“Don’t fight me!� The voice came from a world away. Then the grip on her ankles became the grip of hands, not blackness. She felt the solid, homey scuff of wood seat-plank beneath her toes. She tried to help, but her body was impossibly heavy. Thick as the black stuff seemed to be, she did not gain any when she pushed against it with her hands. She felt Vandien put his full body weight on her calves that now rested on the seat, and grab her hips and jerk upward. In reaction, her chin hit the black and was gripped by it. Her belly muscles convulsed in horror at its touch. The buck broke her chest and shoulders free, and then Vandien’s arms were around her waist, helping her to draw her arms and hands out of it. The back of her head hit the top of the cuddy door as she was jerked through it.
There was no time for gasping, for rest, for thanks. Already the black lapped about their hips as they knelt on the hidden seat. Vandien’s face was white with exertion beneath his stained bandage turban. Wordlessly, he staggered upright, to stand on the seat and drag himself up onto the roof of the cuddy. Ki had scrambled up to lie full-length beside him before he could offer help. Side by side, they panted like dogs, watching with dull eyes the black tide that rose around them. Ki desperately needed to rest, but there was no time.
The black stuff seemed to be rising faster. She heard the wood of the wagon groan ponderously in its grip. She gazed across the black sea to the far white of the snowy trail. She yearned, but she knew they would never make it. They would sink, smother and drown in the blackness. Crushed by the shadows of the Sisters. She turned her eyes up to the immensity above them. Vandien’s gaze followed hers. They had no further capacity for awe, they could not marvel at the beauty of the revealed silver faces. They looked on what few had ever seen: the features of the Sisters, stern, uncompromising, watching their black veils drop upon the trail. Their faces were too pure to be Human, unsullied by the emotions of lesser beings. Vandien stretched appealing hands forth to them. If the wide silver eyes saw his plea, they made no sign. The black rose higher. Impossibly far away, the white snow shone invitingly. The Sisters lingered in their kiss, their eyes impassive, their hair streaming silver.
“To die, while looking on such beauty,� breathed Ki.
Vandien picked up her hand to gain her attention. His eye flitted to the cliff edge, or where it had been. Ki understood. Better quickly than slowly. The edge was close enough that conceivably they might make it. And if they smothered along the way—did it matter where one died, on top of a wagon or crawling toward suicide?
Ki tried to struggle to her feet, but Vandien dragged her flat again. He slithered off the wagon top and into the blackness. It was now only a hand below the level of the wagon top. She watched him go, expecting to see him founder in the stuff. But he kept his hands and legs constantly in motion, his body twitching back and forth as if he were in a fit. Like a swimming snake, she thought, and then the better image of a water-skating insect came to her mind. His constant twitchings and jerkings kept him on the surface, scuttling along, giving the black no time to grip him. She wished she could manage it. But her body was too tired, her muscles screaming, her head pounding. Vandien twitched and writhed along, moving slowly toward the edge of the trail. Ki watched him go, felt a weary gladness for him. The wagon creaked alarmingly beneath her. lit slowly began to lurch. Ki longed for the will and strength to follow Vandien. He did not look back. The black rose toward her, touched her foot with soft hands.
Ki scuttled. Terror, not strength, and the whip of panic moved her body. The top of the wagon disappeared even before she had her body completely off it. She did not look down at the stuff beneath her, but jerked and flopped along like a fish drowning in air. The black seized and released her, seized and released her, and each time it gave back the foot, the knee, the hand with greater reluctance. The air was too heavy to breathe. Ki could not get enough air into her lungs. Any trace of sound in the air was squeezed out of her ears, pushed away from her. The edge of the cliff was incredibly distant, and Vandien nearly as far. Blackness was closing in from the sides of her vision. Logic told her that her body was protesting its abuse, was retreating into unconsciousness. But a subliminal horror rose in her, told her that the blackness at the sides of her vision was the same blackness that tried to suck her down. Ki willed her body to greater effort.
