Broken Earth

by C M Blackwood

  Had Jade known for certain that the others were mirroring her path at the West-hand, she would have seriously considered renting a room (once she found one) and watching for them, however long it took.

  But she was not certain. She could not see things far away, as Dera could; and she felt, even through her loneliness, that time was pressing.

  What could she do but go on?

  ~

  If Jade had looked back once the sun set behind Death Rock Mountain’s distant peak, she would have occasionally been able to see the glint of shining eyes in the cascading darkness. But, intent as she was upon freeing her weary mind, and making haste towards her destination, she did not look back – and was not warned of the impending danger.

  “You are following too closely,” said Biscayne, appearing suddenly beside Kellin.

  “I will follow where I see fit,” Kellin growled.

  Biscayne’s expression was resolute. “I made the Sorceress a promise,” he said. “I will not have you fouling up my plans with your ignorance.”

  Kellin halted, and turned on Biscayne. He stood three feet taller than the Lumarian, and could easily have snapped him like the thinnest of twigs – had, of course, that slight stature been accompanied by the mortality and weakness of men. But it was not. So Kellin only growled again, and turned back to the trail.

  They held their places for a moment, and the others came to a halt behind them. They allowed the Auren to widen the gap betwixt them; and then set off once more in pursuit.

  ~

  Heidi and Dera (Heidi having fallen asleep for a while longer, despite her misgivings about the forest, and the unhappiness of her heart) woke just as night was beginning to fall. Immediately they gathered their things together, and strapped them back to the horses, whom they had given what water they could, and who seemed much refreshed from their rest.

  They returned to the plain, and followed along at the edge of the Western forest. They found, however, that they could see hardly anything up ahead. It was not until the first streaks of morning light came painted across the sky, that they could begin to make out the shape of the land. They saw that, far up ahead, the ground began to dip down. Heidi was sure that, when they eventually got to the bottom of that dip, they would find something more civilised than trees and open plains.

  But even from her place in those snowy fields, Heidi could see the hazy outline of a distant mountain. She knew not that it was named Death Rock, and indeed had no need to know it – but had she known, in that one moment, that she and Jade were looking upon the very same thing, perhaps the ache in her chest would have eased somewhat.

  XI: The Stable-Keeper at the Brass Knuckle

  They passed the first sign of human existence at sunset the following day. They had not stopped to rest since the evening before, and had been riding for almost eighteen hours.

  “Finally,” said Dera, looking sideways at a short row of ramshackle cabins. “A respite from this blasted wilderness!”

  As they rode on, the structures grew larger and more numerous. They began to pass large farms and various trading posts; a tavern and an inn. It was much larger than the one run by Doulo and Noulo; and Dera was thrilled.

  “Beds!” she cried. “Oh – sweet, lovely beds, and beautiful little pillows! I’m coming!”

  The sign over the door read “The Brass Knuckle.” Seeing as there was a tavern so close by, the inn did not have a bar in its dining room. There were a great many tables, though, a few of them already occupied with people waiting for supper.

  The boy who came to greet them was quite young, but still a head taller (and somewhat less cheerful) than their previous bellhop. But he nodded to them courteously as he took their bags, and showed them to the counter where they would sign in for a room and receive a key. He conferred quietly for a moment with a man behind the counter, and then went up the wide staircase at the back of the dining room to bring their bags upstairs.

  “Hello, ladies,” said the man behind the counter. He took in their rumpled clothes and dirty faces, but did not allow whatever opinion he formed to affect the politeness of his voice. He tapped his finger on the open page of the large book before him, and said, “Please sign your names in the ledger.”

  Heidi went first, writing a false name in the next available space. She used the first name that came to mind, which happened to be “Helena Makepeace.” That was the name of her sister, after she married. Heidi had no idea how Helena had found her way into her thoughts. She had not spoken to her in over six years; which was three years after Helena had run away from home, and in the form of only a brief letter by the post.

