“When your da and mother went to Lost Lake for the Kingmaking, my da guarded their back, standing rear guard as they walked down the last trail. Once he told me that he was needed not at all for that. For even the strongest will could not take a step after them; your path twisted aside if you tried, and your eyes were . . . shifted elsewhere. If your will wasn’t of the strongest, you couldn’t make yourself even want to try.”
She frowned. “I think . . . my parents may have said something of the sort, but not in detail.”
Karl nodded in turn, his boney young face unwontedly serious. “For that they wouldn’t feel it, do you see, Princess? They can go there, for the Powers allow it. For other folk, not so; and it’s been that way at Lost Lake since. Now and then my father . . . and I with him, once or twice . . . have hunted the woods near there, on the slopes of Mt. Hood, while the High King and Queen were at Timberline Lodge.”
That was Crown demesne, and visits to Timberline were cherished marks of honor for guests, but the High King’s Archers went where the Royal family did. Most of the millions of acres of woods around Hood had been some sort of preserve before the Change, though now they bordered on the territory of the Dukes of Odell to the east and the Counts of Molalla to the west.
Karl went on: “No paths lead there, though there were roads to it before the Change, aye, and after, until that day. Cross that territory as you will, you won’t catch a glimpse of it now, even if maps say you should. It’s . . . a place apart now, beyond the hills we know.”
There were uneasy glances among some of those present; Diarmuid made the sign of the Horns.
Heuradys spoke, her voice cool, though she touched the owl amulet of Athana she wore. But that One was patroness of reason:
“That’s the holiest spot in all Montival,” she said. “And sacred to House Artos. Why should we have the same problem here?”
Órlaith laid the Sword across her knees, and her hand on the hilt. She was reluctant herself: these were sacred matters. But these folk had followed her into this peril, with more than a hint of the Otherworld to it, and she owed them an explanation.
“My father and mother bore the Sword to Lost Lake . . . to E-e-kwahl-a-mat-yam-lshkt, Lake at the Heart of Mountains,” she said softly. “That was the goal of the Quest of the Sword of the Lady. Before that full many had walked there in the light of common day. When he and my mother mixed their blood upon the point and drove it into the rock of Montival they did more than pierce stone. They drove it through time itself, through all the days of their ancestors and their descendants; and theirs and mine is the mingled blood of all who have dwelt here, and it will run down through all their generations. It became the pivot about which this land turns. My father carried the Sword away, but . . . it is still there.”
At their puzzlement, she went on: “From that moment, it always was there. It always will be there. From the time the Ice withdrew and the first tribes of human kind wandered into this land, in the time of the Gods who were before the Gods, forward to a destiny unknowable, through all this cycle of Time and Space. And so that spot now dwells in all those times, and none; it has stepped aside from the world where we dwell. Only my blood can walk that path.”
Silence rang as night fell. “More I cannot say,” she whispered. “I will not know the fullness of it myself until I journey there for my own Queenmaking. We say that the lord and the land and the folk are one; it’s a proverb. But it is true.”
Reiko spoke at last. “Yes. Then what bars you from this spot we seek?”
Órlaith met her eyes. “What it holds, and should not,” she said. “That which belongs to you and yours.”
Reiko nodded, and addressed the others: “Such things . . . a thing which embodies the spirit and history of a land and a people . . . they are things which can be terrible. Not evil, not wicked in themselves, but . . . perilous, as any great force of nature. An earthquake is not evil; a tsunami is not evil; but they can destroy, especially if you are heedless of them. This is why such things are so often hidden away. Kusanagi-no-Tsurugi is one of three great treasures of our people. The jewel, the mirror, and the sword.”
“Ah,” Órlaith said. “But only one of three, where we have only the Sword.”
Reiko nodded. “I think . . . what the Sword of the Lady is to your land, together they are to Nihon. But separate aspects. The jewel to sustain, to . . . to nourish, as a mother nourishes her child. The mirror for wisdom, for insight, as the mind and soul inform and guide the body, and look inward on themselves for self-knowledge.”
