Broken Earth Read online

  “I don’t understand what you’re saying.”

  “You will,” said the dragon. “Comprehension will find you at an unexpected time.”

  Lila felt sure that, if she allowed herself to hear another word, her heart would beat the single pace faster which was required to stop it forever. She squeezed her eyes shut, and pictured herself back in the hall, surrounded by her men. She could feel the pull exerted by both Aerca and the dragon, and was forced to fight harder than she had ever had to fight, to extract herself from a dreamscape. But then again, this was not a dream – and was perhaps for that reason harder to shake.

  “Comm Dya!” cried Lila, raising her arms to create a Telsmin into which she stepped.

  “Einma,” she whispered; and the Telsmin began to spin faster, moving upwards and pulling her with it. The fire began to darken, and the dragon disappeared.

  Lila was thrown from the Telsmin, and found herself lying on her back on the floor of the hall. Thomas Henry hurried to help her to her feet.

  “Are you all right, Princess?”

  “I’m fine, Henry. Where is that blasted woman?”

  Henry stood speechless for a moment, and looked about confusedly.

  “Henry?”

  “It was so strange. When you took her hand, you both disappeared. A few minutes later, you came flying out of nowhere, right back into the room. It looked almost like the ceiling had opened up, and you fell out of it.”

  “Where is the Sorceress, Henry?”

  “I did not see her. I only saw you.”

  “Find her!” Lila shouted.

  But there was no need to search. As Lila turned away from Henry, to face the rest of the men, Aerca appeared at the table, sitting in the same seat she had abandoned.

  “Curse you,” said Lila, walking quickly towards her with incomplete intentions of injury.

  Aerca held up a hand. “Please, Princess. Won’t you sit down for a moment?”

  “I would much rather kill you.”

  “I am sure that you would. But humour me, won’t you?”

  Breathing heavily, and shivering slightly, Lila took her seat once again. “If this all was your plan,” she said, “then why did you try to kill me?”

  “I did no such thing.”

  “You sent the wolves to me.”

  “You are referring to the Narken. I sent them, yes – but not to kill. I knew that you would overtake them.”

  “Then why send them at all?”

  “To show you what my army is made of. You were not yet acquainted with my Narken, I think? They are the newcomers, you might say. Three species; three armies! They far outnumber your own, I can assure you.”

  Lila’s head felt so muddled, she could hardly decide upon words to say. She only stared at Aerca; and it was all she could do not to reach out and throttle her.

  “There is still time before the war,” said Aerca. “Many things will happen; and you must make your decisions wisely.”

  “What war? What are you talking about?”

  Aerca stood up again. “I think I shall go now,” she said. “Your brother remains with me, until I have what I want.”

  “What do you want?”

  “You.”

  Aerca turned to leave, and did not look back at Lila.

  “Henry,” said Lila, beckoning him to the table.

  He sat down across from her.

  “From where did the carriage fetch Aerca?”

  “She was waiting just outside the gate, at the South Wall of the city.”

  “And you’ve no idea where she came from?”

  “No, Princess. It was as though she just appeared there, out of thin air.”

  “Quite as I expected. Thank you, Henry.”

  “Is there anything else I can do, Princess?”

  “Not here, I’m afraid. But would you please accompany the caravan which is escorting the Sorceress from the city?”

  “Certainly,” said Henry, hurrying after the others.

  ~

  Alone in her room, Lila tried with all her might to make sense of what had happened. She had been summoned, from her own castle, into a world of Aerca’s design.

  Or, perhaps, into a world which had existed already. Though Lila knew that it was far from her now, and nigh inaccessible, she felt still as though she stood within that fire-bound circle of earth. She could feel the hot breath of each head of the dragon, and could see its large eyes staring into her own.

  “Master,” Aerca had called the dragon. And who was mighty enough to gain servitude from the Sorceress?

  Lila’s first impulse was to go to her mother. But how could she help her now, as weak and defenceless as she was? Lila understood, for the first time, that it had all become her fight – to fight alone, with little to no chance of victory.

  In that moment, the future appeared bleaker than ever.

  She found tranquillity for a brief time in sleep, but arrived back at wakefulness much sooner than she would have liked. The blackness of night still held, and the light seemed very far away. She looked out the glass panes of the balcony doors, and saw that the thin orange line of the distant horizon did not grow, though she looked upon it for a long while. She closed her eyes again, made tired by watching for the sun. She fell at once into the thick sleep of dreams, but understood quite soon that what she dreamt was not of her own mind’s making.

  She found herself once again surrounded by fire, with all directions blocked by its wild heat. She stood again on that circle of earth; but this time, even as she stood, it began to shrink. The fire moved in on all sides, coming closer each second to the place from which Lila could not escape.

  She was beginning to understand, that this place was not to become just an unpleasant memory. Though she could close her eyes, and picture herself back in her bed – as she did now, focusing all of her energy on abandoning the fire – she could not keep it away indefinitely.

  “Flor des maen!” she shouted.

  She woke a moment later, rolling out of bed as though the fire had followed from her dream, and lay smouldering upon the sheets.