  This is perhaps not the best time to construct a list of grievances, but it can be assuredly said that Heidi had never forgiven her sister for this last, and had indeed not thought of her (at least, to any great extent) in a very long time.

  After she had written the name, she moved aside so that Dera could fill in one of the narrow slots. Taking Heidi’s lead, she wrote: “Mary Sykes.”

  “Very good,” said the man. “Our policy is to collect the first night’s payment upon arrival. Will you be taking one or two rooms?”

  “Do you have rooms with two beds?” Heidi asked.

  “No. One bed per room.”

  “What a swindle,” Dera muttered.

  The man pretended that he had not heard her.

  “We’ll take one room,” said Heidi. “For one night.”

  “The price is twenty dryas.”

  “Twenty dryas!” exclaimed Dera.

  The man looked at her. “If you have a problem making payment, I will be more than happy to have Ryo bring your bags back to you.”

  “No,” said Heidi, reaching into the small bag attached to her belt. “There is no problem.”

  She realised, then, that Doulo had not even charged them for their stay. Not very conducive to a successful business – but all the more cause to render him, in Heidi’s opinion, quite the dearest little thing that ever lived.

  “Very well,” said the man, holding out his hand to accept the coins which Heidi counted out carefully. “Ryo will show you to your room.”

  “Thank you,” said Heidi, pushing Dera ahead of her before she could say anything else.

  “Dinner is at five-thirty. Plenty of time for you to clean yourselves up,” said the man pointedly.

  “What nerve,” said Dera.

  Ryo, having skipped up to the second floor and back in a few short moments, was waiting by the stairs to lead them up. Heidi was sure that, if the man had simply told them their room number, they would have been perfectly capable of finding it themselves. But she followed patiently, waiting for the boy to unlock the door and step aside. He handed Heidi the key, and then was off down the stairs once again.

  The room was spacious enough, and the bed was fairly wide. Ryo had filled the washstand with warm water, and set their bags down beside the bureau.

  “If I wasn’t so hungry,” said Heidi, “I would skip supper and go to sleep.”

  “Me, too,” said Dera, taking off her cloak so that she could change her shirt.

  Heidi washed her face, and was somewhat surprised when the water turned brown. No wonder that man had looked at them as he did!

  “Lovely,” said Dera. “Leave me the dirty water.”

  “Sorry.”

  Dera took a clean towel to wash her face. Then she looked at Heidi and asked, “Who is Helena Makepeace?”

  “Who?” said Heidi, making a poor attempt at evading the question.

  “Helena Makepeace. The name you wrote in the ledger?”

  Heidi turned away, busying her hands with the straightening of her hair before the mirror. “No one at all,” she said. “Just a name I made up. Didn’t you make up yours?”

  “No. Mary Sykes was a girl I worked with, when I lived in Perga. She was found out – and ended up in prison.”

  “That’s terrible.”

  “It was. She was my best friend.” Dera came to the mirro
r to check her own reflection, catching Heidi’s eye in the glass. “So who is Helena Makepeace?”

  “My sister.”

  Dera appeared shocked. “It seems that personal revelations have become inevitable on this momentous journey.”

  They smiled at one another; and it seemed that, finally, their paths had aligned. Heidi had not expected it; had indeed anticipated an irksome and tedious journey, wherein neither she nor Dera could agree upon anything. But this simple exchange seemed a harbinger of better will, and an easier mode of togetherness.

  Though she could have been allotting more to the exchange than there truly existed – for on her way out the door, Dera took a palm-full of water up in her hand, and splashed Heidi in the face.

  It seemed that dinner was already being served. They sat down at a table in the corner, the light there being a little less bright; and the thickness of the crowd being somewhat thinner there, so that it did not seem constantly that there were eyes upon them.

  “Oh, my,” said Dera, as a plate was set in front of her. “I haven’t had a beefsteak since my birthday!”