Órlaith made a gesture of agreement. “So for you this Sword is more singly such a thing as a blade would symbolize?”
Reiko inclined her head, and moved her fan gracefully. “The Grass-Cutting Sword, that embodies power, the power of Fire and Air that is the soul of the Immortal One Shining in Heaven . . . who is my Ancestress. The warrior heart and power that a ruler must have, to protect, to guard, neh?”
“Justice carries a sword,” John murmured. Reiko looked at him approvingly.
“And to punish the wrongdoer, yes. But separated from its proper place, from the proper hands, that power runs wild, seeking, not finding, twisting the very frame of things. Because it is apart from wisdom and peace.”
Órlaith nodded. “And this land, to protect itself, has drawn a wall about the place. That I have sensed. An . . . absence.”
Reiko hesitated, then went on: “To control it . . . that only I can do. I have seen . . . it has been granted to me to see the Grass-Cutting Sword through the history of my people, from the time of legends to that of our grandfathers. How it is entwined with the blood of my House, and both are mingled with the fate of Dai-Nippon. It was forged for the hand of the Tenno, the lord of the land, of the blood of the Sun Herself. Apart from that hand, it can wreak terrible things. So it was kept apart and secluded for many ages.”
Órlaith looked around at her followers. “All of you, my dear comrades, came because I called you. Some died, and all of you have risked death and shed your blood for me. But at the seventh and last, this isn’t something a war band can do. We’re not here to make war, or to take with the hand of power. This is a pilgrimage, the righting of a wrong, the forging of a destiny that links us with the Powers. In the end, it’s something that Reiko and I have to do—me to take her through the barriers this land has thrown up against a power that is not of its native soil, her to claim it by right of blood and her willingness to do what is needful at any cost and pay the price of it. And so here, for a while, we must leave you: because only we can make our lands whole again.”
She touched the Sword again. “No, Johnnie,” she said, to forestall him. “You’re my brother of blood, but this could only come to you if I were to fail and fall. Fail and die. Until then the burden’s mine. You will have your own tasks.”
Indeed you will. For you too have dreamed; what those dreams mean, we do not yet know. But not of this.
Gently: “Herry, sister of my heart, you are my shield and my right hand and my most trusted advisor, but this once I have to go without you.”
Heuradys nodded and looked aside, swallowing; John pounded a fist on his knee and bent his head. Egawa turned and began to bow.
Reiko caught his eye and made a single sharp sideways gesture with her fan. “No, General. From this you cannot guard me. It is for this that I was born.”
They both rose and stood side-by-side. “Wait for us,” Órlaith said. “And that is the hardest thing we could ask of you.”
• • •
Three days later Reiko went down on one knee, bending her head. “Perhaps . . .” she managed to croak.
That did duty for perhaps we should have waited for sundown.
Órlaith touched the empty waterskin at her side. That filled in for an entire day without water and we wouldn’t be able to move at all.
Reiko blinked again and again
, until her eyes unblurred a little. That did nothing for the headache, which she could ignore at worst despite the way it pulsed through her every time the heartbeat sounded in her temples. And nothing for the weakness and feeling like a bad fever, which she could not. Her broad domed sandogasa straw hat at least gave her reasonable protection from the direct sun, as much as from the rain it was originally intended to shed. Órlaith wore a light beige-colored cloak with a loose hood, which did about as well.
Water, the Nihonjin thought, and then immediately wished she hadn’t. The problem with losing your mind is that affects your self-discipline.
That almost made her giggle, but she controlled herself in time, afraid that if she did there would be no stopping.
Must not stop, she told herself. Keep—
Órlaith paused beside her, wheezing. The scabbard of the Sword clattered against the rocks beneath. With a dull clank . . . which meant they were on . . .
A touch beneath her elbow. That was not support, it was the idea of support, and she found herself able to stand. The rock beneath her feet was pale, very pale—somehow a white shade of black, and smooth except for a fissuring of cracks. Asphalt, after half a century of merciless sun.
