"Sleep baby, go back to sleep," she told it, "Dream good dreams. We will be done soon. So soon. Don't wake up yet." And without knowing she did it, Brone sang the child old, old night songs as she wandered through the dark, to keep it quiet, to keep it dreaming good dreams. But still it fluttered and prodded beneath her breast, every hour stronger.
At last there came a moment when nothing stirred but Brone. No leaf turned, nor breeze blew, even the clattering stream she had drunk from for days was gone. All that Brone could hear was her own deep breaths pushing out against the night. And she came to a clearing. Large and round, covered with fallen leaves and rotting vines that fell after the sun went out.
Long sat Brone in this clearing, turning over bright memories in the dark. At last, planting the torch upright in the hard ground, she dug a hole in the freezing dirt and cleared away the bracken. Drawing the warm linen packet from her chest, she resolve to be free, to turn again to Ganit's side. But as she unwrapped the jade seed that had so gently sprouted, gleaming with new life, in that last light of the old world, she saw it's glow was gone. Bringing it closer to her torch, she saw it was wizened and black, a withered, chilled and clammy thing, as if it were new dug from its grave. And Brone screamed and knew the world no more for a time.
Chapter 16
They say that a mother's need for her child overcomes thirst and hunger, pain and flame and frost. But long, long had Ethon struggled against want and fatigue. Even she, the mighty mare, would have collapsed had not the bare stone bled clear waters for her out of its charred breast. Still, in the desert that Enik left in the wake of his hungry flames, Ethon struggled to find a sprig of grass, a solitary oat. She walked in her sleep at times, dreaming of sweet fall apples.
No sun shone, nor rain fell and nothing grew in that ashen land. At last, the seared sky gave up its dead, and hundreds of birds fell to the ground in the dark, hot night. So weak, so mad with need was Ethon that she at of the carrion, and though her body was not built for flesh, it accepted.The acrid, rotten meat kept her moving, brought her to the sea of glass where Enik waited, brought her to the razor bridge in the West. Standing on the ashen shore of the glass sea, Ethon watched the gold and crimson blush and bend and waver on the dark obsidian plane, on the choppy peaks of burnt hillsides and baked boulders. She knew she had reached Enik's home at long last.
She paced the edge of that smooth, sparkling expanse, for her hooves could find no purchase. In frustration, Ethon smashed at the pooled stone, but where it shattered it left a still smoother bowl. Alas, to be so close to her beloved and still unable to reach him. Though the sky wore its bronze, burnt face without change, neither dimming nor brightening, Ethon felt her breath draining away as she stumbled further and further through the powdery dead soil on the edge of Enik's land. The great beast floundered in deep ash, sinking first to her ankles, then her knees, at last to her very breast, ever calling to her son for help. Black foam clotted in her nostrils and between her lips, reddened her rolling eyes. Ethon beached herself on a hard jutting rock, this one jagged and rough, a porous, ill formed, narrow thing. Here she rested until her breathing slowed to a crawl, until her legs shook no longer. She slept, here on the brink of her goal, who had spent so long flying through flame and ash. She was no more than a long gray hump crumpled next to the bridge through hell. Ethon went unseen by the long, long lines of men who passed there, themselves cracked pillars of ash trudging slowly over the razor bridge to their ends. When each had passed beyond the memory of the world and all was quite still, Ethon rose and found herself on the edge of a slim bridge of stone crossing the piercing sea of glass, the sea that sparked still with flame and smoke. Where so many had fallen, had been pushed aside into the pit, it was for Ethon an easy road, almost unheeded in her longing to reach Enik.
Halfway across the narrow bridge he stood, terrible, red as the coal heart of hell. Enik's mane wavered over him, a sharp, splintered halo of cobalt flame.
"Mother," he called, sparks spilling like rain from his lips, "Come no closer, nor send my brothers near to me. For this is my country alone and none, save me, can survive it."
"I come not to challenge you Enik. Only to aid and warn you."
