Fractured Everest Box Set

by D. H. Dunn

“Do you wish to ask me something, Nima?”

  She did, though she had not realized it until this moment. Nima nodded to Merin, but did not immediately speak. She continued to watch Arix and Lam in the dim light.

  Merin’s two children reminded her so much of herself and Pasang, bringing her thoughts of a world she no longer had a route to.

  Yet there was another concern that ate at her heart. A new responsibility, recently acquired. One that only someone like Merin might understand.

  “Your children,” she said. “Your worry for them changes what you do. Makes you make different choices.”

  Nima thought of Lhamu, who was an infant only a few days ago. Something to carry and protect. Now she was following Nima around, asking her questions and copying her actions.

  Learning from her.

  “That is true,” Merin said with a sigh. “Yet perhaps I did not change my behavior as much as I should have. Looking at them now, I thank the Founder they are safe, but I regret much.” Nima heard a catch in Merin’s throat as she looked at Arix, angled toward the door. Her instincts already to protect her brother. “I regret a great deal.”

  “Do you regret having children?” Nima asked.

  “No,” Merin said, without any hesitation. “Yet I admit I underestimated the … mountain being a parent would be to me. Kad was more natural at it, and I allowed him to do more than his fair share. I shouldn’t have. Now he is gone, and I must take the lead. I must learn to be better. What I did before, the things I did for myself. It is done. It cannot be changed.”

  Merin looked back at her children. Nima noticed that Arix had moved her hand off her brother and slept curled up next to him. A child again, at least for the moment.

  “Lhamu wants to go home, when this is over. Back to Sirapothi.”

  Merin smiled at her. Though it was a small gesture, it was unusual for her, and infectious.

  “What?” Nima asked, smiling back.

  “You surprise me often, Nima. Your boundless optimism. ‘When this is over.’ As if it were an inevitability. As if the defeat of the Dragons would be just another climb.”

  “Why plan to lose?” Nima shrugged her shoulders. “If I am excited about what is ahead, the climb becomes easier!”

  “I would never debate climbing with you,” Merin said. “Yet in this case, I sense you do not know what is at your summit. What do you want, Nima? Do you wish to go back to your world? Or perhaps to Lhamu’s?”

  There was no path back to Nepal, none that Nima knew of. Upala had said the only portals to Earth she knew of where lost with the collapse of the Under.

  Yet that was not Merin’s question.

  “I liked it in Sirapothi. I thought maybe I wanted to stay there,” she said. “Now I am not sure. There is so much to see, and I want to see … everything. It’s all I’ve ever wanted. Even with the danger, Merin, this is what I wanted. To see amazing things, to just go and do. But now, with Lhamu . . .” She let out another sigh. “I feel responsible. Not in a bad way. Helping her makes me feel nice. But I don’t know what to do.”

  Nima took Merin’s hand, feeling the rough edges of Merin’s skin, the callouses formed by years of work.

  “Merin, how do I know what the right thing to do is?”

  Merin chuckled, taking a quick look to make sure she did not wake the children.

  “You ask me the very question that tightens around my own heart, Nima. I am sorry. We do not get to know the right answer until later.”

  Merin looked back at Arix and Lam. “Sometimes we make the wrong choices, but if we are lucky, we get a second chance to make a new one.”

  “Do you know what you will do, then?” Nima asked. She thought of how hard it must be in Merin’s place. Her own father had collapsed after Nima’s mother had died, shriveling and falling in on himself. And he had never seemed to find the love in Nima’s mother that Merin clearly had found in Kad.

  “I will never leave them again,” Merin said, conviction in her voice. Her face then softened, and she smiled again as her eyes seemed to look beyond Nima, beyond the tent and into the night. Perhaps into the past, Nima thought. Looking at a ghost she loved, but who would never return.

  Nima knew Merin’s words were not for Arix and Lam or for her, but for Kad’s smile in the darkness.

  Though she was no closer to finding her own answers, she was inspired that Merin could continue on in the face of so much pressure and sadness, and still find the strength to smile and carry on.

