by Nix, Garth
“It’s Mirelle. Your turn for the watch. Four hours. Stand up, but don’t move more than a few steps unless you have to. Don’t stamp your feet or make unnecessary noise. Are you awake?”
“Yes,” muttered Elinor, shaking her head. She stood up and stretched. Her back and shoulders ached.
“Who am I?”
She couldn’t see the Clayr. She was simply a voice, close in the darkness.
“Mirelle.”
“And what are you going to do now?”
“Keep watch.”
“Good. You are awake. It has been quiet so far. Not even animals passing by. Stay alert. I will tell you when your time is done.”
Elinor took a deep breath in and let it out slowly. She felt wide awake now, and freighted with responsibility. She heard Mirelle softly tread back to her bed, and movement near her, which she supposed was Terciel settling down. It would have been good to talk to him, even those same few words as she had exchanged with Mirelle, but she accepted that he must keep the bells on and her the chain . . .
She had a momentary panic the chain might be gone, and felt for the strap of the bag. It was there, and when she followed it down she felt the top of the bag, and lifting it, the weight of the chain.
It wasn’t very heavy. It should be much heavier, she thought, given what it was.
The stream in the ravine was much louder now everything else was quiet. Or the darkness made Elinor’s hearing better. The water was burbling away steadily out there, a constant, almost reassuring sound.
Soon, Elinor wished she did have a watch, or some means of keeping track of time, which seemed to stretch on and on. For a while she counted in her head—one elephant, two elephants, three elephants, and so on—but that made her sleepy and distracted, too much focused on getting the numbers right.
Next she thought about the night with Terciel, but that was distracting as well. Eventually, she settled on focusing on the burble of the stream and any other small noises she heard. This at least had the virtue of keeping her awake, because every small variation in the natural noises of the night made her heart jump and her hand go to the topmost of her throwing knives.
But none of the errant sounds were repeated, none resolved into steps or footfalls or more sinister movement. There was only the darkness, the constant rush of the stream, the occasional small noise from the others moving in their sleep: the crackle of some unbroken heather, a slight exhalation, something that was almost a snore but did not become one.
Wariness and exhaustion and cold warred in Elinor. She took a few steps, forward and back, stood on one foot, then the other. She rubbed her face energetically, to warm both her cheeks and her hands, the sound of it astonishingly loud. The gloves felt strange upon her skin, neither cloth, metal, or skin, like nothing she knew. An unpleasant feeling, and not worth the momentary warmth it delivered.
She hugged herself and swayed on the spot, the small movements helping a little to keep the cold at bay.
Finally, long, long after she was sure she had spent far more than the four hours allotted to her, she heard Mirelle get up. Another sound that at first made her jolt into full alertness, before she realized what it was. But even listening carefully, she was surprised when Mirelle spoke to her from only a few paces away.
“Lie down now, try to sleep. The day will be hard.”
“Have you Seen something?” whispered Elinor anxiously.
“No,” answered Mirelle. There was more than a trace of amusement in her reply. “No vision of the future is needed to predict that! Rest now.”
Elinor lay back down, adjusting the bag with the chain, her poniard, her throwing knives. There was no way to get properly comfortable, only to reduce exactly how uncomfortable she was. Nevertheless, she soon felt herself dropping off to sleep and—
Woke suddenly, she didn’t know how much later. It was still completely dark, save for the tiny glow at the back of the cave. She heard something, the pop and ripple of a stone dropped in the stream, or something like that, and then it came again. She sat up, reaching for her knife, sucking in the kind of desperate breath needed for fight or flight.
“It’s only river otters,” said Mirelle quietly, not far away, though Elinor could not see her. “Fishing. It will be dawn soon. Sleep again, if you can.”
Elinor lay back down. She heard rustling over to the side, the sound of Terciel and Tizanael settling back as well. She was oddly comforted that they also woke at the noise. It wasn’t her being irrational, the novice scared in the dark.
