Broken Earth

by C M Blackwood

  “Wanted what to stop? The trackers?”

  She nodded. “They did not go away, as I said they did. They followed us everywhere; and it was getting harder and harder to give them the slip. So Yet they had not managed thus far, to follow us all the way home.”

  “That may be true,” said Lila. “But if they did not, then it was not from anything quite so simple as leading them in the wrong direction. They would have stayed with you to the end, had they been able. Did you not say that Jade put a spell of protection round the house?”

  “Yes.”

  “Against what?”

  “All of our enemies, known and unknown.”

  Lila took a moment to ponder that. “She must be very strong.”

  “She is.”

  “I suppose that would account for it, then. They could not follow you at a certain distance from the house. They have no power to break spells; for only the Sorceress can do that.”

  “And I did not lie, when I told you that it took her two years to break Jade’s.”

  “I figured you hadn’t. If she had done it before then, you would have come here sooner.”

  “Perhaps,” said Heidi, her soft voice falling down beneath the noisy cracking of the fire in the grate.

  “What happened?” asked Lila.

  “What?”

  “You said, ‘She meant not for anything to happen.’ What did she do?”

  “She ventured out one night, after we had all gone to sleep, and rode some distance away from the house. As always, the men appeared behind her. She had known that they would; had hoped that they would. So she led them away into the forest. Once inside, she turned upon them, and invited them to fight. They laughed at her, she said. But Jade is not one to take no for an answer; and so she rushed them, no doubt taking them by surprise. She killed them both.”

  “That is impossible.”

  “Do you call her a liar?”

  “That is not what I meant. All I am saying is that, if they were Lumarian, she could not have killed them. Or, rather, she could have – but she would not have known how to do it, as she did not even know what they were.”

  “And pray tell, Princess – how do you kill a Lumarian?”

  “There are several ways. Two are quick; and one is rather prolonged and torturous.” She thought back. “A long time ago, my father captured the Lumarian who had killed his sister. Osha, I think it was called. I still don’t understand how he did it – but he kept it chained down in the dungeon, and watched as it slowly starved to death. It is even more painful, you know, than when humans die in the very same way. There is a terrible sickness that accompanies the lack of food; and they grow so very ill, it begins to look more as a case of disease, than one of starvation. I remember hearing tell of it in the castle; that my father had taken a Lumarian, and was holding it captive. I crept downstairs all alone, and peered into each cell, wanting to see the thing. I had an unhealthy fascination for all things Lumarian. Eventually I found it. Now, I am sure that when I saw it, it was already dead. Its very body seemed to have withered away.”

  “And what are the other ways?”

  “The first is decapitation. Any weapon, any instrument will do. The second is removal of the heart – but that is done far less frequently. It is terribly hard to hold a Lumarian still, long enough to cut anything out if it.”

  Heidi shook her head. “Then the men in the forest could not have been Lumarian.”

  “No, I suppose not,” Lila agreed. “The Sorceress must have sensed your friend’s agitation, and pulled her soldiers out of harm’s way. I suspect that she sent Southern men in their place. After all, the mission was only to be killed.”

  “Then what could have made her so angry?” asked Heidi. “If she cared not that they died – what upset her so?”

  “Only that she was defied,” said Lila. “That first night, on the road, Jade unknowingly contested her power. And when she killed those men in the forest, she issued a kind of wordless threat against Aerca.”

  “But she did not know!”

  “I’m sure that she didn’t,” said Lila calmly. “Yet Aerca was sure that she did, and that she was intentionally entering into battle with her.”

  “We were going to leave,” said Heidi. “We were going to leave, so that nothing would happen to the others. We were not going after Aerca, mind you – we were only going to hide for a while. Jade was the one she wanted. If she was not there, then nothing bad could happen, to either Dera or Josephine. She was not even going to let me go with her.” She smiled thinly. “But I would not let her leave.”

  “I am sure that she did only what she thought was best,” said Lila.

