by Ian Graham
Ballas looked. Laike spoke correctly: a soft-edged split creased the middle of the rock.
Laike’s staff pinpointed a second piece of stone. ‘Its surface is softly indented, so it resembles a bowl. And a groove passes over its lowermost edge, yes? It has been worn away by a trickle of spring-water, you see.’
Again, Laike was correct.
‘Your memory isn’t bad,’ said Ballas quietly.
‘My friend,’ said Laike, ‘it is immaculate. And for that you should be grateful.’
Laike set off walking. Now he moved as quickly as a sighted man upon flat ground. His staff clack-clacked, his hoots scuffed lightly against the ground. They emerged on to a broad stone plateau. On the right, a roughly pyramidal rock stabbed at the sky; it was at least a hundred feet tall. On the left, the ground fell away, exposing a deep, rowan-cluttered gully. As he walked, Laike continued his game of landmark-naming. With a swipe of his staff, he identified a succession of idiosyncrasies in the landscape. A colony of rare red-leafed firewort; a cluster of gashes in the rock face; water-worn whorls on the ground; overhangs seventy feet above them, some rectangular, others elliptical …
Ballas grew irritated. He wondered why Laike continued pointing out aspects of their surroundings. And, having done so, demanded to know whether all was as he claimed. Was he showing off? Ballas wondered. It wasn’t impossible. To be admired, Laike had falsified an account of Belthirran. Surely he would show off any genuine talent, any true achievement?
Perhaps there was another reason. Maybe, in remembering such tiny details, Laike was dragging up larger ones. He hadn’t been on the mountains for over twenty years. Maybe he feared his memory wasn’t as sharp as he supposed. Maybe this was a way of brushing the dust from it.
Ballas decided to tolerate Laike’s game.
Gradually, the plateau narrowed. It became a ledge, three feet wide. A splashing sound drifted up from the gully. In the depths, Ballas could see a small waterfall. The tumbling water shone in the moonlight. At the waterfall’s base, foam, glinting palely, frothed over black rocks. Ballas guessed that the gully was seventy feet deep.
‘Beautiful, isn’t it?’ remarked Laike. The old man was facing away from Ballas. Yet somehow he must have sensed that the waterfall had caught the big man’s eye.
Ballas shrugged. ‘I’ve seen worse things.’
Laike pressed a hand against the rock wall. With his fingertips, he groped—and found a wrinkle in the rock. He seemed to caress it for a moment. Then he squirmed out of his rucksack.
‘Do you need to rest?’ asked Ballas, tightly. ‘You promised you were in fine health—’
‘Be silent.’ Laike raised a finger to his lips.
Ballas stopped speaking.
The explorer became very still. Then, with alarming suddenness, he sprinted a dozen paces along the ledge and hurled himself out over the gully.
‘Laike!’ shouted Ballas, thrusting out a hand as if to catch the explorer.
Laike flew through the air above the gully. He wore an expression of serene concentration. Soaring through the darkness, he lost momentum and started to fall. A heartbeat later he was gone—consumed by the gully’s darkness.
Ballas was too shocked to curse. A sick weightlessness filled his stomach—as if he too had fallen. He felt Belthirran retreating from him. His only hope of finding refuge, of reaching the Land Beyond the Mountains, had gone … had disappeared into blackness.
He stumbled forwards, staring into the gully.
‘Laike! Where are you! Pilgrim’s blood …’
‘Do not be alarmed,’ came a calm voice. ‘All is well, all is well.’
Sinking to his knees, Ballas looked down.
The explorer stood on a second ledge, seven feet down the gully wall. ‘Everything is as I remember,’ he said, grinning. He rapped his staff upon the ledge. ‘Come over, Ballas. Jump, as I did. But first, throw over the rucksacks. They will not aid your flight, my friend.’
‘Are you mad?’ snapped Ballas. ‘You could’ve killed yourself!’
‘Killed myself? I rather think I’ve saved my life. We must take this route Ballas.’
‘There’s no safety in leaping over a bloody chasm!’
‘There’s no safety,’ corrected Laike, ‘in following that ledge any further.
Ballas looked along the ledge. It seemed perfectly safe to him. It was wider than the one on which Laike stood. And it continued as far as the eye could see.