Vandien slipped over the edge. He reached it, and without a pause scuttled headfirst over the drop-off. She heard no scream as he went. The beginning of his fall was slow, for the black stuff held him, dragging him back so that it took forever for his body to tip over the edge. His legs were going down. Ki mindlessly made a final effort to catch up with him, to join him in his fall.
His boots vanished. Ki wallowed on, alone in the black, not fighting to survive but only to choose her own method of dying. If her body must be crushed, let it be smashed on rocks and eaten by birds, not engulfed in a mindless black ooze. Her legs were slowing, refusing her frantic commands to crawl faster. She seemed to sink deeper with every move, to make no forward progress at all. She could not see the edge. Her head was too heavy, she could not hold it high enough. She had to look down on the shining black that granted her no reflection but tried to pull her down. Her nose began to bleed; she had to gulp air through her mouth. The blood from her nose fell in thick drops on the black surface, to be swallowed by it. Ki angrily snorted the blood from her nostrils and crawled on.
The edge! Ki stared down a sheer wall of blackness that suddenly became a wall of stone and snow. Ki gave a yelp and flung her head and shoulders over the edge. She pulled her hands free, and her arms, and dangled them down to the snow, so far beyond her reach. The white valley floor, with its dark dots of brush, was as far away as the sky. The black sucked at her belly, took her feet and ankles. One more flop, one more surge, one more belly-wrench of muscle.
She was over! She dangled, head down, but the black would not release her body. It was a controlled fall as she slid, belly against the black, feet nearly straight in the air, down the face of the sheer black wall. She looked down at the valley floor, white-mantled and horridly far away. She oozed slowly toward it. The blood from her nose choked her, and she retched as her body fought for air.
Her wrist was gripped. She turned startled eyes to Vandien’s snow-white face. His dark eye seized her as hard as his hand. He had been shouting, but the black had eaten the sound.
“Turn your body!� he screamed in her ear, and she made out his words. “Turn your body while the stuff still grips you. Force your feet to come down first.�
He was clear of the black, clinging—she knew not how—to the snow and rock that sheared off the trail. Her muscles screamed as she wrenched her too-heavy body about, forced it to bend and obey. Vandien braced her hand against the tiny ledge he had found in the cliff edge. Ki wished for her gloves as she gripped the freezing rock. The black stuff had long ago sucked them from her hands.
Gradually her body weight came down, and her shoulder and arms twisted unnaturally as she tried to fold her body sideways. With a silent sucking, her feet came clear of the black. Ki found her body sliding in an arc. The whip of her released body cracked, and she nearly lost her precarious grip. Then she was clinging, toes and fingers, body spread, beside Vandien. She pressed her face into the cold snow and the solid rock. She licked the dampness of melting snow flavored with her blood. The cold, thin air flowed into her lungs delightfully. For a long time, it was enough to cling and breathe and wet her mouth with snow.
“Ki!� It was a shout by intention, but a whisper by effect. She turned her face to Vandien wearily. Whatever it was, she wished he would keep it to himself. She did not want to speak or think or struggle anymore. Let her cling here until her strength gave out. After that, at least it would be quick.
“Watch me!� She did, with weary eyes that only widened a little as she saw him risk his hold by trying to scramble upward. He thrust his free hand back int
o the vertical black wall just above the snow and rock. It gripped him. He hung by its sucking grip as he raised his other hand and thrust it in beside the first one. He braced his feet lightly against the cliff face. Ki was only mildly intrigued by his performance until he drew out one bare hand and stuck it in as far away as his outstretched arm would reach. Then he drew out his second hand, plunging it in close to the first one. His body scraped against snow and rock as he dragged it after his hands.
“Come on!� She read from his lips the words his mouth roared. Then he was doing it again—draw out a hand, stretch the arm, thrust in the hand, follow with the second hand, scrape the body along. He did not look back.
Ki watched her hand idly as it clawed up the rock and snow and crept into the dark grip of the black stuff. She shivered as she felt her hand taken in its fingerless grasp. She swung for an instant, trusting to that black suction. Her shoulder cracked ominously as she thrust her second hand into the black wall. Her toes scrabbled against rock.
