Sending

by Carmody Isobelle

  In truth, I felt no urge to communicate with my companions, and because they were beasts, they did not expect it or need it. Aside from all else, walking along a ledge, which sometimes narrowed to little more than shoulder width, required a level of concentration that left no room for idle chatter. Of course my mind wandered, but mostly I tried to keep my attention firmly focused on my feet and on the path before me. Once when we stopped to rest for a little, I found myself wishing I had thought to pack parchment as I might have made a map. This was something I had always required of the least experienced of any party accompanying me on Farseeker expeditions in the past, as a means of making them aware of their surroundings, and of course as a way of adding to our knowledge of the Land. I did not think anyone would ever use the map I might have made, but the activity would have stopped me fretting about what lay ahead. Strangely I did not think of Obernewtyn. When I had unbound my grief at the foot of the mountains, it seemed to open a gulf in my mind between me and my old life, wider than the chasm which now yawned beside me, and no less impossible to cross. And the gulf was widening. Indeed, it was better to conceive of it as being like to the gulf of water that opened when a ship departed from shore, and one understood that there was no way of bridging that widening gap, save by turning back, and that I could not do.

  By the time the ledge began to curve slowly towards the south and the sun, I was startled and pleased to see that there was another ledge running around the northern face of the next mountain in the rank. It met the one we were on so neatly that I could scarcely believe it was natural. Yet it made me wonder why we had not simply headed west from the outset if that was where we were to go. The only answer that made sense was that we had entered the mountains where we had because this route would bring me to Cassandra’s key. Certainly Maruman led the way so confidently that it was clear he had been given good directions. If only he would tell me what he knew!

  We had traversed half the next mountain when the sun sank behind the high range to the west. It grew darker and colder, but Maruman pushed us to go on and an hour later sunlight burst forth once more, streaming for a time through some wide gap in the ridge, then it was gone again and suddenly it was night. Being darkmoon, it was pitch black and I was relieved when Maruman finally called a halt. Fortunately the ledge path had widened, but even so, I wrapped myself in my blanket and sat stiffly alert with my back to the cliff, certain I would not sleep a wink being so close to the steep dark drop. I had no desire to make a meal in that precarious position and none of the animals suggested it.

  Maruman came to curl regally on my lap to sleep and Darga lay pressed up beside me, his heavy head resting on my leg. Whether they were seeking warmth or bestowing it, I was glad of their proximity for the night was very cold and dark and we were all so far from anywhere any of us could wish to be.

  Gahltha stood close by gazing out into the darkness and there was something in his stillness that prevented me asking what he thought about. I had suggested removing the webbing, but he had merely bade me unstrap the sword and the pack, for the rest was light enough not to trouble him.

  Closing my eyes, I tried to imagine the moon fair even now taking place at Obernewtyn, but somehow the night was too dense and lonely and my position too precarious for me to manage it. After a time, I opened my eyes and looked up into the sky where a multitude of stars blazed white, freed of the eclipsing brightness of the moon. Somewhere an animal gave a long guttural call, and later there was the short sharp scream of a rabbit and then silence. My skin prickled with the strangeness of the world I had entered and it was long before the warmth of the animals penetrated deeply enough that I was able to drift off and doze fitfully. The last thing I noted with relief was that none of the mountains I could see were glowing.

  I rose shivering as soon as the sky started to lighten in the east, for beyond the mountains the sun would already have risen. I packed away the blanket, restored Gahltha’s burdens and then we went on at once, having agreed to wait to eat in some more hospitable place. I soon discovered why Maruman had suggested we stop the moment night fell. The next part of the ledge was very narrow and badly eroded and it had been cold enough in the night that any exposed stone had developed a thin sheen of ice. We walked gingerly in single file and I pressed myself as close as possible to the cliff, struggling not to look down. It was a relief when the sun rose and the verglas melted, but all too soon the sun disappeared behind the mountain and the ledge fell into shadow once more. It was not until mid afternoon that I reached the place where the mountain curved east and I could see ahead to where a great wide spur of grey stone broke away from the next mountain to the west and ran down into the chasm where it overlapped another spur of stone that ran down from the rank of mountains to the south. The sun fell onto the place where the spurs met though there was darkness either side.

  I felt immediately certain that this would be our route, but I held my tongue and managed to say nothing, even when Maruman leapt down from the ledge to the stone spur and began to descend it without a word of explanation. Gahltha followed, hoofs clattering on the stone, and Darga and I went after him.

  When we passed from shadow into sunlight, I experienced an almost elated feeling of relief to be off the narrow ledge and in the sunshine, only now admitting to myself how the thin, shadowy path I had been treading had oppressed me. Yet the spur had its own perils. It was wide but slightly rounded and the sides were so smoothly precipitous that a stumble could easily become a deadly tumble into the darkness where no sun reached, for want of anything to catch hold of. About halfway along its length the spur thickened and flattened out on the western side into a long, sunlit slope that ended in a series of deep folds and furrows, like the trailing end of a skirt. Maruman began to make his way down this slope to where the folds touched the end of the spur that descended from the mountain to the north. A reddish bracken grew in the furrows along with needlegrass and a few hardy shrubs and there were bright yellow patches of lichen encrusting the stone here and there, but again no obvious sign of taint. Certainly Darga showed no alarm.

