Fall; or, Dodge in Hell

by Neal Stephenson

  She knew he could do it, too. He would not even need to put her in chains. The Autochthons, once they had got into your mind, had no need of such crude restraints. The only way to be free of Elshield’s power was for him to cease existing.

  She wished he were dead.

  His black cloak, empty, collapsed into a heap on the pavement. The steel hilt of his sword clattered on stone as it slid half out of its scabbard. Elshield was gone. Gone from the quay and gone from her mind.

  Above she heard Sooth give out a shriek. Other than that, the whole place was silent for a few moments. Then it erupted into a welter of voices, mostly in the crude simple version of Townish spoken by Beedles. They all wished to know where Delegate Elshield was. Very few had seen him cease to exist, and so all they knew was that he was nowhere to be seen and that his clothes and weapon lay on the quay as if he had discarded them.

  The only possible explanation seemed to be that he had disrobed and jumped into the water in an effort to rescue Brindle, and so a lot of Beedles who had only just climbed out from trying to rescue Prim now jumped back in again. All was wildly confused.

  It wasn’t merely that no one knew what had happened. The removal of Elshield’s mind from the top of the chain of command had left not only the Beedles but the Autochthons uncertain as to what they should do.

  Prim, enjoying now the luxury of being completely ignored, became conscious of the fact that from the waist down she was naked except for a pair of dripping-wet drawers, and from there up only had a thin white bodice that was soaked through. Elshield’s long black cloak looked comfortable and warm, and no one was using it. She bent down, picked it up by its collar, and twirled it around herself. The sword and strap tumbled loose. It couldn’t hurt to have such a thing, and Brindle had given her a few lessons in what to do with a sword, so she picked it up and got the whole rig arranged over her shoulder. It dangled much too low on her thigh, but she could adjust it later.

  She did not for one moment, though, imagine that swordplay had been what Brindle had meant, a few minutes ago, when he had said she would find it within herself to fight her way out. No, he’d known from the beginning that she was different. Her whole life, he’d lied to her to protect her from the burden of knowing what she was.

  The Beedle to whom Elshield had handed the black mount’s reins was just standing there like a flesh-and-blood hitching post, doing his duty as chaos swirled around him. He, at least, had clear orders: hold the horse. He watched her approach. Elshield’s cloak was much too long for Prim, so its skirt dragged behind her as she walked. Scurrying Beedles kept stepping on it. In spite of which she presently drew to within arm’s length of the mount. She reached out and grasped the reins, above where the Beedle was holding them.

  “Let go,” she commanded.

  “My lord Elshield ordered not let go,” the Beedle answered. Eyeing Prim warily, he transferred the reins to his weak left hand so that his strong right hand could find the pommel of a long knife in his belt.

  For the third time in her life, Prim wished someone dead, and no sooner did the thought form in her mind than the Beedle ceased to exist. She stooped to pick up his knife, which looked more wieldy than Elshield’s sword. Then she put her bare foot in the stirrup and mounted up into the saddle. No one seemed to notice or care save Sooth, who had been seeing all of this from the top of the wall above. “After her! After her!” Sooth screeched as Prim kicked the mount up to a canter.

  The gate leading from the quay into the city was wide open. She rode through, turned south on the main street, and made the mount gallop. Behind her she could hear hooves on paving stones and knew that some Autochthons were in pursuit.

  Navigation, at least, was simple. There was the one street and it ran direct to the south gate. The one she was supposed to have passed through yesterday, when all had been so different.

  As she galloped toward it she saw it being swung closed by a Beedle, who then shoved a massive iron bolt into position to hold it closed. Seeing this, the mount had the good sense to slacken its pace, and came to a stop in the courtyard just on the near side of the gatehouse.

  It was there that a squad of four Autochthons caught up with her. They spread out as they entered the yard, surrounding her but maintaining a respectful distance.

  “Princess Prim,” said the one who was evidently their leader. He certainly looked it. Yet his aquiline good looks were a little discomposed by the strangeness of addressing a barbarian princess who had, somehow, impossibly and unaccountably, stolen the cloak, sword, and mount of the high lord delegate of Secondel. “Dismount, please, and place those weapons on the ground.”

