Elim was beginning to wonder if he could see anything. It sure seemed to come as a surprise when Hawkeye’s grasping hand reached out for the next step and found Elim’s knee instead. “What do you want?” he demanded, turning his head as if to inspect him from the corner of his eye.
“Relax, buddy. It’s just me – Elim, your friend. Thought we could sit for a bit, before the boss comes back.”
Hawkeye held still, his expression blank and unreadable. But he seemed to cotton to the idea, or at least to the feel of Elim’s leg: after some careful rearrangement, he managed to turn and sit down, and Elim likewise collected himself so that they could rest side-by-side, with their backs against the rock. It was all right, as long as Elim didn’t look more than three feet out in front of him. Then he held still, and waited to see what his friend would do.
“Can I tell you something?” Hawkeye’s voice was quiet, almost childlike.
Elim would take it. “Sure thing. What is it?”
Hawkeye stroked Elim’s leg with hot, shaky fingers. “Your pants are filthy.”
Elim laughed in spite of himself – in spite of everything. “I, uh – I dunno if you’ve seen yourself lately, but yours ain’t exactly fresh from the laundry line.”
Hawkeye smiled, a full-on grin that lit up his face like the glow of a lamp in a living room window – like a beacon welcoming a traveler home. “I’ll wash them tomorrow.” His smile faded as he ran his hands over his own trousers, furrowing into confusion when his fingers found the torn cloth tied around his thigh. He began to pick at the knot.
Elim needed to pull that up short. “Hey, uh – are you hungry? Why don’t we have us something to eat?” He pulled out the steak, wishing he’d been clever enough to take a knife while he was at it.
Hawkeye kept working at the knot.
Well, it wasn’t going to be fine dining anyhow. Elim nipped off a bite, wiped it clean, and then touched it to Hawkeye’s hand. “Here – see how that suits you.”
The translator paused. He took hold of the cold morsel, holding it like a fragile quail-egg. He smelled it. He held it up to the side of his face and passed it slowly back and forth beside his right eye. “How much does it cost?”
It was awful, and yet Elim couldn’t help but smile at the absurdity of it all. “For you, it’s free.” Elim took a bite of his own as Hawkeye consented to try the tiniest experimental nibble –
– and then hurled it straight at him. “That’s NOT FUNNY!” Hawkeye cried, and burst into tears.
Elim nearly choked. He swallowed, picked the meat-wad out of his hair, and set down his supper. “What’s wrong, buddy? What’s the matter?”
But Hawkeye was already heaving himself forward onto hands and knee, dragging himself away from Elim – and straight for the edge.
“No no no – come on, you don’t wanna –”
“Go away!” Hawkeye shrieked, landing a glancing blow to Elim’s nose. “I hate you and I want to go home!”
It wasn’t hard to wrestle him down, even with all his thrashing. A little trickier to do it without mashing his leg. But to sit on a man who spoke at least three languages, to hold a friend and mentor down like a hog-tied calf while he fought and screamed and sobbed... Elim hunched over, grim-faced and still, pinning Hawkeye’s wrists to the small of his back with the soul-withering ease of a man drowning cats in a sack. Something in him went gray in that moment, aged before its time.
And just like that, it was over. Hawkeye went quiet and still, the fight going out of him in one shuddering breath: not a moment too soon, and yet much too suddenly.
“... Hawkeye? What’s wrong?”
For a long minute, there was nothing at all. He might have fallen asleep. Then came the slow turn of his head, easy at first, becoming rigid and straining as he reached his limits, as if he were trying to do the owl’s trick of looking behind his own shoulders. He fidgeted, his feverish fingers picking at his shirttail, his jaw working a mouthful of nothing.
Then came a tremendous overhead CRACK. Elim threw himself over Hawkeye as a hail of stones rained down from above. He gritted his teeth and ducked, tasting limp, greasy gray hair as the rockslide pummeled his back and skull.
And just like that, it was over. Elim picked himself up, gingerly rubbing the back of his head, staring in stunned wonderment at the heap of rubble all around them.