‘You’re mistaken,’ said Ballas, hoarsely.
‘You must trust me, Anhaga Ballas.’ Laike spoke softly. ‘Have I not climbed the Garsbracks before? Are you not the novice here?’
Scowling, Ballas flung the rucksacks down on to the ledge. Then he sprang into the gully, landing heavily upon the ledge. The ledge shook as his weight fell upon it.
‘You are not a graceful soul,’ said Laike, tilting his head.
‘And you,’ snapped Ballas, ‘are a bloody fool! If you have to do anything dangerous, warn me first, yes? Stupid bastard.’
Laike smiled. ‘Forgive me.’ Stooping, he pulled on his rucksack. Then he walked away along the ledge.
Ballas followed. This ledge seemed infinitely more dangerous. Not only was it even narrower than the first, but by turns it rose steeply up, then sank sharply down. As if the gully-crossing leap had given him a taste for recklessness, Laike moved onwards at great speed. Ballas wondered if he was trying to prove a point. Laike considered the mountains his territory. He owned the foothills; and he felt spiritually conjoined with the higher slopes. Maybe he wished to demonstrate his closeness to the mountains by acting as if they could do him no harm. Maybe he wanted to impress upon Ballas that he, the explorer, was leading the expedition. And that Ballas was merely a passenger.
For a long time, they walked along the ledge. A thin sweat broke out on Ballas’s skin. As they went higher, a breeze penetrated the rocks, fluting a single wavering note. Otherwise, there was silence.
Eventually Laike halted.
‘Through here,’ he said, gesturing to a v-shaped opening in the rock wall. They clambered through, arriving at a small cave.
‘A good place to pitch camp, I think,’ said Laike. ‘We shall rest till dawn. Then we must press on, yes?’
From his rucksack, Ballas took some firewood and got a blaze going. Shadows sprawled over the cave walls. Laike settled contentedly in the cave mouth. Ballas crouched by the fire, warming his hands.
‘We’ll take turns at keeping watch,’ he said.
‘I doubt whether I would be much use.’ Laike pointed to his sightless eyes.
‘You aren’t deaf,’ said Ballas. ‘It ought to be enough to listen. They reckon blind men have sharp hearing …’
‘Do you think such vigilance is necessary?’
‘I’m not going to take chances,’ replied Ballas, prodding the fire.
‘We won’t have been followed.’
Ballas snorted. ‘Have you forgotten how badly the Wardens want to catch me?’
‘There’s a difference between desire,’ said Laike, ‘and ability. Trust me: no one will find you here. Not tonight, at least. Rest easily. Sleep. Tomorrow there will be much walking to do.’
Moving deeper into the cave, Laike closed his eyes and fell asleep. For a while, Ballas gazed at the stars and moon. Then he too started to doze.
On the cusp of sleep, a noise startled him—hooves clattering, then the alarmed bleating of a goat. Ballas jerked wide awake. The goat bleated for a while longer. Then it quietened.
Under his breath, Ballas swore.
‘That is why we are safe here,’ said Laike.
The old explorer’s eyes remained closed.
‘What’re you talking about?’
‘The goat has made a terrible, fatal mistake,’ said Laike. ‘The same mistake that any Warden, if he were following us, would make. Tomorrow all will become clear.’ Laike shifted slightly. Then he went back to sleep.
When Ballas woke, the following dawn, he fe
lt as if he had not slept at all. His head throbbed, his throat was dry, his muscles ached. Groaning, he pushed himself up into a sitting position. Athreos Laike was already awake. Kneeling, the old explorer fed firewood into the fire. The flames leaped and twisted—yet the cave remained cold.
‘Bad dreams?’ asked Laike, his unseeing gaze locked on the fire.
‘What?’ muttered Ballas, taking a canteen of water from the depths of his rucksack.
‘Your slumber was full of turmoil. You tossed and turned, like a man suffering a fit.’
Drinking from the canteen, Ballas recalled his dream. Or rather, a shard of it spun up from his memory. He had dreamed of the mountains. Of stones, boulders, rock faces. There was no drama he could remember. No imagined incident that might have provoked such contortions from his body. Just a jumble of images. Just fissures, cracks, seams in the rock. Perhaps he hadn’t dreamed at all—merely remembered fragments of the climb so far.
