Fall; or, Dodge in Hell

by Neal Stephenson

  Things in the rear became noisy for a time as Harrier’s marines apparently carried many rocks up and rolled them over the brink to kill anyone they supposed to be clinging to the face of the crack below them.

  They collected as close together as they could and pressed themselves against the face of the stone, extinguished or hid their lights, and waited. They could hear dimly the Beedles talking far above, and they could distinctly hear boulders rolling and bounding down the slope, picking up terrific velocity before hurtling by. Some seemed to approach directly, as if they would score a direct hit, but those caromed from some kind of overhanging brow that apparently jutted from the cliff directly above them. This held, and made the stones leap far out into the darkness. Prim did not for a moment suppose that it was a natural feature. Pick had prepared it as a refuge. They used it as such until hours had passed since the last hint of light, sound, or falling rocks from above. Then they risked making some noise and lighting some candles.

  They moved on into the night for many hours, using the ledge-and-rope scheme. Erasing the ledge behind them apparently required some effort on Pick’s part, and so after it seemed they’d put a safe distance between themselves and the Beedles, he gave up on that and just left it there.

  So they were going now toward the interior of the Asking, both in the sense of getting farther from the coast and, as gradually became impossible to ignore, in the sense of getting deeper belowground. Their movement seemed mostly on the level, but the mountains were ramping higher and higher above them as they moved away from the coast.

  Which raised the question of what, if anything, might be coming up from below to meet them. They knew that the fault had not been equipped with a bottom; that once you descended, or fell, beyond a certain depth you entered into the nothingness of chaos. But where was that depth? Was chaos like water, which had everywhere a constant level?

  That topic of water was much on Prim’s mind, and she knew the others had to be thinking of it as well. They had only brought so much of it with them, and none was to be had on the surface of the Asking. So the only way in which this journey could not lead to their all dying of thirst was if Pick was leading them toward some subterranean spring.

  Prim began imagining a hidden cavern, deep belowground, whose floor was a lake of delicious fresh water, gathered slowly over thousands of years. She wanted it so badly she could smell it. More than that, she could feel its humidity in her nostrils, which had become so accustomed to dry air. And she could hear the teeming of the water—like waves brushing a shore, or rain falling on a lake—condensation, perhaps, dripping down from the cavern’s roof? And some kind of faint luminescence emanating from the water itself?

  “I see light,” Corvus said. “Put out the candle!”

  Querc, ahead of them, was carrying it in a lantern. She did not snuff it out but closed the lantern’s shutter to make nearly perfect darkness. They rested in silence for a time. Pick let out a long sigh. He must have needed rest more badly than any of them. Prim had no idea how Lithoplasty worked but it obviously required effort.

  As their eyes got used to the darkness, there was no question but that they were seeing something. But it was diffuse and indistinct, and as usual, opinions varied.

  “It is the light of day, far above us,” opined Lyne.

  “It can’t be day yet,” Mard objected.

  “Time is tricky down here.”

  “There is no light. It is a trick of the mind,” said Fern.

  “I’m inclined to agree,” said Prim, “since a minute ago my mind was tricking me into dreaming of a lake where waters glowed faintly in a dark cavern.”

  “That was not just a dream,” said Fern, “there is no question I have smelled fresh water. Not all the time. Whiffs of it here and there.”

  Prim was becoming concerned about Corvus. He had never spent so long in his human form. He had spoken many times of how much he disliked being in confined spaces. He did not like being in the dark or unable to see for a distance. He had now been suffering all of those for a long while. In quiet tones that only Prim could hear, he kept insisting that he saw a light ahead of them—either showing them the way or beguiling them into a trap. She was more and more certain that Corvus was not in his right mind. But she kept smelling lake water where quite obviously it was not possible for a lake to exist, so who was she to judge?

