Fractured Everest Box Set

by D. H. Dunn

  “Your trust is not required, Respected,” the Speaker said to Merin. He turned back to Nima, who still glared up at him with balled fists. “Your care for the Foretold is admirable, Arrived. We share it. The translation will be difficult for her, we are assisting her with that transition. In a short time, you will be taken to her. Will you accept this delay?”

  “I don’t guess I have a choice,” Nima said, folding her arms. “But I want to know what is going on with her. Why is she older? Is she all right? Will she know me?”

  “All things have reasons, Arrived, therefore all things have explanations. We shall share our knowledge with you when we bring you to the Foretold.” The Yeti turned toward Drew, who had his hands on Nima’s shoulders. “We would title you Unstable, and would wish to examine you as well. You have much in common with the Foretold.”

  “Me?” Drew said, taking a step back. “Why would you want to examine me? What does that even mean? What do you mean ‘Unstable’?”

  “Speaker.” Upala put as strong a tone as possible into her voice, trying to recall the times she had seen Merin or Harliss use a similar tone. She struggled toward as diplomatic a phrasing as possible, but she was so tired. ”This is all very confusing to us. We expected you would attack us. We are very happy you have not, but do you intend to? Are we safe here? Do you intend to let us leave? What do you want?”

  The questions poured out of her with embarrassing haste, but she needed to know. Somewhere outside this cave Tanira was already at work.

  “Intend, Sentenced? We intend nothing that would go against our rocha. Cred rocha! As long as your actions are in alignment with the Foretold, you have a truce with the Yeti.”

  “Did he answer your question?” Drew asked. “I can hardly tell.”

  Upala pondered the meaning of the Speaker’s words as another Yeti appeared in the chamber opening. It looked indistinguishable from the Speaker. Even with all the Yeti she had dissected she had never found a difference between one and another. The newcomer paused for a moment, then turned and backed a few steps out of the room, standing half in shadow.

  The Speaker addressed Nima.

  “Arrived, you may be taken to the Foretold. Unstable, we would desire to examine you. There is much about you that is questioned.”

  “And the rest of us?” Merin asked. She spoke through clenched teeth, brandishing her burned arm at the Speaker.

  “We would ask that you remain here until the Arrived has spoken with the Foretold. You are injured, we may be able to offer succor as well as sustenance.”

  Upala stepped in front of Drew and Nima. Taking Nima to see Lhamu was one matter, but Drew being examined as well?

  “We will not allow our friends to be harmed.”

  “Do not be provocative,” the Speaker said, his voice flat. “If we wished harm, harm would have occurred. No harm will come to those who are on the side of the Foretold and our rocha.”

  “I’ll be all right,” Drew said, leaning over to her. “It’ll help me keep an eye on Nima and maybe I’ll get some answers too.” He leaned in, giving her a kiss on her cheek. “Be right back.”

  Nima sprung forward, quickly walking alongside the Speaker as he left the room. Drew followed behind, taking one last look back at Upala before sliding out of sight into the darkened passage leading out of the cavern.

  As if the string holding her up had been cut, Upala slumped to the ground, falling to her knees in exhaustion. Whatever might come, whatever Tanira might be up to, they were home. It was a small comfort, but it was all she had.

  The Speaker had brought Nima to a tiny room, she guessed about ten minutes’ walk from where the portal had deposited them. She saw no other Yeti except the Speaker during their journey, which was so filled with twists and turns she doubted she could find her way back.

  Lhamu lay on a stone platform, covered in a blanket of thick, brown fur. Nima stared at her from the entrance of the small chamber, her mind struggling to work out what she was seeing. Even after all the impossibilities she had witnessed since the Under, this was the hardest to accept.

  Drew had attempted to stop and stay with her, but the Speaker had been insistent that Drew accompany him. Drew managed to give Nima a small hug before he was guided away into the darkness, leaving Nima alone outside the small open room that contained Lhamu’s sleeping form.