But Enik laughed, his voice a cool crackle as if his throat were ice, his heart the ash of a long dead hearth. "You mother? How can you aid me? Your time has passed. Already my brother has marked you, your world evaporates. I would only devour you. No, you should go away. Turn and seek out some cool, well watered place to founder in. Come not to me, I cannot shield you from Arvakir."
Ethon shuddered and pounded the rough stone with heavy hooves. "Long, long have I traveled to find you here. Centuries I carried you in my own hide. My body is broken with battle, with weariness to hide you, to shield you. I will not now mourn for what I have made. You will have need of me still, despite all you think you have wrought. For there is one coming. Alas, she is stronger even than I, and she carries her own sons. She would unmake you if I cannot stop her."
"She cannot stand against my inferno, though she be stone or water. You yet stand only because I will it. I fear her not."
"She is neither stone nor water, Enik. She is of the tribe of man and she carries a message, some word more powerful than me. It makes her breath the stuff of life, perhaps even of return of all this world has been cleansed of."
Enik laughed his cruel, snapping laugh again. "Mere man? Have no fear mother. Pass away from this place and find your end in peace. This messenger will not stand before me and live." He turned and left the stone bridge, his flashing corona melting into the thick wall of smoke beyond.
Bowed down, Ethon trod slowly across the bridge, her nose brushing the charred stone, her ears flat against her skull. Her heavy hooves barely lifted themselves as she picked her way across the sooty glass path into the cooler, darkened world beyond.
Chapter 17
When Ganit woke, it was to rich warmth and his eyes were clean and saw the world again. He was the center of a golden circle of life. Around him huddled beast and bird, a crushing mass of fur and scale. Ganit hardly knew whether he breathed, so close did the animals press, and the ground and his flesh were thickly encased with great moths and beetles and all manner of crawling things. Occasionally, a bird moved to snap up a bug or tiny furred thing, but all else was silent.
Ganit shook himself in sudden disgust at the moving mass upon his skin. A smooth, quick patter of fallen insects and then soft buzzing as they moved into the warm space where Ganit had lain. Fully wakened now, Ganit looked around him. Everywhere his light touched, to the farthest extent of his sight, ranged beasts, sleeping and starting, hunting and nesting. For warmth blew from him, gentle and drowsing. No longer the bright, chilled violet of dawn, Ganit's corona was the evening gold of summer. Around him even the vines crept onward, entangled and green up to the edges of his light.
He wondered with horror how long he had slept. All lived, all crept and writhed, grew and flowered in his gaze. "What madness is this? What evil have I wrought? What dark death have I sent her to?"
For all was not still in the world, and Brone could only fall in the burning ice of the dark earth. Their seed, their journey fruitless.
He had no idea where Brone had gone in the bleak midnight forest, nor how far she had been able to get, but he followed her now, seeking the spot where he had last heard her steps. Though Ganit wished to fly, to run until his breath came in jagged thrusts against his chest, the beasts were so many, both small mice and moth and large jungle cats and elephants that they burdened his feet, pressed against his path. He picked his way through until he reached their border, where the edges of his light had touched. Ganit was a moving hearth, a streaking star wavering through the bony upthrusts of frozen earth. The frost, which hadn't touched the jungle since the world was young, new made even, had crushed and twisted the dirt and rock into pockmarked heaves and dips, black and silver flashing against Ganit's warm glow. The ground was littered with stiffened leaves and the trees
split, as if they rotted from inside out, their frozen blood bursting in their trunks. Aghast, Ganit stood silent, feeling no cold, staring as if through glass at this dead world. The earth a corpse preserved against time, a dead thing which never decayed. At last, behind him Ganit heard the shriek and roar of beasts who were waking in the deep, unbending night, the circle of creatures he'd left to the silent, deadly chill. He knew, this bright hunter, this flaming dawn, that all would perish without the warmth which pulsed from his skin. "Come with me!" he cried, "I cannot stay, travel with me through the dark until we find some better place!" Ganit thought himself mad, for never have beasts had the tongue of man, yet they followed him until the very end, swelling and sinking as beasts strayed or straggled toward him, but an ever growing tide of life gathered around Ganit. The trees, the creepers and grasses revived in his light to feed the horde that followed but ever they wilted again only days after his circle of warmth had passed. He wished to linger, to create a lasting green space, a tiny sphere of life against the empty dark, but Brone's loneliness crushed him and he hurried ever on, jealous of any delay, even of his own frail body's need of rest. At least, Ganit realized, he need never fear hunger again.
