Broken Earth

by C M Blackwood

  Which was nothing. So it made no difference if she closed her eyes.

  When she did so, she found that her hearing was improved. Where before there was silence there now were whispers, far away but somehow close to where she lay. They bore messages too soft to be detected by her ears, as they flowed by like weak currents of wind, but were understood in the greatest depths of her mind (that part which, during one’s waking hours of thought and conversation, one very seldom finds either the ability or occasion to access).

  The first time she tried, her voice would not issue from her dry mouth. She reached up and closed a hand round her throat, knowing that the sound would come, if she only fought a little harder.

  She held her arms out to either side, feeling for what lay nearby. She could feel nothing but the air – the air that hung, almost damp, over the rough stone floor.

  “Dera,” she rasped, rolling with great effort onto her side. She lengthened her reach, searching for anything to hold, anything that might help her to lift herself from the floor. For her legs had grown numb, taken hold suddenly by a cold kind of immobility. The feeling seemed to be coursing slowly through her.

  After several more long moments, of struggling against that cold and unyielding thing, she needed admit that she could do no more. She fell back to the floor, and felt a shadow pass over her eyes. She reached upwards, but there was only a kind of slippery thing that twisted inside her hands. She let go with a grimace, but found that her hands were still covered, in whatever iced and slimy thing she had touched. She wiped them madly against her clothes, but they would not come clean.

  The numbness was spreading now through her arms.

  The whispering grew louder, changing quickly from inaudibility to softly spoken words. The words came from directly above her head, and lingered there like spiders, slipping from thin lines of web down into her eyes. She tried to shut them against those small, invading things that crawled so deep; but her eyes were stuck open, frozen in mid-blink along with the rest of her face.

  “Still so far away,” said the spiders, crawling across the inside of her skull, and pressing themselves to her brain. “Still so much time to turn back. Why do you not flee?”

  Heidi could not speak – but found that she did not have to. The words were inside her head, and dug so deep that they could see her thoughts.

  “Who are you?” she asked.

  “I am who you seek. I sought you, and you have been found.” A pause. “If I told you that I would not pursue you, would you believe me?”

  “No.”

  “But I would not. I have already enough to sate my appetite.”

  “You have nothing.”

  A laugh. “What do you know of what I have? What I have taken? You know nothing – for you knew not, when I took what is yours. You must see, in order to understand. You saw the first that I took – and you understood. Your own dear friend! Dead for nothing! Yet now I have all that I want. I shall keep this thing, the second thing which I have taken from you – and I shall be satisfied by it.”

  Jade.

  “Ah, yes! She who shares the name of the stones of the earth, and who has harnessed their Power. But I fear that it was not great enough.”

  Heidi felt a cold fear take hold of her heart, and longed to strike out with her fists. But they would not move, would not so much as twitch.

  “I see that you desire to do me harm. I will forgive you for it, and will even go so far as to say that I empathise. When he whom I loved was taken from me, my rage knew no bounds! It still does not, and has in fact come to take on a force of its own – but I moulded it to my own benefit, trading death for acquisition. I tell you this only for the repair of your tender heart; a heart that does, indeed, require strength for wisdom. She whom you love lives still, her mind and body sound. But her soul belongs to me.”

  “I believe not a word you say. Her soul could never be held, by hands such as yours.”

  “Perhaps not – under different circumstances. But I speak no deceit when I tell you, that you will never see she with whom you parted, in the same condition as when you parted. She is not as she was; and never will be again. Your fight does not include her any longer. Turn away from this dangerous path, and accept these things that you cannot change.”

  There was a moment of absolute silence, wherein Heidi even felt the talons relieve the pressure they had induced upon her brain. Her mind was still, and free of thought.

  But then she was seized by the pain of fire. She was freed from her bonds only in time to be able to writhe upon the floor, filled completely with a pain she had never known before. She twisted and tossed, back and forth for what seemed an eternity. Her lips were loosed once again, and she screamed into the darkness with quite all the sound she could make.

  She knew not how long the agony lasted. She only remembered the moment that it ended, the flames that consumed her body doused in an instant by what could only have been the tallest wave of the sea.

  She lay upon her stomach, clutching the floor. She choked upon what seemed the smoke of all the fires of the underworld, coughing desperately but finding no relief.

  And then it was gone. She breathed freely once again, lying somehow (without having turned) upon her back, with her eyes turned upwards towards the return of the speaking, creeping things.

  “Do not begrudge me your pain. If you were to know what you should run from, you had to be shown. I swear a solemn oath unto you: If you allow your eyes to see sense, and turn away from this hopeless road, you will never know such pain again. You or your friend; for I want neither of you.”

  There were no more words; but Heidi lay for some time longer, frozen through by the chill air of that lonely room.

  ~

  She knew not how long it was, before her eyes began to open slowly. A shrill voice rang out above her head.

  “Heidi!” Dera cried, yanking upon her arm as if it might rouse her more quickly.

  “Stop tugging at me!” said Heidi, trying to sit herself up.

  “Are you all right? What happened?”

