by Larry Niven
Once the Heewhirlas had lifted sheer from the coastal plain. Legend said that a god had fashioned them thus, to create a dramatic pattern. But gods died and magic faded, and at last no force remained to uphold those forms. When they slumped, great chunks of them came crashing down to make a jumble below the remaining steeps. This wreckage provided some grazing for chamois, and ample dens for bear and cave lion. These sought most of their food in the outer parts, strewn across miles. There boulders the size of houses, or whole walls of them, gave weather-shelter to plant life that in turn nourished animals.
A night in such a coppice had not calmed Brandek. He had slept ill in his bag, quarreling with Shalindra in his very dreams. At dawn, he was brusque with his companions.
“Well spend the day separately, in search of spoor,” he told them. “Well meet here before dark, exchange information, and lay our plans. Don’t forget for a moment how easy it is to lose your way hereabouts. Keep taking bearings on peaks and sun, but don’t trust them much; rain or fog or whatever can blot them out of your sight. So memorize landmarks as you go, and make marks where you can. If you do get lost, don’t panic. Settle down, wait till you see the sky again, and work your way toward the west. You’ll come out in the open eventually, and be able to locate this camp.” He paused. “If not, we’re better off without you.”
They reddened at his unwonted condescension. Usually he had been genial and sympathetic, in his bluff fashion. “Yes, sir,” Cren said, while Destog’s features showed hurt. The young men took up their loose spears and went in different directions.
Brandek lingered for a bit. Oaths muttered from him. Half were aimed at himself. He was being a fool, he knew. What sense in taking out on those lads his fury at Shalindra? And what did it matter in the first place what she said or did? She and her weird boy—yes, that was why the children persecuted Llangru. A strangeness possessed him, and in a world from which the comforting, controlling, explaining mana had departed, strangeness was a terror, therefore an object of hatred. Those two were ghosts and did not know it. Then let her stop haunting him!
He spat and struck off on his own.
Scrub birch, nestled on the side of a granite windrow, fell behind. He wound and climbed among masses between whose somberness the shadows and the cold lay heavy. Mists drifted in streamers under a sky that was wan and splashed with cirrus clouds. The colors of lichen, clumps of grass, patches of moss fairly shouted, so rare were they. Now and then, somewhere, a raven croaked. Mechanically, Brandek recorded his location in his mind; but otherwise he wandered almost at random, scamping his search for signs of big game.
If only Shalindra—he thought. If only Shalindra—She was no weakling. He had to concede her that much. Look how she struggled to maintain herself. And she was bright, she could learn what she needed to learn. Doubtless she would never be the best cook or denkeeper that a huntsman might have; but she could, for instance, turn her gift for things like calligraphy toward the making of decorated garments for which neighbors would trade what they themselves brought forth, including help with everyday tasks…Brandek’s ax clove air. Forget her!
Seeking to do that, he harked back to Aeth, his city that he would never see again. He called forth palaces, parks, porticos, kinfolk, friends, populace—and found surprisingly little homesickness in his heart. The city was a crumbling shell; most of what few people remained grubbed the earth beyond its walls and had no hope; the few who kept a little wealth were as obsessed with the past as she was, if not more. It was his impatience with their sort, as much as anything else, which had driven him to make his expedition and thus at last to Tyreen. Here the future lay, here most were winning to a readiness to grapple with the world as it was, and he liked them for that. Why must she hold out, and why must he care?
A sunbeam struck between clouds to dazzle him. Suddenly he noticed that he had been scrambling for hours and was hungry. Yet that was not what halted him. It was something that, in the brightness, leaped forth at his attention.
Huntsman’s habit made him look around before he examined the sight more closely. He was halfway up a long slope on the lower flank of Ripsnarl. Grass and wildflowers grew in patches between scattered boulders. Well below him was a mossy hollow in among such rocks, intensely green against their gray. Ahead, the stone wilderness reared sharply toward a bank of talus beneath darkling palisades; above those, wind-whirled crystals of dry snow, wherein rainbow fragments danced, hid the spike of the mountain. He heard the air yowling up there.
