Hammer of the Earth

by Susan Krinard

  Such activities had become routine after so many months, and yet Rhenna could still look across the fire and drown in a pair of slanted golden eyes. She tried not to reveal too much…not the fears or the uncertainties or the irrational jealousy she had never quite managed to overcome. Cian had burdens of his own. But she kept him always within her sights, and sometimes—when she lay on the hard ground to sleep—she listened to his breathing and remembered their first quarrelsome days together. Before she’d realized she loved him.

  Such sentiments had been never been so irrelevant as they were now. What Cian needed from her was loyalty and protection. And then, one day, when all this was over…

  “It is finished.”

  Nyx stood in the dusk just beyond the fire’s light, proudly indicating a sturdy construction built of branches bound with rope and vines. The raft was large enough to be unwieldy, but certainly not apt to capsize, even with a burden of four people and their scanty provisions. Tahvo felt the smooth wood with a nod of approval. Rhenna offered Nyx an ample slice of roasted antelope.

  “Do you know how to find your way across that?” she asked, gesturing in the direction of the swamp.

  “I have only the knowledge which my father passed to me,” Nyx said, delicately pulling strips of meat from bone. “It is said to be very like a maze, difficult to navigate. I should be able to sense the growth patterns of the papyrus islands that stand between the river channels, but water is Tahvo’s province.”

  “Can you identify the currents that will carry us in the right direction, Tahvo?” Rhenna asked.

  The healer cocked her head as if she could hear the streams moving beneath the tangle of living and half-rotted plants. “The spirits are distant. I will seek them out tonight.”

  “No,” Rhenna said. “You’ll need your strength in the morning. Rest now.” She glanced at Nyx and Cian. “Sleep. I’ll stand watch.”

  With the efficiency of long habit, the others obeyed. Rhenna rested her crossed arms on her knees and gazed into the fire. It was surprisingly difficult to stay awake; her head felt heavy, and the bouts of chills she had ignored for the past few weeks seemed suddenly much worse. She gritted her teeth and poked savagely at the blackened ashes. She and her friends had come intact through disasters, the most arduous conditions and constant deprivation. This was no time to sicken, in a strange land with no native guides and a sodden labyrinth yet to negotiate.

  “Are you all right?”

  The slits of Cian’s eyes caught the firelight, glittering with suspicion. Rhenna shook her head, unreasonably irritated at his worried tone.

  “I’m fine,” she said. “Go back to sleep, Cian.”

  “Only if you wake me in a few hours.”

  She sighed and endured another violent spell of shivering. “Very well, oh Bearer of the Hammer.”

  He winced and rolled over, turning his back to her. She cursed herself for a vindictive she-wolf and braced for a night of lonely discomfort.

  Early the next morning they dragged the raft down to the last stretch of solid ground at the edge of the swamp, tied on their bags, bedding and waterskins, and launched into the murky water. Nyx had a reasonable idea of the direction they must travel, and so they caught the first current they found flowing toward the northeast, Cian and Rhenna armed with long poles to steer and push.

  The first few days went by without undue hardship. Nyx turned her attention to the tall stands of papyrus that sprang from the shallows between the nearly invisible river channels, guiding the raft with relative ease. The sun was blistering well before noon, but Tahvo had made hats of broad leaves brought from the forest. Occasionally a thin breeze rose off the water. Rhenna managed to keep most of the insects away, and the native animals left them alone. Cian proved adept at spearing fish, and each night they were able to find some patch of reasonably solid ground upon which to build a fire of papyrus stalks dried into kindling by Tahvo’s magic.

  Tahvo spent most of her time at the edge of the raft, trailing her fingers over the edge as she felt for the local spirits. The troubled look on her face suggested that she had not found what she sought.

  The reason for her concern became clear at the end of the fifth day. An hour before sunset, the raft jammed in a thatch of impenetrable plant life that seemed to squeeze in more tightly with every passing moment. Rhenna poked the mat with her pole and looked back the way they had come. The newly cleared stripe of black water had filled with rampant green.

  Tahvo crawled from one side of the raft to the other, rubbing oozy water between her fingers. She tasted it and spat out the foul stuff as soon as it touched her tongue.