  “No,” she said. “Listen. I have just now become aware of certain peculiarities as to who I am that place you all in grave danger. Get away.”

  “That’s enough of that kind of talk!” exclaimed the Autochthon on her right. His mount moved toward her until it noticed that it was suddenly riderless.

  She heard the creak of a bow from atop the gatehouse and looked up to see a Beedle archer pulling an arrow to half draw, still aimed at the ground, gazing at the head Autochthon for orders. Then he ceased to exist. The arrow flew wild and stuck in the ground. The bow clattered down the wall and bounced in the dust of the courtyard.

  Prim wheeled her mount and made it walk toward the Beedle who had, a minute ago, shot the bolt. He was still standing there, watching her come on.

  She didn’t really know the speech of Beedles and so she made it as simple as she could:

  “I am Death,” she said. “Now, which one of us is going to open the gate?”

  Part 11

  50

  While we have this all-too-rare opportunity for a private chat,” said Primula—or, in the language of these parts, Daisy—to the giant talking raven perched above her on Firkin’s boom, “I thought I might make a few remarks about your management of the Quest thus far.”

  Corvus shook himself all over. “Have at it,” he said, with an affected carelessness. “Just don’t get so worked up that you wish me dead.”

  Prim glanced over to the shore of the Bit off which Firkin lay at anchor. Mard and Lyne and the three crewmates of Robst were there, gathering fresh water from a stream and poking around in the mud for edible crustaceans. They were out of earshot. Robst was at the other end of the boat. He was half-deaf. Prim had not shared with them some of the stranger and more surprising particulars about the day she had spent in Secondel; the news that Brindle was dead seemed like quite enough for them to take in. But Corvus obviously knew, and had known all along. “Why can’t it work in reverse?” she asked, just thinking out loud. “Why can’t I bring Brindle back, by wishing he had not passed on? Because I do so wish it.”

  “Destroying is just easier than creating,” said Corvus, “and that’s that. They say it took Spring an eon to summon the power to bring a bug to life.”

  “I feel that if you had not hid from me certain facts, things might have come out differently in Secondel.”

  “Some would say the facts were plain enough and you were blind to them,” said Corvus. “That Brindle was a king, and you a princess, ought to have been somewhat obvious.”

  “You never think of yourself that way.”

  “Spoken like a true princess.”

  “And of course I knew that the matter of my parentage was a bit muddled. But still!”

  “Come on,” said Corvus, twitching a wing irritably, “was there ever a girl who was a girl for as long as you were? I’ll bet that gnarled apple tree outside your window was a sapling when you moved in.”

  “I planted it,” Prim said. “But living, as I did, a sheltered life, I thought all of that was normal.”

  “You were sheltered for a reason.”

  “And would you care to share that reason with me?”

  “It’s a bit obvious now, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, but how did I come to be on Calla, behind the Eternal Veil, being raised as an ordinary girl?”

  “An
ordinary princess, you mean? I haven’t the faintest idea! No doubt if we could communicate with the other plane of existence from which we all seem to have originated, we could get an answer straightaway. As it is, we can only speculate. Your speculations are probably as good as mine, Princess, now that you have seen El’s cathedral at Secondeltown and killed a high lord of the Autochthons with your brain and made off with his sword and his horse.” He glanced at the former. Prim had taken it out of its sheath to rub oil on the blade, lest salt air rust it. The mount they’d been forced to abandon on the shore, since Firkin could not accommodate large beasts. “Whether by dumb luck or perhaps by some volition hidden from the likes of you and me, you have managed to live a long, quiet, and blessedly uneventful life in an out-of-the-way Bit, shrouded by an Eternal Veil, until recently. It was not until you came into womanhood, embarked—willingly I might just point out—on a Quest, passed out of that Veil, and set foot on the Land that all hell broke loose.”

  “Now, that is the part I wish to speak to you about,” Prim said. “When we parted ways from Edda and the others in Cloven, you abandoned us.”

  “I had to abandon someone. That’s the thing about parting ways.”

  “Why us? You must have known the dangers of Secondel. We could have used your help.”

