by Terry Brooks
Just her name, nothing more. It was enough. She knew why he was calling to her, of course, and why the call was so desperate. She was at the controls of their small craft, and she was the only one who could save them.
“Stay where you are!” she shouted back, worried that if he released his safety line or tried to move about, he could be thrown from the airship and lost over the side. If he was to die, she wanted it to be with her.
A wild, crazy thought and yet there it was, nudging at her.
She shoved the starboard thrusters full-on once more, trying to reignite them, but the failure of the diapson crystals was total and there was no help to be had. The Skaar princess was an expert flier, and she had done everything she could to regain the power she needed to slow their descent. Her earlier efforts had almost saved them. For a few brief moments, the crystals had responded, and it looked as if the plummeting craft could be saved. But then they failed for good, and at this point she wasn’t left with many options. She tried powering up and down in a series of bucking stops and starts, but it wasn’t enough. The result was a somewhat slower spiral down into the jungles below, though still too fast to save them. In the absence of something coming to their aid, there was nothing to keep them from slamming into the mountains encircling the valley below.
They had perhaps a minute left. Likely less.
Judgment, she thought. That’s all I have to work with.
“Hold tight!” she shouted over her shoulder.
With one hand on the port thruster and one on the rudder, she increased power. At once the craft picked up speed, spiraling faster toward the ground but still pulling to the right. Have to time it just right, she thought. She peered over the side at what lay below. Foliage and lots of it. Some attached to huge trunks that would smash them to pieces, but there were some spaces in between that were more open and welcoming.
She powered back and watched the ground rise to meet her. Got to spiral away from those mountains at just the right moment, she told herself. She pulled back on the wing lifts. A little, not too much. The ground was close now—a green carpet riddled with trunks and stumps on one side, and a forty-degree stone cliff face on the other. When she came around on the latter again, she reduced their power to almost nothing, and the airship dropped down in response.
The ground was right there beneath them.
The craft struck with such force it threw Ajin a full foot in spite of the safety lines and belts, slamming against the rugged terrain, bouncing repeatedly, then slamming down for good and skewing sideways. It struck something hard, and the front half of their craft shattered. Ajin was thrown into the controls once more, but her safety lines kept her from being thrown clear.
Behind her, Dar gave a grunt of pain and went still.
No time to look back. She still had the controls working and she reversed power on the port thrusters. It spun them about for an instant, but then she cut the power once more. They were still moving, sliding now through grasses and brush, leaping and falling over hillocks and rutted earth with ferocious force. But now they were turned about, and she was forced to look over her shoulder to see where they were going. She glimpsed Dar slumped in his seat, clearly unconscious. Beyond him and coming up fast was a large body of water—a lake! She fought to use the lifts and rudder to slow their slide, but they failed to provide the help she needed, and seconds later the two-man was plunging into water and shadows.
Ajin had enough sense to hold her breath as they struck and sank, thinking she had to help Dar. But when she began releasing her restraining ties, the one about her waist refused to come free. She worked at it in every way she could think of, finally reaching for her knives and finding one missing and the other trapped behind her where she couldn’t free it.
She had a moment to realize what was going to happen, and then everything was spotting before her eyes and she could feel herself blacking out. She was going to die with Dar, after all.
Be careful what you wish for, she thought before losing consciousness entirely.
Time must have passed, because the next thing she knew she was lying facedown in a field with pressure being applied to her back and shoulders by strong hands, and water was spilling from her mouth and lungs in what felt like a torrent. She gasped and choked as the liquid she had swallowed was forced from her lungs. Shocked to discover she was still alive, she turned her head just enough to look up into the Blade’s stern features.
“I knew you’d save me,” she whispered, her voice a rough and ragged shadow of itself.
“No, you didn’t.”
She managed a smirk. “All right, I didn’t. I was planning to save you.”
He pulled a face. “Next time we crash-land, I’ll give you the chance. Are you all right now?”
She pulled herself up into a sitting position, nodding. “You?”
“A bump on the head that will ache for a week and a few bruises.”
“But we’re alive, aren’t we? I thought maybe we were finished this time. That was a bad landing.”
He smiled and pulled her against him, giving her an impulsive hug that made her feel like almost dying was worth it. “That was a great landing. I don’t know anyone else who could have managed it. Including me.”
She backed away and looked him in the eyes. “No, you could have managed it, too. You are I are too much alike for it to be any other way.” Then she kissed him hard on the lips and held him there for a long time before letting him go. “You must see it by now.”
His gave her a resigned look. “Maybe. Want to find if there is a way out of here?”
They climbed to their feet and looked around. They were far down the length of the valley, but closer to the ocean than the interior. This valley, like the other, was heavily overgrown with foliage, brush, and trees. The mountains towered over it on three sides, and a quick scan revealed no easily identifiable path leading out. The lake into which they had plunged was oddly shaped and apparently quite deep, given what Dar described as his efforts to free Ajin and pull her to the surface.