She shut her eyes and listened to the sounds in the stream. River otters, fishing. She’d like to see them, she thought, but in other, easier circumstances. She pictured otters playing in a stream, in sunshine, and her and Terciel picnicking on the bank. Slowly, sleep overcame her and her head slid sideways so her nose poked into her pack.
Some time later, the chain rattled in the bag. A strange, clattering sound, as if made by a living animal, not an inanimate object.
Elinor shot completely out of her bed this time and stood up, taking a pace before she got control of herself. Instinctively she held the bag out from her body, but she could hear the chain moving inside, like a trapped snake.
“What is it?” asked Mirelle.
“The chain, it’s moving in the bag,” said Elinor tremulously.
“Tizanael?” asked Mirelle conversationally. “I note the otters are also fleeing downstream.”
Heather crackled, footsteps scuffed the sandy floor. Elinor heard three slow, deliberate sniffs. She couldn’t smell anything much herself, certainly not the acrid, metallic reek of Free Magic she feared. Then she caught a smell, the faint whiff of some pleasant smoke, as if from a fire of aromatic wood. Not anything she recognized. It lingered for a moment, then it was gone.
“Is the chain still moving?” asked Tizanael.
“A little,” said Elinor anxiously.
“Tell it to be still,” said Tizanael. “As I said before, as if speaking to a child or a dog. Think it as well.”
Elinor cleared her throat and thought for a moment, putting herself back on stage with the unruly choir.
“Be still!” she said. Not loud or annoyed, but forceful. She concentrated hard on those two words, infusing them with her will.
The bag stopped trembling in her hand.
“It was answering to something that has passed down the ravine,” said Tizanael. She sounded very weary. “A kind of echo or remnant of a Free Magic entity. One of the myriad lesser beings that gave itself to the Charter, but some fragment remained. It is harmless, unless you are directly in its path. I had forgotten it would walk here, in the spring, as a herald of the dawn.”
“What would it do if you are directly in its path?” asked Elinor.
“Take you with it, out of time,” said Tizanael. “It is not entirely of the here and now.”
“What does that mean?”
“You would return unchanged and unharmed, on some spring day, weeks or months or even years hence,” said Tizanael dryly. “Not something to be desired at the present.”
“The sun has risen, above,” said Mirelle. Elinor had no notion how she could tell. It was still entirely dark. “In another hour it will be light enough to move on. Eat and drink something, stay alert. I will take a look along the stream.”
Elinor heard her moving off, though she didn’t make the sound of footsteps. It was more a slight scuffing noise.
“How can she see anything?” she asked.
“There is Charter Magic to alter one’s body,” said Tizanael. Elinor could hear her settling back down. “Senses may be augmented permanently, reflexes enhanced, and so on, and all these are employed by the Rangers. It is a magic closely related to healing, and the spells for ensuring health against the ravages of age. Though all such have their costs, and their limits, as is only right.”
Terciel made a slight noise, which Elinor correctly interpreted as surprise that Tizanael had answered a question without additional prompti
ng.
“Well, breakfast time,” said Terciel, in a tone that was meant to be cheery but didn’t come out quite that way. “More cheese and pickle sandwiches. Still better than hard biscuit.”
Elinor got her own wax-paper package out of the top of her pack, and her water bottle, by feel, and they ate in silence, companionably thirty feet apart. As she finished eating, Elinor noted that she could now see the outline of the cave entrance, and the faint shapes of the two Abhorsens, and her pack was a differentiated lump of darkness.
A few minutes later, Mirelle returned. Elinor saw the movement first, before she heard her.
“It will soon be light enough to go on,” said Mirelle. “I will eat and then we will depart. I think we will reach the fog an hour before noon. Tizanael, you said there are several places we can climb out of the ravine?”
Tizanael did not immediately answer. Mirelle repeated the question.
“Yes. I am thinking. There are numerous re-entrants along the way, lesser cracks in the earth that join this one. We can follow any one of them up. On the eastern side, that is. Kerrigor’s court will be closer to Uppside. The trick will be to find the closest, to give us the greatest element of surprise.”