  X: The Two Paths of the Three Wanderers

  It seemed that the moon would not bestow its greetings this night. The sky was dark blue rather than black, and seemed to pulse with the mass of clouds that floated across it. Those rolling, wispy bunches hid the Great Eye entirely, even taking away the few stars that had been out to begin with.

  Jade moved swiftly through the night, pushing Buck to his limit. Every so often, she would urge him from a brisk step to a canter; but he would eventually slow down again, with or without her leave to do so.

  “I’m sorry, boy,” she said, running her fingers through his silky mane. “I know you’re tired.”

  They went several more miles before she would allow a pause in their movements. They had come to a continuance of the thick wood, which had paused at the opposite end of the deep, wide valley. When Jade left the trees, and entered the valley, daylight still burnt; but now night came to call, and she did not feel comfortable going on into the wood.

  She tied Buck to a wide tree, and then spread a blanket beneath its bole. She laid her head down onto her pack, eyes closed but far from sleep. She could not calm her thoughts, which flowed quickly back and forth inside the boundaries of her skull; she beat her fist against the ground, tossing to and fro and bunching the blanket up beneath her.

  She jumped angrily to her feet, stamping the blanket and pulling at the ends of her hair. She looked up into the empty sky, wishing for just a single star.

  But it was not to be given.

  Patting Buck’s head in reassurance, she left the cover of the trees, and went crunching out into the snow. The air was colder there, in the openness of the valley; but she enjoyed the lifting of restriction, and the evaporation of the dark pines.

  “Here I am,” she said softly. “So far away – yet nowhere at all.”

  She walked round and round in wide circles, longing for morning. She had no
desire for sleep, or for dreams. It was easier to keep moving, and to think of what she would do, when she reached Onssgaard.

  If she ever did get there.

  The silence of the valley fell down upon her ears, and she lifted her hands to cover them, closing her eyes and fading into her mind. She shut out the cold, and imagined walls around her. She was sitting at a table, with a fire blazing nearby. She ate something that she could not see clearly, not knowing what it was but gaining strength from it nonetheless. She raised her eyes, and saw her friends all around her, each sitting in their usual seats, and eating meals of equally vague contents.

  Josephine and Dera sat on the opposite side of the table, talking and arguing with one another quite the same as always. Well, Josephine talked; and then Dera proceeded to debate whatever she said. Jade sat across from them, and Heidi was beside her.

  “It’s quite a fix we’ve got ourselves into,” Heidi said, seemingly to her plate. She pushed the food around it, mixing things together that did not belong, mostly because she did not plan on eating it.

  “I’ll make it right,” Jade told her.

  Heidi looked up and smiled. “I know you will.”

  Jade tried to reach for her hand, but her own passed directly through it, as if it were nothing but mist. Heidi’s smile lingered, and she held her hand up in the air, palm facing out.

  Jade raised her own hand, nearly pressing it to Heidi’s; but not quite. She looked at the proximity of their fingertips, so close, but unable to touch.

  “Are you all right?” Heidi asked, her eyes on their hands. She seemed to be concentrating on something, perhaps willing them to press against each other without falling through.

  “As well as can be,” Jade answered. “I’m sorry that I left you.”

  Another smile. “Don’t be sorry. We’ll meet at the end.”

  “At the end of what?”

  “Our journey.”

  Jade dropped her hand, reaching in a last effort towards the place where Heidi sat; but the walls were dissipating, and the cold was returning.

  She fell down to her knees in the snow, screaming things into the night that no one would ever hear.

  ~

  They had finally reached the mountain pass.

  “What’s beyond the mountains?” Dera asked.

  “Geinhold.”

  “I know that. But what, exactly?”

  “I’m not entirely sure.”

  “That’s comforting.”

  Heidi pointed up, over the mountain. “We’ll find what we’re looking for, somewhere over there.”

  “How do you know that we should be going South? What if we should be going North?”

  “I highly doubt that,” said Heidi. “But perhaps you should have asked Welk.”

  “Very funny, Heidi.”

  “I know something of what lies past Lormar. I don’t think that Onssgaard is that way.”

  “You don’t think? But what if it is?”

  “You are the one who has lived here all her life,” said Heidi. “Should you not know at least something of what lies over the mountain?”

  “I have not lived here all my life.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I am from Perga.”

  “Where?”

  “Perga is past Eral, to the West of Dwensa. I lived there until I was eighteen – and I can tell you with absolute certainty, that nothing called Onssgaard lies past it.”

  “Why did you come here?” Heidi asked, confused by Dera’s revelation. She had never before heard her mention Perga.

  “What?”

  “Why did you come to Portentia?”

  “Perga’s devout citizens made it somewhat difficult for my previous profession to thrive.” She shook her head. “They thought that it was because of girls like me, that the country was plagued by drought. The gods looked down upon us, they said, and were ashamed. It did not help our case at all, that the one time they threw us into the gaol – it rained the very next morning.”

  Heidi shook her head. “I have known you for five years. You never said anything about Perga.”

  “You never asked.”

  “Why would I? I have never even heard of it.”