Road, she thought, the thought as sluggish as her thickening blood. Ancient road.
The desert had been surprisingly densely scattered with them. Asphalt and dirt and gravel, lying still and often almost as if the ancients had simply walked away a little before. Sometimes with cars still resting on them, not as badly rusted as the ones she was used to. Sometimes the doors were open, sometimes shut; sometimes only bones near them, sometimes a grinning blackened mummy peering out through the glass, sometimes you walked a mile before the broken scattered skeletons lay by the wayside.
They crossed the road. Then gravel crunched beneath their feet. It was as if she was pushing wooden stumps down at the ground. Also as if she was pushing herself. Pushing through something resilient, endlessly patient, something that pushed at her mind to turn it about, as if soft impalpable hands nudged and nudged and nudged at her shoulder. The Sword at Órlaith’s side was a white beacon, the prow of a ship parting the wave, the point of a spear. At times she hated it, because without it she could lie down and stop and that feeling of willful exclusion, of wrongness, would stop too.
The tension in her head mounted and mounted. She coughed, then retched dryly and put her hands to her temples. There was an almost irresistible urge to grab and pull, pull, pull until the skull popped.
A note of music, as if something had parted. A steel wire behind her eyes, somehow. Heat poured out of her, and sweat broke out all over her body. She crammed her cracked lips against the skin of her wrist, and the thick salty sweat burned them like a wave of fire, shocking her mind back into a glassy lucidity for a few instants. Something crackled beneath her feet, something tawny.
Grass, she thought. Brush.
A cliff loomed ahead, pale rock dripping as if it had melted—marble, flowing down the rock.
Órlaith made a choked sound beside her and toppled, toppled forward, crawled into the shade of the cottonwoods. Water glimmered and she plunged her head into it. Reiko coughed again and collapsed. Her outstretched hand fell into coolness, and she writhed forward like a snake. Hand to mouth, water touching her tongue.
Pull, she thought, and grabbed Órlaith’s sword-belt with both hands. Pull!
The other woman slid backward over dried grass. Her face turned sideways, water running from her slack mouth and from her nostrils, and she coughed and sputtered. Reiko stretched her hand out again, licked the water off her palm with her swollen tongue, repeated it until her throat and stomach began to ache. Then she set herself to push Órlaith over on her back, an effort that left her shuddering and striving not to vomit up the water she had swallowed. After she lay panting for a while she fumbled at her belt until the cup atop her canteen was in her hand.
Slowly. Into the water, fill it. Pull it back. Don’t spill!
Slide a hand under Órlaith’s head. Tilt it up. Dribble the water into her mouth. Slowly!
As much as she could swallow. Then a cup for herself. Then dribble another past Órlaith’s lips. Her body grew heavier and heavier while she worked. Then she turned and collapsed backward. Sunlight dappled through the leaves above, and there was a hint of dampness soaking through from the ground into her hair, and the hat slowly came forward and rested over her face. Silence. Oddly, she could feel her willpower physically, the thing she used to make herself do that which was beyond her: it was like a ball of tight-bound string in her chest. Now it was unravelling, spreading out through her body with the water. Like a faithful servant dismissed to rest with a smile and gesture.
Rest.
• • •
Reiko snatched at her tessen; or at least she would have, if her hand had obeyed her instead of twitching and swaying and falling back.
“Easy, Reiko-chan, easy,” Órlaith said; her voice was hoarse, but no longer a grinding croak. “Easy there.”
She pushed the hat off her face and bit back a whimper as she moved. Every muscle in her body seemed to have shrunk, turning in on itself and trying to pull her into an immovable knot. Órlaith’s face looked ghastly as she tried to smile, with shreds of skin loose around her lips and her eyes sunken in her head.
“And how would you be feeling?”
“Terrible. Wonderful,” Reiko said, and winced a little at the pain of attempting to smile herself.
“I think I’ve you to thank for not drowning,” Órlaith said cheerfully despite the skull-like look of her face. “Which would be too ironic for words, drowning in this desert, would it not?”
