Broken Earth

by C M Blackwood

  This made that particular man’s task all the easier. We shall postpone launching into an endeavour of its specifics; for those might make better sense at another time. We might only think of him, in this instant, as on the warpath – at the end of which, lay something that we will soon enough find ourselves acquainted with. Perhaps, without pleasure; but such is the case with that particular man, as well, with whom we are acquainted.

  So we fall away, for the moment, from evil; from that side of the light which is black and tarnished, and which fills the heart with misery and squalor, to leave it in a state of shame and repentance for die which were not even cast by its owner. So where do we turn? But oh – where else but to the place where we ought? To turn there is a painful thing; but then, it was never said that ought and not were easy decisions to make.

  ~

  Heidi was startled by a scream which seeped suddenly through the wall; a scream which was loud and sharp, but seemed to take some amount of time to reach her through the thick stone that separated her from it; and so she said it seeped, and did not cut, through the air.

  That it was Dera’s scream, she had no doubt. She hurried into the adjacent room, and leapt upon the bed where her friend had been dreaming, to take her face quickly into her hands, and search for signs of trouble there. So quick was Dera’s breathing, and so terribly did her pale hands shake – signifying a fear and disquiet which were all too unusual in her – that she made no effort to push away Heidi’s concerned efforts; but actually clung more tightly to her for it, and let her head fall down in an uncommon display of weakness, against her shoulder.

  “Have you had a nightmare?” Heidi asked.

  “You could say as much, I suppose.”

  “Do you want to tell me what you dreamt?”

  “I do not know if I should, Heidi.”

  Heidi moved back from her a little, the better to see into her face. “What do you mean, Dera?”

  Dera began to squirm in discomfort.

  “Tell me, Dera.”

  “There is nothing to be done,” said Dera. “There is nothing that anyone can do.”

  With every word that Dera spoke, Heidi felt her anxiety increase. At length, all she could do was continue to watch her, and to supplicate her with her own gaze. Dera moved more and more about, till she had wiggled quite all the way across the bed – and then she could only shake her head, and lower her eyes in defeat.

  “There is nothing to be done,” she said softly. “What could we do?”

  “About what, Dera?”

  “About Jade.”

  The world moved slowly; but spun all about in great, wide circles, just above Heidi’s head. Her blood ran thick, and her heart beat slow; and she could hear it, pounding there in her ears.

  “Tell me what you saw, Dera.”

  Dera let her head hang down, and put a shaking hand to her face. “What’s the good of knowing?” she muttered. “If I could go without, I guarantee you – I would.”

  “I’ll not ask you again,” said Heidi.

  Dera looked up suddenly; and when she spoke, it was in a near-shout. “What’s the good of knowing?” she repeated. “Why do you want to know such horrible things? There is nothing you can do for her! She is gone from you, from us – and I wish with all I have, that I did not have to see such things!”

  It was quite like a thin, taut string – what had been tied in that length of space that existed betwixt her heart and her brain – giving way. There was a quick sound, as it snapped, followed by a particularly sharp pang. In only a moment, Heidi was up on her knees, and very nearly had Dera’s throat in her hands.

  “Tell me what you saw!”

  Dera pulled away from her, and sat for a moment, staring up at her in fear and anger. She rubbed at the red finger-marks upon her throat.

  “She has been taken by the Sorceress,” she said. “You already know that. Tell me, Heidi – what terrible thing do you think has not yet befallen her?”

  Heidi’s breath came so sharp between her clenched teeth, she could not speak a word – but the hot look of devastation upon her face induced Dera to continue.

  “She hangs from the ceiling in chains. Her body is broken, and bleeding. I cannot hear what words are said – but I can hear the sound of her screams. Her clothes have been nearly torn to pieces by the repetition of the whip, and her skin lies bare to the chill of the prison. It has been ripped open in many places. I can see her left arm, that was caught long in the thong of the whip – and I can see the white of the bone, where it was broken, and pierces out through the skin.”

  Heidi could hear no more. She leapt from the bed, and dashed out into the hall, where she stood confounded for long moments. She turned to look back at Dera, and saw her still sitting upon the bed, with her knees drawn up to hide her face. She looked to the open door of her own chamber, but could not even fathom laying herself back down, alone. She closed her eyes, and held her head, as the images which Dera described came to call upon her ravaged mind. The air grew heavy, and began to press down upon her; and it became very difficult to stand so isolated. She looked again to Dera – but she was preoccupied, it seemed, with her own tears.

  Heidi hurried on down the hall, not knowing if she should go where she meant; but knowing that she meant to just the same.

  She came, what seemed only seconds later, to the door of the Princess’ quarters. She held a trembling fist up in the air; but it took her some time to find the will to knock upon the door. When she did, there was no answer, and she suspected that the Princess was asleep. But the pressure of the air all round her seemed to increase by the moment, till her head felt that it might truly burst – and forgetting herself entirely, as to either the stupidity or impropriety of the act, she pushed open the door to the chamber.