  “It is as I feared,” she said quietly. “There are spirits in the water, but they are ill.”

  “Ill?” Rhenna echoed.

  Tahvo plunged both hands through the muck, chanting under her breath. Nyx crouched by her side.

  “I feel it,” the Southern woman said. “The plants have been forced into unnatural growth, like Ge’s hedge.”

  “By whom?” Cian asked.

  Tahvo withdrew her hands from the water. “I have…reached the spirits,” she said. As she spoke, a pathway opened at the prow of the raft. Cian and Rhenna applied themselves to the poles. It was hard work, and Rhenna’s muscles began to quiver with the strain.

  They drove forward as long as the light lasted and then were forced to pull up alongside a hillock of papyrus, the nearest thing to dry land within sight. Everyone stretched out on the raft, too weary to consider a meal of that morning’s leftover fish.

  Cian shook Rhenna out of a profound sleep. She opened her eyes and labored to remember where she was. Her mouth was gritty and dry as sand, and her limbs felt weighted as if by layers of mail and leather. She met Cian’s somber gaze and struggled to her knees.

  “It’s worse than Tahvo realized,” he said, gesturing to the opposite end of the raft. Tahvo sat with a bowed head, her hands folded in her lap. Beyond her, and in every direction, floating vegetation heaved like the backs of enormous fish. A stretch of black water would appear, only to be covered by a green, pulsing blanket.

  Tahvo looked up as Rhenna approached, her silver eyes dull with despair. “The spirits cannot hear me,” she said. “They are mad. The currents constantly change direction. They will no longer carry us where we wish to go.”

  Rhenna shaded her eyes and looked toward the eastern horizon. “We can’t walk across.”

  “No,” Nyx agreed.

  “What is the cause of this madness, Tahvo?” Rhenna asked, fearing she already knew the answer.

  “Yseul,” Cian said. “She must escape the Alu.”

  “She, and those who travel with her,” Tahvo said. “I have had another vision of my brother.”

  “The one who should be dead,” Rhenna said.

  Tahvo nodded. “I am certain now that he is one of those who follows us. His hand is in this evil, as it was in the drying of the Amazi springs.”

  “And yet we have never seen him,” Nyx said. “How did they get ahead of us?”

  “Only the spirits know,” Tahvo said. “The evil ones laid this trap to slow our progress.”

  “Or stop us completely,” Rhenna said. Her teeth chattered. “If you and Nyx can do nothing…” She looked at Cian. “What of the powers of Earth?”

  Cian rubbed his hands on his tattered trousers. “Would you have me turn all this marsh to solid land? You give me too much credit.”

  “A goddess found you worthy enough.”

  He flinched, avoiding her gaze. “This is beyond my skill.”

  “But not beyond the Hammer,” Nyx said.

  “No.”

  Rhenna grabbed his shoulder and forced him to face her. “We could die here, Cian. Everything we’ve fought for will be lost. Immeghar, Abidemi, Mezwar…”

  He moved to shake off her trembling hand and took it instead, nearly crushing her fingers. “Once I touch the Hammer—”

  Nyx gave a cry of warning. Rhenna followed her gesture to t
he forest of papyrus. A man pushed his way from among the fronds and stopped to stare, brown eyes dazed in a bronze-skinned face. Scraps of cloth hung from his emaciated frame. He croaked a broken string of syllables and abruptly collapsed.

  Nyx jumped off the raft and landed precariously on the relative firmness of the papyrus bed. She knelt beside the stranger, lifting his head against her chest.

  “This man is of my father’s countrymen,” she said. She spoke to him, and he grunted a soft response. “Help me get him aboard the raft.”

  Rhenna glanced at Tahvo, seeking her reaction. “I feel no evil in him,” the healer said with a faint frown.

  “But?”

  “He is no danger to us.”

  Rhenna braced herself against a sudden spell of weakness and joined Nyx on the bank. Together they carried the stranger onto the raft and laid him out, while Cian fetched a waterskin.

  The man drank with the desperate concentration of one near death from thirst. Rhenna took the skin away before he could sicken, and Nyx addressed him again in her father’s tongue. After a long moment of uncertainty, when it seemed the stranger must surely lose consciousness, he rallied and fixed his gaze on Nyx, brushing her cheek with skeletal fingers.

