The Cloven Land Trilogy

by Simon Kewin

  “Well, if everything you tried failed, perhaps you were trying the wrong things,” said Ariane.

  “Why do you think I brought you down here? To put up with your prattling all this time?”

  “Nice to know you've admitted your limitations for once,” said Ariane. “Now, stand back and let me take a look.” She struck an orange werelight and let it play slowly across the whole surface of the door, looking for any marks that might give her a clue. Her eyes were narrowed in concentration as she peered close, almost as if she were sniffing the ancient metal.

  After a few minutes she stepped back. “No marks or signs. Not even a draught coming from underneath. Are you sure this is a door?”

  “You can see it's a door,” said Hellen. “Is your eyesight that bad?”

  “I can see it looks like one. But how do you know it leads anywhere? Perhaps someone set it against the mother rock to fool people like you, make them think something lay beyond.”

  “Perhaps,” said Hellen. “I thought about that. But you can sense the strength of the warding spells woven into the iron. Someone went to a lot of trouble to keep this door closed. Why would they do that if it was nothing more than a joke?”

  Ariane nodded, deep in thought. “So this scroll you found. Do you have it with you?”

  “Obviously. It's not much help. It's very old, from long before the Cleaving.” Hellen pulled the ancient scroll from her own backpack. It crackled as she gently unfurled it.

  Ariane's lips moved as she tried to read the old words, tracing her fingertip across the parchment. The writing was clear still, vivid letters of purple, but the words, the sense of them, were all but lost.

  “This talks about someone a witch went to meet.” said Ariane. “Does that say guardian? And here again, it talks about An as if it was a person, not a place. Who, Hellen? Who did they go to meet? Who lives on this island?”

  “Isn't it obvious? Do I have to sit you down and recount all the old fireside stories?”

  Understanding dawned on her old friend's face. “You mean Hyrn. You actually think Hyrn lives on this island. Or did all that time ago.”

  “I do,” said Hellen. “The guardian of An. The spirit in the wood and the water. The Green Man. The one who walked these lands when there was no one else to walk beside him. Hyrn, yes. He was there when the land was cleaved in two. He was part of it, and from what I've read he took up residence on this island afterward. It was his escape, his refuge.”

  “But we can't rely on a myth to step from the mists and save us. If Hyrn is real, why isn't he helping us? Why is he making things so difficult for us?”

  “I don't know. I think, perhaps, we don't really understand who or what he is. How he is connected to the land.”

  “But the sagas say he made An. Raised the two lands from an endless sea to form the river, flowing in its eternal circle. If that's true, why would he allow the undain to become what they have?”

  “Good question,” said Hellen. “Just because there is knowledge in some of the old tales doesn't mean we have to believe all of them. From what I've read I think it was the other way round. An created him. He's the spirit of the land, the essence, the voice, given human form.”

  “Like the Song.”

  “Something like the Song, yes. And the Song is faltering and breaking. You've heard it. It occurred to me that Hyrn, too, may be fading. He's not the all-powerful being some of the stories describe, dreaming the sky into being and all that nonsense. I think maybe he's dying because the land is dying. And that's why he's not helping us.”

  Ariane didn't speak for long moments. It was a lot to grasp, Hellen knew. It had taken her years of reading and thinking to get that far.

  “Then we have to help him,” said Ariane finally. “Help him to help ourselves.”

  “Yes,” said Hellen, quietly, smiling at her old friend. “We do. And that means opening this door.”

  They stayed there for two or three days, although in truth it was hard to be sure of the passing of time when there was no moon or sun or stars. They'd brought supplies with them: food and blankets and candles, as if setting off for a long trek across country. It was just as well they had. They camped by the door for one sleep, and then another, while they tried and failed to open the entrance.

  Some time in the middle of the third night – if it was night – Hellen was awoken by Ariane's gasp.

  “Sorry,” said Ariane as she regained herself. “A dream. A vivid dream.”

