Fire Arrow (10 page)

"Perhaps a moment or two," Brie replied dryly.

"Very well. I could do with a snack." Monodnock pulled out a small wedge of brisgein—an Ellyl delicacy made of stalks of heather and silverwood—and offered one to Brie. She took it, her hand shaking only a little.

"Oh, dear maiden." Monodnock pressed a hand to his heart. "It makes me quite ill to think of you, with danger pressing on all sides. If only I were free to journey with you, be your champion, vanquish the devils who beset you!" Then he stood straight up, pulling his lanky frame into a heroic pose and rubbing his orange hair into a frenzy of spikes.

"Alas, you are not free," said Brie, casting her face down to hide the smile. "But I will always be in your debt for your many kindnesses."

"Ah, 'twas nothing, nothing at all," he said mournfully.

"You are needed here at your post. There may be further attacks on the porth by the gabha."

Monodnock's heroic pose suddenly sagged and he began muttering, "I must send word right away to King Midir. I wonder how many reinforcements he will send. I could fit no more than three and even then it would be quite cramped." He began walking away. "And what of my food stocks? Oh, I do hope they won't have large appetites..."

"Excuse me, Monodnock," interrupted Brie, "but how do I get out of here?"

"Oh, just go down that tunnel; it will lead into a cave, and out the cave's entrance lies Sura's Gorge. Now, I could fit two Ellylon in the parlor, provided they are small ... Oh, but will I have enough coverlets? The last time I checked..."

Brie watched him disappear into the rock and then turned and made her way down the tunnel.

She emerged into Sura's Gorge through a narrow rectangular passage, almost stumbling down a steep pitch that ended in a creek. Carefully she began to descend, but she ended up sliding most of the way down on her backside, landing with a splash in the creek.

Rising, she gazed back at the mountain through which she had passed with Monodnock. It was steep and forbidding, though she wasn't entirely sure the shortcut had been worth it. Ahead stretched a jagged mountainscape. According to Crann's map, the tallest peaks were called Beirt, or the Twins, and she could just see them in the far distance.

Aelwyn had told her that Beirt was really two spires standing side by side, like twins, almost identical in shape. Between the Twins lay Beirthoud's Pass. Taking a deep breath, Brie set out, following the creek through the gorge.

By twilight she had ascended the first mountain that lay between her and Beirthoud's Pass. The path had been an easy one, ascending in zigzags to the top. But the descent was trickier and steeper, and again she spent much of it sliding in a downpour of loose stones and scrub.

When she reached the valley, Brie made camp and spent the night there. So far she had seen no sign of any goat-men.

***

During the next few days, as she traversed a smaller range of mountains dense with pine trees, Brie occasionally looked at Ladran's map, comparing it to Crann's. As she had suspected, the farmer's map was a lie. He had sought to misdirect her; without Crann's map she would almost certainly have gotten hopelessly lost in the vastness of the Blue Stacks.

Brie quickly found that hiking up and down mountains taxed leg and back muscles she had used but little before. And she developed blisters the size of coins on her heels. But the grandeur of the mountains, their wildness and dignity and beauty, filled her with awe.

As the days succeeded each other, Brie found herself getting stronger, able to travel farther in a day. Still, it took her two days of backbreaking exertion to reach Beirthoud's Pass. She had several terrifying moments when she had to scale almost-sheer stretches of rock face, made even more treacherous by the occasional patch of icy snow, which at this high altitude never completely melted. But finally Brie reached the summit.

There was a small rock marker with beirt bealach faintly inscribed on it; "Beirthoud's Pass" in the old language. With a fresh mountain wind blowing across her face, Brie felt a surge of exhilaration. She gazed at the two snowcapped spires rising on either side of her—the Twins—and beyond, to the north, she could see the kingdom of Dungal, the sea glittering alongside it. After Beirthoud's Pass, she had only two summits of significant size to cross, and then she would be in the foothills of Dungal.