“What do we do if the way out is guarded?” asked Terciel. “If we are to use neither bells nor magic until we can close on Kerrigor?”
“At noon, even in fog, any guards should be mortal,” said Tizanael. “We kill them as quietly as possible and go on.”
“There may still be Dead alert enough to function,” continued Terciel. “Noon or not. They cannot be dealt with without magic.”
“If we must, we will use bells and Charter Magic,” said Tizanael. “And press on, without delay. That is most important. We forge ahead, no matter what, even if the alarm is raised. We must confront and defeat Kerrigor as quickly as possible.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
The track alongside the stream became broader and somewhat easier as the rift widened and descended, but there were still sections where it became more difficult and they had to climb up and over huge falls of rock, with Mirelle finding the best way forward.
But they made steady progress, getting faster as the morning light made its way into the depths. It was a sunny day, up above. Elinor felt her heart lift when she caught actual sight of the sun, a blinding dot framed between the stony walls of the rift. It made up a little for being tired, and clammy from yesterday’s sweat having frozen on her only to be thawed by new sweat, and having aching shoulders and numb toes.
As the sun continued its rise, Mirelle ranged farther ahead, reconnoitering the smaller re-entrant ravines on the eastern side of the gorge. Elinor marveled at how quickly Mirelle climbed up and down very narrow, difficult paths. As she also went ahead along the stream and back again, to check up on everyone, she easily covered twice as much ground as everyone else, but showed no signs of fatigue.
The fourth time Mirelle came back down from one of these narrow adjoining gulleys that rose up to the forest above, the sun was beginning to descend from its high point and soon would fall out of sight from where they were down the bottom of the rift. Elinor watched it anxiously, knowing the presence of the sun was an important part of their planned attack.
Mirelle signaled them to stop, and they all gratefully sat on boulders, or in Elinor’s case a ledge of rock that might almost have been purposefully shaped like a bench rather than simply being the result of erosion.
“There is a conjured fog above this next side ravine,” said the Clayr, speaking quietly but clearly, so they all could hear, despite maintaining their distance. “This is where we need to ascend. But it is already almost an hour past noon, and it will take another hour to climb to the forest, and from there it may take an hour or more to find Kerrigor’s court. Will the sun be strong enough above the fog to diminish the Dead, if we are so late? Tizanael?”
The Abhorsen frowned.
“I had hoped to be earlier, but I believe it is not too late. We must hurry.”
“We should drop our packs here,” said Mirelle.
“Not at the top, where we might retrieve them more easily?” asked Terciel.
“The path up is arduous,” said Mirelle. “If we are victorious, we can survive a night in the forest and walk down to Uppside. If we are not, we would retreat back down here anyway, to the stream, to gain the protection of running water. Unless you know of somewhere defensible above, Tizanael?”
“There are small watercourses that run through the forest, down to the Upp,” said Tizanael. “They are not as swift or deep as this stream, and would offer little protection. None against Kerrigor himself. But then neither would this. We must, and we will, chain him in Death.”
She started to take off her pack, gesturing Terciel to stay back as he moved in to help. After a moment, he took his own pack off, leaning it up against the rock he’d been sitting on. Elinor swung her pack off and set it on the ledge. It was a relief to have the weight off her back, but at the same time it was also a dread kind of punctuation. She might not ever come back to it.
“Take your quiver and your water bottle,” said Mirelle. “It will hook on your belt.”
Elinor slung quiver and bow on her back, and fixed the water bottle on next to her poniard, just behind her hip. She noticed Terciel was having some sort of low-voiced argument with Tizanael. The Abhorsen was saying something crossly, but very contained, when Terciel simply turned his back. Taking off his bell bandolier, he laid it on the ground and hurried over to Elinor, ignoring Tizanael’s hissed, “Terciel! There is no time.”
He came right up to Elinor and hugged her, though he did so slightly at an angle so he didn’t touch the bag with the chain. After a moment’s hesitation, Elinor hugged him back. She was surprised to find that she was shaking a little, and had to take a slow breath to keep still. Or maybe it was Terciel who was shaking, and the tremors came from him? Either way, after a few seconds they were completely still, deep in an embrace.