  “Ah. You must tell me all about it. In the morning.”

  “No, Hellen, I think I have tell you now.”

  An urgency in Ariane's voice made it clear Hellen had to listen. She pushed herself up, her hips stiff and sore from lying on the hard stone. Ariane struck a werelight, bathing the two of them in its pallid, shifting glow.

  “Go on then if you must,” said Hellen.

  “I saw him,” said Ariane. “Hyrn. He had antlers on his head, and he prowled through the dapple of the woods, disappearing into the shadows again and again. I tried to reach him, follow him, but he sped away each time I got close.”

  “Probably very sensible of him.”

  “Hush. For some reason I had to reach him. And then I saw the trail of blood on the ground. He was wounded and I caught him, put my hand on his arm. He turned to face me, but he was old and weak and exhausted. His tongue lolled purple from his mouth. He fell at my feet and lay there panting like a wounded animal. He looked up at me, wary, as if afraid I was going to kill him.”

  “Which tells us nothing, except that your tired old mind is capable of weaving everything we've talked about into dream nonsense.”

  “No. I think I've understood something.”

  “And what would that be?”

  “That we've been doing it all wrong,” said Ariane. “Trying to blast the door down and force it to open. He needed my help. He's injured. It's what you said about him being the land given body. Don't you understand?”

  “I understand you're making no sense.”

  “I think what you said was right for once,” said Ariane. “And maybe it works the other way round, too. Hyrn is the land and the land is Hyrn. In which case, perhaps this mysterious doorway is a part of him. A way into his being, his heart. Perhaps it's his … connection to Andar. All you've been doing is inflicting more damage, pursuing him, making him defend himself. He needs healing, Hellen, not attacking.”

  Enthusiasm burned bright in Ariane's voice. But that was often how it was when you woke from dreams. It didn't mean the visions were true once the lights were back on. But Hellen also thought about a recent dream of her own, back in her room on Islagray. The day Fer turned up and everything started. Booming, metallic voices had chased her, making her run in terror. There'd been truth in that dream, in a way.

  “Go on,” she said. “Tell me what you have in mind.”

  “We need to approach this place as we would an injured person. With care and love. We need to try and bring healing.”

  “How?” said Hellen. “How would you do that?”

  “I don't know. But I think it's what we have to try.”

  Ten minutes later, Hellen watched as Ariane sat beside the door, hands laid flat upon it. She'd seen her old friend do something similar often enough at the infirmary. Pour her own spirit into the sick and injured to bring them back to life.

  “There is pain there,” Ariane whispered. “Pain and confusion. And huge guilt, too. I can feel it. Beyond the door but also within it.”

  Hellen nodded but didn't interrupt. Perhaps the pain Ariane was tapping into was the same thing Hellen had heard in the Song. The whole land crying out in its distress. She lit a werelight of her own so Ariane could focus on the door and settled down to watch.

  Ariane's eyes were closed as she expended a great magical effort. She scowled and winced with the pangs of it again and again as she sought for what was broken. Here was a skill Hellen had never really acquired. She could blunder around and fix a broken bone, maybe
, but anything beyond that escaped her. Ariane, on the other hand, was an artist.

  They sat together for an hour, Ariane working, Hellen keeping vigil, wishing she could be of more use. At some point she must have drifted to sleep because a shriek from Ariane awoke her, sending her heart pounding in alarm.

  It was utterly dark. The werelight had faded when Hellen had fallen asleep. She kindled it again to reveal the scene in front of her. Ariane lay sprawled on the floor. Her eyes were closed, but she groaned and writhed as if wracked by cruel pains.

  And in front of her the iron door stood open, the endless dark beyond waiting for them.

  22. Hyrn

  Hellen half-supported Ariane as they stood at the top of a flight of stone steps leading into an unknown darkness.

  “How far down do they go?” asked Ariane in a whisper. The effort she'd expended on opening the door had drained her badly. She walked with a limp when previously there'd been none. She'd said nothing, but Hellen knew what the magic had cost her friend.