  “Both of you. I abandoned both groups, you see. Edda and Burr and Weaver are just as vexed as you are.”

  “How could they be? Brindle is dead!”

  “His decision to pass on surprised me, I’ll grant you that. Had he decided otherwise, we’d have rescued him. Difficult. But well within the scope of a Quest.”

  “It goes to show how desperate he believed the situation to be. All because of a lack of information—which you could have supplied, had you been there!”

  “I have so much less information than you seem to believe,” said Corvus, “and when I am not with you, helpfully imparting such information as I do have, I am flying into the dodgiest situations you can imagine trying to get more. To the Island of Wild Souls I have lately been, arguing with tornadoes and temblors incarnate, and the Last Bit, and decidedly unwholesome parts of the Bewilderment, and I have even made an attempt to fly into the Evertempest: the perpetual storm that squats over the Knot. But it turns out I’m no Freewander. I cannot get anywhere near that thing.”

  “Hmph. Well then,” said Prim, looking again at Mard and Lyne, who were pushing Firkin’s dinghy out into the channel, headed back to Firkin along with the rest of the crew. “All I can do is take you at your word. Do you think they suspect anything?”

  “You mean, do they suspect that their traveling companion is a disguised member of Egdod’s Pantheon who can kill anyone by wishing them dead? I doubt it; but if you notice young Mardellian Bufrect treating you even more courteously than he does already . . .”

  Prim blushed, and tried to hide it with a grin. “Maybe that’s why?”

  “Just maybe.” And Corvus took to the air with a cackling squawk that might have been a laugh. He playfully dive-bombed Robst, who was at the other end of the boat mending a sail, and beat up into the air to have a look round.

  Prim, wishing she could see what he saw, summoned forth a memory of the map. They were at the place where the First Shiver forked into two equal branches that both ran to the ocean. The one to the left ran southwest to Toravithranax-by-the-Sea. The other ran northwest and was less frequented. Between them lay the spearhead-shaped island named the Burning Bit, so called because, seen from the high places of Toravithranax, it gave off an orange glow by night and reddened the sun with its smoke by day. Venturing around to its seaward edge would be too hazardous for little Firkin, but if they went down the inland fork to a certain place, they could hike up across a narrow part of the Bit and scout around on its west side, which was not a single coherent coast but an ever-ramifying web of steaming Shivers “cast into the sea,” Edda had told her, pulling silver silk through the map, “like a fisherman’s net.”

  That westerly wind prevailed for another day, but thenceforth it bore smoke, strange mineral odors, and even tiny flecks of grit that speckled Firkin’s canvas and crunched beneath their feet on the deck planks. Trimming his sails to it, Robst made good time up the inland coast of the Burner, as he called it. In due course they eased into a sort of dimple in that coast, not really profound enough to be called a proper bay, but enough to give them some shelter. They made camp on the beach in the shadow of a sharp ridge that ran up the spine of the Burner, and built a fire that they used to smoke some fish and oysters that they had collected over the last couple of days. Victualed with that and with some berries and greens gathered along the water’s edge, Mard and Lyne and Prim set out early the next morning, seeking the least difficult path over the island’s crest. In that they were aided by Corvus, who did not abandon them this time. The bird didn’t completely understand the travails of ground-pounders and so they could not always trust his judgment, but he did at least warn them off from a few turnings that would have taken them to dead ends. And in the most disheartening moments of the journey it was a comfort to see him soaring overhead and know that, at the very least, they had not got lost.

  The Newest Shiver cracked this Bit in twain down toward its southern end. If they followed the coast south, they would find it running directly across their path—they couldn’t miss it if they tried. So that is what they did once they had crested the island’s spine and gone down to the edge of the sea.