Shit, but he hated mountains. No wonder the prophet-stories were stuffed so full of them: you needed the Hand of the Almighty pointing straight at you just to survive the trip.
And if God were aiming a finger at Elim just then, it wasn’t His first one.
Elim wiped his face. “All right, buddy – how about we get ourselves back to camp before anything else comes clundering down on top of us, huh?”
This time, Hawkeye didn’t object. He lay still amidst the rocks, eyes closed, breathing easily – just as he had after the ground gave way under Sil.
Elim picked himself up amidst the gently drifting dust, his gaze switching between the passed-out Sundowner at his feet and the freshly-broken stone up above.
Hawkeye was sorcerous – he knew that much. He found things nobody could see, knew where fishmen were and horseshoes weren’t, and could tell Elim exactly how many steps were left between him and his next drink of water.
So maybe he knew something. Maybe that fidgety picking and neck-stretching was his addled way of warning Elim – too little and too late – before something crumbled or cracked. Maybe that was why he’d been trying to crawl back down, saying those peculiar things about self-evidence and bad ideas. Hawkeye was no fool: the mountain was coming apart, and he didn’t aim to be there when it did.
Elim might ought to take the hint.
But by the time he’d collected his thoughts, his supper, and his insensible friend, Bootjack had already come running back for them, his barking jabber stilled by his first sight of that rocky ring of debris, and dirt-showered Elim standing there in the middle of it. He looked every bit as mistrustful as Elim felt... but in the end, Bootjack’s hand pointed back up the trail, and Elim’s feet followed it.
And on the way back up, he prayed. Show me something, Elim asked the deepening light behind the mountain. He knew better than to solicit a miracle – Sil needed whatever of those might be lying around here – and yet he craved something. Give me a sign. Tell me I chose right. Show me you’re still there.
But there was only the path, the peak, and the earth cooling in its shadow. And when they finally made it back to camp, Elim was left to watch in dull-eyed wonder as Way-Say worked his pagan magic: a crow-feathered necromancer raising up what had used to be Actor, a meek and sweet-mouthed drygrocer’s horse – Sil’s horse – and was now a stiff-legged black puppet, an empty-eyed contrivance for the coffin lashed to his back.
Elim’s shoulders slumped under Hawkeye’s weight. He bowed his head and fell in line behind them as they started forward again: the living bearing the living, and the dead hauling the dead.
THE CROW WAS pecking at her eye.
She swatted it, and it hopped away. Then another peck, another swat. Eventually it switched tacks and started on her ear.
It hurt too much to reach that far. She rolled face-down, waiting for her hair to fall forward and shield her from the pesky bird. A cold breeze tickled the back of her neck.
Then a set of sharp talons alighted on her scalp. She flinched and swatted, feebly jerking. Eventually, when it became clear that her body was not going to be able to manage things on its own, Día reluctantly returned to supervise.
Everything hurt. Lying still hurt. Shivering hurt. Breathing hurt more than she ever thought it could. But it was only when she opened her eyes that she realized what a miracle it was to feel any pain at all.
She’d been out for hours. The world was a dark forest now, the sun an orange-violet glow behind the vast stone face of the mountain. The mountain that she...
No, he.
He’d pushed her.
That vile, conni
ving boy had pushed her.
Día had no memory of the drop. She guessed from the scratches on her palms that she must have grabbed something to break her fall. The ground had broken the rest of her.
She began to push herself up, and stopped when the pain in her left arm fountained out into a wave of nausea. Her first gasp drove an invisible knife between her ribs. And her head – in God’s holy name, what had she done to her head?
The crow watched her, the sentiment in its beady black eye unreadable. Then it flew off.
Día moved by slow, careful inches thereafter, testing each part as she eased herself up to sit. Her arm was broken. At least a couple of ribs were too. The congealing blood on the stone frightened her until she felt the back of her head: just a cut, thank goodness, long but shallow. She must have rolled the last of the way. And as for the headache...