  She was beautiful. She had long, green hair that looked like sea waves rolling over the thin pillow. Her skin had a tinge of blue to it, the faintest hint of scales showing on her cheeks. To Nima she looked to be in her mid-teens, somehow. The crystal between her closed eyes glowed softly, shifting from one color to the next. Underneath the blanket, Nima could see her chest rise and fall.

  She was impossible, but she was alive.

  “Val,” she whispered. If only he could have seen this.

  Lhamu’s head turned at the sound, dark eyes opening to look at Nima. Nima smiled nervously. Will she even know who I am?

  Lhamu smiled back, her crystal glowed a low orange that bathed the room in its warmth.

  Nima took one step into the room, one step closer. Her palms were sweating, her heart pounding. What should I say?

  “Hi,” Nima said, her voice feeling small even in the tiny room. “I don’t know if you can understand me, but I am . . . I am so happy you are all right.”

  “I can understand you.”

  Nima let out a yelp in surprise. She can speak! How?

  “I am pleased to see you.”

  Lhamu’s voice sounded like the tide to Nima, there was an ebb and flow to her words that reminded her of Sirapothi.

  “I-I don’t know what to say,” Nima said. She walked closer to Lhamu, kneeling next to the stone platform so she could look Lhamu in the eye. “I am happy, but I am so confused.”

  “I am confused as well,” Lhamu said, dark eyes narrowing. “I am not where I should be. My link is severed, yet I am stable. I cannot sense the originator, his contact is lost to me. What is this place?”

  “We are in. . .” Nima looked around the small room. She wished Drew had not been taken away, she wished with all her heart that Val was there. “We are in a cave, um, on another world. A world of my friends, we are chasing someone who is here. Someone bad.”

  “This is not Sirapothi,” Lhamu said, looking around the chamber. “I am not where I should be. My link is severed! Where is Valaen? Where is Tanira?” Lhamu sat up, reaching out and taking Nima’s hand. The crystal on her head shifted from orange to a dark blue, the girl’s eyes widening. “I am afraid! Where are they?”

  How could she know them? She was just a baby. How was she talking? The questions and mysteries flooded Nima’s mind, so hard to know which to ask first, yet Lhamu’s fear was all Nima could focus on. She began to shush her, rubbing the girl’s hand with her own.

  “Everything is all right, Lhamu. You are safe, I am safe. We are not in Sirapothi, but we are in a safe place, a place with friends.”

  Lhamu let out a deep, ragged sigh like surf crashing onto a rocky shore. She lay back down, the color of her crystal shifting between red and green.

  “We are safe,” she repeated back to Nima. “You are with me, and you have kept me safe. Yet you are afraid, I can see it inside you. What is your fear?”

  “I just. . . I don’t know how you are here, I mean how old you are. How can you understand me? How can you know what to say?”

  “This unknown is frightening to you,” Lhamu said, as if Nima had just taught her something. “I speak because I know the words, does that help? I have known words all of my memory. Your words, Valaen’s, and Tanira’s. The originator’s most of all.”

  “‘Originator’? You mean Sessgrenimath?”

  “Yes. His words were not in my ears but inside me. I could hear them even if I did not want to. Dark words, they were large and overhead. I can hear whispers of those words here, but they are not his. They are many, smaller, but still large. Whose words are inside me now?”

  “I don’t know
, Lhamu. I can try to help you find out.”

  “I am glad his words are gone, the link is severed. Yet I know this is not where I should be. When do we go home? When do we return to Sirapothi?”

  Nima squeezed Lhamu’s hand. She wanted to go home, yet what would happen to her if they tried? They went through the portal once, would Lhamu age again if they returned? Would she turn back to an infant? Would the link with Sessgrenimath kill her as it was supposed to?

  There were so many questions, so much danger. Yet that was the girl’s wish, looking into Lhamu’s face Nima saw someone it would be hard for her to say no to.

  “We have . . . things to do here first. Something bad is happening here and we need to stop it, to keep people from being hurt. Once that is done and my friends are safe, I will try to take you home.”

  Lhamu nodded as if Nima had said something profound to her.

