Chapter 253: The Gold Light

Logan woke beside the cairn with Stay still across his knees.

He had slept sitting up. His neck ached, and his hand had cramped round the sword’s grip. He did not know where he was at first. Then he saw the pale light beside him, and the three still figures kneeling inside it, and he remembered all of it at once.

Vina was already awake.

She was sitting cross-legged in front of the light, as close as she could get without touching it. She had a strip of bark across her knee and a stub of charcoal in her fist, and she was writing on the back of the strip with her tongue between her teeth.

Logan did not ask what. He waited.

When she finished, she held it up to the light so she could read it.

Then she held it out to him.

It was the strip she had written for herself in Keepsake. Logan did not read the front. On the back, in large crooked letters that had smudged where her fist dragged across them, she had written one line.

AND IF I CANNOT LIFT HIM, I GET UP.

"So he knows I am keeping it," Vina said. "The other half."

Logan could not answer. He gave it back to her.

She folded it once and leaned forward and tucked it under the top stone of Pebble’s cairn, so that one corner showed.

The others woke one by one.

They kept their words few. Martha cooked, and they ate a little, because Helen made them. Afterward, without anyone deciding it, they went to the light one at a time.

Garen went first.

He stood before the kneeling old man with his arms straight at his sides. He was not wearing the grin he wore for everyone else.

"Senior," he said. "You told me to call you when it came. I called. I am glad I did. I am sorry it was for this."

He bowed, low and stiff. Isolde bowed beside him.

Helen knelt in front of Saya.

She did not say anything aloud. She stayed there with her hands folded in her lap, looking at the other woman’s face with its lips parted on a note that would never finish. Then she bent forward and touched her forehead to the floor.

Daniel stood behind his wife with his hand on Hob’s neck. When Helen got up, he stepped forward and looked into the old man’s face.

"Thank you for my son," he said. "And for my daughter."

Beside him, Hob lowered his great plated head toward the floor, as if he were bowing too.

Bram and Edda went together.

They did not go to the three figures. They stood a little apart from the light and looked past it, out over the great crowd of the kept standing in their lit well.

"We could stay," Edda said. "We could look for her. There are so many. She could be any of them."

Bram looked out at the crowd and did not answer straight away. Then he put his arm round his daughter.

"Your grandmother," he said, "would take her axe to the pair of us. She would say get up and go home. She would say it louder than I can."

Edda laughed. It broke in the middle.

"She would," she said. "She would shout it."

They turned away from the crowd together. Edda kept her eyes forward.

Alice went with Logan.

She held his hand, and they faced the old man together with the sword between them. Logan looked at the calm face and the closed eyes, at the white beard and the small hand held fast in his.

He thought of the thought he had lost on the Mere and gotten back.

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

"I was there," he said. "When you got to it. I was there."

Alice’s hand tightened on his.

"You told me when you told me," Logan said. "That was enough. Thank you, Grandfather."

He had never called him that before. Only Link had.

Link went last.

He planted his iron staff upright before the light, its red flame burning high and steady. His eyes stayed on Rishin’s face.

Then he bowed all the way down, until the flame nearly brushed the floor.

When he straightened, he faced away from the light. He walked to where Vina stood and took his place in front of her with his staff raised.

"Little one," he said. "It is time to go up."

Vina looked at him in surprise. Then her face broke, and she wiped it fiercely on her sleeve, and she nodded.

They walked back across the empty floor.

Vina walked behind Link. Helen walked beside her. Behind them came the family and then the units. Bram and Edda came last of all, and Bram hummed the walking song low in his chest.

Logan looked back once.

The light was small already. It was a single pale point at the edge of the great lit crowd of the kept, apart from the others. He could not see the cairn beside it, or the strip of bark, or the faces.

He kept his eyes ahead after that.

They slept once on the way, far out in the dark, inside the circle of Link’s flame.

[ Time remaining: 308 days ]

When they woke, they walked on. The floor was smooth now under their feet. The scores and scratches in the stone were gone, as if they had never been there.

The wall climbed ahead of them, sheer and endless. The gate stood open in the middle of it.

The gold light was still burning far back inside the arch.

They halted before the gate.

They stood together in a line across the floor, the family and Bram and Edda and the units behind them, and they looked into the warm dark.

"Billy," said Logan.

"Boss."

"You go first."

The wheel looked up at him.

"Units first," said Logan. "I promised Alice. A long way up."

Billy’s rim hummed again, low and steady.

"Units first," he said. "I know, Boss. I remember."

He rolled forward into the dark.

Pebble stopped at the threshold and looked back across the floor.

"All those cairns," he said. "On every turn of the path. Nobody is going to use them now."

"Somebody might," said Logan. "Somebody coming down after us. They will see them and know that someone came this way and got out."

Pebble thought about it. Then he nodded, touched the white streak in his hair and settled his sling on his shoulder.

Halden and Terry went after Billy. The rest of the units followed in a long line with Pebble among them. Link led Vina, and she went in after him with Helen holding her hand and Daniel at her other side.

Garen and Isolde went in together. Bram and Edda followed them, still humming.

Logan stood at the threshold with Alice.

He looked down at Stay in his hand. Then he slid it through his belt beside his sword, where it would stay.

"Ready?" said Alice.

"No," said Logan. "Go anyway."

"Go anyway," said Alice.

They stepped through together into the gold.

[ You have reached the end of the Abysslon. ]