  The cold wind whipped down the slopes of Ish Kalum and onto Tanira’s exposed back. The only thing keeping her warm was her anger. Both she and the Thread had been exhausted when they landed, but as she lay on a makeshift cot Reylor had constructed out of their packs, she wanted answers.

  “What happened back there?” she demanded.

  Lying flat on her stomach while Reylor did what he could with her injury, Tanira’s frustration burst past any walls she might have thrown up against it. That she was angry at a Dragon ten times her size did not matter.

  “We were about to finish that Manad Vhan and - agh!”

  Fresh agony ran down her left side, like lightning that went to her toes and then back up to her head.

  “I am sorry,” Reylor stammered. “My mother was a healer but I do not really - there is a lot of burned skin here. You said to remove the crystal but I-”

  “Agh!” Tanira shouted as the man gave another tug on the shard the Yeti had jammed into her back. “Just leave it then! Try to bandage around it.” She did not like the idea of leaving such a foreign object lodged in her body, but there was a good chance she was not going to live much longer anyway.

  “I would also like to know what happened,” Reylor said as she heard the man tear another strip from one of the tents to create more bandages

  “One disaster at a time,” Tanira said. “I am still waiting to hear from our Dragon.”

  “I am not your Dragon. You speak with great risk, End of the Line,” the Thread spoke from his perch, stretched out on a snow-covered rock slightly above them. His tail swished in the snow, while he examined one of his leathery wings with his claws.

  “I have what you need,” Tanira said. “The location of the Machine. As long as I have that, I have no risk from you. Now, what happened back there? What is the forebear?”

  There was a hiss from above her that sounded like steam escaping. She wished she could stare into the beast’s eyes, but with Reylor’s fumbling attempts to mend her back ongoing, she could only look at the snow beneath her.

  “The Forebear,” the Thread said after a long delay. “It was the Caenolan girl-”

  “I know it was the Caenolan girl!” she yelled back. “I just came from Sirapothi and saw many of them. They were nothing extraordinary, even more docile than Rakhum.”

  All save Valaen, who Tanira remembered learned to be something more.

  Until she had ended his life, acting before she could even think, before she could even decide. Another life on the Line.

  “This one is not ordinary. She has been given access to a great power at birth. She is now larval, on a path to being a perversion. Becoming what we are, rather than what we should have been.”

  Tanira’s mind tried to blot out the pain of Reylor’s ministrations, following the path of the Thread’s vague speech.

  “She’s going to become a Dragon? A Dragon like you?”

  The Thread’s roar was enough to knock snow from the perch on which he lay, dropping several clumps of it on Reylor and Tanira.

  “A perversion! Barren, spawn-less and clutch-less. Like me, like the other thirteen. Sessgrenimath sent her to mock me!”

  Clutch-less? She thought back to her brief glimpse of the massive machine she had witnessed in the Hero’s temple, the broken shells of a single egg at its center. The Line had taught her the Machine was of value to the Dragons, that she could bargain with it. They had never explained what it did.

  Could it be the Dragons themselves were barren, unab
le to reproduce? Was the Machine their way around that design? Sessgrenimath’s design?

  “Forgive me,” the Thread said. She winced as Reylor brushed some of the snow from her wound. “I lost control, as I did back at the Bridge. Yet I was not the only one, was I? What you witnessed there, it enraged you.”

  Tanira thought back to those seconds on the bridge, just as the Thread was diving down. The Manad Vhan man and her father arguing. A flash of flame, and her father was gone.

  Gone in that fire was a hundred chances, a thousand answers to questions she was only now finding the courage to ask within herself. One mystery rising above all others.

  What was this all for?

  This new Manad Vhan had acted just as her father had taught her they would, burning the mortals around him like so much chaff. Like Kater and Upala before him.

  That they were evil was beyond questioning, and consistently proved.

  Yet Nima’s presence was a stain on the white cloth of her belief. A good person, as decent and selfless a person as she had ever met.

  One who would never turn on a friend, leaving them to bleed and die in the snow.