  All of these considerations became moot when they traversed round a bend and came in view of an expanse of frank open chaos that after those hours in total darkness seemed as big and bright to them as the night sky above the desert, and as loud as a waterfall. But it was more brilliant and more lively than the dim and almost imperceptible stuff that Pick had kept in his adamant drawer. Light shone from this, or rather shone through it, here and there at different times. It would flare in one place and draw their gaze, and it would seem for a moment that they could almost perceive forms in it. Then the light would flee as if it knew it was being looked at. At all times this was happening not only in one place but in several, more often than not in the corner of one’s eye.

  “There is a floor beneath it!” Pick affirmed. In the patches of light beaming out of the chaos they could see him wading out away from the wall of the fault. “Pluto caused it to be here, for this place was important to him and he passed through it often.”

  “Passed . . . through it?” Lyne asked. He was cautiously following Querc, who was following Pick. The rest of the party did likewise. Prim understood how the conception had entered her mind of a luminescent, hissing lake in the darkness. The chaos was below as well as above them, so it was as if they were wading into a pool whose bottom could not be seen, but only felt by groping with the feet.

  “There she is! Showing us the way!” Corvus exclaimed.

  “She?” Prim asked. She had become distracted by a distinct whiff of pine forest.

  “The light that moves!” Corvus said. His voice was changing midsentence—less human, more birdlike.

  “Does anyone smell wood smoke?” Mard asked.

  Corvus was now a giant talking raven again. Which seemed most impractical. “You don’t understand,” he said. “To get out of here we must have a guide star!”

  Prim was now pretty sure she saw what he was seeing—and it was no star. It was indistinct, but female, with wings.

  “Get me a rope end!” Corvus commanded. “And hold on for dear life!”

  As it happened, ropes were practically the only thing they had left. Mard heaved a coil off of his shoulder, groped for its end, and held it up. Corvus snatched it in one talon as he flew by, then veered off in pursuit of the glowing will-o’-the-wisp. “Hurry! And stay together! All hands on the rope no matter what!”

  As it turned out, the only one of those commands that Prim, for her part, was able to obey was the last. Keeping both hands on the rope was the only thing she could hold in her head during what came next. The notion of hurry meant nothing when time and distance had ceased to make sense, which became the case immediately when she tried to go where Corvus had gone. Staying together meant nothing at all. Not only did she not know where the others were, she did not even remember their names. All became pure chaos more than once. Sometimes there was nothing at all save the rope in her hand, and she had no way of guessing whether those times might have spanned centuries or mere heartbeats.

  The first clear and steady sensation that came to her senses was that smell of lake water she’d caught whiffs of earlier. That, and the rope still in her hand. Light obtruded itself next, and it was steady light always in the same place. Hard ground was then under her feet. This had a natural unevenness, unlike the flat ledge made by Pick. Dark shapes interrupted the light: the silhouettes of a person and of a large bird.

  All of those became constant enough that she was fairly certain of walking along a cave, headed toward its exit—which was the source of the light. And of the fragrance: the sharp scents of pine trees and burning wood, underlain by the heavier and more subtle aroma o
f lake water and of something that powerfully brought her in mind of Calla: leaves that had but lately fallen from trees and were lying damp and red on the earth.

  All that surrounded her had now grown solid and real. There was no trace of chaos save the fog that was still beclouding her mind. But some of that was simple confusion as to where she was. The stony ground had many small ups and downs, but on the whole it ran gently downhill.

  The cave broadened as they went along. The light that blazed into its entrance was as bright as the midday sun on the Asking, but far more inconstant; one moment it would shine directly into their faces, forcing them to fling up hands or arms to shield their eyes, the next it would be a darkness like the one they had just emerged from—yet with rays and glints stabbing and hurtling out of its midst. Prim noticed that the rope had gone limp in her hand. In a moment when a beam of light swept across the cavern’s floor, she saw it lying on the ground. Pick had dropped it. He had slowed. The others had piled up behind him and formed a crowd. Their silhouettes fractured the unruly light. They had stopped some yards short of the cave’s mouth. Beyond it, Prim could see between the others’ legs a flat wrinkled surface that glittered when light flashed upon it. Recent events caused her to think at first that it might be another pool of chaos, but then the sun seemed to come out for a moment. Stepping into a space between Mard and Querc she got her first good look at what lay beyond the mouth of the cave and understood with perfect clarity that it was a lake. Its near shore washed the floor of this cave directly before them.

