Cordimancy

by Hardman, Daniel

  It felt like the ground began to trend upward, although it was hard to be sure. Malena’s thighs and back protested. She’d been trying to shoulder more weight to spare Shivi, but now she found the strain unsustainable, and she slumped slightly. Paka seemed to shuffle more slowly.

  She began to resent her husband, able to walk freely while she struggled behind. Was he seeing anything at all in this inky hell? Or was he just wrapped up in a fantasy of his own making?

  Did he think they could all move as easily as he did?

  A piggish squeal, and an echo of malicious laughter, wafted out of the oppressive obscurity, as if at immense distance.

  Oji’s hand touched her arm lightly—a gesture of reassurance. He had grabbed a corner of her cloak when the darkness became impenetrable. How long ago had that been? An hour? Three?

  She stubbed a toe on a boulder, felt blood seep around the nail.

  Sweat trickled off her nose.

  More shuffling. More noises in the dark.

  How could Shivi sustain this? Surely Toril would call a halt when they were far enough away from the site of the attack. Surely, that would be soon.

  A hundred more steps. She would go that far, and then she would stop. If the pishachas were tracking them, and if this march had not put them beyond danger by then, she would sit and be slaughtered.

  But she could not sit.

  Tupa needed her.

  She went a hundred steps.

  Two hundred.

  Suddenly, Paka lurched forward and down, and Malena heard Shivi moan. Malena dropped to her knees; the cord to her husband jerked from half-numb fingers. The hilt of Oji’s sword poked between her shoulder blades as he sagged to a stop and pushed off to avoid a tangle of arms and legs.

  “Are you all right?” Toril rasped.

  Malena heard boots scuffing in the sand. She croaked, rolled onto a hip, and allowed herself to collapse face up, knees bent. A wave of dizziness overpowered her. She spat grit. Beside her, Paka wheezed urgently.

  “We’re spent,” Shivi whispered, sounding shaky.

  “We’re not safe,” Toril said.

  “Didn’t you hear?” Malena snarled. “We can’t go another step!”

  The sentence left her winded. She coughed, sucked in a deep breath, coughed again. Every muscle in her legs and back trembled with exhaustion. Beside her, she sensed Oji squatting to help Paka.

  Sand cascaded as weight shifted nearby. Toril’s fingers found her hand.

  She was too weary to pull away.

  How much time passed, Malena could not say. Her breathing quieted, and she discovered that her head was cradled in her husband’s lap. He was brushing sand from her forehead, and pulling tangled hair out of her eyes. She was sure she had not slept; a great weight of fatigue still hung like lead on her limbs, and her eyelids wanted nothing so much as to close.

  Instead, she sat, acutely aware of shooting soreness as her trunk contracted. Toril’s hand lifted at her neck.

  “Shivi?”

  “Here.” The old woman’s voice sounded gaunt, almost a whisper.

  “We’ve all been catchin’ our breath,” Paka added. “Gimme another twelve hours, preferably with my eyes closed, and I may be able to walk again. Little, anyway.”

  “We should stop here,” Oji said. “We need rest.”

  “We’re not safe,” Toril said.

  “That’s easy for you to say!” Malena sputtered. “You’ve got two good legs, and you can see where you’re going.”

  The smooth shaft of Toril’s staff pressed against her side. Her husband’s hand found her own, and pushed her fingers around it.

  “What do you see?” Toril demanded.

  She felt him twist the staff, guide Shivi and Paka and Oji into grips of their own.

  “What do you see?” he said again, sounding desperate.

  Malena opened her mouth, ready to describe the surrounding blackness in sarcastic detail—but the syllables died on her lips.

  The dark became dim, then merely gray, then brightening fog, and ultimately transparent. She saw a glow from the staff—glyphs that spelled out words she didn’t recognize. She saw the members of their company—Shivi with her braid half undone, a sleeve of her blouse ripped, face lined and drawn; Paka, his beard askew and his thigh soaked with crusting maroon; Oji, a triangle of sweat on his chest; Toril, pale and swaying, a slash along one cheek, kurta bloody from armpit to hip.