  She folded his hand between her own. “His name is Khaleme,” she said. “He is a soldier of the holy city.” She began to speak to the stranger in a voice of unmistakable command.

  “She tries to persuade him that we may be trusted,” Tahvo said softly. “She gives the name of her father and talks of things I do not understand, but he does not answer.”

  “My father’s people are taught from childhood never to reveal knowledge of New Meroe to outsiders,” Nyx said. “But there is one sure way to convince him.”

  Slowly she untied the vine ropes that bound the Hammer to her back, laid the bundle across her knees and unwrapped it. She lifted the Weapon reverently in both hands. Sunlight splashed off the iron head and illuminated the symbols carved into its gleaming surface.

  Khaleme started. He threw his arm across his eyes and whispered a single word.

  Nyx carefully covered the Hammer. “Now he believes,” she said. She pulled Khaleme’s arm away from his face. He averted his gaze from the Hammer and began to speak as if he feared he might die before he could finish.

  Nyx listened, her face growing more and more grim. “It is no wonder that he recognizes the Hammer,” she said at last. “Khaleme is the last surviving member of an expedition sent by the king of New Meroe to find it.”

  “Then your father was not the only one to seek it,” Rhenna said.

  “So it seems.” She listened again, and her frown deepened. “Many such expeditions have been sent, but not one has returned. The others of Khaleme’s party went astray in the swamp before they ever reached the other side. Khaleme was searching for the way home, but he, too, was lost.”

  Khaleme struggled to rise, the breath sawing in his throat. Tahvo pressed him back. “He has suffered much,” she said. “He must rest, and take nourishment….”

  “No,” Khaleme rasped. “I…speak the Hellenish tongue.” He reached for Nyx. “Hear me, Lady—”

  Nyx offered him another sip from the waterskin. “We hear.”

  “You are not the first I have met in this cursed land,” Khaleme said, pushing the waterskin aside. “Others came from the West, a woman and two men, with an escort of soldiers in Hellenish armor.” His head fell back to the deck. “It was clear they were beings of power. They…” Tears trickled down the sides of his face. “Lady, they used evil magic and forced me to tell of the city.”

  “A woman and two men,” Rhenna said. “Did they give their names?”

  Khaleme looked at Rhenna as if she might transform herself into a malevolent spirit before his eyes. “They were pale, like all Northerners, and their words…” He swallowed and turned back to Nyx. “They asked about the prophecies, but I did not speak. I did not speak.”

  Tahvo laid a damp cloth across his sweat-soaked forehead. “Yseul,” she murmured. “Yseul and my brother.”

  “And another,” Rhenna said. “With the Stone God’s soldiers.”

  Khaleme went rigid. “I will not!” he cried. “I will not.”

  Nyx caught his flailing hands. “How many days since these strangers came?”

  “No days here,” he said, suddenly calm. “No nights. No escape.”

  “Who is king in New Meroe?”

  “Aryesbokhe holds the throne. The time of battle draws near….”

  “What battle, Khaleme?”

  His head rolled to one side, and his brown eyes glazed.

  “He will no longer hear you,” Tahvo said. “Let me care for him.”

  Nyx nodded and withdrew, taking the Hammer with her. Rhenna and Cian squatted beside her at the opposite side of the raft.

  “Tahvo was right,” Nyx said. “Our enemies are ahead of us, and they know of the holy city. Somehow they have discovered where we are bound.”

  “If their goal is simply to stop us, why must they know the city’s location?” Cian asked.

  “Baalshillek would sacrifice a thousand of his finest troops to find New Meroe and steal the true prophecies,” Nyx said. “But I cannot believe that Yseul is powerful enough to breach the city’s walls or overcome the magic of our priests.”

  “They would have all the power they need if they reported this to Baalshillek,” Rhenna said.

  “We have no way of knowing if they have sent messengers back to Karchedon,” Nyx said. “But unless they can fly like the birds, they will not cross the Great Desert before we reach the holy city.”