  “I don’t know what happened. But as to whether I am all right – I should have to say no.”

  “Are you hurt?”

  “Not so much. It’s only my back . . .”

  “Here?” said Dera, laying her hand upon the place of mild affliction.

  “Yes.”

  “Meinden,” said Dera, pushing against Heidi’s spine.

  Gone in an instant was the dull, throbbing pain.

  “What would I do without you?” Heidi asked.

  “You would most likely be dead.”

  “You are most likely right.”

  Dera helped her to her feet, and they both climbed back on their horses.

  “Do you still wish to rest?” Dera asked.

  “Heavens no. I only want to get away from this forsaken place.”

  “I was hoping very much you would say that.”

  In truth, Heidi remembered every word that had been spoken to her, while she lay disconnected upon the road. She wondered, for a moment, if it would not be better to tell Dera all. But she decided – selfishly, perhaps – to keep it to herself. Dera asked her nothing more about it, but was obviously curious. Truth be told, so was Heidi; though her thoughts were tinged more with fear than curiosity.

  Then again, Dera’s would have been, too – had she been forced to accompany Heidi into that cold, black room.

  ~

  When Jade woke, she was for a few lengthy moments uncertain as to where she was. But then her memory began to return, trickling back into her brain as if through a small opening in the side of her skull. She lifted herself to her feet, but fell immediately back to the ground, overtaken by an intense pain within her temples. She clutched at her head, curling up in the snow.

  By the time the pain began to subside, the sun had risen full in the sky. She rose up once again, and this time remained upon her feet.

  “Buck!” she called, turning about in slow, wide c
ircles. “Buck, where are you?”

  It seemed that he had not returned, after the Sorceress’ company departed. Jade stood there for quite a while, calling for him and watching for his return – but he never came.

  She felt incredibly sick to her stomach, and her head still pained her. She stumbled on across the open land, wishing suddenly for the cover of trees. So she turned away from the path to the river, and made for the trees of the forest that skirted Ludjo.

  Her supplies had been attached to Buck’s saddle. All she had now were the clothes upon her back, and a packet of dried berries in a pocket of said clothes. She had no idea whatever how she would get on; but found that, at least for the moment, she was not very preoccupied about it.

  Her only desire was to reach a place of shadows and safety. She wanted not to remain upon this open plain; for her fear of those creatures what might return, etched a desperate urgency upon her heart, with which she could not wrestle. She looked to the distant cluster of trees before the river; but deeming a greater space there to exist, than between herself and the Eastern forest of Ludjo, she made instead for those latter trees. She covered as quickly as she was able the five miles of open ground that lay before them, and ran gratefully into the forest, though she fell immediately upon the ground in weariness.

  When she opened her eyes again, she found that she had been swallowed, while she slept, by the dead of night. A nearly full moon shone down, just outside the break of the trees; but there beneath their thick barrier, its light was almost nonexistent. Jade shrank away from the lighted plain, loving more the darkness of the forest. She cowered for a long while beneath a great tree.

  As the moon began to move off on its nightly course, her stomach growled with deep hunger. So deep was it that she considered, for a long and illogical moment, taking a bite out of one of the large pinecones that lay all about.

  Then she remembered the fruit in her pocket. She pulled out the packet, and slit it open; ate every scrap it held, but found – to no great surprise, really – that she was still famished. Yet she had nothing else; and therefore had no choice at all, but to gain her feet, and wander a little into the forest, in search of something edible.

  She considered, for a moment, taking back the distance she had given betwixt herself and the river. But then she realised, that the Aria would not run till morning; and that the most she could do, in these hours which remained of the night, was to find some sort of thing, anything at all, that she might use to sate her gnawing hunger. At daybreak, she would turn South, and travel through the forest to the bank of the river. She reckoned it to be a journey of no less than ten miles; after which she would turn Westward, and follow the line of trees to the dock of the Aria.

  With these thoughts in mind, she turned her course Southward. With what little light dwelt there beneath the trees, she knew not what food she expected to find; but strange smells were wafting upon the air, and found their way to her, as sure as the sun would soon find its way to her hiding place amongst the trees. Her stomach continued to rumble, in protest of the exertion which she put upon a body not fueled. As soon as those few pieces of old fruit dashed against the pit of her stomach, what felt as if it had been changed to rock in its emptiness, they had been burnt instantly to ashes – whose smoke drifted up, and served only to remind her of her intense hunger.

  She longed for food, to ease the pain that chewed with iron jaws upon the walls of her stomach. She longed for Buck to lift her off her swollen, aching feet. Granted, she had not been walking very long at all; but she was so tired. Her eyes fluttered open and shut as she went, and once remained closed for so very long, that she collided with a particularly large oak tree.

  Once again, there came those unusual scents upon the air, hanging like things that would not be ignored. What she had at first assumed to be a variety of less than savoury smells (signifying any sort of thing within the expanse of that great forest, whether it be perhaps a rotting animal carcass, or a strange and strongly-smelling plant) seemed now to be only a single aroma, which was quite actually anything but unpleasant. It was almost like the smell of venison, that Heidi would fry in the kitchen back home, all sprinkled with herbs and spices to make it taste that much better. It was almost like that – but somehow different. As if it had not been cooked at all. As if it had come directly from its wrapping of wax paper, and was sitting quite raw upon the chopping block.