  Her gaze took in the steady incline they’d followed for hours, its slopes riddled with fissures and debris—and beyond that, the full sweep of the valley, and even the encircling mountains beyond. Dawn was rising in the east; no tendrils of light touched the blighted basin, yet—but somehow, she could see without it. The land was broken and wild, with venting steam, pools of noxious, boiling water, flows of mud and lava flanked by concentric rings of calcite and sulfur. Cactus, and patches of blasted weeds, clung to hillocks here and there.

  A fleeting regret for her censure of Toril crossed her thoughts. That they had been able to walk steadily, despite their blindness, and had avoided all the serious obstacles that now crowded her vision, was nothing short of a miracle. Guiding them safely across such terrain could not have been easy, and she now understood why he’d felt compelled to lead.

  Somehow, distance was irrelevant; leagues away, the imprint of human feet in the sand leapt to her eyes. She saw a scorpion scuttle across one, a tarantula crouch beside another.

  She followed the tracks back across the floor of the valley, and spied a large skeleton at the mouth of a box canyon. Its ribs were scarred by teeth marks and circled by a mangled cinch and saddle. The gristle at the joints was fresh. A pishacha crouched on the skull, gnawing a foreleg; as she watched, it tossed a hoof at a snake that slithered too close.

  Returning to the trail they’d traveled more recently, Malena’s eyes climbed until they hit a cluster of figures mounted on suvars. The lead boar had its snout to the ground, snuffling intently. The pishachas did not look at one another, and their eyes blinked without seeing, but they seemed to call back and forth, and their heads swiveled as they reacted to one another’s sounds.

  Toril had seen this unfolding for hours?

  The span between humans and pishachas was difficult to judge; Malena perceived with a detail that normal eyesight would never have supplied. Everything looked close. As she watched, the pig raised its head and began moving—trotting—toward them.

  Malena inhaled sharply.

  “They’re coming,” she said.

  “You see?” Toril said, an ironic relief flooding his voice.

  “I see nothing,” Shivi said. Malena observed her eyes darting blindly.

  “Same,” said Oji and Paka, together.

  “I see the pishachas,” Malena said. “They’re tracking us by smell. And they are close. Maybe a quarter of an hour behind.”

  Shivi lifted a hand to her mouth.

  “Fight? Or hide?” Oji said.

  “Neither,” said Toril. “We run.”

  “Run where?” Malena said. “Our legs barely work.”

  Toril pointed over Malena’s shoulder.

  She turned, and sucked in her breath all over again. The land behind her grew steeper; what had been a gradual rise became a slope, then layers of rock and shale, and then a bluff. Mist billowed at its lip, but seemed to cease at the border.

  “We’re close,” she choked out. “I see sky.”

  “Where?” Oji asked. “How close?”

  “Few hundred paces, I’d say. But we have to climb.”

  “I wasn’t kiddin’ about the need to rest,” Paka said. “I don’t think I have a hundred paces in me, especially uphill. Even if my life depends on it.”

  “Climb on my back,” Toril said. “Malena is going to lead us.”

  They hurried.

  As the steepness grew, gravel gave way to loose talus, and footing became unreliable. Now blind, Toril blundered under his burden, smashing shins and knees against jagged boulders, a
nd once half-dropping Paka.

  Shivi limped badly.

  First they leaned, then began using hands to steady themselves. Then they climbed.

  Malena still had little energy, but she’d recovered enough to press ahead, suppressing soreness and fatigue. With the staff in hand, she saw clearly. However, she found that her own footsteps weren’t adequate guidance for those who followed. They still moved through blackness. She was forced to divide her attention between pathfinding, ahead, and instructions to those who followed. “Come left, Shivi,” she’d say. “Oji, stretch a little farther; there’s a place to grab just above your hand.”

  The ascent was agonizing.

  Always when she looked back, she saw the pishachas, narrowing the gap between them. Her heartbeat crescendoed.

  They were halfway up, perhaps, when grunts and shrieks reached their ears, and they heard scrabbling almost straight below. Their pursuers had covered the final hundred paces in a sprint; looking down, Malena saw pishachas dismounting, preparing to scale.