  Rhenna’s head throbbed as if a herd of horses were racing through her skull. Khaleme’s appearance had not changed their predicament. Sinister magic still bound the swamp and held the raft captive.

  “Why did Yseul let Khaleme live once they were through with him?” she asked, rubbing her forehead.

  “I do not know.” Nyx stared at Cian. “We dare not wait for our enemies’ influence on the waters to lose its strength. The time has come, Bearer of the Hammer.”

  Rhenna caught a glimpse of Cian’s stubborn, frightened face just as the darkness crashed behind her eyes.

  Tahvo heard Rhenna fall and followed the sound of Cian’s cry to the warrior’s side. Rhenna’s feet beat on the deck, and her breath wheezed as if she were strangling. Cian and Nyx pinned Rhenna down before her convulsions could hurl her from the raft.

  There were no spirits here to help her, but Tahvo chanted the rituals of healing and stroked her hands over Rhenna’s trembling body. The warrior’s wild motions slowed and ceased. Cian held Rhenna against his chest, cursing harshly, while Nyx brought water.

  “What is it?” Cian demanded. “What is wrong with her, Tahvo?”

  “I have seen this before,” Nyx said, her voice hushed. “It is a sickness of the forest that sometimes strikes the Ará Odò in the rainy season. I did not realize…”

  “She’s been shivering for days,” Cian said, “but she refused to admit that anything was wrong.” He hissed through his teeth. “Her skin is burning….”

  “Shaking and heat under the skin are the first signs,” Nyx admitted. “They often strike without warning.”

  “What is the treatment?”

  “I know of none.”

  “Can it kill her?”

  “The strong survive,” Nyx said. “Rhenna is strong, Cian….”

  “Tahvo,” Cian said. “Help her.”

  Tahvo shut out Cian’s fear and all sense of the world around her. She let her being join with Rhenna’s as she had mingled with the tormented spirits of the swamp, seeking the life-giving waters that raced through the channels beneath the warrior’s flesh. Almost at once she felt the sickness in the blood, tiny invaders attacking Rhenna from within like a fleet of minute Arrhidaean warships. In their black holds they carried death.

  But this was not the work of the Stone God or his servants. It came out of the forest, as Nyx had said, an enemy that c
ould be fought by a skilled noaiddit—a healer with the proper herbs, a sacred drum and spirits able and willing to lend their aid.

  Tahvo pressed Rhenna’s hot, limp hand to her cheek. “There is too much foulness in this place,” she said. “We must get her out.”

  No one spoke. The raft’s lashings creaked. Cian gently pushed Rhenna into Tahvo’s arms and stood.

  “The Hammer,” he said. “Give it to me.”

  The leashed power of the Weapon disturbed the air like the distant rumble of a storm. Cian’s heart beat so fast and hard that Tahvo could hear it. She straightened slowly, alerted to something she had not felt before…something that made Cian’s fear of the Hammer seem not only rational but vital to his existence.

  The Hammer was not merely an inanimate Weapon of magic. It had a very real life of its own. A life that waited to be set free…

  “Cian,” she said, trying to get his attention, but her voice came out as a whisper. No one heard her. She reached out, but no one saw. She knew when Cian took the Hammer in his hands, when its magic awakened at his touch and poured into his body.

  A puff of wind stirred the simmering air. Nyx gripped Tahvo’s wrist, her nails digging into Tahvo’s skin.

  The Hammer struck water with a crash like shattering stone. Scalding drops rained down on Tahvo’s face and hands. She curled her body over Rhenna’s. A deep vibration shook the thick branches under her knees, followed by the roar of waves that slapped at the raft like a lynx with a mouse. Then the raft began to sink, settling at last on a firm surface.

  Nyx gasped.

  “What do you see?” Tahvo asked.

  “The Hammer has cut a gorge all the way down to dry earth. The water rises like walls on either side, as far as the horizon.”

  “And Cian?”

  “I cannot see his face. He stands so still….”

  “Speak to him, Nyx. I am afraid.”

  Nyx got to her feet. She moved slowly, her steps faltering, as if she sensed what Tahvo feared.

  “Cian?”

  He must have turned, for Nyx abruptly stopped. She exhaled sharply.