She shook her head. “Just scared. Everything here”- she gestured at the sky, the mountains, the foothills- “looks so normal.” Undisturbed. “The way the Land is supposed to look. But the things Anele said-”
She shuddered. “He was terrified. He sees dangers I’ve never even heard of.”
They were gone now, locked behind his madness.
In response, Liand’s expression darkened. “The Masters.” His disgust was barely audible through the waterfall’s roar. “The most dire perils stalk the Land, and they tell us nothing.”
Then he straightened his shoulders. “It would please me greatly to elude them. We must continue our ascent. Exposed on these hillsides, we may yet be discovered.” Frowning, he added, “The hue of your raiment will be easily seen.”
Linden needed no urging to move away from the mind-numbing thunder of the Plunge.
He had left his mount a short distance away, its reins loosely secured under a hunk of rock. While he wrung out the blanket he had used to cover Somo’s eyes, she said suddenly, “Don’t put that away. I can use it to cover my shirt.”
The blanket was damp, but it might warm her.
With a nod of approval, Liand handed it to her. As soon as she had draped the rough brown wool over her shoulders, she returned to Anele.
The old man did not react to her presence, or her voice. However, he allowed her to reclaim his arm. Pulling him with her, she started up the hillside.
With Liand and Somo a pace or two below her, she headed in the general direction of the rift.
Their path angled to the west as it challenged the tumbled foothills. Farther in that direction, along the northward reach of the mountains, the foothills were like fingers knotted in the valley floor, pulling the valley wider; and between the fingers lay steep vales and clefts. Here, however, in the head of the valley, the slopes were more even, draped down from the cliffs like a mussed skirt. Linden and her companions were spared the abrupt rises and drops of the northwestward hills.
Nevertheless their ascent was arduous. The stubborn grasses and wind-twisted brush which marked the hillside could not always hold the soil in place under the pressure of their feet, and they often had to scramble in order to gain ground. At the same time, the slope grew steadily steeper, with less vegetation to anchor the dirt. The distance from the passage behind the Mithil’s Plunge to the fan of scree below the rift may have been no more than a stone’s throw for a Giant; but after an hour’s labour Linden and her companions still had not reached their immediate aim.
They must have been visible from the vicinity of Mithil Stonedown. Until they reached the shelter of the rift, they had to hope that they were too small to be noticed from so far away.
Clinging to the blanket, she paused for a moment’s rest. Her respiration had become a deep heaving, and her legs trembled with each step. Sunlight and exertion had dried the blanket as well as her clothes; but that had proved to be a curse as much as a blessing. For a while, she had been grateful for anything which eased her various chills. Gradually, however, her dampness had become sweat and hard breathing, and even the crisp breeze of this elevation could not cool her. As the strength she had gained from hurtloam and treasure-berries faded, she began to believe that she would prove too weak for her task.
More and more, she relied on Anele’s support. In spite of his emaciation, he remained hardy: he seemed to forge upward as if he had never done anything else. His eldritch toughness helped her continue the climb.
His skin against hers described the irregular fluctuations of his mental estate. At odd intervals, he veered close to sanity: less frequently, she felt the Despiser’s dark scorn moil in his depths. Masques of rage and grief and appalled endurance drifted through him like shadows. But he did not speak; and she had no energy to spare for his complex lunacy. As she forced her trembling steps upward, her awareness of him withdrew. She only clung to him and laboured onward.
Ahead of her, Liand and his horse ascended more easily; had to wait for her more often. Although Somo’s hooves dragged the untrustworthy hillside downward, the mustang had stamina to spare in spite of its old wound. And Liand possessed the characteristic toughness of Stonedownors. He and his mount would be able to keep going long after Linden dropped.
They were here on her account; and yet their chances of escape would have been much higher without her.
Then Liand called softly, “Soon, Linden Avery!” and she looked up from her benumbed concentration to see him standing at the edge of the scree.
Lowering her head, she forced her quivering muscles to bear her to his side.
He had already taken a waterskin from one of his packs. Now he handed it to her. She held it shaking to her lips and drank until she had soothed her dry mouth and raw throat. Then she passed the waterskin to Anele.
While the old man sucked at the skin, Liand unpacked a little bread and sun-dried fruit. “We should not tarry here,” he remarked, “exposed to the sight of the Masters, l fear, however, that you near the end of your endurance. And Somo cannot bear you on this terrain. Our flight will fail if our haste exceeds your strength.”
He handed food to her first, then to Anele.
Linden thanked him with a nod. She was breathing too hard to speak.
Slowly she chewed bread and fruit, and tried to imagine sustenance flooding through her veins, filling the courses of her heart. Jeremiah needed her. She did not mean to fail him. While she ate, she surveyed the climb ahead and endeavoured to believe that she could master it.
That she could master herself.
For a while, Liand gave her silence; a chance to gather her resolve. But his tension increased as he waited, and eventually he asked, “Are you able to continue, Linden Avery? Until we gain shelter, every delay is perilous.”
“I’ll do it,” she muttered. “Able or not.” Then she gave him a wry frown. “But you have got to stop calling me `Linden Avery. ‘I feel like I’m in church.”
She had spent too many hours there as a child, wearing her one nice dress and fidgeting while a preacher levied strictures against her; a preacher who knew nothing about her pain-or her mother’s.
But she could not expect Liand to understand such things. “I’m “Linden”, she added. “That’s enough. I don’t need so much formality.”
He studied her as if she had asked him to commit an act of irreverence. “Very well,” he said cautiously. “You will be “Linden” to me.”
Then he turned away and began to repack Somo’s burdens.
Anele also seemed eager for movement. He had grown restive, shuffling his feet on the scree. He started upward without any urging.
Setting her teeth, Linden stumbled into motion and followed her companions.
There the ascent became harder for her. The slope of shale and loose stones increased the likelihood that she might fall; perhaps break an ankle. At the same time however, she found that she could use her hands to help her climb. If she simply let the blanket hang across her shoulders, her arms could ease some of the strain on her legs. In that way, in spite of her weakness, she was able to keep pace with Anele, Liand, and Somo for a time.
She scraped her palms; bruised her newly healed elbows and shins. The thinning air stung her lungs until phosphenes plucked erratically at her vision, dissolving d and wedged stones to bright swirls and then resolving them to granite again, schist and obsidian, feldspar and quartz. But she fixed Jeremiah’s face before her and went on climbing.
Halfway to the rough edges of the rift, however, she began to fall behind her companions. The blanket slipped from her shoulders, but she was unaware that she had lost it. The tremors in her legs expanded to her arms and chest. Eventually she found herself approaching each step as a discrete event, isolated in time from the one before it and the one which would come next. During that instant, nothing existed for her except the effort of heaving herself upward.
Then finally she discovered that her legs no longer shook and her cheek lay along a sheared plane of stone. Flakes of mica sent small gleams of sunlight into her eyes, but she could hardly distinguish them from the dissociated dance of anoxia. Had the air become so thin already? And why had the sun not warmed the chill from