  “You know – that is the exact thing I tried to tell Dera. And yet, perhaps, if she had let me go with her – oh, perhaps she would be all right. And if we had gone earlier, as we planned at the first, before Josephine –” She sniffled. “Then perhaps she would still be alive.”

  “There is no way of knowing things like that. It is best not even to think about it.”

  Heidi covered her face. “Is there no other way out of this?” she asked. “I thought that I wanted to kill her – but that was only when I was afraid for Jade, when I was so angry for what she did to Josephine. Now, I only want to go home!”

  “You should still be afraid for Jade,” said Lila. “And I do hate to be the one to remind you – but you killed Aerca’s husband. She will not forget that. She –”

  Here she stopped, and drew a sharp breath. Perhaps . . .

  “Heidi,” she said quietly, reaching out to lay a hand upon the woman’s arm. “What I am about to ask you is very important; and you must answer me directly, and to the best of your ability.”

  “I shall try.”

  “Does the Sorceress know that you killed Shonin Welk?”

  “I suppose. I mean, I don’t see – but maybe –”

  Though Lila knew it not, Heidi was thinking back upon the meeting she had had with Aerca, inside her own mind; and of the spiders that had crawled into her eyes, and of the flames that had burnt all over her body. She shivered with the memory of it.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “When I spoke to her – or rather, when she spoke to me –”

  “She spoke to you?”

  “Yes?”

  “When?”

  “What matter? She did mention Welk, I think; but she accused me of nothing. She said that she did not want me.”

  “Then she must believe that Jade killed him.”

  Heidi’s eyed widened in horror. “No!” she cried. “No, she cannot think that. I killed him!”

  “Quiet,” Lila snapped. “There is no way to know when she is listening. I did attempt something, that may keep her eyes from this place; but I know not for certain if it will work. Do not speak about it again, at least not directly.”

  “What does it matter?”

  “She has no grievance against you. If you do as I tell you, you may very well live to see the end of this catastrophe.”

  “But what about Jade?”

  “I fear that it is too late for Jade.”

  Heidi leapt up from her chair. “Do not say that,” she hissed, pointing her finger in Lila’s face. “It is not too late. Do not say it.”

  “All right,” said Lila, taking hold of Heidi’s outstretched hand. She rose from her seat, and went to stand beside her. “I will not say it. But I will ask you one more thing.” She lowered her voice to a whisper, and moved her mouth near to Heidi’s ear. “Why did you kill Shonin Welk?”

  “He had bound Dera up in his kitchen,” Heidi replied. “She did see him once, by chance, speaking on the roadside with one of the men who followed us. She escaped them all, without being seen; and afterwards sought after Welk in busier areas, casting herself again into her old position of street-walker. She met with him several times, and did what she could to wring information from him – with quite as much subtlety as she was able, mind you. He is the only reason we knew the name of Dain Aerca. T
he day Josephine died, Dera was with him. I went to her; and I saw that he had found her out. I killed him, and we escaped.”

  “All right,” said Lila, moving away from her. “Now, remember – you would do well to keep all of that to yourself. Indeed, never speak of it again! All you can do, I think –”

  Her words were interrupted by the sudden, shrill sound of screaming.

  XXXII: Blood Upon the Door

  It was more than two weeks since the Auren escaped the Mountain, and as of yet, there was no visible result of it. The Lumaria spent each day in a sort of anxious terror. The Sorceress had not yet come seeking recompence; but there was no doubt that she would.

  The people of the Mountain cursed her name silently, and grew to hate even more than they had done already. Why, oh why had she ever come to them? Why had she chosen them for this life of servitude? They were not by any means a servile people. An air of hatred and impatience hung there in the tunnels, and spread amongst the Mountain-dwellers like a vicious disease.