“We went pretty far in,” he told her. “I remember hitting my head during the fall, but nothing after that until the shock of the water. I was able to get my own straps unhooked and then crawl over to cut yours off. I started for the surface, pulling you behind me. But it was hard to move by that time, so we must have been deep under. I almost gave out; I think another ten feet would have been too much. But here we are—still alive.”
Ajin took a deep breath as she looked around again. “Those walls look too steep to climb. I don’t see a way out.”
“There has to be.”
“Then we’d better start searching. We don’t have any food or water, and it will be dark in a few hours. I don’t know about you, but I don’t care to run into another of those horned monsters we stumbled across in that other valley.”
Without another word, she struck out. She had already determined that it made more sense to go toward the ocean than deeper into the island. If anyone from the Behemoth was searching for them, it would be along the shoreline, so maybe Dar and she could find help there. Or maybe when it got dark, they could start a fire to signal any rescuers. Whatever it required, they would find a way.
Suddenly she was aware that something was wrong with her left arm. A pain that hadn’t been there before had surfaced, sharp and angry. She glanced down and saw that blood was seeping through a long tear in her sleeve. She drew to a halt. Further inspection revealed a deep gash in her upper arm, near the shoulder. The flesh around the injury was purple and blood-bruised. Something jagged had cut her badly.
Dar came up to see what she was doing, and saw the arm. “Let me see. Looks like a jagged piece of metal did that. Must have happened during the crash, when the airship broke apart. In any case, we can’t leave it like that.”
He took hold of her arm carefully, examining it from se
veral different angles, then led her over to a patch of grass and sat her down. “We need to wash and bind it.” He grinned. “You are one tough princess.” He looked around, then rose to his feet. “Wait here and don’t move.”
He tore off the sleeves of his tunic and walked back to the edge of the lake, where he dipped one of them in the water. When he returned, he used the wet sleeve to wash out the wound. She managed to remain still while he worked, although the pain was considerable. But she refused to give in to the nausea and the urge to cry out. She had suffered injuries before, so this was nothing new. She sat there without moving while he finished cleaning off the blood and bound the wound with the dry sleeve so that it was protected. It should not come open again before it had a chance to heal.
When he was done, he leaned forward and kissed her nose. “Best we can do for now. Try to keep from bumping into anything. I’ll help you when you need it.”
She exhaled sharply as the pain diminished a tad. “So, you have training as a Healer, too?”
“A little. Enough to fix this sort of injury. Are you all right otherwise? We haven’t missed anything, have we?”
“You winced when you got up a moment ago. Let’s take a look at your ribs.”
He undid his tunic and pulled it open. His right side was discolored, and her touch caused him to wince. “Cracked ribs, maybe,” she announced. “But most likely just badly bruised. We need to bind them just in case. Tear off my sleeves. We can use them to form a compress.”
He did so, knotting them together to form a wrap. “If we keep this up,” he said with a grunt, “we’ll end up without any clothes on at all.”
Then, realizing what he had said, he turned red. “I didn’t mean to suggest…”
She put a finger to his lips. “Why, Dar Leah, you’re blushing!”
She helped him wrap the makeshift compress around his waist so that a smooth, wide piece of cloth was tight against the damaged area, then fastened his tunic back in place. Neither spoke, but the tension between them was palpable.
Then they were on their way again, walking toward the end of the valley and the ocean beyond.
Ajin, in spite of the pain from her arm and the uncertainty from being marooned and essentially lost, was feeling good. What she wanted most in the world was for Dar Leah to be with her, and now she had him. His attentions were sweet and genuine, and she sensed they had turned a corner since that first confrontation outside the walls of Paranor. Always before, there had been that sense of separation between two people who were enemies by circumstance and need. She had been attracted to him at once, even though the feeling wasn’t mutual, but fate and circumstance had drawn them together over and over until at last they were made shipmates on the Behemoth and now made more dependent on each other by shared misfortune.
The Blade might have thought she was delusional when she told him they were meant to be together, but she could tell he was coming around. He hadn’t said so, admittedly, but his actions supported it.
Now, though, she found herself wondering what they would do with this mutual recognition once it was far enough out in the open to be unavoidable.
The matter was not to be decided that day, however. Or anytime soon, as it turned out. Nor would they get out of the valley as easily as they had expected. They walked until it was too dark to continue, and Ajin kept looking for some sign that suggested they were making progress. But no matter how long they walked, their destination did not seem to get any closer. Finally, they had to take shelter, which they did by climbing into a cluster of rocks and then settling themselves into the most uncomfortable positions Ajin could ever remember enduring. Dar tried to help her, but there was little that he could do about his ribs. They took turns keeping watch, but in spite of their diligence and consideration for each other, no sleep was to be had. In the end, when they spied the first glimmer of sunrise on the horizon, they climbed out of their haven in disgust and started walking again.