What stood immediately before him was a mass twice the size of any other in view, the bulk of a large house. The side that loomed over him as he confronted it was nearly flat. Had some natural force cloven the stone, long ago, or some magic? Certainty magic had been at work here, for a symbol had been chiseled into this face. Its boundary was a circle, a fathom across. Otherwise it was so eroded that he could only see it was of labyrinthine complexity.
Did it, though, bear kinship to signs he had encountered on cliffs in the South? Brandek bent close in wonderment. His forefinger tried to trace faint lines and curves. A shiver went through him as he identified a vai, that letter of the hieratic alphabet which was never used in writing. The memory of how potent it had been in gramarie was still too sharp.
The raven flapped overhead. Somehow, abruptly, that winged blackness reminded Brandek of Llangru and the boy’s claims about faring forth in animal guise. It didn’t seem like childish fabulation. Llangru was too desperately serious about it. He didn’t even act like a child trying to deny that his father was dead, trying in a way to be that father and wield forces which themselves were forever vanished.
But if he wasn’t daydreaming or play-acting, what then? Brandek’s lips tightened. He had seen more than one person driven by despair to seek refuge in delusion. And those had been able-bodied adults. Llangru, frail and unripe soul in a body that from birth had been encumbered—Was Llangru simply insane?
Poor Shalindra…Impulse outraced thought, Brandek retraced the sign while he spoke its name, “Vai,” which means “I guard.”
Earth rumbled and grated. Through his bootsoles and into his bones, he felt shock waves hit. The great stone shuddered. Lesser boulders toppled or rolled. In a tidal roar, the scree poured downward.
Brandek spun on his heel and bounded ahead of the slide. If those shards caught him, they would cut him into flitches. It flashed across his mind—a wisp of power to hold mountains in place had remained in yonder emblem. He drained it off when he uttered the formula. Ripsnarl slumped further.
A hammerblow cast him into night.
As he returned to day, he was not aware of pain. Instead, he was dazedly surprised by the silence. So vast was it, after the noise before, that he lay in it as if in ocean depths, as if he had become a merman. The wind around the peak sounded fugitively faint. His heartbeat was no louder.
He tried to raise himself. Then the agony smote. Darkness blew ragged across his vision. He heard his voice scream.
After a while he grew capable of careful small movements, and thus of learning what had happened to him. His right shin lay across a track plowed by the round rock which had overtaken him and come to rest several yards off. Though his mind was still clumsy and anguish dragged at every thought, he decided that it had knocked him down and passed over his leg. Soil had cushioned him somewhat, little blood seemed to have been lost, but he saw the slight bend under his knee. That, as well as what he felt, told him the shinbone was broken.
His right arm wouldn’t obey him, either. Every attempt at motion sent lightnings through him. The upper bone was likewise fractured. He guessed he had fallen with arms flung out and landed on that one in just the wrong way, the force of the boulder behind him.
The rest of his body throbbed within his garments, he must have bruises from head to foot and be missing a good bit of skin, but there didn’t seem to be anything worse the matter. Not that that would make much difference. He had barely escaped the talus. Pieces lay around him, and
the main mass now began mere feet away. Higher aloft, half buried, the runic stone looked strangely forlorn.
Brandek almost wished the slide had caught him. He’d be free of this torture—No!
He began to curse. He cursed the mountain up the west side and down the east, roots and crown and the stupid god who erected it, for minutes, with the riches of oath and obscenity that a sailor commanded. It cleared his head and brought back a measure of strength. When he was done, he was ready to fight.
To remain here was sure death; Cren and Destog would never find him in time. The odds were overwhelming that they never would at all, nor any search party they might fetch. But at least if he had water he would live longer and thus have a tiny chance. Moss in the hollow that he had noticed betokened moisture. A frightful distance to go, in his present state: but the only way for him.
He rolled to his left side, overbalanced, and fell prone on grit and flinders. Pain seethed; icy sweat spurted forth, runneled inside his clothes and reeked in his nostrils. He mastered himself. The spears and pack of rations on his back had toppled him. With his usable hand and his teeth, he loosened their thongs. The ax he must leave behind, but he would not be without food and some means of doing battle.