  “Let's see.” Hellen sparked a second werelight and sent it bobbing down the stairs. As it descended, lighting up a patch of grey stone steps, grey stone walls, it dimmed. She made it burn brighter for a time, hoping to see the bottom, but all the light revealed were more and more steps. “A long way. We should sleep here and continue tomorrow.”

  “No,” said Ariane. “We can't afford the time. Who knows where the girl is now? We're no use to anyone if we reach the bridgehead a day late.”

  “And if we fall and break our necks? You need to rest. We'll wait an hour and then descend.”

  “Is that an order, old woman?”

  “It is.”

  Ariane nodded and sank to the ground. “Very well. Just this once I'll do as you say. So long as you don't tell anyone.”

  An hour later, Ariane insisted on going first in case she slipped. No point in us both falling is there? The stairs were cracked and loose in places, forever threatening to tip them forward into the deep. There were no handholds, only the circle of darkness beneath, forever receding. The scuffing of their feet echoed off the narrow stone walls. Hellen had the strange sensation they were burrowing into Hyrn's mind as well as the earth and rock of Andar.

  They descended for a long time, hours it seemed. Hellen counted the stairs, but she got as far as five hundred and gave up. Besides, she needed to think. She had no idea what they were about to face. She needed to watch Ariane, too. Her friend was stubborn and proud and wouldn't call a halt even if she needed it. With each step, Hellen worried Ariane might collapse, slip and fall to tumble down the endless stairs. And what if they didn't lead anywhere? What if Hyrn – fading, broken, Hyrn – had slipped into madness and the stairs went on forever?

  But an age later they stepped forward and found there were no more steps. A wide, stone level stretched into the darkness. Hellen flared her light, making it burn as brightly as she could, but she could see no walls, no roof, no detail at all except for the grey stone floor and the sheer wall through which the steps emerged.

  Shadows gathered on Ariane's face by the yellow glow of the light. “Which way do you think?” she spoke in a half-whisper. The silence around them seemed to swallow her words as soon as she uttered them.

  “West toward the An,” Hellen replied. “These caverns must pass right beneath the waters.”

  “But which way is this island? Upstream or down?”

  “The account I read said it was south of the bridge, so it must be somewhere north of here.” She should have visited the Blind Mapmaker herself, found out for certain. Another thing she'd failed to do.

  “Can you tell which way is west?”

  Hellen nodded into the darkness. “Somewhere that way there must be stairs back up.”

  “Well,” said Ariane. “The sooner we start the sooner we'll find them.”

  “You need to rest.”

  “True. But I'm not going to. Now stop fussing and walk.”

  Hellen soon stopped trying to illuminate the ceiling or the walls. They seemed to be crossing a vast, limitless space, crawling across it like ants. Strange to think of this void down here all this time beneath the trees and grass and soil. Or perhaps it hadn't always been here. Perhaps it was part of the sickness, Andar rotting away into nothingness. Or were they below the An itself by now? The thought of that enormous body of water above their heads was unsettling.

  She wondered if anything lived down here. There were bats in the caves beneath Islagray, although she'd never worked out how they flew in and out. Pale, eyeless fish in some of the pools, too. She couldn't feel anything nearby with her mind, apart from Ariane beside her. But perhaps she wouldn't. If, somehow, they were walking through the mind of Hyrn, who knew what nightmares might be lurking in the darkness? She tried not to think about it.

  Dimly, as she grew more used to it, she did begin to perceive the positions of the moon and sun in the unseen sky far above them. It was a comfort, although in her mind's eye the sun blazed with a cold grey light rather than its usual red or gold. But she'd spent her whole life aware of their presence, knowing where they were in the sky even when they couldn't be seen. They anchored her to the real world. Perhaps this was only a cave after all. A void in the ground, nothing more.