  In the middle distance, a bow-shot away, a sandbar extended across the water from their left, evidently connecting an unseen part of the lakeshore to a rocky islet that rose out of the water to a height of a few yards. It supported a few mature trees whose seeds had been carried to it by birds or wind. One of them was fully engulfed in flame. Another had been snapped off at about the height of a man’s shoulder; its upper part, still attached to the shattered stump by tortured splinters as thick as a man’s arm, was bent over and down into the water.

  The light of the burning tree was weak and pale by comparison with what shone nearby. The sky beyond and above was dark, with stars visible here and there, and a faint pink glow off to their right; the dawn was coming.

  She heard the din of clashing arms, and a shout. A radiant bolt swung round, leaving a meteor trail across her vision, and veered downward, only to be stopped in its course by a darker obstacle that somehow withstood the impact and whipped away from the collision as if it had drawn power from it and was now pursuing intentions of its own. The light was eclipsed for a time by a silhouette; this had arms and legs like an ordinary soul, but it also had wings.

  Pick’s reason for going no farther was clear enough now; they had stumbled upon a fight, and at least one of the combatants was an angel. The prudent course was to stay well back. Prim shouldered past him, though, and strode on. She could hear, between clashes of weapons, Mard calling to her, but she paid him no heed. Her view of things improved as she neared the cave’s mouth and she saw that the angel’s opponent was Burr. He was armed not with a sword but with a long spear, which he whirled about him to block the angel’s attacks; when an opportunity presented itself he would seek to punch the angel with the spear’s heavy iron butt or slash with its sharp head.

  She came full out on the lakeshore and felt the cold water soaking her boots. To her right a formation of gray stone ramped up to terminate one side of the lake in a sheer cliff. More caves were in it. To her left the stone gave way to a flat beach that not far away curved back to make the sandbar. Prim went that way, striding across the sand at first and then breaking into a run as the grunts and cries of Burr made her fear that he could not much longer hold out against the angel’s onslaughts.

  Before she could get onto the sandbar, though, she drew up short in the face of a new kind of soul who had darted in to block her way. This gave off light too, though nothing like the radiance of the angel’s sword. The whole creature stood about a foot high, though she would have stood a few inches higher had her legs not terminated as stumps below the knees. What she lacked in that way she more than made up for with a set of wings that she used to dart and flicker through the air with far greater skill than Corvus could ever seem to manage. This was, in other words, the soul that had found them in the dark fault beneath the Asking and showed them the way here—wherever here might be. “Do not,” she implored Prim. “Do not exercise that power that is yours, here and now, for then El will know that you have entered into the Land, and his bright angels will descend upon us in their thousands.”

  Part of Prim wanted to ask what was the point of owning such a power if it was never to be used, but she was distracted, now that she was standing still, by a curious sensation transmitted into the soles of her feet from the ground.

  In a way it was but a faint reverberation, and yet it came over and over again, with quickening pace, and the fact that it was shaking the ground itself bespoke some great power behind it. The fight on the islet had bated for a few moments as the combatants, drawn apart to a safe distance, caught their breath. The angel’s sword was making a fiery road across the lake between him and Prim, as when the sun sets across a great water. Within it she could see ripples that coincided with the thuds she felt in her legs.