  “Yes,” she said. “Friends should be kept safe. You kept me safe, I remember. There was a high tower, and a rolling sea. A great snow, and bitter cold. People fighting, people being hurt. Yet you were always above me, Nima, keeping me safe. I learned from you. We will keep your friends safe as well, Nima. We will help them. Then I can go home.”

  Nima smiled, surprised at the feeling of pride she felt at the conviction with which Lhamu spoke. Her eyes grew moist, her memory flashing back to the sunset on Varesta, her one last moment with Val before everything went wrong.

  “Nima, where are Valaen and Tanira?” Lhamu sat up, wrapping the blanket around her. “They should help us with your friends too. Yet I do not see them here. Where are they?”

  Nima sighed as she felt the smile drain from her face. She wasn’t even sure she herself had processed what had happened to Val, and how Tanira had betrayed them.

  She took a deep breath. Lhamu deserved the truth, even if it was hard to say.

  “What happened with Tanira is complicated, Lhamu. She protected you, but she did that because she needed you.”

  “Needed me?” Lhamu’s eyes grew wider, her crystal shifting to a pink hue. “What does that mean?”

  “There was a door she needed to open, and you were the key. Tanira told me she was my friend, but she had done some awful things.”

  Nima’s heart immediately thought back to Val, and all she had lost. Tanira had done far more harm than that, of course.

  Lhamu looked back at Nima, brows furrowed. The light in her headcrystal grew.

  “Tanira said she was your friend, but she was not? So she lied?”

  Nima thought back to her first meeting with Tanira, and how the woman had told her of her quest to save her people. Nima felt shame at her excitement at the time, at how she had proclaimed Tanira a brave knight.

  You saw what you wanted to see! Tanira had yelled at her from the top of Varesta on Sirapothi, and she had been right.

  “No,” Nima said, sadness at the edge of her voice. “No she didn’t lie. I just wasn’t smart enough to see what she really was, and it cost me, cost all of us. Especially Val.”

  Lhamu leaned forward, a look of concern growing on her face. Nima watched the color in her crystal shift from a pink hue to a deep blue.

  “Why?” she asked. “What happened to Val?”

  There was no way to cushion it, no way to make it easier for Lhamu to hear, or for Nima to say.

  “Tanira killed him,” she said, a choke coming to her voice. “She … she didn’t mean to, I think. But that doesn’t change anything. She was willing to do whatever was needed, to get to her goal.”

  Lhamu lowered her head. Nima wondered if Lhamu really grasped what death meant, if she understood what any of this meant.

  She took the girl’s hands into her own, feeling the slight ridges from the faint scales in her blue skin. So similar to Val.

  “Lhamu, I’m sorry. I know this is hard to understand. I don’t think I understand it.”

  Lhamu looked back up at her. Instead of the tears Nima had expected, she saw a stern glare as the grip on her hands tightened.

  “I understand,” she said firmly. “Tanira is bad. She has hurt people, and now she plans to hurt more.”

  Nima felt a laugh escape, even as a tear rolled down her cheek. It really is that simple, she told herself. If only I had been able to see it.

  “I guess you do understand, Lhamu. Maybe I’m the one who has been confused.”

  Lhamu pushed herself off the small cot, planting her feet on the floor. She continued to grip Nima’s hands, her crystal now shining golden like the sun.

  “We should stop her,” she said. “That’s what we’re going to do, right? Tanira is bad, but we are good people.”

  Nima looked off to the shadows of the hallway outside the small chamber. She had thought that through that door waited hard choices, tough decisions.

  Yet Lhamu had rendered it very simple.

  “Yes,” Nima said, thinking of what might be required to stop Tanira. What she might be forced to do. “We are good, and good people help. Even when it’s hard.”

  “So, do you understand what is going on with me? Is that why you called me ‘unstable’?”

  Drew looked up at the Speaker, confused that this narrow crack of stone between two passages was where the Yeti felt was the best place for them to talk.

  He wanted to be back with Nima, both to support his friend and to understand the impossibility of Lhamu entering the portal an infant and coming out a teenager. Yet perhaps it was best, this allowed Nima to have some privacy and maybe Drew could get some answers. Even if the source was as unlikely as any he could have guessed.