With one arm and one leg, dragging his gear, he crawled.
Often in the hours that followed, the pain wore him down. He must lie half conscious, shivering, until at last he could hitch himself onward. The sun descended; the horizon flamed above far Tyreen; stars blinked forth overhead; his breath smoked in deepening cold, and he saw frost form on the stones over which he crept.
When he reached his goal, it was past midnight and he knew he could travel no more. The moss was soft and dank under his belly. A rivulet trickled through it. He sucked up water for a very long time before his body stopped feeling withered and merely hurt. By now he was almost used to hurting. It should not keep him from the rest that was his next necessity. Of course, he thought in a distant part of his mind, water like this must draw animals. Maybe big flesh-eaters were among them. Somehow he got to the largest of the boulders which loomed murkily around, that he might have his back against it. He arranged his weapons ready to his left hand, and toppled into unawareness.
That night Llangru cried Brandek’s name in his sleep, but when Shalindra went to comfort him he turned toward the wall. He was silent and listless all the following day. By sunset he lay feverish, making small-animal sounds. Shalindra poured him a decoction of willowbark—that potion, at least, still worked—but he gagged on the bitterness.
“Brandek…broken…freezing…” Again and again, the same words. Shalindra struggled with her pride, conquered it, and sent for Brandek, merely to learn that he’d gone hunting the day before yesterday. Right after we quarreled. When he returned—let it be soon!—she would ask him to see Llangru. He would come for the boy’s sake, no matter how angry he was with her. He was gruff but kind. His gifts had fed them through the winter, and he had never sought anything in return, despite her being a woman and alone.
Her cheeks burned. Why even think of that? Brandek could have any of a dozen girls, young, sturdy helpmeets and childbearers. Doubtless he had made his choice, and would soon wed. No matter for her concern. They could not talk together without flying at each other.
After he came back she would strive to be pleasant for Llangru’s sake. Against a sudden dread: of course he would come back. The sea itself had not slain him. He was a veteran hunter.
That evening Destog brought word to his father, Kiernon the smith. He and Cren had drawn lots, and the latter stayed behind to search, though they held scant hope. They’d seen no smoke, and, in yonder trackless country full of half-mythic beasts…
Shalindra was on her way home from the Lord Mayor’s palace. She’d sought wine for Llangru, and had been told that Tyreen’s precious and dwindling store was not to be wasted on a useless witling. Beyond the door of the Green Merman she heard voices mutter, and Brandek’s name was mentioned. She entered and saw Destog; were they back from the hunt already?
“…get a large party to search for him,” Destog was saying. “Surprising he’d come to grief, but, well, I had the notion his mind was mostly elsewhere.”
“What will we do?” That was Kiernon’s basso. He spread work-roughened hands.
Shalindra had to know. She drew her cloak about her and stepped full into the ill-lit room. Soapstone lamps, newly made, guttered on shelves and the table. Brandek’s design. Their smoke, combined with man-sweat and stale beer, stung her eyes. The men hushed their talk. Many more than usual were present; they must have gathered to discuss appalling news. Benches scraped as some of the older ones rose. The youngsters eyed her with indifference.
“I overheard—” she said into the abrupt silence, “someone is missing? Brandek?”
“Aye, lady,” Gilm slurred. He was far-gone in drink. “Destog, here, brought word. Away in the chaos country, they were, and him beyond finding in that jumble, I’m thinking.”
Shalindra turned pale. Her knees buckled and she slid to the floor.
Gilm lurched forward, slopping his beer. “Catch her, quick! Eh, there, what ails ye, lady?” He rose and shook his head. “She’s fainted. We’d best get her home. Funny thing, her takin’ on like that, she and Brandek was never friends.”
Again it was night and the stars mercilessly brilliant. Among them the Silver Torrent glimmered along a frozen course, and sometimes a meteor darted. Though the moon had not yet risen, light was enough to show hoarfrost pale on rocks and moss, and the rivulet agleam. Its tiny tinkle was the only sound Brandek could hear, save for the breath that rattled through his lungs. By dawn the water would be ice.