  “I guess that explains where the twenty dryas came in,” said Heidi, chewing regretfully. She would have much rather eaten oatmeal – and heard a healthier jingle at her belt.

  Back in the bedroom, however – much despite the twenty dryas which were hanging on her mind – she fell almost as quickly as Dera, into a deep and sound sleep. It was in this peaceful state of oblivion that she hovered – when a knock came at the door, and elicited an immediate crash back into heavy darkness.

  “Curse it all,” Heidi muttered. “Would you answer that, Dera?”

  Unsurprisingly enough, the soft knocking had not woken Dera. So Heidi hauled herself up, and went to the door, opening it to find an old man with a bent back and a warm smile.

  “Oh, I’m so sorry,” said he. “Did I wake you?”

  “It’s all right.”

  “I take care of the stables,” he said. “You folks were the last to arrive tonight – so I haven’t seen you. I brought your horses round to the back, and they’re locked up for the night. In the case that you might need to know it, I open the stables at six.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Heidi. (She and Dera had tied the horses out front, just as they had done at Doulo’s inn.) “I didn’t realise that there was a stable.”

  “It’s no matter,” said the old man. “Lots of people don’t.”

  He nodded once to her, and then hobbled off down the hallway.

  ~

  Having fallen asleep so early, Heidi woke before the rising of the sun. She looked over at Dera, who was, of course, still fast asleep.

  She got out of bed, and washed up with the cold water from the washstand. She sat for a few minutes in a chair by the window, but grew tired of the stillness and the silence. She took the key from the top of the bureau, and slipped it into her pocket, locking the door behind her as she went quietly from the room.

  She made her way around the inn to the stables; and remembered, that she must wait till six o’clock. The doors were still locked, and she could not go in to see Eriah. That was what she sometimes did, when she was feeling especially out-of-turn; or when the world was dark, and all of it, save for her, seemed still to be sleeping peacefully.

  Turning away from the padlocked doors, Heidi was startled by the sudden appearance of the old man. He smiled quite genially, and tipped his hat.

  “Seems strange,” he said.

  “What’s that?”

  “I said it seems strange, you and your little friend so far from home, all by yourselves.”

  “How do you know we are far from home?”

  He shrugged. “It’s just a thing I can tell. You look nervous, out of place.”

  “Oh.”

  The old man laughed. “Look, little miss – I didn’t mean anything by it. I’m just the old man who tends the stables.”

  Heidi did not answer; but he launched another question, anyway.

  “Where are you headed?”

  She turned back towards him. Again she said nothing, not entirely sure what she should disclose to him; but he seemed to sense her thoughts (in a way quite unlike Dera’s; but rather in the experienced and worldly way, which is the result of many years of life).

  “I understand your thinking,” said he, “but I was only trying to help. You look like you’ve not the slightest idea which way you’re headed – and I know these parts better than anybody else you could ask.” He shrugged once again. “But if you want to keep to yourself, that’s your right.”

  “I’m sorry,” Heidi said simply.

  “I understand,” he repeated. “And like I said, I’m not trying to press you. I just thought I could be of some use.”

  He reached into his pocket for a set of keys, and turned to the stable doors to unlock them.

  “I think,” said Heidi carefully, “that I should be able to find it on a map. But I know not where to find one.”

  “I’ve got all sorts,” said the man. “I live in that cabin over there.”

  He pointed to a tiny house, a few hundred feet away from the stables.

  “Do you think I could have a look?”

  “Of course,” he said, snapping the lock back into place. “I’ll just finish this later.”

  Heidi followed him across the lot, and into the cabin. He snapped the door against the morning wind, rubbing his hands and blowing upon them.

  “I’ll tell you,” he said. “I’ve got to get farther South. These old bones just can’t take the cold anymore.”

  He went to a bookcase in a corner of the room, and rummaged through its messy shelves. “Here are a few,” he said, taking up a handful of papers and setting them down on a little table. “This one would probably help you best. It shows you everything from Minnos to the Kala River.”