Día stopped, struck still by the enormity of the gesture – by the reality of her fingers probing her own naked scalp, and the feel of tiny, irregular tufts where her knife hadn’t cut smoothly along the skin.
She really had done it. She’d cut it all off.
She looked up and around the shade-swallowed slope, searching the cliff-face and the treetops and the surrounding brush. Had she held it as she fell? Had it snagged on the way down? It could be miles away by now, dangling from some lonely crag.
She’d cut it off for him, and now it was gone and so was he.
Día leaned forward, her good hand sheltering her eyes as she reached out into the silence. Mother Dog, I need you. I’ve fallen and I’m badly hurt and I need you to come get me.
There was no answer, not even a wordless feeling – not unless the Dog Lady was responsible for that churning, bloodless panic in her bowels. Please. Please, please come get me.
From somewhere far out in the distance, a coyote howled.
Día folded further in on herself, urged on by the cold air even as she was rebuffed by the lightning-sharp pain in her chest. Help me, Master. She didn’t even know what to ask Him for, but she pleaded as hard as she ever had. Help me. Lead me. Save me.
But the Penitent faith had no earthly gods – at least, not here. They had been left behind in the old world, an ocean away, and were now nothing but a namesake for herbs and holidays. Día had no material spirit to call on, no patron-avatar to advocate for her in the grand order of the cosmos. There was only herself, her own tiny, mortal mind, communing as best she could with a distant, universal creator.
Día was used to that. She knew better than to expect a flash of light and a healing miracle – which was good, because she didn’t get one. She was far more likely to find God’s help at the end of her own fingertips. So she let Him take her hand and open her veins – let Him mind the drip as anxiety and fear drained out of her – let Him stand in attendance as her tireless, infinite physician.
It was a long, slow bleed. And when it was done, Día could finally think beyond what she wanted to have happen, to what she knew to be true.
It was getting dark. She had no shelter and no water and no clear path in any direction. She had a knife. She could make a fire. The Halfwick boy was gone, and as for Elim...
Some of that cold, unwholesome fear backwashed up through her veins as Día wondered whether she was already too late – whether the Dog Lady didn’t answer because she had been ended at the moment of her son’s death.
Well, Día wasn’t going to find out by sitting here. No, she was going to... she would...
She would work backwards. She knew she was somewhere along the eastern face, that she had been walking up that trail with the cliff on her right-hand side, and that she had seen another trail join up with it just before she found Halfwick. There had been recent tracks coming up from that direction – a horse and at least two people – which meant that it might see regular traffic. If she found that path, she would be much more likely to find help. And if she didn’t, she would look for a way down to the southern face, towards the place where she had left the Dog Lady and Miss Du Chenne. She had a vast granite landmark literally looming over her, after all – it wasn’t as if she could lose her bearings. All she had to do was start.
Or rather, she needed her body to start. Día sat forward on the cold stone and shivered. It hadn’t been her first impact – that would have killed her – but somewhere on the way down, her left side had hit something with bone-smashing force.
She could survive a broken arm. She could live with some cracked ribs, even though they hurt like the screaming pits of hell. But Día desperately needed that ache in her hip to be a bruise, needed to be able to work off that ominous pain in her knee. If she was going to survive the night, if she was going to help herself at all, she had to walk.
And that was where reason passed the torch back to faith. Día sat straight-backed and still, telling herself that God had given her everything she needed to take the next step – that He had seen and sustained her across the desert, past wildfires and raging rivers, through hours up that slope and free-falling seconds back down it, and neither man nor nature nor that twice-damned Halfwick had managed to thwart His design.
He had not failed her yet. She would not doubt Him now.
Día drew in a careful, shallow breath, willing peace to her pain and stillness to her lingering nausea. Then she stood up.
Her knee hurt, but her legs held her. When the dizziness subsided, she took one tremulous step, and then another. Wobbling like a newborn fawn, her feet reacquainted themselves with the ground, her toes closing over sharp grass and dry brush and plain, soft dirt.