“We are past the point of counting who has saved whose life most, I think, Orrey-chan!” Reiko said.
Very carefully she pushed herself up until her back was braced against a cottonwood stump and looked around. It was evening, and felt . . . not exactly cool, but not hot either. A cliff loomed northward; between it and them was a line of pools. Water trickled down the rock, amid the travertine it had deposited. Reeds and trees and odd-looking bushy palms grew thick, and there was a smell of life in the air that was inexpressible joy. A small fire crackled, and Órlaith lifted a cup off it. The infinitely familiar aroma of miso greeted her, and she took it and sipped.
“Ahhh,” she said.
Her spirit was still unstable, and she felt a prickle of tears at the homely taste. And at the sight of Órlaith, and at the terror of what being alone here would have meant.
This is what it is to have a friend, a true comrade, she thought, and looked aside until she had composed herself.
“Indeed, and I’m less hostile to the stuff now,” Órlaith said, sipping at her own cup. “I’ve been up for a pair of hours—got the camp set up, such as it is. And had to pee, the which is deeply reassuring.”
Reiko nodded soberly; that meant lasting kidney damage from near-death by thirst was less likely. That—and the sound of trickling water—made her aware of a similar urgency. She stood cautiously, and took step by step until she found a suitable spot; the flow was thick and ill-smelling, but she felt the better for it. When she returned and washed her face and hands Órlaith had soaked some biscuit in the reconstituted soup and set out some of the dried apricots and figs. They both ate cautiously, nibble by nibble, ceasing at the first protests from stomachs just coming to life, and sipping slowly but frequently at water. Reiko could even taste it now; it was rather . . . not quite warm but un-cool, and with a mineral tang. She looked about as she did; the little stretch of vegetation extended some hundreds of yards either way along the base of the cliff, but it was narrow, barely a third of that wide.
There was also a bunch of grapes, small and thick-skinned; she took one and let it burst between her teeth, joyfully soothing to the sore interior of her mouth.
“Where are we?” she asked. “Though everything is ver
y nice compared to where we were. If we had some tea, nearly perfect!”
“’Tis a place called Grapevine Springs . . . or Grapevine Canyon . . . by the maps. And living up to its name; there are a few wild vines. And some birds and small game about, and from the prints some sort of antelope visit here. And human kind, but not many and not that often. Bare feet; the same ones each time, I’d say. No outsiders since the Change, I’d venture, or very few. Whatever was keeping us out, we’re either inside it, or it’s gone . . . and I’m thinking it’s gone. But for as long as it stood, it kept whoever and whatever was here inside, as well. I think it might have been possible for a few to enter, but much harder to leave.”
“And the castle?” Reiko said; her head still felt a little thick.
“About a mile and a half from here,” Órlaith said. “I haven’t been prancing about, you’ll understand!”
Her head dropped forward, and Reiko smiled again, despite the cracked lips. “I also could sleep, Orrey-chan,” she said. “And if nothing has killed us yet . . .”
• • •
“Extraordinary,” Reiko said a day and a night later as they approached the complex of buildings.
She was moving well now, rebounding with the resilience of someone young and immensely fit; so was her companion.
Moving well compared to yesterday, she thought.
She chuckled at the thought, and Órlaith voiced it: “Sure, and I only feel a few years past sixty the now, rather than a hundred and six come Yule, and three days dead besides.”
The structure they studied was a castle, in the sense that there were exterior walls with crenellations in some parts; others had arched entryway doors, a set of three of them to either side of the main entrance they faced. One tower to their right was round and looked like those of a Western-style castle . . . in miniature, only two stories tall.
There had been gardens of some sort around it, and the skeletons of dead trees still stood, hacked and haggled for firewood. Equally dead vehicles stood before the entrance, and a clutch of bicycles that looked to have been there about as long. And a curious cart-like machine, with two bicycles in front. Several of them, in fact; they had the look of something improvised in a hurry.
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