  Heidi took her eyes from the map, looking to the old man and feeling lost.

  “You don’t know what any of that is, do you?”

  Heidi shook her head.

  “Here,” he said, pulling out a chair for her. “Take a seat, and I’ll explain it all to you.”

  He waited until she sat, and then slid out a chair for himself.

  “Thank you, sir.”

  He laughed. “Oh, don’t call me that. My name’s Billy.”

  “Thank you, Billy.”

  “All right, then,” he said, reaching for a little wooden box on the side of the table. Inside were a pair of spectacles, which he put on before turning his attention to the map.

  Far to the left of the map, Heidi saw a thick line running down labelled “Snowy Mountains.” Well – at least she recognised something.

  “This,” said Billy, “is a map of Geinhold. After the mountains there, you’ll see the land called Minnos. That’s where we are.”

  He pointed to a spot right in the middle of the area labelled “Minnos.” In smaller writing was the word “Lodale.”

  “Lodale is our little farm town here. But if you go on past it –” (he traced a thin line that moved away from Lodale in a squiggly fashion) “– and follow the Euskan Road, which is marked clear up ahead, you’ll end up in Cabria. That’s about three days by horse. At the boundary of Cabria (that should take you another two days to get to, if you stop to sleep), the Euskan branches off into three different roads. The Clellan will take you East, and the Shumas will take you West. The Lalos is your best course to continue South, though it veers South-West at times. Before I get into all of that, though – why don’t you just tell me which way you’re planning to go? That way, I won’t have to talk so much.”

  Heidi stared in bewilderment down at the map. As soon as she laid eyes upon it, she had tried to find the word “Onssgaard.” But it was not there.

  “I don’t see the place I’m trying to reach.”

  Billy looked up in surprise. “How far are you trying to get, little miss?”

  She shook her head miserably. “That’s the problem. I don’t even know where it is.”


  “I can’t help you, if you don’t tell me the name of it.” He gave her a smile – and he looked so kind, Heidi could not believe that she had been at all wary of him.

  Without thinking, of whether or not it was the wise thing to do, Heidi said, “We are going to Onssgaard.”

  Billy seemed to inhale sharply, and looked at her as though he thought she was joking. When he saw that she was not, he leaned forward and asked, “Why in the world would you want to go there, little miss?”

  “Even if I tried to tell you,” she said, “I wouldn’t have time.” She looked out of the small window, and saw that the sun was already beginning to rise.

  “Well, to tell you the truth, I’ve never been much for questions and answers, anyway.” He looked back at the map. “But I should tell you, it’s still quite a journey from here.”

  “You can tell me the way?”

  “Of course.” He pointed to the long road called Lalos. “If you want to get to Onssgaard, you’re going to have to keep South. Once you’re on the Lalos, you’ll have to cover about a hundred miles of uncharted land. It’s going to be as empty as a squeezed cow’s teat – and you’ll want to have plenty of food and water with you. And take care of the coyotes.”

  Heidi swallowed thickly.

  “If you stick to the road, you shouldn’t get lost. Once you’re in that empty place, though, be careful not to turn to the East or the West. Once you get lost, you’re sure to stay that way. Got it?”

  She nodded.

  “Okay. Now, the Lalos ends when you get to Ludjo. That’s a big city, full of things and people. You won’t go astray there. Go out of the main city, and all the way to the Southern boundary, which is the Kala River. You’ll see the trees before you see the river. It’s a huge, wild thing, and you’ll have to board a big paddleboat, called the Aria, once you get to it. Don’t worry, though. They let horses on. But you have to pay to board, so make sure you don’t go spending all of your money before you get there. The Aria’s going to take you down the river, heading West. Now, most people who board keep West, and on to either Ademin or Halju. But you’re going to have to turn South again. You don’t have to retrace the distance to the East, because your next stop is the Panwye Hills. Nobody, and I mean nobody, goes there – if they don’t absolutely have to.”