No, he realised—he hadn’t done so, For the rocks he had seen had been bathed in dark light: the light that spills from a cloud-jammed sky.
Rising, Ballas stepped outside the cave. The ground shone with frost. The stones were slippery underfoot. Walking carefully, he moved a few yards away, then urinated on to the ground. He watched the steaming yellow fluid melt the frost. Then he returned to the cave.
They ate a breakfast of porridge, cooked from the oat rations in their rucksacks. Shivering, Ballas kept close to the fire.
‘The cold bites deeply when one is tired,’ said Laike. ‘It is important that you get a healthy night’s sleep. Otherwise you will be making your journey a thousand times more arduous.’ He patted the rucksack. ‘I brought whisky. To stave off the cold, mainly—but if a few mouthfuls will help you drowse …’
Suddenly, a goat bleated—the same goat, Ballas presumed, that had startled him the previous night.
‘Of course, of course,’ murmured Laike. ‘There is something you must see.’
They finished their breakfast. Packing the blankets, groundsheets and cooking implements into their rucksacks, they left the cave.
They clambered through the v-shaped opening on to the ledge.
‘Tread-carefully,’ said Ballas. ‘The ground is—’
‘Frosted, yes—I know, my friend.’ He touched Ballas’s forearm. ‘Winter is tightening its grip. Let us pray we reach the top before the snows blow in. If we don’t, Ballas, you’ll know how cold a man can truly get.’
They followed the ledge. Ballas was acutely conscious of the slippery ground. Every footfall, however solidly placed, slid a fraction of an inch. Leading the way, Laike moved slowly. He leaned slightly upon his staff. With his left hand, he gripped the rock wall.
Ballas gazed into the gully. He saw another, smaller waterfall. There was something awkward, something half-rigid about the movement of the water. It was on the cusp of turning to ice, Ballas realised. Already, a few icicles hung at the waterfall’s edge. The rowans below sparkled: frost-sealed, their leaves glittered like polished blades.
Ballas decided to keep his eyes on the ledge.
After a few hundred yards, Laike called a halt. With his staff, he pointed across the gully to a flat patch of stone, squarish in shape, each side four paces long. Upon it stood the goat, lapping at spring-water trickling from a rock face.
‘There. Do you see? That is the way the Garsbracks kill.’
Ballas scowled. ‘The goat is alive. It doesn’t seem unhappy—it’s just standing there, drinking.’
‘Drinking? Ah—then you are seeing, too, how the mountain can torture.’ Laike lowered his staff. ‘The goat is trapped. There is no escape from where it stands.’
Ballas looked intently. And realised that, contrary to first impressions, Laike was correct. The stone square led nowhere—it simply jutted over empty air. The goat had reached it by scrambling down a steep slope. This slope was smooth, and scarcely possible to climb back up. And if the goat did so, it would still be trapped: for at the top of the slope was a severe overhang, extending several feet. Its underside would act as a barrier to anyone—or anything—attempting to go beyond the slope. The goat couldn’t possibly negotiate an escape route. Nor could a human, Ballas decided. Not even the tallest man would be able reach up and grasp the overhang edge and haul himself up.
Laike smiled. ‘If one believed this arrangement-had been designed,’ said the explorer, ‘we would call it ingenious, yes?’
Ballas nodded.
‘The goat followed the ledge—the ledge you would have taken last night. The drop from the overhang does not appear too dangerous. And, viewed from above, the stone shelf on which the goat now stands seems to be the beginning of a fresh ledge, curving away around the rock face. It looks perfectly safe, Ballas. As safe as a deadfall to a fox.’ He drew a breath. ‘The goat is going to die. The torture comes from the spring-water. Deprived of water, it would survive only a few days. But now it will linger for weeks. Until it starves to death. A cruel touch, yes?’
Jumbled bones lay upon the stone. From the distance, Ballas couldn’t tell whether they were animal or human.
‘Who’d make a path leading to nowhere?’ he said. ‘It’s bloody stupid …’
‘Not all ledges are paths,’ replied Laike mildly. ‘Some serve such a purpose. Others do not. That one—’ a staff-swipe toward the ledge ‘—was once a path, I think—but no longer. Many hundreds of years ago, long before Druine was founded—before history began, even—an earthquake shook the mountains. The paths were distorted, disfigured, torn apart. Many, as you said, lead to nowhere. They became traps. And the mountains, always treacherous, grew fatally dangerous. That is the thinking of some scholars. It is speculation, of course.