  The room was dark, save for what moonlight shone in through the open curtains. It was impossible to tell, from Heidi’s place at the door, whether the Princess was awake or asleep – and so her legs gave her the excuse to proceed, by giving way beneath her and propelling her into the room. Heidi could not stop till she had reached the bed; and only then did she fall down upon her knees, and take the edge of the mattress up in her cold hands.

  “Princess,” she whispered, working her fingers madly, in an attempt to resist reaching for the sleeping arm that lay before her. “Princess?”

  The woman did not stir. She lay still upon her back, with her face turned ever so slightly towards Heidi. The white light fell down upon it at a sharp angle, so that half was bathed in cool luminescence, while the other half was left to shadow. Her hair lay neatly on the white pillow, dark and shining. Her skin looked so very cold and pale, it seemed indeed as if she were lying upon a bank of snow; and Heidi resisted again the impulse to reach for her, if only to know that she was alive.

  “Princess,” she said, twisting the bed-sheet in her fingers, and letting her head drop down beside the Princess’ unmoving hand. “Oh, Lila, won’t you please wake?”

  She looked on silently, and for a very long while, into the sleeping face. But there was no sign, and no movement; and she could not bring herself to take up the hand in hers. So she rose like a dying breath, very slowly and stiffly; and took to the halls of the castle, where she walked to and fro until the rising of the sun. She passed, so many times she lost count, the door to her sister’s chamber – but she hurried quickly from it each time she passed, shot through with cold and shivering like one upon the verge of death.

  ~

  The days what passed after that night, passed in a different measure for each head under the great roof of that castle. To some they were slow; but to some they were exceedingly quick, what with the fear of the unknown that lay ahead, and that was come just a little closer with each hour gone.

  The seconds were like needles to Heidi, ticking steadily past as the hand of a clock; but pushing deeper and deeper into her skin, as if driven by a sledge. She screamed and paced, and slept and tossed – all alone. To see others brought the ne
edles back out, and drove them in more slowly.

  For days she had run all about, beseeching every uniformed officer she could find, for the help that she had not found in the Princess. She begged them, with her knees in the dust, to help her to know what she might do; but none gave her much more than a word. What could they do for her? they asked. What could they possibly do?

  And then they turned away, and went back to what business they could actually manage. And so Heidi returned to her chamber, and doused any light that might have come to resemble hope. She tossed and turned as the needles dug deeper; and cried out in the night, when they pierced the flesh of her heart.

  Lila continued on in a state of disconnection. She lay very still, for the most part, in her bed; but rose sometimes, when the muscles in her legs began to twinge. Yet she did not leave her chamber; and walked about for only short amounts of time, during which she was no more mentally present than if she had been asleep. For her, the days passed with no notion of time. If she was not aware of even herself, then how could she be aware of the days?

  Things went on in this manner, till Lila was nearly lost completely – and till Heidi was nearly driven off the brink of her threshold for pain. She longed, many times, to return to Lila, and to plead with her as she knew how. But it turned out for the best that she did not; for the empty silence that would have been exchanged for her passionate appeals, would have only served to madden her more quickly.

  Tobias Redda, on the other hand, made his daily visits to Lila his very first priority. He sat with her for long whiles, and managed several more times to draw forth from her a display of Power. These displays served something as replies to his own statements and questions – and he was quite as happy with them, as he would have been with actual words. So he pressed on, and noticed, little by little, that the white emptiness in Lila’s eyes was beginning to abate.

  If it had not been for the tender and diligent ministrations of the medicine man, there is really no telling whether Lila would have come back to herself. She might have been lost to the vastness of her own wasted mind, and of the world around her; or all might have, of course, turned out just the way it did. As was said – there is really no telling.

  One day, with a great shaking of the very foundations of the castle, and of the deep earth beneath them, Lila came awake. Her eyes slipped shut; and when they opened again, the glaze that had covered them previously was gone completely, and she seemed at full attention.

  The medicine man was not present at this moment. Lila looked all about for several minutes, feeling confused with the environment, and confused with recent events. There were only two things that she could remember; and those only vaguely. She recollected only two faces, there at her bedside: that of the medicine man, and that of Heidi Bastian. She was wholly sure, that she had borne witness to the former, sitting by her, and speaking to her – but her remembrance of the latter was more like a dream. Her eyes were closed, and her mind slept on, but she heard the voice of that woman, drifting towards her in a pitch of desperation. She could not hear the words; but she heard the sound they made, and it filled her head till there was no room left inside it. She shook it wildly, trying to dispel the sound.

  She rushed from the chamber, and made for the medicine man’s rooms just as quickly as she could manage.

  ~

  For some days after she awoke, Lila made her bed in the corner of Tobias Redda’s parlour. Much time had passed while she slept; and the winter had all worn away, to leave pleasant warm air that drifted in through the medicine man’s windows.

