NOVEL NEXT 153. The Very Wound Upon Her Heart
"Little stoneheart," called the longhorn.
She watched him from the scour into which she'd dragged herself. Huge form hunkering over the cart. Dusk thickening around him. She lay there as silent as the stone she was becoming. Hoping anyone looking might think her just another bit of the mountain, smashed off and left behind.
The longhorn had his maul out and was prodding it through the cart's contents. "Took you these, my spoils by right of conquest?" he called. He came around the cart. Now rifling with his hands. Dumping the oats upon the ground where the wind might scatter it. Any moment he'd see the exposed wynding. Any moment he'd go in after Orc.
She couldn't let that happen.
The longhorn now held up her alpenstock as if he knew she was watching. "Strange to hold this with which you would have struck me. So light. What swing has it? A surly one. Surly like your kind. I come for you now little stoneheart. I come to help you on your way. You who will become your cherished earth. Like men say, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Let us add: stone to stone. You would've killed me with it! As you killed your folk entire." And he laughed.
She listened, trembling. The rend within which she was entrenched was the very wound upon her heart and it went thither and yon without any apparent end. The stone shattered before and after, future and past, and within these infinites would she soon meet her bloodless end and thus the terminus of her kind. For they were a people that could not outlive their land.
Slowly, excruciatingly, she brought her longarm across her body. She lay on her back and could see the longhorn between her feet. She tucked the charred stump of the burnt-off butt into her armpit. The barrel resting on the instep of her boot. She could not move her head to align the sites. She had but one shot and it would have to be her best guess. The luminous sky, the stark black shadow of the beast. She fingered the trigger.
"How many dwarves murdered by your inaction? You could've averted it, had you but slain the grayback as you were stonesworn to do. But you pitied him, enfeebling you both. You forgave him, accelerating the end of your world. And now, what? You fall in love with him?"
The report of the longarm caromed downrange. Back the way whence the moon had come. The longarm's head whipped back. The massive horns upturned, a black crescent on the horizon like some anti-world of formless shadow descendant to earth, sinking to that lightless place, inking across its vast surface befitting man's inheritance. A drop in its constitutive sea. Forever has the world been half enveloped by darkness. Reject those who would increase that calculus for their own aggrandizement. Reject them and destroy them.
***
She heard him coming in the middle of the night. She was too weak to speak. He dribbled cool water upon her lips and she swallowed as best she could. Her throat felt like sand. He asked her if she would eat but she could make no reply. He held her close. He told her not to speak. To save her voice. He gathered her up from the scour and lifted her across his breast, the sutures stretched to bursting, and he carried her into the wynding.
It was so dark yet he moved with confidence. So quiet yet there was no hesitation in his stride. When he reached the fork he went right. At the forge of creation he laid her down upon the bridgehead. She looked up at him and he looked out upon the river of fire. She watched his eyes. Rarely had they been kind. What were they now?
"The anvil's gone," he said. He looked down at her. "The chains hang empty. The bridge, the dwarfstone sphere, all gone."
He knelt beside her. Took up her hand and placed it upon her chest. Rested his own palm upon its back.
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"Your father's alpenstock, the stones, the power of stonespeech. We have none of those things."
She watched him. When had he last slept? He would have no energy to go on. She didn't even know if he would, after the end.
"We don't need any of them. The power's in you. It's always been in you."
How little she'd known him. How badly she wished they'd had more time. Just one more day. One more hour. All the memories of her life she would give for one more hour.
"You must try."
She would have nodded but she could not articulate her neck. I will try, she thought.
She made neither noise nor movement yet he stood back as if he knew what was required. She closed her eyes. Prised her mouth apart by force of will. In her gravelic throat she bassed the sacred tone. She said the words, made the ask, completed the incantation. She opened her eyes.
He was there. Tears falling freely now.
She moved her hand somewhat. A beckoning. He fell down beside her.
"I'm sorry," he said. "I'm sorry."
She tried to clear her throat. "Khaz?" she whispered.
"I found him. Left at the fork, just like you said. He asked after you."
She shifted her head a little to better see his face. She wanted to touch his cheek. To draw a finger along his lips.
"I told him you were waiting for him. He's on his way to us now."
"Liar," she breathed.
"It's true. Him and Cousins both. She's alive. They found a way into the wynds of time. He thinks we can find a way to undo all this. You just need to hang on. Here."
He twisted around and pulled his musette into his lap. He opened the flap and reached in and pulled out the packet.
"I've got something for you. Something I've been saving for a special occasion."
She watched his fallen face. The way he would build it up again and the way it would fall again. He had unwrapped the peaches and was holding one under her nose. It smelled like a sunrise. Like the world made fresh.
He helped her open her mouth. He tore off a chunk and he laid it on her tongue. She couldn't chew. She just held it there. The sugar leeching out with her saliva. She closed her eyes. Nothing had ever tasted this good.
After a while he pinched it out of her mouth. Cast it into the fire. "Another?" he said.
"No."
"Just a little longer. They'll be here in just a little longer."
"Go te your grave," she murmured.
"My grave?"
"At the brigadier's. Dig it up."
She looked at him. Waited for his roving eyes to find hers back.
"You'll come with me," he said.
To laugh would be a cruelty to him. She couldn't muster one anyway. "Push me in," she said. "After."
"I won't need to."
She closed her eyes. "Please. Send me home."
He didn't say anything and she didn't notice. All her thoughts were turned inward. Upon her face and her figure settled the godhead of her folk. A stolid dignity as enduring as the marble from which her ancestors were said to have been cut. From which all movement, all alteration, seemed impossible. Her breathing grew slow and certain. Once exhaled, no life could ever be redrawn. Once ended, all oaths would be fulfilled.
She slipped into a dreamless sleep. He held onto her. The chamber was warm and she grew cold. He laid next to her for a long time and then he wiped his hand across her brow and he said her name. He said it again. He knew she wouldn't want to have to ask for it so he told her the thing he'd never before told anyone. Over and over he said it and he hoped it wasn't too late. He hoped she had heard it before the end.
He held no vigil. Nor could he stand to remain in that place. That which was flesh was now stone. Perhaps he could make it flesh again. The brigadier had told her everything awaited him. He was desperate. He did not say goodbye properly. He left the decapitated mountain hold and under the dead sky he found the scrawny cat gorging itself on dried oats scattered beside the cart. He collected up one and then the other. He traveled north to the place where for him it all began.