  Why should they pay for the transgressions of a filthy witch? That was what Lokin asked them, when he returned to Death Rock after having failed to intercept the Auren on her way to Eredor. The only explanation for it, as he explained to Biscayne, was that she must have learnt how to shift. Of course, Biscayne cared nothing for this excuse, and proceeded to holler and shout in Lokin’s ears – and Lokin became nearly as hateful of him as he was of the Sorceress.

  In his opinion (and in many others’, come to that), Biscayne had grown much too close to the Sorceress. With him, it seemed to have become less of an obligation, and more of a camaraderie. To Lokin, it was disgusting.

  And so, just as Lila Bier had anticipated, a whisper of defiance began to be spoken through the body of the Lumaria, beginning with Lokin, and spreading to those quite as foul-hearted as the disloyal Pesha. As distracted as Biscayne was with current events, he was quite unaware of it all; but the ever-attentive Zana watched with a smile, keeping herself out of the tumult itself, but looking upon it from a distance with some amount of pleasure. She also looked from time to time to the Sorceress; and was equally pleased to see her tortured uncertainty. Yet she only sat back, and awaited her own time.

  Dain Aerca was lost in a confusion of whens and wheres, and was paying no attention at all to anything that was taking place at Death Rock. The Master had told her to work in her own time – but not to delay. She thought, at first, of simply rushing forth, and doing all that could be done in such a force of activity.

  But her sense told her to wait. If the Auren had gone to Eredor (a fact of which she was nearly certain, anyway), then the Princess would be expecting Dain to attempt to collect her. In the days after the girl’s escape from the Mountain, security of the castle would be especially strict; and success would be harder to attain.

  Little did she know, of course, that it would have been much better for her to act sooner. When she did try to catch a glimpse of the Princess, she was displeased to find that all of Eredor had been taken from her line of sight. She peered for long minutes at a time into the Sphere, and could see nothing but blackness.

  So how was she to know, that Lila Bier had abandoned her castle – and set off in pursuit of the savage people of the shore? She only watched the blackness, and waited for its clearing.

  And yet, as she had suspected would be the case, no clearing ever came. She only sat waiting, and using whatever sense of the Princess she had left (which was not much) to judge her own timing. She must needs find the perfect balance between haste and care. She could not wait too long; for then the Master would grow even angrier. But she could not simply run to her death!

  So those two weeks passed away, and still she had done nothing to follow through with the Master’s instructions.

  Yet, eventually, she was forced to concentrate in earnest, and to decide alone exactly how the deed should be done. She knew that it would require the joint efforts of both the Lumaria and the Narken; not to mention a horde of her faithful Southerners, to serve as expendable munitions.

  And so, while she busied herself with thoughts and plans, Biscayne himself spent nearly all of his time in his own chamber, awaiting some terrible sort of effect piqued by recent events.

  “What am I to do?” he said over and over, always to himself – for he could not bear to have anyone near him. He had shut himself up indefinitely, after receiving news from Lokin that the search party had failed to recover the Auren. This did even more to set his people against him; for at a time when they required his guidance and instruction, he was nowhere to be found. So they turned instead to Lokin, who was always visible to them, and always more than willing to set forth his own opinion.

  That was the beginning of Biscayne’s unravelling. He feared every moment the impending blow of the Sorceress, and longed every second for comfort – which he wanted only from Zana. But she was quite as elusive as he himself had become to the Mountain, and indeed, he had not seen her, since she had come to tell him that the Auren escaped.

  So sometimes he paced, and sometimes he sat; sometimes he lay awake, and sometimes he lay asleep, his dreams even darker and more horrible than usual. Of course, that kind of thing had once held great appeal for him, and he had delighted in all things filled with blood and screams. But now he saw only his blood, spilt by the hand of the Sorceress; and heard only his screams, permeating the silence of the night, as his immortality was snatched away.

