Chapter 242: One Voice

When Logan woke, the old man was still on his feet at the brink of the shelf.

He seemed not to have moved at all. Vina had rolled over in her sleep until her head lay against his boot, and Link had not left his side. The glow between Rishin’s fingers lit the underside of his beard.

Logan got up without waking Alice and went to stand beside him.

"Did you sleep?" he asked.

"No." Rishin did not turn from the dark. "I will sleep when I am down."

Logan stood with him without saying anything more. Below them, the lights burned in their thousands. He tried to guess which two the old man was looking at, and he could not.

They went on down after they had eaten.

The path kept to the wall, turning and turning back. Pebble set his cairns at every bend. The lights came closer as they went, and more of them lay along the path itself, so that every few turns they walked past another kept shape in its glow.

A man sat with his back to the wall, his arms wrapped round empty air. Two children stood hand in hand. An old woman lay stretched across the path itself, and the units had to step over her one by one.

Logan looked at every face as he passed. He did not know why. None of them were anyone he had ever met.

Edda looked harder than any of them.

She went ahead of her father to every light on the path and peered into it. She studied the faces, and the hands, and the clothes. Then she came back and walked on beside him with her lips pressed together, until the next one.

Bram did not stop her. At the fourth light, he went ahead with her and looked too.

"She was short," he told Logan, when he saw him watching. "Shorter than me. White plait. She had her axe on her back the whole time, in the Silver. If she is anywhere, she has the axe."

Logan nodded. After that he looked for a short dwarf woman with an axe, at every light they passed.

They did not find her.

Rishin walked behind Vina, as he always had.

He did not look at the kept people on the path, not once. He walked with his head up and his gaze fixed on the next turn, and every turn he walked a little faster. Vina had to lengthen her stride to stay in front of him.

"Grandpa," she said. "You are pushing."

"I am sorry, little one."

He slowed. A few turns later he was pushing again.

At the fourteenth turn, he stopped.

He stopped dead. Helen was walking behind him and had to catch herself against the wall. He stood in the middle of the path with his fist against his chest and his head turned a little to one side, as if he were listening.

Logan heard it then.

It was faint, and it came from below them, round the next bend. It was a woman’s voice. She was humming without any words, a slow low tune that rose and fell and came back round to where it had started.

"Grandpa?" Vina turned. "Who is that?"

Rishin gave her no reply. He walked past her, round the bend, and they all followed him.

Below the bend, a second gate blocked the path.

It was the same as the first one, an arch of black rock with a curtain of darkness hung inside it. But the humming came from inside the curtain, soft and steady, as if somebody were sitting close behind it and singing to themselves.

Rishin stood in front of it.

He did not move. Logan saw his shoulders come up, and his free hand open and close at his side.

"That is what she sang to Nell," he said. "Every sleep, all the way down. Nell would not close her eyes without it."

Helen pressed her fingers to her lips.

The panel opened.

[ The way down asks. ] [ Asked: one voice ]

Logan read the panel twice. He listened to the humming. He looked at the old man standing in front of the curtain, and he understood the rest without needing to be told.

’She gave it here,’ he thought. ’Her voice. This is the gate where she gave it.’

"She gave it so I would not have to," said Rishin. "She said Nell would need someone to talk to her the rest of the way down, and it ought to be her father." His voice was perfectly level. "So I talked to Nell the rest of the way. And Saya never said another word."

Vina was crying.

She did not make a sound. She stood with her hands knotted in front of her and the tears running down her face, and she stared at the curtain and the humming behind it.

Alice had gone white beside Logan. ’She is putting her mother in that gate,’ Logan thought. ’And her father. And me.’ He found her hand, and she gripped his so hard that his knuckles ground together.

"Can we not give it back?" she said. "Her voice. Can we not take it out?"

"No, little one. What is given here is kept."

Garen had come up beside Logan.

"A voice cannot be split," he said, low. "Can it."

"No," said Rishin. "This is the first one that cannot. This is the first one where somebody has to give the whole thing."

Logan looked along the line of the family.

His mother had her hand in his father’s. Alice stood at his side with her jaw set and her eyes on the panel. Isolde had hold of Garen’s sleeve as though she thought he might walk forward.

None of them moved. None of them offered.

Behind the family, the units stood in their long line down the path. Pebble had stopped setting his cairns. Halden had his halberd grounded, and Terry stood with his shield on his arm, and Link held his flame steady in front of Vina. Not one of them made a sound.

’We said we would not,’ he thought. ’We are keeping it. And there is no other way down.’

He opened Sword Intent and looked at the gate.

The curtain was a dense black knot, and from its heart a single thread ran out, thin and pale. It went down through the rock beneath the path and away into the dark, toward the lights.

It was the humming. It was Saya’s voice, running back to her.

A rim bumped against the back of his legs.

"Boss," said Billy.

"Not now."

"Boss, I have been thinking." Billy’s rim hummed low and uneven. "Everybody says I talk too much. Halden says it. Terry says it with his face."

Logan turned round.

Billy was already rolling past him. He rolled up the path between the family and stopped before the dark arch beside the old man. His rim gleamed in Link’s red light.

"I talk too much anyway," Billy said to the gate. "So you can have it. It is mine. I am giving it for my boss."

"Billy, no!"

[ Offered: Billy ] [ Asked: one voice ]