  Looking up along the spur that ran north across the gulf I saw that it rose to a narrow pass between two mountains. I had the instinctive feeling that this was our route, but I did not make the mistake of asking when Maruman announced that we were to stop and rest.

  I took a few pinches of herbs I found and stripped branches from the tough bushes, though I swiftly abandoned the idea of lighting a fire immediately, since a column of smoke might conceivably be visible from the Land, given that it was broad daylight and we were only one rank into the range. I promised myself that beyond the pass I would light a fire and prepare some sort of hot broth using the herbs and crumbled travel cake. In the meantime, I bound the branches I had scavenged into a faggot. I broke open another travel biscuit and offered it to Darga and Maruman as Gahltha grazed on the needlegrass and nibbled at the yellow lichen, then I poured some water from the gourd into a bowl, drank and poured the rest into a depression in the stone for the animals.

  ‘I hope there is more clean water ahead,’ I murmured. It had not been a question but Maruman gave me a cold stare before stalking away to groom himself on a boulder in the afternoon sunlight.

  ‘Why does he tell us so little and me least of all?’ I complained, walking over to sit on a fold of stone beside Gahltha who was now chomping at young bracken shoots. I had been worried about him finding fodder in the mountains, but Gahltha had already assured me that there were several kinds of nourishing lichen growing in abundance, which the mountain horses ate as staple fare, though his own preference was for sweet green grass.

  Now he said, ‘Marumanyelloweyes keeps his own counsel always, but beyond that he is still angry that you left him/us.’

  I sighed. ‘He is not a fool. He knows that was not of my choosing!’

  ‘Marumanyelloweyes knows and does not care,’ Gahltha sent.

  I shook my head and told myself I ought to lie down and rest while I could,
but although my body was weary, my mind was restless. On impulse, I got out Jacob’s journal and began to skim through the part I had already read.

  I was trying to find the place I had read to last, when Darga came and lay beside me. Shielding my thoughts, I wondered if he was staying close to me because Atthis had enjoined him to protect me, or because, no matter what he had allowed the Agyllians to suppress, the memory of the love and companionship he had felt with Jik made him hunger for it again.

  I turned my attention to the crabbed scribing in the journal and skimmed until I located the mention of the building in the high mountains. I read carefully this time and confirmed that Jacob had regarded the establishment as important because he had believed the instruments and devices it housed would reveal the city he had dreamed about.

  If the Taillard Observatory has been destroyed, the instrumentation damaged or if the satellite link has been disabled, I will have to rely on my old maps, for although they show no city beyond this great range, there having been little development in that remote region before the world fell, they do show the location of various large settlements. It is one of these corporate towns, surely, that has grown these long years into the city of which I dreamed. The instrumentation at the Taillard Observatory will tell me which at once, but if it is necessary, I will travel to all of them until I find which one it is. I will begin with Pellmar for no reason save that it is a place Hannah visited because of her interest in the research work being done there, and in the ecological and moral philosophy of its founders. I wish now that I had encouraged her to speak of her visit more fully, but I did not.

  I turned the page eagerly, only to find that Jacob had hoped to acquire something called an iscoper at the observatory, which would enable him to see farther than he could with the naked eye, if not as far as the larger and more complex devices in the institution in the mountains. From his description, an iscoper was a device similar to the spyglass used by shipmasters. I continued to skim but he did not say in which direction the Pellmar settlement lay or what its exact purpose had been in the Beforetime, nor did he say anything that would lead us to the Taillard Observatory. Of the latter, he said no more than that it was white and lay beyond something he called The Horns.

  Suddenly it struck me that if I was being led to Cassandra’s key, I would also find Jacob’s body, and with it his vessel, along with all of the devices he had taken with him to ease his passage. If they were still whole and functioning, it might be that I could use them. I was no teknoguilder with the sort of affinity people like Jak had, which allowed him to empathise with Beforetime machines enough to discover how they worked, but still, a device that would allow me to see far would be very useful.

  ‘It is time to go on, ElspethInnle,’ Maruman interrupted my musings. Obediently, I wrapped the journal carefully, stowed it in my pack and slung the small faggot of branches over my own shoulder, for it was very light.

  As I had anticipated, Maruman set off up the spur leading to the pass. It took us the remainder of the day to reach it.

  When we were nearing the top, a brisk wind rose and began to blow athwart our route. It was the first time the wind had touched me since I had entered the mountains, I realised. It would have been easier to cope had it been constant but it was a blustering wind that shoved and pushed at you unexpectedly. I soon regretted insisting on carrying the faggot of wood myself rather than adding to Gahltha’s burdens for the wind plucked at the branches, making it hard to keep my footing when the spur narrowed and grew steeper. But there was no possibility of shifting my load to Gahltha now. Either I managed or I would have to leave it behind.