***

Two days later, Brie had just crested the second of the two peaks and was gazing down in some despair at what looked to be a sheer wall of rock when she was struck by an enormous blast of wind. She had been vaguely aware that the wind had picked up, but was unprepared for the strength of the gust. The force of the wind pushed her to the edge, her feet skidding off into open air. She grabbed at the path, but the weight of her body pulled her down and she was over the side of the ledge. One hand caught hold of a protruding rock and she hung against the face of the cliff, terrified. Gazing down over her shoulder she could see another ledge, perhaps thirty feet below. The toes of her boots scrabbled against the rock face. The wind tore at her. Suddenly the piece of rock under her fingers came loose and she lost her handhold.

She fell.

Plummeting downward, Brie clutched at the cliff face, scraping off skin and breaking her fingernails. She landed heavily on the ledge below, crushing her right leg beneath her. Pain exploded through her body and she screamed. Then she clenched her teeth and lay still. Barely conscious, she spotted a small crevice in the rocky cliff and burrowed into it, dragging her leg. She was able to fit only half of her body into the opening, but it gave her some protection from the lashing wind.

Brie lost track of time, her leg throbbing with a pain beyond any she'd known before. Her thoughts became disconnected, dreamlike, and she grew warm with a tingling rushing under her skin. Collun was there, at their campsite, an arm's length away. They had spent the day planting rutabaga and were exhausted, drowsing peacefully by the embers of their fire. Then Brie's father bent over her, telling her it was time to get up and practice with her bow and arrow.

The arrow. Brie came alert. Where was the arrow? She shifted her body to reach for the quiver. Her leg moved and pain knifed into her. She began to panic, then her fingers brushed the leather surface of the quiver. It had stayed on her shoulder as she fell, along with her bow and pack. But to get to the arrow she would have to move her body again. She couldn't. Her fingers dropped from the quiver.

 

Cross your heart,
Then to die;
Shoot an arrow in your eye.

 

The singsong bit of doggerel repeated several times in her ears, though she didn't know if it was her own voice or someone else's. She needed the arrow. If she didn't hold the arrow, she would die. As she reached for the quiver, the pain again coursed through her, worse now. She pulled the quiver to her chest. With numb fingers she found the arrow. It was ice-cold to the touch. She had been expecting warmth, comfort, and the shock of the cold made her numb fingers flinch away. The arrow fell.

Brie felt a whirling dizziness, as if she, too, were falling. Then she was somehow looking down from above at the crumpled body of a girl. She saw blood and a white tip of bone sticking out of her leg. But the arrow ... It was falling slowly through the air, and as it fell, tiny pictures unraveled like thread off a spool. A thin streamer spiraled away from the arrow; it was long, longer than she would have believed possible. The wind played with the colored picture streamer, teasing it into great looping coils.

Brie reached for the streamer, thinking to reel the arrow back in like a fish at the end of a line, but the wind was mischievous, whipping the streamer out of her grasp just as she thought she had it. She sighed. She was so tired. It was easiest just to close her eyes....

"Brie."

Someone had spoken her name. A voice with melody and strength. A woman's voice. Brie's eyes flicked open. Then she saw a face. Unlined, beautiful, yet old, very old. White hair—or was it a cloud?—surrounded, flowed all around the face. Seila. Brie smiled, closing her eyes again.

"Brie, wake up." The voice was insistent, even urgent.

"I'm tired, great-grandmother."

"You can sleep later. Now you need to get up. Here." Something was being pressed into her hands. It was the arrow, no longer cold, with just a little warmth humming along its shaft. Brie wondered if all the pictures were gone, unraveled.

"Look," said the voice.

Brie opened her eyes and looked at the arrow. The pictures were still there. For the first time she could see one of them. The little pictures were like pictures in a book, only they were moving, telling a story. There was a young girl with yellow hair skipping along a seawall, carefree. Then water rising, rising. And a light bursting from the girl as she held back the water. Brie watched the pictures unfold, avid, waiting to see what would happen next.

"Get up, Brie."

She jerked with surprise. The pictures faded, disappeared. She wanted them back.

"Get up, Brie."

"It hurts."

"Get up."

"I can't."

"The arrow, Brie."

Brie closed her eyes, but she held tightly to the arrow. It was getting warmer. She concentrated on the warmth, felt it seep into her hands, up her arms.

"Seila?" Brie called out, pulling herself up. But she knew even before opening her eyes that Seila was gone. Brie almost sank back onto the rock; the feeling of loss was so overwhelming. But she stayed upright.