  The passage of the sun across the sky allowed her to track the time. Three days they spent marching in silence, heading west. Three nights they slept, eating the bread and fruit they'd brought, then lying wearily on blankets and the unyielding rock. At least it was warm in the cavern: a constant, low warmth, indifferent to summer or winter in the world above.

  She almost walked flat into the far wall when they finally reached it. It rose vertically, another sheer cliff of rock, with no sign of any way up or through.

  Ariane put a hand to it, as if she could discern secrets hidden within. “We could split up. Take opposite directions to find the stairs.”

  If they even exist, Hellen added in her mind. The thought had troubled her more and more as they'd crossed. And if there was no way out, could they find their way back across the void to the stairs they'd come down? Or were they doomed to spend the rest of their days fumbling around in the darkness, lost to the world?

  “No,” she said. “Let's stay together. I'm not sure I trust this place. I don't think these walls are quite so solid as they pretend. If we get separated we might never find each other again.”

  “Then which way?”

  “I think we need to go farther north. If we find nothing we can always double back.”

  Ariane took a shard of stone from the floor and scratched something into the rock face. Their names, Ariane and Hellen. “Then at least we'll know when we're back where we started,” said Ariane.

  They set off, keeping the rock face to their left. Hellen glanced back at their carved names. She had the unsettling sensation of the darkness rushing in to read the words. Devour them. Erase them. She tried to ignore it. The place played tricks on the mind.

  They tramped along for the whole of another day, following the wall. They came across no doorways or staircases.

  As they sat together to eat Ariane said, “So. Do we turn back and try in the other direction tomorrow?”

  “We might find the steps at any moment,” said Hellen.

  “Or we might not. If we were above ground we would have reached Forness by now.”

  “I know. But let's carry on a little longer. Otherwise we'll spend the last of our days walking backward and forward along this wall. This cliff seems to run in a straight line, but for all we know it's curling around to confuse us.”

  “Very well, if you insist,” said Ariane. She lay down to sleep, exhausted by the day's walk. Hellen sat watching over her for a time, worrying she'd made some wrong turn, trying to see a way out of the endless darkness. She could think of nothing. In the end she slept beside her old friend, nestling next to her for warmth.

  They found the doorway half way through the next day. They'd nearly decided to turn back when a low archw
ay came into sight in the rock face. When they reached it they saw it framed a flight of stone steps leading upward.

  “You're sure these aren't the same steps?” said Ariane. “You're sure we aren't going round in circles down here?”

  “Of course we aren't,” Hellen replied, although in truth she wasn't quite as convinced as she sounded. She wished she'd scratched something into the rock when they'd first arrived. “Somewhere up there is the island in the An. Are you ready for the climb?”

  “I'm ready,” said Ariane. “It's your ancient legs I'm worried about.” Something of her friend's humour had returned as she recovered from her ordeal at the door. It was good to hear.

  The climb up to the world took the best part of a day, and several times they had to stop and sit on the steps while their laboured breathing slowed.

  “Perhaps they go on forever,” said Ariane at one of their stops. “Some magic we're not aware of keeping us from the island.”

  “Perhaps,” said Hellen. “Or perhaps you're making excuses for being so slow. Let me know when you're ready and we'll resume.”

  “When I'm ready?” said Ariane. “I'm waiting for you.”

  Another three hours of relentless climbing later, of hauling themselves up step by step, Ariane stopped again. She stood still as if listening for something. Hellen paused, too. She was glad of the rest; her knees and thighs burned.

  “The air is changing,” said Ariane. “Can you smell it?”

  Hellen drew in a deep breath. Ariane was right. Distantly she caught the tang of water and fresh air and growing things. “We must be getting near.”

  “Put out that little light you're maintaining, and let's see if the exit is visible.”

  They stood in the darkness for several minutes while their eyes adjusted. Finally Ariane said, “I think there's something. A smudge of grey.”

  “You're imagining it,” said Hellen. “I see nothing.”

  “That's because you've ruined your eyes reading all those books. It's there, believe me.”