  The sprite lacked that connection to the ground and so was slower to sense it. Perhaps she was now alerted by those ripples, or by the snapping of thick branches that could be heard in the forest spreading away from the shore of the lake. She beat her wings several times and shot directly upward to a great height as if to survey the area, then dove toward the forest. She pulled up before getting involved in the trees and veered back toward the place where the sandbar was rooted to the beach. Her light grew brighter. Prim got the idea that she was both lighting the way and acting as a guide star for whatever was coming through the woods and shaking the ground with those heavy footfalls.

  A sudden shifting of the light told her that the angel had brandished his sword. Turning to look at the islet, Prim saw that the angel had risen from kneeling and partly unfurled his wings. He had felt what Prim had felt and was looking toward the shore of the lake.

  A small tree fell over near the shore; this was clearly visible in the illumination cast by the sprite.

  A moment later Edda emerged from the woods. She was not quite running, but striding briskly, and each footfall shook the ground and discomposed the water. She crossed the beach in a few strides and started walking up the sandbar toward the islet.

  Prim, for her part, had been expecting something like a hill-giant, or at least one of the enormous wild beasts with which Spring had populated the forests of the north. That it was Edda made sense to her, of course; but she could not help looking at the angel to see his reaction. Did it make sense to him? Did angels know about giantesses and wild souls and talking ravens and sprites? Were they taught about such things in some kind of angel academy? Were they omniscient? Or did El prevent them from knowing about such prodigies, so as to better control them?

  Halfway along the sandbar, a young tree got in Edda’s way. She put her shoulder into it and it went down. Its entire root ball emerged from the loose ground and she kicked it into the lake. This did not go unwatched by the angel, who now spread his wings wider and bent his knees, preparing to spring into the air.

  Burr had other plans. With a great swing of his spear he severed the angel’s right wing from his shoulder. It fell to the ground gushing aura. A moment later the other joined it.

  Staggered and unbalanced by the loss of those appendages, the angel was barely able to raise his sword by the time Edda strode onto the islet. In spite of the fact that there was a foe to his side who had just inflicted grievous damage upon him, the angel chose to face, and to brandish his sword at, the unarmed woman coming directly for him. He raised it on high above his head, poised to bring down a killing blow.

  Burr rang down one of his own, severing both of the angel’s arms between
wrists and elbows. The sword fell back onto the stone and clattered and scraped its way down into the waters of the lake, which did not extinguish it but now glowed from within.

  Edda spread her arms wide. She wore a long cloak that hung from them like dark wings. Without slowing her pace she met the angel with the full front of her body and embraced him, shrouding his form in her garment.

  By the time Prim had run up the sandbar to the islet, all trace of the angel’s form was gone. Edda was there, looking like Edda.

  “Welcome to Lost Lake,” she said. “You’ll be thirsty.”

  Burr was squatting on his heels, elbows on his knees, face in his hands, too tired to move or to speak. Lying on the ground next to him, barely visible in the rose glow of the northern dawn, was his spear, and its shaft was made of smoke.

  “You seem to have found it,” Lyne objected, when Edda told him the name of the place.

  Ferhuul did not care for Lyne’s wit. “And you seem to have popped out of a magic hole in the ground. Easy, was it?”

  Footsteps, terminated by a crunching thud, signaled the return of Burr, who had come out of the woods bent under a bundle of firewood. It was all fallen dead timber, collected in silence with no use of axe or maul.

  “No,” Lyne admitted, “it was not easy.”

  “One day,” said Weaver, “if we all get out of this, I will combine your story of the Asking with ours of the Bewilderment, and sing it as one epic song, and I daresay that the two parts of it might contain a like number of verses.”

  The East Cloven contingent had somehow managed to recruit a magical sprite, whom they addressed by the name Mab. Such a being figured into certain tellings of the tale of Adam and Eve, so if this was the same Mab, then seeking her out and persuading her to join the Quest might have been every bit as strange and perilous as what the Firkin group had got up to. Somewhere along the line they had furthermore acquired a magical spear with a shaft that appeared to be literally made out of black smoke and that was impervious to blows from angel swords. Where had that come from?