The wind had died down. Brie looked around her, taking stock.

The ledge she was on jutted out of the cliff, narrowing away to her right. Below her the cliff face plunged straight away. Brie could not see a way down.

Then she steeled herself to look at her leg. She could see the whiteness of the bone where it protruded. It was bleeding badly. If she didn't get help soon she surely would die. The warmth of the arrow beat against her fingers.

The first thing to do was to set the bone back into her leg and then stanch the flow of blood. She laid down the arrow and, painfully, slowly, shrugged the pack off her back. Brie felt a sudden, unexpected surge of self-pity. It wasn't fair.

But, hardening herself, she reached down and took hold of the white knob of bone. With her other hand, she felt under her leg for the opposite end. Taking a deep breath, she pushed them together. A scream tore out of her throat and she battled against losing consciousness. For a few moments she teetered in grayness, then the miasma began to clear.

Again she pressed together the two ends of shattered bone, and again came the unspeakable pain. Brie looked at her leg. It wasn't good enough. But she could do no more. Reaching into her pack she found a spare tunic. She tore it into strips and tightly wound the largest around the bleeding wound. Then she took out one of her two remaining arrows and, breaking off the arrowhead, used the shaft for a splint, tying it in place with strips of jersey. She did the same with the last arrow; only the fire arrow remained in her quiver.

After that Brie lay still, letting her pounding heart rest briefly. Then she shifted onto her stomach and began to drag herself along the ledge to where it tapered off. Perhaps if she could see around the corner there would be a way off the ledge.

A grating sound assailed her ears. She stopped and listened closely. It was the braying of some kind of animal. She looked up.

A goat-man stood on the summit above her. His goat face wore a gloating, toothy smile. He had seen her.

Impossibly, he began moving down the mountain face toward her, finding toeholds she could not even see. Brie's heart hammered unevenly as she grabbed her bow. She tried to nock the fire arrow to the string, but her fingers were trembling too violently. The goat-man was only a few feet above her, on a minuscule edge of rock. He looked down at her, balanced and steady on his perch. His musky goatish odor wafted down, making Brie's stomach tighten.

Please, oh please, oh please ... Brie silently prayed for her fingers to work. There. The arrow was notched and ready. The goat-man began to leap down, toward her. Squinting, Brie let the fire arrow fly.

There was a searing, crackling noise. Sparks of light blinded her. Heat on her face, skin. She heard a hoarse scream. Through blurred eyesight, Brie saw the creature fall, its chest split open, flames spewing from inside.

Then it was gone.

Brie listened. Some time later—it seemed an eternity—she heard a far-off thud. Then she slipped into unconsciousness.

***

She woke to the feeling of something soft rubbing against her eyelids. Slowly she opened her eyes and saw a blurry white ear. As she blinked several times to ease the blur, a pink tongue lapped her eyebrow and Brie found herself looking into the silvery eyes of a faol, an Ellyl animal from Tir a Ceol. Dumbly she wondered what a faol was doing in the Blue Stack Mountains, then the animal purred a welcome and rubbed her white furry face against Brie's.

"Fara," she whispered in amazement. And the faol lovingly gave Brie's cheek a lick with her coarse tongue. Feebly Brie lifted her hand and ran it down the animal's back. "Well met, friend," she said, gazing at Fara. Faols were an odd hybrid of wolf and big cat, and this one had a gleaming white coat with a gold star burst on her forehead.

Then Brie remembered the goat-man and her fire arrow splitting his chest with fire. The fire arrow was gone. She felt a wave of desolation.

Sensing Brie's grief, Fara licked her again several times.

But then the faol moved away, down the ledge to the end where it tapered off. She stopped, waiting expectantly.

"I cannot, Fara. My leg is broken," Brie said almost apologetically.

Fara didn't budge.

Brie sighed, then began dragging herself toward Fara. Finally she reached the end, and—sweating and raw with pain—she peered around the edge. Approximately ten feet away was a moderately steep slope, made up of mostly loose pebbles and small patches of scrub grass. It was not as steep as the cliff face, but it didn't look particularly navigable, certainly not for one with a broken leg. Between it and the ledge she was on lay one narrow outcropping of rock. The rest was sheer.