  ~

  And so, while all those agents of darkness ran about in the circles of their own confusion, Eredor’s already uneasy peace began to grow tenser; tighter; and more tenuous. During the time that Lila was away, many of her soldiers longed for merely a glimpse of her, if only to strengthen their weakening spirits. Thomas Henry did what he could for them, and spoke in their midst quite as boldly as he could, but it was impossible to hide the fact that even his own nerves were fraying. When the Princess returned, in the state that she was in, after having offered her men a false plan, and having done who knew what at all in some unknown place – well, it did very little to comfort anyone.

  Mostly due to the uncertainty of impending events, Henry and the other high officers spent most of their time in their respective offices, thinking none too happily of days to come. The Princess was shut up in the Queen’s chamber, and none dared to deliver questions to her there. Everyone simply waited, hoping that she would soon emerge; and that, even if only to soothe their own raw fears, they would all be able to discuss plans of action.

  For each citizen of Eredor (even the disrespectful, mutinous city-dwellers) could feel the darkness moving slowly towards them. They could see it in the sky, blocking out the light of the sun, a just a little more each day. They cowered beneath the shadows, fearing the Sorceress’ lightning – which had come to the city three times over the past year, streaking through the sky and down to the city below, where it smote all that it touched. Houses were burnt to the ground; horses were struck down to ashes where they stood; tens upon tens of people were killed.

  So what was to be done? That was what everyone kept asking. What was the Princess going to do about it? How would she protect them? These were the questions that were shouted in the streets, bellowed at the top of weak lungs, which broke afterwards into fits of coughing. There was not much land in the city that was good for growing anymore, and the Sorceress’ wolf-men had recently taken to intercepting the carts of foodstuffs which arrived from the West. The poorest in the city, who could not afford the money which it currently required to make men risk their lives to bring them food, were slowly starving to death.

  And what the Princess to do? When would she save them? When would she ever begin to try?

  Men, women and children gathered round the gates of Eredor in enormous semi-circles, shouting and chanting, and spitting at any of the soldiers who happened to be within good hawking-distance. Certain as they were of the imminence of another lightning storm (and seeming to think that a storm of their own volition was much mo
re desirable) the more unbalanced members of the community took to setting things aflame, and laughing and shouting as it all began to burn. At this, swarms of soldiers would file from the gates to douse the flames, and to stamp out the torches of the mad peasants. Sometimes, though, a few of them would slip through the open gates, and direct their feet towards the castle. They were always caught before they reached it; but only just the week before, one of them had made it almost to the Eastern entrance, and had fought with such fervour upon capture that he had to be clubbed down.

  This did little to improve the temperament of those who remained outside the gates. They watched with indignation, screaming threats and curses to the guards who carried the clubbed fellow back outside the castle grounds.

  The soldiers were beginning to fear for their lives; not only because of the Sorceress, but because of their own fellow citizens. Being a member of the Army of Eredor began to look as nothing more than a death sentence. Indeed, an incident which took place also while the Princess was away, began when a raving mob set an attack on a reputable family called Lorin. Mikhael Lorin was a man who could afford to pay for food, and whose family showed no obvious signs of suffering during this most troubling time.

  So they set his roof on fire, and dragged his eldest daughter from the house by her hair. Luckily, the soldiers arrived before anyone could do anything too very terrible to her; but they did not come in time to save Mikhael. He was strung up by his neck from the thick branch of a tall tree, and left there to dangle till he died. Many people were watching in horror from outside the ring of his torturers, who had taken up leather thongs in their hands to beat him bloody by the roadside. (This was, of course, before they strung him up in the first place.)

  By the time the soldiers had put out the flames, and pried Kaéna Lorin from the hands of the mob, they arrived only to see Mikhael’s face become covered in purple blotches. They cut him down, and listened for his breath; but there was none to be found. So a few of the soldiers pulled his screaming daughter from the fray, and his wife whose hands were tightening round the neck of one of the thong-bearers, and walked them home. The rest remained to break apart the crowd, sending the innocent on their way, and trying to haul the guilty away to the castle.