  Toril was panting too heavily to react. His head hung low, his back bent almost double. Paka held his shoulders in a death grip, eyes wide.

  Oji cursed softly.

  “Hold still,” Malena said. “Shivi, pull in a little closer to Paka.” When the older woman was out of the way, Malena crept back along the shelf they all shared, found a safe position, and pried with the staff. For a long moment, she feared she’d selected the wrong boulder—but then a chunk of rock nearly her own height cracked away from the face of the cliff and plunged, shattering and gathering a cascade of smaller debris as it fell.

  Screams sounded, then a few odd squeals and a high whine that faded into silence.

  Rocks clattered.

  “Killed a few,” Malena said, grimly. “But not enough, I think. They’re regrouping.”

  “How far?” Toril gasped.

  “We’re closer to the top than the bottom,” Malena said. “I hope.”

  Toril groaned.

  “There’s a crack that runs almost vertical, just ahead,” she added. “If we brace our backs, we might be able to go straight up. Looks like it runs all the way to the top.”

  “I might manage that with one good leg,” Paka said. “Let me off.” Malena heard strings twang, hollow wood bang lightly. “I won’t be bringing my music any further, I think.” He sounded sadder than she had ever heard him.

  They began wedging their way up the chimney. Malena went first, calling down instructions to the others. Blindness was less of a handicap; safety depended on friction more than on balance or perfect placement of hands and feet.

  In short order, even Toril, at the bottom, was higher by the height of a dozen men. Sounds of pursuit concentrated at the foot of the crack; apparently, it was too wide for the pishachas to emulate the humans’ climbing technique. She heard a splinter and vibration as the sitar smashed.

  “Is that daylight?” Shivi gasped, looking upward.

  Bitterness welled in Malena. She had hit a dead end. The top was almost within reach—she saw a lip that, on flat ground, she might have touched on tip-toe. But there was nothing more to brace against; the chimney widened into smooth rock with no obvious handholds.

  The pishachas will have their meal after all, she thought.

  “I can’t,” she called, her voice breaking. “The last little bit…”

  For a long moment, only ragged breathing, Malena’s muted whimpers, and clatters and howls far below, broke the mist.

  Then Oji spoke.

  “Drop one end of the staff to me,” he said. “I’ll climb. Stay put, and brace well.”

  Malena complied. She felt the staff grow heavy, and gritted her teeth as it jerked. Her arms ached. A small hand grabbed her wrist, then her ankle. It slipped, grabbed again. She felt weight on her shins. The staff grew light.

  Oji gasped for a few moments. Malena gritted teeth at the discomfort from him kneeling on her leg.

  “Now raise the staff and brace it somewhere.”

  Somehow, she jammed the staff inside her hip and held it, tolerating its dig, while Oji shinnied up. At the top, he flailed for a moment, then flung himself forward, fish-tailed, and disappeared.

  She closed her eyes. So, so weary. At least one of them would survive.

  Her legs were beginning to tremble. How long could she hold out before she fell?

  Breathe in. Breathe out.

  A golden head—a beautiful head—popped back over the edge. She realized that she was seeing now without the aid of the staff. A momentary rent in the mist revealed streaming sunlight; even after the gray closed back, shapes were visible.

  “Now Shivi,” he said. “She’s next lightest. If you can anchor her, there’ll be two of us to pull you up.”

  Could she do this?

  She remembered that she had to. Tupa was depending on her. The other children, too.

  Once more she dangled the staff, praying that she had enough strength in her arms and hands to sustain the weight. Shivi was much less agile than Oji, but she seemed to get a boost from below; soon she was crouching in Malena’s lap. Instead of climbing the staff, she lifted it to Oji, who pulled her up easily. The two of them then hauled Malena, clinging to the staff, over the edge. Malena flopped face-down onto stone, knuckles bleeding, chest and belly raw, and sobbed.

  She saw daylight. Silica glinted in the stone at her cheek.

  She was out of the mist.

  A hand fell on her shoulder.

  “We’re not done. It will take all to lift Paka.”

  In a trance of adrenaline, she watched Oji lay down at the edge, fog surging around him, and extend the staff. She felt his ankles in her hands, felt her heart thunder, watched herself heaving beside Shivi. An old man’s head rose.