  To their right was a drop-off that betokened a very long final few moments for anyone who went over it. Far out to sea were sails of large vessels, showing due respect for the danger posed by the cliffs and the sentinel rocks that stood off from them. Strewn along a thin ribbon of beach far below were wracks of ships that had got it wrong. But when they prudently drew back from the precipice and lifted their gaze to the country ahead, they saw a wall of steam piling up from the ground and blocking their view south. It was pearly white. Silhouetted against it, sometimes standing out crisply and sometimes shrouded in the murk, was a hut that had been built apparently on the very limit of the Last Bit where it gave way to the glowing gorge of the Newest Shiver. Not far from it, from time to time, they could make out the silhouette of a man, pacing back and forth—not in the style of one who was actually tending to any particular business, but more like one lost in thought, or trying to find his hat (it was on his head).

  As they drew closer—which did not happen quickly, since the ground near the gorge was broken, upheaved, and punishingly sharp—they saw a somewhat smaller figure who seemed to be trying to keep pace with the first one’s restless movements. The big one loped across tilted slabs and leapt between them. The small one moved in a style that it was not unfair to describe as scurrying. Some kind of discourse was taking place between them, the big one pointing at things with an elaborate walking stick and the smaller one looking where he pointed, then writing things down on a tablet. The former had eyes only for the evidently hot and fascinating goings-on down below, but the latter occasionally had moments of leisure while the former stroked his beard or held the stick up to his face. It was during one such moment that she—for by now the visitors had drawn near enough to discern that, notwithstanding a short haircut and boyish clothes, the small one was female—noticed Prim and Mard and Lyne picking their way up the rampart of shrugged-off shards that had accumulated near the brink of this new Shiver. She had seated herself on a slab edge so that she could write on her lap, but now reached up and tugged at the hem of this big one’s garment. This was long, and if its purpose was to protect the wearer from flying sparks and cinders, then it had put in long service and perhaps saved his life. He turned around to face them and repeated the queer gesture of holding the head of his stick up to his face.

  “Querc,” he said, “it would seem we have visitors.”

  Querc’s response was to glance up. She pointed into the sky, and Prim, following the gesture, saw Corvus wheeling high above, out of range of the glowing rocks that occasion
ally launched from the gorge. “I told you that was no ordinary crow, Pick!”

  “And I pointed out that that much was obvious!”

  Querc was already shuffling through loose pages in a sort of wallet slung over her shoulder. “My notes will show that I predicted the giant crow betokened other visitors to come.”

  “Then don’t bother digging them out,” Pick said wearily. “They’re never wrong; and if they were, I’d have no way of proving it, since my opinion would be contradicted by your bloody notes.”

  By now the visitors had drawn to within a few yards, near enough that ordinary persons might have greeted them and ventured some remarks in a conversational vein. But Pick and Querc were not ordinary persons. Prim decided to make the first foray. “Hail, denizens of the Last Bit!” she said. “We have come from faraway Calla to gaze upon the far-famed Last Shiver.”

  “It’s twenty miles long,” said Pick, and then glanced at Querc as if worried she might pull a sheet from her wallet and contradict him. But she was silent, allowing him to go on: “But you just happened to come directly to us. No, it’s us you want to see, and not the Newest Shiver.”

  Prim had no comeback. Querc scrambled to her feet and said, “But as long as you have come so far, you might as well have a look anyway!” She extended an arm toward the brink, only a long pace away from her.

  Much in the postures of Mard and Lyne suggested that they were aware that a sweep of Pick’s stick would knock them over the edge. He was a big man, and in no way pleased to see them. But the thing in his hand seemed too elaborate and contraption-like to serve as a weapon. Its foot was shod in steel, forged in the shape of a paw with extended claws. Those were worn almost to nubs, and when Prim saw how he planted it on the rock to steady himself, she understood why. At the other end, where a cane might have had a knob or a curved handle, this thing had a sharp pick, forged in the shape of a bird’s beak, and it too had been worn down from hard use. The head of the bird sported glass eyes, through which light shone. From that and from Pick’s habit of holding it up to his face, she guessed it was a spyglass. Somewhat emboldened, she stepped past Querc and then dropped to one knee, then both knees as she neared the edge. Not to be outdone, Mard dropped into a similar attitude next to her. Prim had imagined a glowing river of lava flowing to the sea, for she had read of such things in books—at least one of which, come to think of it, mentioned this Pick chap by name. But if any such thing existed at the bottom of this gorge, it was obscured by steam and only hinted at by a lambent glow.