Día went slow and deliberately, her every movement planned and prayerful. Miss du Chenne had been right: she was not dressed for this, not equipped or prepared to survive out here. But although that realization had bludgeoned her aching head before, Día now made it a whetstone for her thinking. She cut away her anger at Halfwick, and her fear for Elim and U’ru, and that powerful, irrational urge to go looking for her hair. She had no margin for error now. She would shepherd her steps and mind her time, and make the most of however much of both she might have remaining.
God is my one Master; I will for nothing want. Día bent and ripped up a dead sagebrush plant by its thick, woody stem.
He holds me fast. I shall not waver. He lifts me up. I shall not fall. When her toes found barren earth, she tossed the sage down and stepped on it.
By his grace, I walk to everlasting glory. One fiery burst from the sole of her foot ignited the sage. With painful slowness, Día picked up her torch and walked on into the cold, approaching night.
SOMETHING WAS WRONG with the mountain.
Vuchak didn’t pretend to be an expert, especially here on the dry side. He’d lived for two years up there in Atali’Krah, but until the day he and Weisei had set out for Island Town, their adventures had always been on the western slope, where the water was good and the climbing was easy. A shame that getting there from the All-Year River would have required a thirty-mile detour around the roots of the lesser mountains. If Vuchak had told everything he knew about this eastern face, it would have been finished in two sentences.
But the Mother of Mountains wasn’t supposed to crack and crumble. He was sure of that much. She had lain down on the third day of the World That Is, and promised to remain until the end, and none of the seer-songs had said anything about random pieces falling off in the meantime... all of which amounted to one more drop in the great bottomless ocean of things that Vuchak was helpless to affect, or even to understand.
He would have liked to talk about that. He would have liked to share an honest word with anyone. But Weisei had to concentrate on the horse – and besides which, talking to him caused as many problems as it solved – and Ylem couldn’t speak more than two intelligible words, and Hakai had simply lost himself.
So as day cooled to night, and Vuchak trudged on at the head of their tired, silent procession, he consoled himself by talking to Echep.
I wish you were here, he thought out at his missing co
unterpart. Echep wouldn’t have known anything about the mountain either, but he’d have made a good joke about it. I wish you could help me. I’m tired of being tired, and angry at myself for being angry, and I can’t tell whether I’m doing anything right anymore.
Vuchak hitched up the carry-sack on his back, the ties digging hard into his shoulder, and listened to the monotone clop of the horse’s hooves behind him. He and Weisei had found their better selves again, but when Vuchak thought of himself sitting on a holy son of Marhuk, threatening to force-feed him chewed meat, his free-soul shriveled in shame. I thought I would be different now. I thought I had changed. But I haven’t, and neither has he, and I’m afraid that he never will – that I’ll grow old waiting for him to grow up, and that we’ll spend our lives disappointing each other.
Echep had understood that. Dulei was seven years Weisei’s junior and already a man, but his boasting adolescent arrogance had cost his atodak plenty of sleep. What if he stayed that way? What if Echep had to spend his life serving a selfish lout?
The heavy scraping of the travois poles answered that with funerary finality: that worry was boxed up in a leaking coffin, only hours away from being laid permanently to rest.
And since Echep was almost certainly dead too, Vuchak could entrust him with words that he would never, ever speak aloud.
I wish I didn’t belong to Weisei. I wish he weren’t even a’Krah. Yes, that was the guilty, sordid truth: Weisei should have been sired by some other god, some other people – someone who would be honored and bettered by his charm and compassion and passionate woman-hearted affections. Someone who knew what to do with him.
Instead, he had been born to Marhuk, to the a’Krah, whose ways were caution and discretion and careful, long-eyed calculation. The mediators of life and death had to keep a balance, a middle-way of living, and Weisei had never managed to find the middle of anything. So the balance-keepers just strapped Vuchak to him to act as a human counterweight, offsetting every wild, thoughtless swing of his marka’s sensibilities. That was the solution. That was balance.
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