Ganit soon found Brone's mushrooms, though their glow had long since flickered out. They shone like shells, for they froze standing, encased in frost that sharply glittered in Ganit's halo. Ganit picked one, snapping it from its frozen stem. Its icy sheet melted away and Ganit wept as it twisted and wilted in his hand, as if its death had at last caught up to it. He could not doubt that Brone had left them in her wake, for the way stretched with hundreds of these silver moons, clustered thickly as a cobbled road leading to her. Ever as Ganit sped through the deep forest, the sound of water filled his ears, ever dripping gently as ice melted about him. The green moss smell of damp earth filled him as if spring, as if the dawn, was each moment about to burst upon him. But deadly were his thoughts in this midnight thaw. He thought he would find Brone as a pillar of ice at the end of this ice-coin road. He saw her, thick with child, her hair a curtain of frozen glass, her skin as stone split and cracked with frost. Ganit believed her dead, yet still it added swiftness to his step, heat to his path, so that those beasts closest to him must slow and wait for him to pass farther on or else be burnt.
Hour upon hour Ganit followed the memory of Brone's footsteps, each pearly stalk a ghost, a thought of her. Swiftly passing through the frozen trees and vines, bringing dreams of summer evenings to the graveyard of the vanishing world. But just as swiftly, the night snapped closed again behind him. He found her first camp as his own strength waned and marveled that she, though heavy with child and grief, had herself made it so far without rest. He longed to sleep upon the imprint of where she had lain, but instead he clambered up a mighty tree and found a broad, sturdy plateau of branches, naked now, but strong. Here he slept, dreaming that perhaps she could see his light, that she'd be drawn back to him as the beasts had been. His halo stretched far and far across the land, thawing, reviving, bringing free water again to the earth.
When Ganit climbed down from his tree, he found he had been sleeping long enough to thaw the mushrooms as far as he sight could carry him. Black and twisted, they had decayed in the night and could not help him. For to this mummified cold, Ganit brought decay as well as life. His fury scorched the dust around him and his corona blazed forth in molten hues. But he thought again of Brone and of the child beneath her heart and for a moment felt the cold as she must have felt it, and was himself again. He could do no more than follow the direction she had been constantly going, south and west, ever south and west, and hope she had met no obstacle to turn her out of the path.
In the distance Ganit could hear the loud cracking of trees dying under the frost that lay beyond his light. The blasted ruins were already about him, green and splintered, the trunks as jagged teeth jutting from the rotting earth. He longed to know if Brone had found safe shelter from the shattering cold. Ganit's panic pushed him, even when his flesh needed rest, and he only stopped when his legs gave way beneath him. Each time he rested, Ganit dragged himself up the nearest tree that still stood whole and tied himself to the uppermost branches, and there he slept. He hoped that Brone could see his light, gather some warmth from him, wherever she was.
The beasts that hovered around him became scavengers of the thaw. They survived on the melting vines and blasted trees or on the corpses of their brethren who had been caught in the darkness. Soon, the incessant drip and flow of freed water, the rumbling shudders of tress as their branches sloughed off in great rotten chunks were the lone sound that reached Ganit's ear. The sweet sharp smell of putrefaction sickened him, overwhelmed him at first, but still it went on, breath after breath, and after a time he forgot to smell it.