  Gritting my teeth I bent forward a little and concentrated hard on where I put my feet, not willing yet to abandon the idea of a fire, for although the previous night had been darkmoon, tonight would be no less dark and it would be colder because the pass was higher than the ledge.

  Unfortunately, the last red blush of sunset had gone and the sky darkened to indigo before we attained the pass. I had hoped we would be able to find shelter where I could light a fire and prepare some herb soup but it was too dark to see anything and a cold hard wind blew, which would make it almost impossible to light a fire. Maruman said we must wait till dawn to go on, which told me that, once again, the way ahead was too precarious for us to risk continuing without some light. The force of the wind made it impossible to unpack anything. I bade Gahltha lie down so that I could lie back against him then Maruman curled in my lap and Darga lay down by my side. The feel of the beasts about me was a comfort, but I found it difficult to sleep. The wind blew relentlessly and with a keening note that sounded too much of despair and loneliness, and although we had settled as close to the wall beside the pass as possible, it still managed to send chilly gusts over us.

  Thinking wistfully of the fire I had planned to build, I tucked my hands into my armpits, drew up the hood of my coat and told myself that I had promised myself a fire after we had gone through the pass.

  It was a long night full of the sorts of worries and anxieties and pointless planning that Maruman called gnawing, so it was fortunate that he slept soundly. Not that he had said much to me since we had left Obernewtyn, save to order us imperiously to go this way or that, or to tell us to stop or go on. I finally slept when the wind dropped away towards morning, and when I woke it was to a chill milky dawn. There was not a mist so much as a veil of bright haze that obscured all that lay beyond the pass, but Maruman rose and stretched and set off at once heading east. The mountain slope swiftly became more steep as we moved away from the pass and I was just beginning to worry for Gahltha when suddenly, to my considerable amazement, I saw ahead of us a wide ledge jutting out from the side of the mountain. It stretched away out of sight around the north face of the mountain, exactly like the one on the previous day. The only difference was that the ledge was much wider and the edge was smooth rather than being eroded. Indeed, when I went closer to examine it, I saw with some astonishment that a lip had been sculpted along the outer edge.

  I sucked in a breath at the belated realisation that this wide trail and the ledge I had traversed the previous day were not natural formations. They were the remnants of the passages created by the Beforetimers, which Jacob had mentioned in his journal. I had been a fool not to realise it sooner, for nature seldom created such surfaces and I knew the Beforetimers had possessed devices capable of sheering through stone.

  If I was right, and I knew I was, then doubtless Jacob had come this way. The ledge the previous day had been too narrow for his vessel but perhaps it had not been eroded when he had come to it. Or maybe he had come some other way until this point. Certainly this trail was wide enough to allow the passage of the vessel he had drawn in his journal. There was no way to tell if he had passed this way, but why else would Maruman be leading me here?

  We had not been walking long when Maruman bade me mount up and ride while I could. Gahltha stopped obligingly and nuzzled at my neck as I lifted Maruman up onto his back and rearranged the sword so that I could mount. When we set off again, I gazed north, willing the air to clear, but the sun would have to be higher before it gained enough strength to burn away the veil of haze that hung beside the trail.

  It took us several hours to get around the mountain, which I reckoned to be double the girth and a third again the height of any other mountain we had traversed. I had been thinking about the Beforetimers and wondering why they would go to the trouble of building roads and paths in the mountains of what Jacob had scribed of as a remote region in the Beforetime, when I became aware of a soft rumbling sound. It was not the deep-throated rumble of rocks falling, and I was still trying to puzzle it out when the road curved around enough for me to see a ribbon waterfall dropping into the narrow chute between the mountain I was on and the next in the range.

  I was no longer surprised to see that the ledge road continued around the next mountain but when we were close enough to feel the spray from the fall, Darga pronounced the water cl
ean, and Maruman decided that we would stop to drink and eat something. As if this were a signal to the natural world, the sun at last cleared the eastern peaks and even as I dismounted and unburdened Gahltha, red-gold light speared down in great bright shafts that soon dissolved the obscuring haze to leave a breathtakingly clear view of mountains rearing up grey and black under a sparkling pale-blue sky. Looking back the way I had come, I saw that a veritable wall of mountains marched northward out of sight, blocking any view of the sea beyond the west of the Land, the highest peaks shining white with snow. This was the spine of high peaks that ran down the centre of the range and I was glad to have turned my back on them, for I had been dreading the possibility that I would have to climb them. It was these same mountains that had stopped me seeing the Beforetime road when the Agyllians had carried me to and from the stone pinnacles that were their eyrie on the western side of the range. Turning east, I noted that another line of peaks ran from south to north, and though nowhere near as imposing as the snow-capped mountains behind me, they were high enough to block any view I might have had of the terrain beyond the mountains.