path.

She did not move. Her eyes were closed and her face was calm.

Vina stopped in front of her.

"She is asleep," she said.

"She is kept," said Rishin.

He did not stop walking, but he slowed until he stood beside the girl. He looked at the kneeling woman, and Logan saw his jaw work under the beard.

"She gave herself here," said the old man. "Whoever she pushed on went down without her."

"Did they come back for her?"

"I do not know, little one."

Vina studied the woman’s empty outstretched hands. Then she caught hold of Rishin’s fingers and walked on, and she did not look back.

Alice walked beside Logan with her bow on her back.

She had been quiet since the tunnel. Now she spoke without looking at him.

"If it asks for you," she said, "I am going to want to."

"I know."

"I am telling you so you know I know. I heard him." Her voice was steady. "I am not going to. I need you to not either."

’She is saying it out loud so it is real,’ Logan thought. ’Like on the Mere.’

"I will not," he said. "I promise."

Alice glanced at him sharply. Then one corner of her mouth went up.

"Careful," she said. "We know what happens to your promises."

The gate stood across the path at the tenth turn.

It was an arch of black rock, as tall as Hob and as wide as the path. Inside it, where the path should have gone on, hung a curtain of darkness so thick that Link’s flame did not go into it at all.

Billy rolled up to it and stopped. Halden put his halberd through the dark, and it came back out clean, but Halden did not go after it.

The panel opened as the family came up behind the units.

[ The way down asks. ] [ Asked: 1,000 days ]

Garen read it and let out a low whistle.

"Days," he said. "Whose?"

"Anyone’s who loves you," said Rishin. "That is the only rule. It does not care whose they are."

Isolde stared at the panel.

"We have three hundred and some," she said. "Each of us. A thousand would take three of us to nothing."

"Yes," said the old man. "This is the first asking. It is always days. It is always more than any one of you can give."

He turned round to face them. "That is how it begins. One offers a part and another offers a part. By the time it asks for a thing that cannot be split, they are already used to giving."

Logan looked at the black curtain.

He thought of the kneeling woman with her arms out. He thought of three people standing here once, long ago, working out between them how to pay.

"Boss," said Pebble.

He had come back down the line from his cairns. He stood beside Logan, slight and grey-haired at the temple, with his sling over his shoulder.

"I have four thousand six hundred," he said. "And ten. I am a Mythic. The counter on the Fourth Layer paid me thirty-two a day for them." He looked at the panel. "A thousand is not so many."

Logan turned to Rishin.

The old man knew what he was asking. He studied Pebble’s face, and then Logan’s.

"Days are not a person," Rishin said. "Days he may give. They are his to spend, as they were at the counter. Let him."

"You said do not offer."

"I said do not offer yourselves." Rishin’s hand tightened on his glowing fist. "Saya and I and the others who came down with us paid this gate between us, a few hundred days each. We were frightened of how few we had left after. If we had had him, I would have let him."

Logan looked at Pebble.

"Do it," he said.

Pebble stepped up to the arch.

He did not touch it. He stood in front of the black curtain with his hands at his sides and spoke to it the way he had once spoken to the counter.

"Mine," he said. "A thousand. For my boss and his family."

[ Offered: Longroad Cairn Slinger (Pebble) ] [ Given: 1,000 days ] [ Pebble: Lifespan 3,610 days ]

The curtain went out like a blown candle. Beyond it, the path went on down into the dark.

Logan looked at Pebble’s hair.

The grey lock at his left temple had widened. Running through it now there was a streak of pure white as broad as a finger, and the two fine threads from the Fourth Layer were lost inside it.

Pebble put his hand up and touched it.

"It is fine, boss," he said. "I still have nearly ten years. I do not know what I would do with ten years anyway."

"Pebble."

"Boss." He shouldered his sling and went back up the line to the front. "I have cairns to set."

They stopped on a wide shelf two turns below the gate, where the path widened enough for all of them.

Martha cooked, and this time they ate. Afterward the family sat in their pairs from habit, although the Tenth Layer was above them now and nothing would be lost by sleeping.

Logan lay down beside Alice with his back to the rock.

Across the shelf, the old man stood at the very edge with Vina asleep at his feet and Link beside him. His eyes were on the dark below. In his closed hand, the stones glowed a little brighter than before.

[ Time remaining: 313 days ]