The second day was more disheartening than the first. Progress went well enough until midday when they reached the shores of an enormous lake that cut right across their path and seemed to stretch for miles in either direction. They chose a path for skirting the lake’s shores and walked for hours without finding an end. At one point, Ajin considered trying to swim across but quickly abandoned the idea. With the injuries to her arm and his ribs, too many things could go wrong—not the least of which was the possibility of predators lurking in the lake’s depths. While walking, they had witnessed some large splashes out in the deeper regions, and that was enough to discourage any further thoughts about swimming. At least on shore they had a chance of seeing anything that came for them.
By sunset, they still hadn’t reached the end of the lake or even appeared to have gotten closer to any part of the valley walls. They slept this night a bit more comfortably, choosing a grassy stretch among a cluster of large spruce that offered their shaggy boughs as a protective shelter. They agreed to take turns keeping watch, but Dar let her sleep far too long and she was not pleased when he woke her.
“I can see dawn light to the east, Dar Leah,” she said groggily as she pushed herself into a sitting position. “You let me sleep most of the night.”
“You need the rest more than I do, Ajin. I only need a couple of hours. Wake me when I’ve had them.”
He was asleep within minutes. She was irritated at first at his high-handed behavior; her army life as a woman among men had been built around an expectation of equality. But realizing how much better she felt after almost a full night’s sleep, she eventually softened to his act of kindness. After all, she wasn’t a soldier anymore or even a part of an army. Neither of them was, and their relationship was much different from that of comrades-in-arms. She sat next to him, looking down at his face, thinking that—whatever else happened in her life—she could not lose him. She had already lost almost everything she held dear—her father, her soldiers, her rank and standing in the Skaar army; one day soon, perhaps, she would even lose her life. She found herself thinking about what waited for her back home in Skaarsland, and it was not reassuring.
At one point she allowed herself to run her fingers along his cheek, the pressure so gentle she was barely touching him. She fingered his long hair and the material of his tunic, then slipped her hand inside the fabric to feel his chest. He stirred and she took her hand away, but not too quickly. She could still feel the heat of his body on her fingertips. She could still feel the beating of his pulse where she had placed her fingertips.
Darcon Leah. She spoke his name in her mind. Can’t you see we are meant to be together? Can’t you feel how right it is?
After she woke him as he had asked, they set out once more. They found the end of the lake by midmorning and had circled around to the other side by midday to continue west toward the ocean.
The lake, while they had circled it, had at least provided them with water, but they had still found no food, and hunger was beginning to take its toll. And Ajin found herself worrying about where they would find water again now that the lake was behind them.
It was impossible to be certain about their choice of direction, even with the sun to help guide them. No other point of reference offered itself, and they had not been entirely sure of their directions even after setting out. But there was no help for it, and nothing to do but to keep walking.
Twice that day, they came across creatures that were possible predators, but turned out to be vegetarians. One was a six-foot horned lizard the color of mud that hissed at them in warning before it moved away. The other was a lumbering four-legged beast much bigger than the lizard but likewise with no real interest in them; it seemed much more intent on the odd-looking fruits it was busy devouring. But at least sampling what fruit it left when it wandered off didn’t seem to harm them—though what remained was pitifully scarce.
Otherwise, there was little to be found.
That night was spent in a shelter formed by an embankment bracketed by boulders that mostly blocked the way into their nest and would allow Dar and Ajin to defend themselves better than if they were out in the open. They had only the ground and some fir boughs with which to find comfort, but they used both to curl up against each other and find warmth and a sense of safety. For this night, at least, they slept soundly and were not disturbed.
On waking, they began walking again. To Ajin’s relief, they found a small stream trickling down from one of the distant walls through the green carpet of the valley floor, and after tasting the water they decided it was drinkable. They swallowed as much as they could hold comfortably and then moved on again, lacking any reasonable way of carrying more water with them. The best they could hope for was that they would find another such stream along the way—though Ajin found herself missing the vast lake.
Food remained a problem. They had not come across any more of those fruits—or anything else they were sure was edible. “Another day or so, and our definition of what is and isn’t edible is likely to change,” Ajin muttered bleakly.
They pushed on, trying not to think about hunger. They were in their fourth day of travel, and had eaten no more than a handful of fruit. It was beginning to take a toll on both of them. Neither had the energy they’d had on starting out on this trek. After finding water, they were now desperate to find something more to eat.
But by day’s end, they had found nothing—not even fruit or greens that looked recognizable. What they did find was a lean-to: a small structure constructed of lengths of wood from tree limbs tied together with pieces of vine. It sat back in a grove of hardwoods, situated so that it was both protected and concealed. Finding it was a complete accident. They walked up and stood staring at it for long minutes before speaking.
“Someone lives in this valley,” Dar said finally.
The shelter was well constructed and relatively new. Whoever built it knew what they were doing. “We haven’t seen anyone,” Ajin replied.