  “Unstable is your title no more.” The Yeti’s voice seemed to come from everywhere inside the tiny enclosure. “Yet it is no longer your condition. We have examined you. As is with the Foretold, you are now stable. We would name you Altered.”

  When the hell did they examine him? Stable?

  “Stable? What does that mean? You mean I won’t be changing anymore? What happened to me in the first place?” His pulse pounded in his temples as his frustration rose.

  “We do not have knowledge of the first place you have been, Altered. Yet you have been many places, the mark of several portals is upon you. It is from this that your instability was sourced.”

  “From the portals?” He supposed it was possible, yet it also didn’t make sense. He hadn’t felt different in the Under. He certainly wasn’t shooting fire from his hands or growing new skin there. It was not until he arrived in Aroha Darad that he started changing. Just like Lhamu.

  “Is it this world? This place is what changed me? Changed the girl?”

  “That is sooth.” The Speaker nodded. “This world is like no other. Not all who translate to it are affected the same. Most remain stable, but you did not. The Foretold did not. Place five seeds in the ground, five plants may not grow. All beings are different.”

  “Great, I’m allergic.” Drew laughed, the sound devoid of humor. “So, I’m stable, what does that mean? I can’t change back? I can’t become human again?”

  “Your essence reacted to Aroha Darad, becoming malleable. An impression was made upon you by another. You have taken on the form of that impression and are no longer moldable. You are as you are, Altered.”

  There it was, stated by the Yeti as a fact. This is who he was now. Locked somewhere between Manad Vhan and human, and not sure where one ended and the other began. Was it truly bad to be altered? He had been fighting against it because he didn’t want to believe in it.

  Maybe it was time to believe. With the stakes so high, maybe it was time to count on these changes and own them. Use them.

  “Great, well I guess it is good to know. I don’t know what to do with it, but I can stop wondering why it happened.”

  “To question that which is fact is not in the nature of the Yeti. You would do to alter yours. We have examined you, we will now return you to the Arrived and the Foretold.”

  The Speaker turned, moving toward the exit of the thin stone crevice, while Drew r
eviewed the rush of the conversation in his head, so much information so quickly. There was one more question that prodded the back of his mind.

  “Wait, Speaker. You said Aroha Darad wasn’t like other worlds. How is that true? What’s different about it?”

  The Speaker paused at the opening of the crack, its massive form blocking out the light and leaving Drew in shadow.

  “It is simple. Other worlds are real.”

  Chapter 10

  Upala looked up as Kater slurped the rest of his soup from the crude, clay bowl the Yeti had served it in.

  “Repulsive,” he said, tossing the bowl aside and rising to his feet. It was the first time Upala had seen him stand since they arrived, yet now he looked as strong and hale as he could in his old body. It was still hard to get used to seeing him aged, though it occurred to her that she had now seen the same thing happen to Lhamu.

  “What are we waiting here for, Upala?” Kater demanded, walking to one side of the broad stone chamber, then turning. He took a glance at the portal, now just a darkened oval on the far wall. “We are here, back on Aroha Darad. The longer we sit here, the more this Rakhum woman, this Tanira, will get ahead of us.”

  Merin eyed Kater from where she leaned by the entrance to the chamber. She had been looking down the passage that led into the shadows for some time. The left side of her upper body was covered in a strange paste that one of the Yeti had brought in. It smelled foul, but had seemed to soothe the woman’s pain quickly.

  “We need to wait for Nima and Drew,” Upala said, sipping the soup from her bowl as she sat. Kater’s description was not without merit, the thick mixture of under-ripe vegetables and a broth she could not quite identify was not appetizing, but it was warm.

  “Again, I ask why,” Kater now paced to the other side of the room. “However it happened, the changes in Adley might be useful were he not a fool. I have no interest in the child, and the other two are of no help. Why wait for these useless quicklifes?”

  “Do not speak of me as if I am not here,” Merin said.