The Legend of Broken

of intriguing, that she responded to it. Perhaps she had always comprehended far more of what he said than her silence inside the cave indicated; whatever the case, she accepted the name, and it quickly became the one infallible means that he possessed of attracting her attention.

Would that she were close enough now, he thinks, to hear him: for his mind turns desperately to the notion of her carrying him down to the small feeder stream, and placing him in its icy waters just as she did when they first met, and so many times since. Indeed, whenever he has injured himself in her hearing, they have made this pilgrimage; but she is likely far away by now. And so he must, with only his arms to rely upon, try to free himself of his walking apparatus, and then pull himself across the cave floor to the tree stump by his bed, and to the medicines that lie atop it.

But no matter the effort, no matter his screams and denunciations of whatever god or gods have reduced him to this pitiable condition, it is of no use; and finally, after a timeless, numberless series of attempts, and with his body long past exhaustion, he realizes his defeat, and allows his perspiring brow to fall, finally, upon the cool stone beneath him. He exhales a terrible moan, his truncated body following his head in utter collapse. “I submit to you, cursed divinities …,” he begins to whisper, trying to catch his breath; but regular breathing brings only a sudden return of pulsating pain, pain that had been temporarily masked by effort. The return of such agony makes his predicament, for a moment, too great to bear, and he abandons himself to despair: “I submit to you— where is the godliness in thus amusing yourselves …?”

And — not for the first time, when he is in such a desperate state of distress — the old man begins to quietly weep, too exhausted, finally, to either scream or to carry on an angry indictment of the Heavens.

How long does he lie there before fear replaces his distress? He has neither knowledge nor interest; for the fear, when it comes, is pronounced. It is sparked by a rustling, some twenty yards from the cave, and the slight vibration of a heavy step through the stone floor that reaches the neura of his face; and it is deepened by the fact that he is utterly vulnerable, now, bereft of either weapons or further strength. And yet, when he quickly confirms the vibrations as being a hasty step that belongs to a creature too large for him to dismiss, the old man’s fear is mitigated by a sudden thought:

Perhaps it is time, he muses through the pain. Perhaps he has defied Fate for long enough, and ought to finally allow the great forest outside the cave to claim him. It will do so one day, no matter how many times he may succeed in staving that moment off; why not today? This very morning? In the midst of Davon Wood’s great renewal, why not allow some creature to make of him food for itself or its young? It will likely be a far more useful end than the one that he has flattered himself he may one day enjoy, should he finally return to human society. He is saddened by the thought of leaving her, of course; but will she not be better off, as well, without him to continually fret over …?

The steps come nearer and faster: evidently the creature — moving at something between a walk and a run — has no fear of the scent of humankind. The old man faces away from the cave door, thinking, in his agonized resignation, that he will not even turn. Rather, he will offer up the back of his neck, the most vulnerable part of his spine, to be crushed in the jaws of what most probably — given its lack of stealth, indeed its behaving as if it already owned the den — is a brown bear of Broken, the same beast whose rampant image figured prominently on the crest of that kingdom’s founder, Oxmontrot, as it has since done on that of his royal descendants. The animal will have recently woken from the long winter sleep, and is doubtless emboldened by the hunger that comes with burning away all the stored sustenance in its body. Such a creature will be more than capable of crushing the frail bones of the old man …

But then he hears it: a heavy yet hushed trill of the throat. And when he does, he recognizes the peculiarity of the step: each leg moving independently as they trot. Only two creatures, the old man knows, possess such coordination of movement: cats, both great and small, and horses. Thus, it must be his companion† returning unexpectedly, he dares hope for a moment …

His head lifts without his consciously willing it, and his agonized face turns toward the sunlight; then, instantly, his expression changes completely, as the newcomer enters into view …

IV: The Specter of Salvation

On its way into the cave is the most dreaded animal in all the Wood, a Davon panther. Nor is this any panther, but the one known for many years as a legend throughout Broken, not only for the unusual lust it possesses for the blood of certain men, but for the extraordinary beauty of its coat: fur that should, at best, be a gold akin to ripe wheat, is almost a ghostly white, and where the slightly darker striping and spotting should be, there are only the faintest traces of those markings,† rendered in a shade that nearly matches the beautiful but mysterious jewelry that the old man was fond of crafting for the God-King Izairn’s daughter: an alloy of pure gold, silver, and nickel, all readily available in the mountains along Broken’s frontiers. A mature female, and one with the scars to prove her age and experience, the panther is fearless, that much is evident from her quick step and lack of concern with the smell of human flesh and waste that she must have detected long before reaching the cave. The massive paws (for she is at least ten years of age, as well as over five hundred pounds in weight, some nine feet in length, and half that in height, when measured at the lowest point of the long, dipping spine‡) make a sound too careless for the hunt, however: they pad along the forest floor before the cave regally, the great and noble head never turning to remark upon the old man’s extraordinary garden, or his forge, or any other detail of this miraculous habitation. The large ears, which come to unusually pointed tufts, are turned purposefully forward; and yet, although the tongue is out and panting, there is no bloodlust in the extraordinary brilliance of the light green eyes, eyes that mirror the shade of the newest leaves on the youngest trees surrounding the camp …

The old man holds his breath, his eyes filling with tears; but these are not the tears of a man about to leave this world — they are those of a man who has found salvation where he thought there could be none.

“Stasi!” he manages to say, in cracks and cries. “But — you were …”

But she was not, in fact, so far away, after all. And, now that she is close, the white panther pays the old man’s voice no heed; instead, she trots into the cave as quickly as she approached it, and, standing with her head over his prostrate body, glances about, noting his disordered table and the scattered pieces of his walking apparatus as if she comprehends their meaning. And, indeed, in her eyes, as she looks down at him, is a gaze that could be interpreted — if one had the talent to see it, as the old man does — as embodying both concern and admonishment.

“I know it, Stasi, I know it,” the old man groans in contrition, wincing still with the cutting waves of pain. “But for now—”

He need not finish his sentence. With loving compassion, the panther lowers her head to rub her nose and muzzle gently against his nose and face,†† and then places her neck over his arms, extending her forelegs, so that her shoulders and chest also descend. This allows the old man to reach up and lock his arms around her graceful yet enormously powerful neck, which she then twists, with equal ease and agility, in such a way that he can, as effortlessly as his throbbing scars will allow, pull himself atop her shoulders, with each of his thighs resting between her shoulders and ribs. The panther then lifts the hundred or so pounds of mortal flesh with which the priests of Kafra left the old man, so long ago, exerting no more effort than if she were rising unencumbered; and, although the movements cause the old man some additional pains, his relief is sufficient to make these slight.

He reaches up, running one hand down the top of her impressive head to her moist, brick-red nose, the lone spot of deep color on her body: apart, that is, from the black lines that outline the remarkably tinted eyes, deepening their effect in such a way that they might have been applied with cosmetic paint by one of the women of the old man’s homeland on the Northeastern Sea.† Then the panther, consolingly, moves her face to greet the hand, and to allow his fingernails to scratch lightly, first at the long crest of the nose, then across the brow atop those strangely exotic eyes, and finally to the crown of her proud head. With tears, not of further anguish, but of the very deepest joy and relief streaming freely and silently down his face, the old man places his mouth by one of her enormous ears.

“The stream, Stasi,” he murmurs, although he need not; she has known since entering the cave that this is to be their destination. As she turns to go, she immediately slows her former quick pace to an easy, rhythmic gait, one that she knows the old man has always found soothing: her shoulders ripple, her spine undulates just