  “What is the point of this?”

  Heidi was not entirely sure. After all – had she ever mentioned Morsheyd? Not to Dera.

  “No point,” answered Heidi. “I’m only starting to realise how little we know about each other.”

  Dera said nothing, but followed Heidi as she steered Eriah into the mouth of the pass, riding under a roof of stone for about half a mile. Then the roof disappeared, and there was only the darkening sky.

  Even on the icy, uneven floor of the pass, Eriah’s hooves were sure. He bore Heidi firmly and steadily. As they climbed higher and higher, leaving the ground farther and farther behind, she had no fear of falling.

  A glance backwards showed her that Dera was feeling by no means as confident. Her eyes were fixed upon the ground, which was becoming nothing but a distant canvas of white. There was nothing painted upon it yet; unless, of course, their demise upon the slick pass were to result in an abstract work of red splashes.

  Heidi shook her head, clearing the thought away. It seemed that Dera’s obvious panic had found its way into her own thoughts.

  Dera called Heidi’s name, much more loudly than was necessary with the distance that separated them. She clutched at Dillyn’s reins as if they were the essence of life itself (though, in this case, they were in fact the only available preserver of said life). She looked like a woman thrown from a ship, grasping as tightly as she could to the floatable object that someone had tossed out to her across the wild waters. She looked continually to the wall of the pass, clearly wishing for a handrail.

  “What’s the matter?” asked Heidi.

  “I don’t think I can do this. We’ve hardly even started – and I feel that my heart is about to burst.”

  “Just try to calm down,” said Heidi, turning her head to face Dera as well as she could. The ridge was so narrow, they could only ride in single file.

  “It’s one thing for you to say that. If I didn’t know better, I would think you had done this before.”

  “Well, I haven’t. But I promise you – everything is going to be fine.”

  “Unless we die.”

  “We are not going to die, Dera.”

  “You can’t know that for certain.”

  Heidi faced back to the front. “If you keep talking like that,” she said, “I’m not even going to try to reassure you.”

  So Dera fell quiet. The only sound was the step of the horses; and the occasional tinkling of a fallen icicle upon the rock.

  “See that?” said Dera. “We could be killed by hurtling skewers of ice.”

  “If you don’t look up at them, and they don’t fall into your eyes, you should be just fine.”

  But Dera looked up, anyway – and her eyes fell upon an enormous slab of ice, hanging halfway off of the ledge above them.

  “I don’t think it matters where that lands,” she said. “In the eye or no.”

  Heidi glanced up at the slab, and found that she could not but agree with Dera’s observation.

  Ah, well.

  They rode on, moving slower as they travelled higher. The air became colder, and the layer of ice coating the pass became thicker. Even if Heidi had tried, she would not have been able to increase Eriah’s step. He put one hoof in front of the other, grunting in concentration, and paying Heidi absolutely no mind at all.

  ~

  The night had long been cast down upon the earth, by the time the summit came into focus. Treacherous as the conditions had become (they were moving hardly faster than they would on a pair of snails), Heidi did all she could to ignore her drowsiness, and to remain attentive.

  Behind her, Dera had taken to repeating small verses and rhymes – over, and over, and over. Heidi would have told her to put a stocking in it, if the look on her face had not still
been one of complete and abject terror.

  “We’re almost there,” said. “It should only be another hour or so.”

  “You said that an hour ago.”

  “I never claimed to be an expert on mountain climbing.”

  “I wish – I wish we had someone with us who knew what they were doing!”

  “Like Jade?”

  “Yes,” said Dera sulkily.

  Heidi said no more about it. She only fixed her eyes to the top of the pass, which inched closer with each step.

  And, finally – with one small slip, and a great snort of effort from Eriah – they were there.

  Heidi and Dera jumped off of their horses. The summit was very wide, and stretched on endlessly in either direction, in steep inclinations which led to higher parts of the mount; which Heidi would not have attempted to climb, even had someone offered her a thousand dryas to do so. There were paths carved in the stone leading up, almost like sets of steps. Hundreds and hundreds (and hundreds more) of feet they went up, reaching towards the sky like outstretched arms. From a distance, the mountains appeared V-shaped, with the lowest point of the curve signifying the pass. That point was only about a quarter of the height of the mountain’s highest peak.

  It had begun to snow, and there was nothing but a thick, swirling whiteness that distorted everything within the line of sight.

  “This is a fine mess,” said Dera. “At the top of the mountain, we are – but now it’s storming, and colder than an icicle up the –”

  “Dera.”

  “What are we going to do?”

  Heidi wrapped her arms around her shoulders, shivering against the falling, sticking flakes of misery. “We can’t stay here,” she said.

  “Obviously. But we can’t go down in this.”

  “We have to. If we pass the night here, we might very well die.”

  “I thought you said we were not going to die?”

  “That was before – when it wasn’t snowing, and we weren’t in the coldest place in the country.”

  Dera moved a little closer to the opposite ledge, peering down cautiously. “It looks exactly the same as the other side,” she said. “But it’s going to be more slippery now, and the horses are already tired. It took us all night to get here.”