  Nima was on one side, and she on the other. But where was the truth?

  “There, you are as bandaged as I can manage,” Reylor said, tossing the remaining bandages down in the snow. “Now tell me what you saw back at Rogek Shad! I am part of this too, I have a right to know.”

  Tanira sat up, wincing as she did so. There was a stab of pain behind her left shoulder whenever she moved it, but she could move it. She pulled a cloak around her, cinching it as tightly as she could. Walking a few steps away from Reylor, she sat on a stone near the edge of the landing they had camped on. The drop below was dizzying, even if there was far more mountain above them.

  She ignored Reylor’s question, knowing the Thread would answer it if she waited long enough. Instead she pulled the Helm out of her pack, cradling its plain, metal surface between her hands. All that had happened, for this small piece of metal.

  “We witnessed the fall of the Line,” the Thread said. “A man I suspect was the head of your order was slain by a Manad Vhan. They took the city back from the Line’s control.”

  “That is impossible,” Reylor scoffed.

  Tanira looked out over the vast landscape in front of her. Dozens of other mountains, none as high as Ish Kalum, but many impressive and snow-covered. The glaciers ran around them like vast snakes, intertwining and connecting them.

  What had gone wrong, Father? What happened to the plan of the Line? You were right, we were right. How could you lose?

  “There were too many people there, Reylor.” She heard her voice, yet it sounded more to her like the Line’s voice. As impassive and cold as the view in front of her. “They tried to reunify Rogek Shad and Nalam Wast, I do not know why. It was too soon, they did not have enough people. Perhaps the additional Manad Vhan pushed them into making changes to the plan.”

  Maybe Father thought he knew better than the Line.

  “The Line cannot fall,” Reylor sounded lost, his voice quaking. “My brothers, their deaths cannot mean nothing. The Line cannot be over.”

  “Perhaps it is.” The Thread’s low rumble of a voice took on an encouraging quality. “It was only the small plans of Rakhum after all. Perhaps it would be best to give me the location of the Machine and be done with the affair. Lead the lives that you can, while you can.”

  Tanira looked down at the helm, her face reflected back in the facets of the crystal in the center. She could toss the Helm right now, send Kater’s creation down into the depths of the mountain below where it would likely never be found.

  If I am not the End of the Line, who am I? Where can I go, that the ghosts of the Line will not find me?

  Rogek Shad and Nalam Wast would be filled with the families of the men and women she had killed in the Line’s name. Killed for this very Helm. How could they forgive her?

  Could I return to Nima? Could Nima take me to another world, back to that time in Sirapothi where we had run and laughed with Valaen? When we had been . . . friends?

  She gripped the Helm tighter in her hands. There was no forgiveness, but the deaths were still behind her. They had to mean something. She had to make them mean something.

  Tanira stood, feeling the snow compress underneath her boots. She still affected the world, she still mattered. She would not panic as her father had. In the end he had not trusted the Line, but she was bound to it.

  She turned, both Reylor and the Thread watched her. Whether they liked it or not, she knew the decision was hers.

  “The Line is not dead,” she said, looking up the vast slopes of Ish Kalum. “Not while we live. We have a Vault to open.”

  Above them, obscured by clouds and distance, the Voice waited for them.

  Chapter 17

  Drew’s world came back to him in stages, like waves washing up on a beach. The first several waves were composed of nothing but pain, a pain that ran through his body with an agonizing totality.

  Over time it localized in his side and chest. Concentration made it worse, even as it receded from his extremities. When he began to notice sounds again, the first he heard were his own groans. In time he began to hear voices, but they were not voices he knew. They were not Upala or Nima, nor were they Artie or his parents.

  He was abandoned on this beach of agony, strangers tending to him. The pain in his side began to separate, splitting into three distinct ribbons of sensation. There was a smell too; an odd combination that reminded him of molded bread and the sea. The air was filled with a gritty particulate that pushed into his nostrils, irritating them.