  And so, what smell should have been to her somewhat less than favourable, served presently as a spark to relight the fire of her unbearable hunger. A sudden sort of strength seeped into her limbs, and rendered her capable of hurried movement, which she took full advantage of in her search for the source of that aggravating and incessant smell.

  And yet, as she ran, there came unbidden into her mind a series of images. There came pale faces, all in a row; and great beasts behind them. There came a rush of movement, and she was cast down to the ground. She felt teeth at her neck.

  There came a hot pain upon the side of her throat. She reached up, as if swatting a fly, and clapped a hand to the spot. Then she took her fingers away, and squinted down at them, making what use she could of what pale light filtered down through the trees. Her hand was smeared with blood – blood that seemed to be dripping down her neck.

  She grabbed hold of a tree; for her legs had begun to tremble. She felt a sickness come into her stomach, that pushed the hunger away. When she thought of food, she grew nauseous; and her legs would not be still. So she let go of the tree, and fell down to her knees.

  There came into her heart, at that moment, a feeling of great loss and hopelessness. She thought of Heidi; but there seemed such a great distance, and such a great barrier, between them, that she could scarcely see her properly.

  She bowed forward, and pressed her forehead to the cold ground. She thought, for a time, that she might die of this torrent of despair, what had come to rage like a wildfire round the emptiness in her chest; but there came suddenly a new thought into her mind, engendered by that familiar smell.

  It was closer now.

  She gained her feet, and raised her head to sniff the air. The smell was so very strong, so very distinct – it could not have been far off.

  But where was it?

  She hid behind a tree, and peered out into the darkness of the wood. A few beams of moonlight fell down here and there; but the majority of the forest was choked with blackness. Blackness of any amount, however, does not dull one’s senses of hearing and smell. It could be argued, in fact, that it only serves to sharpen them.

  So she heard, loud and clear as the sweet chiming of a bell, when something rustled the leaves about twenty feet away. The scent invaded her nostrils, as a force even greater than a favourite supper, baking up in an oven.

  Again, there was movement; and a large, dark shape could be espied through the gloom. It stepped forward, and its head came into a circle of moonlight. A large deer, it was. A tall buck, with deep, sorrowful eyes.

  It raised its head, and grew still. It seemed to sense its danger, even before the cause of that danger did realise herself, that she was any such thing. The deer seemed, in fact, well-nigh about to flee – when Jade sprang from the shadows, and tackled it to the ground.

  For just a moment, her vision seemed to blacken; and she knew not how she had come to be there, when she found herself kneeling above the deer, which lay prostrate upon the leaves. Jade squinted her eyes, and wondered why it did not move; when the light shifted, and she saw a patch of red at its throat.

  She licked her lips, and felt them strangely slick. She reached up, and felt for them, seemingly coated with something wet and thick; something that tasted, when she opened her mouth, warm and metallic. Her tongue ran all along her teeth – and she found them sharp as razors.

  She leapt to her feet, and wiped the blood from her face. She tried, with quite every fibre of her being, to turn away from the deer, and to run from it. She would forget where it lay, and why it lay there; she would forget
what she had tasted upon her tongue. And yet she felt, what grew stronger each moment, some unclean urge working against her own will, compelling her to go to her knees once again. Her heart beat fast, and her body broke out in a cold, slimy sweat. Her vision began to blur, and she grew dizzy, so that she could not but fall back down. She raised her hands to either side of her head, waiting for the unbalance to pass; but it only grew worse, and worse still, until all shapes around her turned to a uniform mass of black stillness.

  When she could see again (it felt years later), she found herself bending over the nearly stripped bones of the deer. She looked down at herself, and saw that her clothes were covered with blood, and with clinging bits of flesh. She was so very repulsed, that she knew she should want to be sick – but she did not feel sick at all.

  She was only horrified, to find that her hunger had finally been satisfied.

  ~

  After returning from a brief visit with Antony Bier, Dain Aerca settled herself into her bed, in search of the sleep that she had not been able to find as of late.

  The trip into the cellars had, of course, been for naught but her own amusement. All things had been laid as they ought. The Princess knew of her brother’s imprisonment; and knew that it could not end, till she had done as Dain proposed. Yet she had not done it, and would not do it easily.

  The boy could tell nothing. He was, in quite every respect, entirely useless; but it pleased Dain to witness his misery, and to think how it would pain his sister, could she but see it.

  She closed her eyes against the light from the lamp. She would have turned it out, but a room full of darkness was the perfect place for death by fright. When the Master came in the night, shaking her from the sleep that had learnt not to fall too deep, it was always better when there was light.

  Whenever he came, he would bring her down to the places where he dwelt beneath the earth. Sometimes they would stay for hours, sometimes for days – but no matter the time, she always came back feeling cold despite the fire, and tired and shaken despite the feast that was always served.