  It took Lila a great deal of time, even after she was roused, to regain her strength. It might have taken her even longer than it did; but each day there returned to her mind the sound of Heidi Bastian’s voice, pleading with her for a thing of which Lila knew not. Though she wished greatly to go to her, she could not face her in the condition that she was in. She was quite filled enough, as it was, with her own sorrows and hopelessness; for the memories which had been lost to her while she slept, were come back quickly as she convalesced under the eye of the medicine man. The death of her mother was as an entirely new blow. She was filled, then, with a joy that she had not yet allowed herself to feel, at the return of her brother; but it was tinged also with the darkness of the memory of Dain Aerca. Lila knew not which way to look, for it seemed that any way she chose was wrong; and she knew not how to find the strength, so as to deal with impending difficulties as she must have done.

  In her stead, Thomas Henry and Harn Fala had ordered the city. She wished, for a moment, that she could leave the ordering ever to them, and only return once again to her sleep. Yet the medicine man urged her on, and did all he could to persuade her from the haze that sometimes settled over her.

  After being some weeks in his quarters, Lila found finally the strength to stand. Once awake, she could not wander about, as she had done while slept; and the weariness that plagued her limbs was undeniable, if inexplicable. But she was daily dosed with Redda’s private stores, and was eventually brought to a state that would allow her to function as she once had. The fatigue did not wear away; and in fact she was each moment riddled with it, so that doing as she knew she should was all the more difficult. Yet she was visited often by her brother, and was informed of present affairs quite frequently by Thomas Henry. Strange as it was, however, what kept her trying on was the memory of Heidi Bastian’s plea, and the feeling of obligation which was bestowed upon her, to learn the reason for the woman’s despair.

  She wished, many times, that Heidi would come to her; for she refused to leave Redda’s parlour, till she was quite well enough so as not to appear weak before certain members of the castle. But Heidi never came, and she could only go on with her physical and mental exercises, so as to finally find the answers to the questions of her mind.

  But when the day did come for her to leave the parlour, her first obligations of course lay elsewhere. She was obliged, first of all, to Eredor, and to Onssgaard. She spent many hours of many days with Thomas Henry, learning once again how to assume the command of a city. Her mind, at the first, was almost as an infantile mush; but Henry assisted her with the kindness and loyalty that was ever his bearing, and Lila loved him all the more for it.

  As has been hinted, however, the state of the city’s affairs after the burial of the Queen was altogether quiet and calm. The storm was not sensed by most, and they went on as always with their lives and their work, with smiles upon their faces that had been missed for a very long time. Lila knew in her heart that the peace was not real; but neither she nor Henry could bring themselves, at that point in time, to break the happiness of their people.

  There was hanging ever in the air, of course, the necessary officialities of Lila’s coronation. In her sickness, Henry and Fala had acted as Lila herself once had for her mother; but now that she was well again, the act of assuming responsibility of the city could not be ignored.

  Yet the thought filled her with dread. She imagined the crowd that would congregate, through the very doors of the castle, and into the Golden Hall, where she would be sat down upon the throne of her mother. She would wear the white robe of state, and would receive upon her head the crown of diamonds.

  She was almost made sick by the thought of it. Therefore, she agreed with Henry when he expressed the needfulness of the ceremony; but drew up quite as many reasons as she could manage, for its postponement.

  After some days of such stalling, she found that she could do nothing but attempt to avoid Thomas Henry; and Harn Fala, and anyone else who might have tried to remind her, that her city was currently without a proper Queen – and that this simply would not do. She kept to the higher levels of the castle, spending the greater part of her hours in that North-West tower, where her mother’s maps and papers lay. The memory of them had been sparked by Heidi Bastian; and Lila went there to sort through them, when she got to missing Abella very sorely.

  She thought often, still, of one of the first memories sh
e had had upon waking. She heard still Heidi Bastian’s voice, ringing in her ears; but she took many days more, before she decided finally to pay the visit that had in fact been her very first inclination.

  It was the first day in many days, that she had considered herself brave enough to face the dutiful mind of Captain Henry. She had got herself down to the Rally Room, where he had insisted she hold a meeting with her high officers. This she agreed to do, for the first time since she had left Tobias Redda. All were very polite to her; but it was difficult to ignore the instances of doubt and displeasure upon their faces, when they looked to the woman who was to become the Queen of their beloved city. And why her? they certainly must have thought. Why this deranged, weak woman? Can we do no better?

  Though Lila had wished heartily against it, she saw these thoughts even in the countenance of the loyal Harn Fala. It was only Thomas Henry, as it always had been, who retained an esteem for Lila that was like to any reverence he had ever had for her. For this she was grateful – but it surely was not enough to dull the ache of the hole that was opened up, at the qualms and reservations of her other officers.

  She left the Rally Room in very low spirits – and took immediately to the stairs, ascending in the hope of some sort of equal raising of her own opinions of herself. She thought to ascend all the way to the tower, but was stopped after only a single flight of steps, by a reminding bell that rang betwixt her ears.

  She had not spoken to Heidi Bastian, since the terrible day of the siege. But that day had been so filled of horror and loss, that Lila had indeed had little time to offer anything to Heidi but formality. Yet she was plagued with a memory of the woman’s voice, having come to her from her bedside while she lay unknowing of it.