Ever as Ganit moved, pushing back the frozen night, he called Brone. Again and again he called her, not knowing if she could answer or even hear him any longer. His voice was warm and hung upon the air, but it brought no answer. Still he called until his throat would bear no more, and then rested only as long as he must. Hour upon hour, time beyond counting Ganit went on, seeking one small creature in the vast empty land.
Somewhere in that endless journey, the broken trees faded and the earth bent upwards into jagged peaks and Ganit entered the mountains still calling to Brone. When he reached the first peak, where the air had hung still and cold after the ceasing of the winds, Ganit looked down as far as his light would touch, a broad swathe of gray, empty valleys and the beginning of other peaks beyond, many ash gray, a few bright silver with ancient ice.
He felt the gentle clustering of beasts around him, the winged things creating translucent golden shadows and all around him the sound of paw and hoof, of snuffling breath and half uttered cries, yet all the world below his feet, all the space that stretched away from his feet and his small circle of life was utterly still. Ganit wept as he stood upon the ridge, knowing he could not hope for Brone to be alive in all that heavy dark, nor would he find her body, him so tiny in that gargantuan land.
Long sat Ganit on the peak, not knowing what ought to be done. "If it is done, if she is gone, then why do I remain?" He thought. The rustling of life was about him, a quiet press of warmth and breath was his only answer, yet Ganit heeded it not and was wholly alone.
But then, in the dark, from beyond the next peak, Ganit saw first a glow and then a bright flash as a figure bearing a torch climbed over the rim. Still and tall it stood and its face was beyond Ganit's sight. The flame of its torch wavered not, a slender blade of dawn cutting through the windless dark. A moment only, Ganit thought it was Lian Zi and then his heart shattered with hope and he knew it had to be Brone. Down the jagged peak he tore, ever west, too fast for caution. The torch bearer waved the torch in alarm. Too fast, too fast Ganit flew and fell, his leg bursting beneath him with a snap like a wet carrot torn in two. He cried out, calling and calling to Brone even as his leg seared a brilliant scarlet brand in his mind.
He moved not but watched the torch bearer pick its way slowly down towards him. Ganit saw it was not Brone, but a man, heavy with youth and health. With a practiced hand, the man gently broke through the mass of beasts, picking his way to where Ganit lay. He spoke no words, nor seemed fearful of the great cats and feral dogs that gathered again behind him.
"Have you seen a woman sir?" cried Ganit in dismay, "She is great with child now, has she passed this way? Did she find shelter with you?"
But the man said nothing, nor looked at Ganit, but stared raptly at his own feet, carefully avoiding the small rodents, the crawling insects between him and Ganit. Looking into that strong, silent face, Ganit began to be afraid. "Why don't you answer?" he cried, "Is she dead?"
The man said nothing and now knelt near Ganit looking down at Ganit's twisted leg and gently reached to touch him. "Did you hurt her? Answer me!" Ganit's body flared, bright with heat and the remnants of his clothing shriveled and blackened, falling away. The small animals around him squeaked and scattered.
The man drew his hand back quickly from Ganit's leg and brought his fingers to his lips, blowing on them. He looked into Ganit's face in alarm but still spoke no words. The air hung heavy and sparked with burnt fur and hair. The man's eyes were wide with shock and made him look even younger than Ganit had thought him.
"I'm sorry," said Ganit, slowly cooling, "But I need to find her. And you wouldn't say anything."
The man just shook his head and placed his hand over his own mouth.
"I'm sorry," Ganit said again, but the man simply planted his torch into the dust and looked at Ganit's leg. Gently, he touched the flesh, now warm, but not burning, and tried to run Ganit's leg back into place. Deep and brittle pain flashed into Ganit, welling up not from his shattered leg, but from somewhere beneath his chest. Despair tore through him and Ganit fainted. The young man frowned and lifted Ganit onto one of his heavy shoulders. Slowly, he climbed the western peak and beyond. He shuffled between the scrambling animals, carrying the bright dawn back into the wide world. The man left his torch behind him, where it burnt for hours, a solitary fallen star, until at last it guttered out in the dust.
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