  She saw Paka take off a belt, wrap a wrist around one end, and hand the other end to her. She felt her shoulders and thighs bunch, felt Shivi’s bony fingers around her waist. The two men knelt at the edge, backs straining. An arm appeared, slapped, dug nails into a crack. Toril threw himself forward, slipped, slid away. The belt in her hands jerked…

  Stretched…

  Held.

  Toril emerged from the mist once again, face contorted.

  He teetered for a moment that seemed to last an hour, then slithered forward and collapsed at her feet, utterly exhausted.

  She fell to her knees, pressed forehead to his shoulder, and wept.

  46

  Lin's seedling ~ Toril

  The first thing Toril noticed, when his heartbeat slowed and his lungs no longer shrieked for air, was the breeze—specifically, its temperature. In the depths of the Rift, his face and throat had flushed with heat, and thirst had driven him nearly mad. The sensation of baking, both outside and in, had built hour by hour.

  Now a delicious breath of cool tickled rivulets of sweat on the nape of his neck, slid across burning forehead and between parched lips, and soothed his lungs.

  He felt… Alive? Calm.

  Next he heard the quiet.

  There were no ghostly wails.

  No echoes from malicious denizens of the mist, animated by blood lust.

  No confusing tricks of the ear.

  It wasn’t dead silence, but rather a sort of soft, peaceful texture of sound. Was that rustling leaves? He thought he could just make out the burble and chuckle of running water.

  He raised his head and blinked.

  Sunlight struck his face.

  Malena rocked back. Too late, he appreciated her proximity, missed the delicate pressure of her fingertips on his back.

  She brushed a tear off one cheek and smiled.

  Toril smiled back.

  Feet slapped stone.

  Oji trotted up, a dripping waterskin in both hands. He offered it to Shivi first. The old woman closed her eyes in relief as liquid hit her lips. Then Paka’s beard bobbed. Malena sighed when her turn came, holding wet palms on her throat as she finished.

  Toril half expected the water to be warm and cl
ouded by salt; with the vision of the staff he’d seen plenty of boiling cauldrons and mineral-crusted sinkholes while they traversed the waste. As thirst grew critical, he’d debated stopping, wondering if a noxious drink would be better than nothing. Now he was certain he’d risk it.

  However, this water was pure, sweet, and cold. He had never tasted anything so exquisite. Toril gulped until the skin grew flaccid in his hands and his stomach gurgled.

  “I will be in your debt forever for that drink,” he whispered to Oji. Unexpectedly, his eyes began to brim. “We all will. It was a taste of heaven.”

  Oji clapped his shoulder. “Remember how I shivered when you killed a cat and free-cut me? Remember the cloak you offered? That was my heaven.” He opened his mouth to say more, then shrugged and laughed instead.

  Looking over Oji’s shoulder, Toril took in his surroundings for the first time. The stone they’d climbed fringed a gentle, grass-covered rise; the rill that had slaked their thirst glinted through vermillion poppies. It was achingly beautiful—but Toril confirmed what he’d seen before with the staff—they had not reached the edge of the Rift. They were on an island of sorts; their circle of sunshine appeared to end in billowing haze within a short walk in every direction.

  The central fact of their new location was not the hill, however. Nor was it the mist that groped its borders and meant their reprieve was only temporary, nor even the spring that would have riveted Toril’s attention moments before.

  At the apex of the hill stood a solitary oak tree; once he lifted his gaze, he had eyes for nothing else.

  It was enormous—majestic, hale, and symmetrical—and the most magical, yet the most exultantly alive and natural thing he had ever seen. Morning sun made its leaves shimmer in green and gold; the poppies seemed pale and washed-out by comparison. The trunk, covered with moss, stretched more than twice as wide as Toril’s staff at its base; its branches, thick as a man’s height, swept out to a crown so broad and high that it dwarfed both the clearing and the walls of mist.

  Toril’s heart leapt when he saw it.

  Here was something that did not shrink from the darkness.

  Here was a refuge no pishacha could infringe or destroy.