Pull out the first hand. Dangle and reach for another hold. Her second hand was beginning to slip free as she thrust in the first one again. It was a more precarious way of moving than it had appeared. The effort of scraping her body across the rock face dragged at her hands, trying to pull them free of her gripless black hold. Pull, thrust, dangle; pull, thrust, scrape the body along. No air to breathe with, her hands stretched high. Shoulder joints threatened and warned. Ki remembered sickly how the one shoulder had once pulled free of her body’s command. Please, she begged her body. Pull, thrust, dangle; pull, thrust, scrape the body along. Gradually the blackness became more solid. It held her hands more firmly, and for a few moments that was a comfort, but then it became more difficult to thrust the venturing hand in, harder to make the black relinquish the trailing hand. When her hands were in the black, they were compressed tightly, emerging from it white, the blood forced out of them. Ki folded her mouth tight and went on stoically. Her hands were cold, colder than her body that pressed and scraped across hard rock and snow. Her fingers were numb, and the black was becoming so solid that she had to batter her hand against it before it would sink in at all. The trailing hand had to be jerked free with a snapping movement. Ki felt tiny rippings in her shoulders, in the muscles of elbows and wrist, tiny snappings and poppings. Puppet strings breaking.
She jerked a hand free, reached, slammed it against the solid wall. She drew it back farther, smashed her fist against it. It would not give. She dangled by one hand, and the hand was beginning to send her sharp messages of pain as the black crushed it. Ki squeezed her eyes shut, made a final driving blow against the wall.
“It doesn’t work with rock.� Vandien seized her knotted fist, heaved at it. She heard his body scrape and slide over snow. She could hear suddenly, she could breathe, and when she opened her eyes and looked, she saw that she had reached the end of the black wall and had, indeed, been trying to force her fist into solid rock. She jerked her screaming hand free of the black wall, entrusting her weight unthinkingly to Vandien’s grip on her wrist and forearm. He grunted as he took her weight, then, with a heave, she found the edge of the world was under her armpits. She scrambled frantically, her boots treading air, and with another heave she was up. Panic sent her body scooting further along the flat trail top. She didn’t even try to rise but slithered along. Vandien didn’t mock her. He was too busy copying her.
They stopped to lie close together in the snow, bodies touching at shoulders and hips, heads cushioned on their arms. Ki listened to Vandien pant. Or was it her own hoarse breathing? The air came easily, the snow was cold to rest in; she was tired, and she did not wish to lift her head, but she knew she could if she tried. She was alive. She raised her head enough to gulp in a mouthful of snow. Her teeth hurt as it melted in her mouth, but she took another. She rolled her head over to one side to look into Vandien’s face.
She studied the face so close to her own. He watched her from under half-closed lashes. What she could see of his face was drained of blood and lined with weariness. A large part of his bandage was red and wet. The snow closest to his face was melting with the red.
“You look like an actor painted for a play,� she panted. “White face, black beard, green and red bandage. You could be the corpse in the scene.�
“Not this scene,� Vandien grunted. They turned together to look at the solid black wall that reared up from the trail only a few steps away. Ki felt a pressure against her leg. She jerked away from it, and Sigmund, offended, snorted. Behind him, Sigurd was leisurely scratching the side of his nose against his black foreleg. They seemed mildly curious about Ki and Vandien in the snow, but not greatly interested.
“My loyal beasts!� Ki scoffed.
“Smarter than you were,� Vandien rejoined.
They remained prostrate in the snow, breathing and resting. Ki’s body ached all over, her head throbbed, and she felt marvelous. The cool of the snow began to make itself noticed. Her hands were bare of protection, her gloves lost in that blackness. The cold pushed at her through her rent cloak. She smiled weakly at the thought of it. The Harpy of the morning seemed a lifetime away now, and of small import. She reached up wearily to pull her hood up over her head. She would have to get up soon and do something. She lay still, wondering what something she would do.