‘But speculation that demands further speculations.
‘For if there are paths, there are living creatures. But a path worn into stone doesn’t always tell you what those creatures were. Certainly, they could be the work of goats’ hooves. But maybe men once lived here.’
There was a strange catch in Laike’s voice—as if he was contemplating some intoxicating mystery.
‘Men lived on a mountain.’ Ballas shrugged scornfully. ‘That’s hardly wondrous. Travel to the south, and you’ll find many mountain tribes.’
‘True.’ Laike nodded. ‘But what is to say that men lived upon this mountain? Maybe it was merely a crossing point … an obstacle to be negotiated, on the way to somewhere else?’
‘Belthirran?’ asked Ballas.
‘ “Belthirran” is the name we, as inhabitants of Druine, have given the Land Beyond the Mountains. But yes—the place that occupies that area of the world. There is another theory—one I relied upon when composing my false account of Belthirran. Some believe that the land south of the mountains, and that to the north, communicated freely. They traded with one another, transporting goods over the Garsbracks. Perhaps they thought themselves one: a single country, divided by the mountains.
‘When the earthquake struck, the lands were divided. Nothing could be done to rejoin them. What choice did the people have but to carry on as two nations, each isolated from the other? Thus Belthirran was born.’
Ballas felt light-headed. ‘You reckon this is true?’
‘It is unproven, but plausible. To my mind the bone map attests that there is some civilisation beyond the Garsbracks.’
Ballas experienced a surge of optimism. He felt as if he had already arrived at Belthirran: a kind of airy delight swept through him. Grinning, he said, ‘We’d better be making tracks.’
‘First,’ said Laike, ‘you must do me a favour. Grant the goat a quick death. They are pleasant creatures, and I hate to think of them suffering.’
Nodding, Ballas untied the short bow from his rucksack.
Their journey continued. At noon they paused, and Ballas ate a heel of coarse black bread. Then he drank from an outlet of spring-water. Laike had spoken truthfully: the water was almost indescribably pure—purer than the water of cities, of wells, of moor
land streams.
After resting, the two men moved on.
The terrain—a mix of scree and loose rocks—caused Ballas discomfort. Within his knees, tiny agonies flared: a sharp, hot pain, as if a burning spike was stabbing within the joint, or pieces of the bone were grating against one another. His lower back ached. His leg muscles seemed infused with liquid fire. Occasionally, the ground levelled out and Ballas found himself on grass-covered ground that was soft, springy. This provided a little relief. Yet it was always a brief lull, a momentary escape. The rocks and scree returned, as did his discomfort.
At the middle of the afternoon, they stopped at a heap of boulders. It rose thirty feet, each stone lump crusted with frost-blackened moss.
‘We must climb it,’ said Laike. ‘Are you well enough?’
‘What?’
‘Are you capable? You are struggling, my friend. If there, were snow, your breathing would conjure an avalanche—for each exhalation is as loud as the snort of a rutting stallion …’
‘I am fine,’ Ballas said sourly.
‘There is no shame in weariness,’ said Laike. ‘You are not a mountain man. You are strong, but that strength gives you no advantage here, because you are heavy. And you also lack stamina. You are accustomed to bursts of exertion—as when you are fighting. But the slog, the slow persistent toil of ascent? That is new to you.’ His tone became lighter. ‘Besides, you have hardly treated your body kindly over the years. The grain and the grape bring pleasure—but also infirmity.’
‘I’m not infirm.’
‘No, but your health is imperfect. Do you wish to rest?’
‘No.’
‘As I say, there is no shame—’
‘We’ll make the climb, then rest.’
‘As you wish.’
Laike was the first to scale the boulders. Despite the frost and crumbling moss, he moved quickly and nimbly—as if there was something of the squirrel about him. Ballas wondered how detailed Laike’s memories were. In his mind’s eye, did he perceive every boulder, with perfect clarity? Or did instinct play a part, guiding his hands and feet to the safest stone every time?