He drew his good knee under his chin and hugged his good arm around it, trying to hold a trifle of warmth. If he just had his sleeping bag, he could crawl into that. But it was back in camp. Cold had soon wakened him last night. During the day he had gotten some rest. Now came the long watch until morning. It might be as well this way—lions, wolves, and their ilk did most of their work after sunset—but it deepened the weariness in him, hour by hour.
He had no means of kindling fire, and the fire in his body smoldered low. Pain was lessened a little. Partly that was because he had splinted the broken leg, lashing it to a spearshaft grounded in his boot, and kept the broken arm inside his coat with the hand under his belt. However, he recognized that whatever slight relief he felt was also due to the numbness of fatigue.
How long had he to live? Water was here in plenty, and food sufficient; you didn’t leave rations unguarded for animals to find, but packed them along. He had scant appetite, must indeed force himself to fuel his flesh against chill. Yes, he thought, starvation would not move in on him as fast as exposure and exhaustion.
He downright wished that a beast of prey would arrive first. He meant to go out fighting, no matter how feebly, and to thrust a spear down the gullet of a bear was better than to sit trying to defy these nights, like Shalindra defying the future.
Better? Easier? She had never borne a weapon, but she had overcome more than he could imagine, by enduring it. How far away, how dreamlike she seemed.
—He started out of a drowse. What? The sound repeated. Hoo-oo…an owl. His bad side protested as he turned his head in search.
The owl had landed on a tall rock not far off. It was one of the great white ones that were moving south ahead of the glaciers. Starlight filled its eyes and made it doubly spectral. Hoo-oo, it said again. In a dull fashion, he wondered why. The tone was softer than he had ever heard before from its kind, almost caressing.
Bitterness surged in him. “Oh, yes,” he said aloud, “you’re welcome to pick my bones, but not till I’m done with them.” He fumbled about, closed fingers on a stone, and threw it left-handed. He missed, of course. Yet it should have frightened the owl off. It didn’t. The bird simply cocked its head and continued to stare at the man.
A shudder which was not from cold passed through him. He had found to his woe
that a ghost of magic lingered in this desolation. It was gone, but was there more?
The owl spread wings. For a moment it held quiet thus, like a talisman of snow. Then it lifted. In three silent circles, it swung over Brandek’s head before departing westward.
Gilm and Kiernon bore Shalindra to the library and sent Risaya, Hente’s daughter, to care for her and her ailing son. The tall young woman sat by the fire and stitched skins, her movements deft.
Garments for Brandek? Shalindra wondered, and began shaking anew, despite her warm wrap. Finally she spoke. “How—how is Llangru?”
“Much the same.” Risaya said. “He was sleeping when—oh, here he comes!”
Wraithlike, the boy padded into the main room. His nightshirt hung loose, and his face seemed all huge blue eyes, with the strange gray ring around the iris. He held out his palms to the hearth. “Brandek has no fire,” he said. “He shivers at night.”
Risaya dropped her sewing. “What did you say, boy? How can you know anything about Brandek?” Her tone was shrill. She gulped and gathered back her work.
“Surely you dreamed it,” Shalindra said. “You’ve been feverish.” But Llangru had fallen ill before word of Brandek came. He had not left the library. How could he know?
Llangru shook his head. “You always say I dream things, Mother, or scold me for making them up. But I was there. I just got back. I know.”
“We’ve all heard your wild stories,” Risaya jeered. “No one believes them. You should be ashamed. What would Brandek say?”
“Brandek never laughs at me. I saw, and I know.” With an attempt at dignity, the boy stumbled from the room.
He scurried down dark streets to the Green Merman. Inside, men still huddled and talked. “We’ve got to go out tomorrow and search,” Destog argued. “We can’t quit until we’re sure.”
“Ah, he’s dead already,” Hente mumbled, “as will we all be soon. Probably lose half our party in the jumbled lands. It’s not worth it, just to bring home a corpse.”