“Ki!�
She opened her eyes grudgingly. She wondered when she had closed them. The sun was far down the sky. One side of her body was cold. She pulled the covers over her more tightly and her eyes started to slide shut again. Then she realized that the covers were her own cloak and Vandien’s that he had spread to cover them both. The side of her body that shared his warmth was comfortable enough, but her feet were tingling. Time to move. She shifted.
“Be still!� Vandien hissed.
Ki froze. His eye was dark and intent, staring from beneath his bandage that now showed a pale layer of frost over the red. His expression brooked no questions. She moved her eyes to see what he saw.
The silver Sisters had gone gray. The black was rising, was writhing back up to them in whirling drifts and eddies, in every shade from palest gray to black. It flowed up like layers of silken webbing, veiling their beauty once more from lesser eyes. Ki took one final drink of their heartless majesty before the rising black made them again impassive stone.
“They were guardians, once,� Ki breathed.
“Sssh!� Vandien nodded slowly.
“How could I fall asleep so close beside them?�
The black on the Sisters grew darker every instant. On the trail where it had lain the wall of it was becoming lower, sinking as the black mist that formed it wafted back up to the Sisters.
“We were out of their shadows,� Vandien murmured, becoming bold enough to speak. “They are monstrously fair about it. Only in that one spot do they hold sway. That is why the trail, coming and going, avoids the look of their eyes, stays hidden for as long as it can. They are slow to react, I suppose. Perhaps they guarded against creatures more ponderous than we know, or perhaps they were instructed to barricade and block, not destroy. How can we know? Or maybe they did a thing that we can never comprehend at all, and the danger they present to travelers these days is coincidental. We are young on this old world, Ki.�
“My wagon!� Ki replied. She drew herself together, rose, leaving Vandien to scramble after her. The last drifts and snatches of mist were rising, flowing back into place. Ki walked unhesitating into the area they had just vacated. She had to step down off the layer of snow and ice where she and Vandien had napped to tread the bare rock of the trail, exposed flat and smooth where the black had been.
Ki had once seen a Romni wagon that had slid and rolled off a mountain path made treacherous by spring runoff. She had marveled at the clean snapping of the heavy wood, great horses thrown about like puppies, a
t the litter of small debris strewn down the side of the cliff like bits of bright paper. But never had she seen wood crushed, the fibers compressed together so tightly that they crumbled away from one another afterwards. Her wagon had been crushed and smeared across the stone like a bright insect smashed on a window pane.
Here and there her eyes picked out the details her mind did not want to know: the woeful head of a wooden horse, intact, but its body crumbled away; a rag of bright curtain; flat, crumpled copper that had been a kettle; straw crumbled to chaff; a single bright flower painted on a board that had survived.
She did not scream; she did not speak. Vandien’s boots scuffed on the rock as he strode up to her. He took her upper arm to lead her away, but she shrugged him off. Only her eyes were alive as they flickered and danced over the wreckage. She began to tremble. It started as a shivering and increased in tempo until Vandien wondered if she would convulse in a fit. She prowled shaking among the wreckage of her life.
Vandien observed her. She moved slowly, stooping to pick up a treasured fragment. She cradled it against her body for a few steps, then dropped it to pick up some other remnant. She seemed to choose them at random: a scrap of leather, the handle of a mug, a rag of bright fabric. She clutched and discarded each in turn. She moved aimlessly through the rubble, keeping nothing of what she gathered, impervious to the cold that made her hands white and red. Finally, she let a little fur boot tumble from her hand. She watched it fall. Her trembling passed.
“It will be night soon. We have no more time to waste here.� Her tone almost implied that Vandien had kept her standing about. With a purposeful stride, she crossed the rocky trail to climb up the packed snow and ice. “It will be dark soon,� she called back to Vandien. Her trembling had ceased. She made a grab for Sigurd’s head, and he swung it willfully away from her. She slapped him sharply on the shoulder and made a second, more successful grab. She was looking up the hill of his rolling, dappled shoulder when Vandien came up behind her.
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