“Elinor, if by some chance we are all slain, you can escape,” he said, his breath warm on her ear. “The best chance is to come back here and go downstream. Cross as soon as you can, and follow the stream down to the Upp. It is a big river. Find a boat or make a raft, whatever you can do, and take the river south, to the Red Lake. There are some villages along the shore. They may survive some time even if Uppside has fallen. Seek help there, if you can see people, if there is sunshine. If not, keep going south. Head for the Wall, cross it, go back to Ancelstierre.”
“I hadn’t even thought I might survive and no one else,” said Elinor, turning her head so her face was in his neck, just above his armored coat. Experimentally, she dug her nose in, and was surprised she didn’t mind the smell. Maybe it was because she smelled just as bad.
“It doesn’t seem very likely, does it? I think we will live or die together, Terciel. Preferably live, of course. Put your bells back on. Like Tizanael says, there is no time.”
“I know,” said Terciel, his voice full of regret. “I know.”
He eased off a little, and bent down, and she looked up, and they kissed. A gentle kiss, almost a goodbye kiss with only the hint there might one day be another. Then he spun about on his heel and ran to put his bandolier back over his shoulder. Tizanael was already starting up the path, with Mirelle a good thirty to forty yards in front.
Elinor followed, wondering why she felt so sanguine about what was to come. Clearly Terciel thought there was a very good chance they would die. That had been clear from the outset. Mirelle was more restrained, but had not discounted the danger. Tizanael—it was difficult to know what Tizanael thought, she showed so little in her face, or in her voice.
I am afraid, Elinor thought to herself. But I am not terrified. And if I am to die, it will be doing something, something important. The sort of thing that could become a story, a song, even a play. The Binding of Kerrigor.
She wouldn’t be the main character herself, Elinor thought. But an important supporting
one. The bearer of the chain. If Breakespear was writing it, she would have a short soliloquy perhaps. To tell the small story within the big story, about how a little girl who thinks she is disfigured and without family grows up to discover she has a magical heritage, and despite loss and pain along the way finds a path to a new life, the potential of new love as well, and meaning and significance. Even if it might not be for very long.
But the play was not written, the story still unfolding. Elinor took a deep breath and started up the track, not forgetting to pause after a dozen steps and glance backward, as Mirelle had told her to make sure no one and nothing was creeping up on them from behind.
They moved more swiftly without the packs, but the climb up was difficult, and Tizanael was slow.
Some two thirds of the way up the re-entrant, it became less of a ravine and more of a narrow valley, the rocky ground giving way to luxuriant grass growing from rich earth, as if a great deal of mud had slid down in the distant past and stuck there. There were wildflowers amongst the grass, primroses and daffodils, visible signs of the spring, and it was warmer, too, though it could still only be described as cold.
Right at the top, they even came into a narrow band of direct sunshine. Elinor turned her face up to the light and warmth, reveling in the thawing of her nose. She’d have liked to take her strange gloves off to get sunshine on her hands as well, but did not do so. While the sunshine, the vibrant grass, and the wildflowers gave an air of peacefulness and calm, it could not quell the fear and anxiety that was steadily rising in Elinor, the sense that something terrible was about to happen.
Fifty yards away the giant blackwood forest began. Huge trees, with trunks twenty or thirty or forty feet in diameter, rising up several hundred feet, each standing like some lonely monarch, their outstretched branches not quite reaching to their neighbors, as if each tree had come to an agreement they would not touch.
Usually, the separation of the giant trees would allow the sunshine to illuminate the forest, to relieve the shade immediately under the trees. But not now. Fog cloaked the giants and swirled along the avenues. White, wet fog that looked as if a massive cloud had drifted down from the mountainside above and taken up permanent residence over the forest. The great trees became more and more indistinct, black streaks against the fog, until they were subsumed into blank whiteness.
