A Tumult of Tumble and Chaos (19)

The morning came, cold and clear, blue skies and a biting wind. My despair had collapsed under its own weight, and it left me with a diamond-hearted resolution. This would not be my last day.

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The morning came, cold and clear, blue skies and a biting wind. My despair had collapsed under its own weight, and it left me with a diamond-hearted resolution. This would not be my last day.

I drank from a tiny drip falling from atop my sheltering rock crevice. Better that than risking any of the murky pools. 

Despite my shelter, I was soaked to the bone. I stripped my clothes and wrung them dry as much as I could. The sun was no match for the wind, and I huddled naked with my garments spread over various nearby rocks for only a short while before I capitulated to the inevitable — damp clothes were better than none. 

I realized I was at the north end of the valley, with my sheltering mountain behind me. On my left, the long shadow of another peak covered half the valley. On my right, the third peak reached higher than the rest, or perhaps it was only that it seemed more, bathed in the morning light. 

I needed a vantage point. I needed to climb. The ridge between Shelter Mountain and East Mountain seemed closest, and a gentler slope than the others. A good enough place to start as any. 

I ignored my hunger. There was nothing to eat, no matter how hungry I became. I stopped for a short respite when I was about halfway up the ridge, and looked back. I thought about where I had landed in a puddle, and where I had sought shelter. I could see the boulder. And beyond the boulder, a strange hunched shape caught my eye, but I couldn't tell what it was.

I returned to my ascent. The view spread ever further, but remained filled with sky and grey mountain peaks. I reached the top of the ridge, and one more step would have sent me to my doom. The drop was not quite sheer, but it was steep. If I'd been here the day before, in that dark state of mind, I might have simply taken the step and slid into the void. This was a new day.

I scoured the vista for any sign of civilization. Any village, any dwelling, any road. Anything at all would have given me comfort. A strange patch of white on a far slope confused me for a moment, until I decided it was a flock of sheep or mountain goats. Perhaps it was a sign of habitation after all.

I reached out for any hint of magic, and again found none.

Turning away from the view, my eyes came to rest on the other patch of white I'd seen, beyond my sheltering boulder. 

As I approached, bile rose in my throat, despite the utter void in my stomach, or perhaps because of it. Bones. A human skeleton. Not placed in any formal way. Slumped, as if fallen, as if they had appeared here some distance from the uneven rocky ground, and had not had the good fortune of a puddle. It seemed so obvious to me, I could almost see it happening. The fall from the sky, the bad landing, one crumpled motion, and then nothing more. It meant only one thing to me — that this was the dumping ground for Zhalghumi's castoffs, those who were no longer of any use to him, or those to whom he no longer had any obligation. I wasn't his first, and I would not be his last.

The bones were ancient, and that helped me face the moment. At least it meant the Faerie's victims were few and far between. A few strips of bleached fabric lay here and there over the bones. It was clear there was nothing of use, nothing that would be of any help to him. Except for the body itself.

I had the decency to feel distaste at what I was about to do. I simply did what needed to be done. And that wasn't to offer the deceased a decent burial or to build some kind of cairn around them, or say any sanctimonious words to some false deity. I grabbed the femur, and tested it for strength. I sneered at my barbarity. Would Father be proud or ashamed? I couldn't decide.

The bone didn't snap in my hands. It would serve as a weapon. Even though I hadn't seen any living creature nearby, I wanted to be prepared if I did. 

Grasping the bone near the knee meant the round head at the hip joint might serve as a mace or club.

I felt primeval. 

I headed south, to the rise between the East and West Mountains, a harder climb than the first ridge, but the steeper slope had helped clear loose stones, so in some ways it was less treacherous. The lip of that ridge was sudden and sure. Sheer. A drop of a thousand feet, it seemed, until a bank of cloud obscured the view. I loosed a stone over the edge, and it dropped away and away. 

Again, I reached out for my Arts, and felt nothing in return.

I turned away from the precipice, and headed to the final vantage, the ridge between the Shelter and West Mountains. This was the hardest climb of all, an intermediate slope, with lots of loose scarp and rubble, and every footfall was a potential disaster. As I reached near to the top of the ridge, I had to scramble on my hands and knees, letting go of my femur club. The view beyond the ridge reached further than the others, to a distant flat horizon. Here, the low cloud was patchy and uneven, and down in the lowlands distant dark spires reached above the white blanket. A city. Life. Civilization. This was the direction to go. Except that the slope below offered certain death. Any movement might set off a rockslide, the slope too steep to fight the inevitable. 

I reached out, certain that I would feel something, finally. I strived and pushed and reached and yearned. I stared at the distant city and willed it to me, or me to it, the difference didn't matter. And I remained on the ridge, without even a wisp of magic, and no hope at all of calling the Art.

My head drooped. My forehead rested on a flattish rock. There was no safe way down. The entire highland was within the Folly. My only hope was to slide down the rocky slope and hope to avoid any sheer drops. It was hardly any hope at all. 

A sound. My head whipped up, and the stone I'd been resting on slipped over the edge and away, sparking a tumult of tumble and chaos. The rockslide was only a small taste of the one that would join my body on its final fall from these heights. 

There was so much noise and danger that I completely forgot, in that moment, about the sound I'd heard. When I remembered, and looked behind me, I saw nothing that could have made any noise. 

And then there was movement.

An eagle of some kind, an unfamiliar species, swooped from a hidden place and screeched in victory at the small thing it now had in its talons as it again took to the air.

Life, after all. Chaos, in the magical desert of the Folly. If it was indeed a Folly. Now there was hope.

Continue reading with Part 20.