  Drew sneezed violently and painfully, his eyes finally opening. A new agony gripped him from his side as he did so, two figures moving in the low light. A large blur of white hovered over him, moving slowly. It was accompanied by a smaller blur of blue.

  “I can’t really see.” His voice, throaty and broken, was a gift to hear. It was his and it was real.

  “An effect of the poultice, Altered,” the white blur said. “It should pass. It has never been used on your kind before.”

  The voice was familiar, but more recent. Altered? Someone called me that before. His mind worked to catch up to where he was. Everest? The Under? No, those had happened already.

  “There are other effects,” the deep voice continued.

  The blue blur came by, passing behind him. He felt a cool cloth on his forehead, the minor relief still a blessing.

  “Thought may be clouded for a time, yet your death has been avoided.”

  He blinked again, his vision becoming no clearer but a few of the clouds in his mind giving way. Behind the clouds was his own anger, fiery rage and guilt. Then there was a flash of purple, sharp claws and an explosion of pain.

  The Dragon!

  He tried to sit up, the action lasting only a second before a massive force from the white blur pushed him back to the bed. His mind finally made the connection. The Yeti? The Speaker is tending to me?

  “You must lay still!” the Yeti said. “The poultice is setting.”

  “I need to know what happened,” Drew croaked, his heart pounding as faces and visions pounded into his brain. Are they all right? What did I do? Nima and Merin? Trillip? Had he killed Garantika?

  “Everyone is safe now.”

  Another voice, female and young. Lhamu, the Caenolan girl that Nima had brought with her. Everyone is safe? He felt the tide of relief trying to come ashore, but he was afraid to believe in it. His need to know outweighed everything, even his own pain.

  “Details!” he said through clenched teeth, the Speaker’s paw still holding him down gently, but firmly.

  “Nima is unhurt, I am unhurt,” Lhamu began reciting the status of everyone, like a child giving the answers in class. “Merin is with her children. The Speaker is here. Trillip is badly injured but will live. Garantika is dead. Upala and Kater are not back. The people are no longer fighting here.”


  Drew allowed the breath he held to leak out in a hiss, awakening new soreness from his side. Why hadn’t he healed?

  His answer came in the memory of a purple-scaled beast diving out of the sky, a flash of claws and teeth.

  Dragon injury. Right, okay.

  At least the fighting was over, though he wished Upala was there.

  “And the Dragon?”

  “The beast took an aggressive interest in the Foretold,” the Speaker said. Drew felt the pressure release from his chest as the Yeti removed his paw. “I attacked the rider, and the Dragon retrieved her and flew off.”

  Drew’s relief vanished, a fresh layer of tension and worry filling him. Confirmation Tanira had at least one Dragon, and they still had no real idea what she was up to, not in any detail. The fact the Yeti was able to drive her off was a welcome surprise, even if Tanira survived it.

  “Where is Nima, why are you two here?”

  “Nima wanted to be here,” Lhamu said, apologetically. “The Speaker did not want anyone intruding on his work.”

  “His work?” Drew looked over at the white blur, a few more details becoming present. The creature’s dark eyes looked back at him, revealing nothing. “Why would you try to heal me? I thought all you cared about was her?” What was the word they used? “Your rocha.”

  “The Foretold is my rocha. I would prefer her in safer environs. But she refused to leave your presence, and only would agree to do so eventually if I attempted to heal you.”

  “Nice of you to think of me, Speaker.”

  A small cough escaped Drew and he winced as the pain increasing in his left side.

  He looked over at Lhamu, trying to smile and show his appreciation. “Thank you, Lhamu.”

  She nodded and smiled back.

  The Speaker took a few steps forward, his huge form blotting out Lhamu’s and filling Drew’s vision. The intensity left the creature’s eyes, replaced by something Drew had not seen before.

  Kindness?

  “My rocha has been challenged. Your actions on the bridge were difficult to process,” the Speaker said. “You, the Foretold, the Arrived. None of you are Rakhum. You were willing to sacrifice yourself for them, you even attempted to avoid violence against those who wished violence on you. After your injury, the Foretold was . . . insistent that I attempt to help you.”