The Deed of Paksenarrion (137 page)

“Where?” Giron, now, stood before her. Paks felt, rather than saw, his concern. She leaned against Phaer, unable to speak, sick and shaking with fear and the unbearable touch of some evil. She heard Giron say “Stay with her, Phaer. The rest of you—”

She was huddled on the ground; beneath her nose the soil had a faint sour tang. At last she managed to draw a full breath, then another. Whatever it was had not disappeared—she could still feel that loathsome pressure—but it seemed to be concentrating elsewhere. Paks pushed herself up on hands and knees. Above her, Phaer’s voice: “Are you better?”

She nodded. She didn’t trust her voice. Slowly, feeling at every moment that she might fall into separate pieces, she sat back on her heels, managed to rise to her feet. Deliberately she took the great bow from her shoulder, and braced her leg to string it. With the bow strung, she pulled an arrow from her quiver, checked the fletching, then took another, to hold as she had been taught. She looked around. The others had disappeared into the trees; only Phaer was visible, standing beside her now, his own bow strung and ready.

“Can you speak? Are you spelled?” She knew instantly that one of his arrows would be for her, if she were.

“No.” Her voice surprised her; clear and low, it held none of the unease she felt. “No, it’s looking elsewhere. It is very close, but I can’t tell where—too close.”

Phaer nodded. “After you fell, we all could feel something wrong. Did it attack you, or—”

Paks shook her head. “I don’t think it did. Somehow I must be sensitive to it—whatever it is—as night creatures are to a flash of light.”

“It is rare for a human to be more sensitive to anything than an elf or part-elf.” Phaer sounded faintly affronted. “Do you have a god, perhaps, enlightening your mind?”

Paks did not want to discuss it. The sense of wrong and danger was as strong as ever, though it didn’t center on her. Now that the sickness was past, she tried to feel her way toward its location. She turned her head from side to side, eyes half shut. A slight tingle, there. She could see nothing openly. Phaer was watching her, still alert.

“I think—that way—” Paks nodded to the uphill side of the trail.

“I still don’t feel any direction.” He looked worried. “Perhaps we should wait until Giron comes.”

“No. If we move, we have a chance of surprising it, whatever it is. If we wait here—” Paks took a cautious step off the trail. The tingle intensified: a sort of mental itch. She shivered, and moved on. She looked at each tree and stone as the rangers had taught her: she knew the names, now, of nearly all the trees and herbs. When she glanced back at Phaer, he was following in her tracks, his bow already drawn.

A fir, another fir, a spruce. A massive stone ledge, high enough to break the forest roof and let in more light, lay just uphill. Paks went forward, one slow step after another. She felt a wave of vileness roll down from above.

“Now I can tell,” murmured Phaer from behind her. “Don’t move, Paks; I’ll call—”

But the ledge itself heaved and shuddered, lifting in stinking coils. Without thought, Paks flipped her first arrow into position, drew, and saw it fly across that short sunlit space to shatter on rock-hard scales. She had the second arrow already nocked to the string.

“Daskdraudigs!” yelled Phaer. This meant nothing to Paks. The menace, too large to conceive, reared above them, tree tall, and yet the ledge still shifted, as if the stone itself were moulting into a serpent. Paks breathed a quick prayer to Gird, and loosed her second arrow at the underside of a lifted coil. It seemed to catch between two scales, but did not penetrate. She hardly noticed. Great waves of hatred and disgust rolled over her mind. She struggled to keep her eyes fixed on the thing, tried to fumble another arrow out of her quiver. Suddenly something slammed into her back and knocked her flat. “Daskdraudigs, I told you!” Phaer growled in her ear. “Stay down, human; this is elf work.” Through the noise in her head she yet managed to hear the other rangers: Giron shouting in elvish; Tamar’s higher voice rising like a stormwind’s howl. She turned her head where she lay and saw Phaer fitting an arrow to his bowstring.

“Why can’t I—”

“Special arrow. You don’t have these.” Paks noticed now that the fletching looked like stone; the arrowhead certainly was a single piece of chipped crystal. Phaer stood, drawing the bow. Above them more and more coils had risen, and the front of the creature was moving downslope to their left. He stepped forward, looking along the monster’s length (she could not tell for what purpose), then shot quickly and threw himself down.

The arrow flew true, and sank into the monster’s scales as if they were cheese. As Paks watched, that coil seemed to stiffen, to return to the stone she had first seen. Already Phaer had pulled out another of the special arrows. This time he aimed for the next coil ahead of his first target. Again his aim was true. But the unbound coils of the monster’s trailing end whipped and writhed, rolling down upon them. Before Paks could leap up to run, the trees they sheltered in were crushed, broken off like straws. Coils as heavy and hard as stone rolled over them.

Paks was aware of something cold and hard touching her skin before she could think what had happened. It was dark. She began to shiver from the cold. A pungent, resinous odor prickled her nose. When she tried to rub it, she found she couldn’t move her arms. Sudden panic soured her mouth: dark, cold, trapped. She tried to squirm free. Now she could feel pressure along most of her body. Nothing moved. She heaved frantically, heedless of roughness that scraped her. She stirred only dust that clogged her nose and made her sneeze. The sneeze stirred more dust; she sneezed again.

A ghost of reason returned: if she could sneeze, she was not being crushed utterly. She tried to think. Her head hurt. Her arms—she tried to feel, to wiggle her fingers. One was cramped under her; she worked those fingers back and forth. The other moved only slightly as she tried it. It felt as if it were under a sack of meal—something heavy, but yielding. When she tried to lift her head from the dust, it bumped something hard above her: bumped on the very place that hurt so. Paks muttered a Company curse at that, and let her head back down. Her legs—she tried again, without success, to move them. They were trapped under the same heavy weight as the rest of her body. She rested her cheek on the dust beneath it and wandered back into sleep.

When she heard the voices, she thought at first she was dreaming. Silvery elven voices, much like Ardhiel’s, wove an intricate pattern of sound. She lay, blinking in the darkness, and listened. After a moment, she realized that the darkness was no longer complete. She could see, dimly, a gnarled root a few inches from her nose. Remembering the hard barrier above her head, she turned cautiously to the side, and tried to look up. Tiny flickers of dim light seeped through whatever held her down. The voices kept talking or singing. It might not be a dream. She listened.

“—somewhere about here, if I heard the call rightly. Mother of Trees! The daskdraudigs must have fallen on them.”

“So it must. Look how the trees are torn.”

“But the firs would try to hold—”

“No tree could hold against that.” Paks suddenly recognized a voice she knew. Giron. Rangers. A dim memory began to return.

“They must be dead.” A woman’s voice. Tamar? Yes, that was the name.

“I fear so.” Giron again. “I fear so, indeed. Yet we must search as we can. I would not leave their bones under these foul stones.”

“If we can move them.” Another man. Clevis, or Ansuli—Paks could not think which. He sounded weary, or injured; his voice had no depth to it.

“Not you, Ansuli. You but watch, while Tamar and I search and move.”

It occurred to Paks, as slowly as in a dream, that she should say something. She tried to call, and as in dreams could make no sound: her mouth was dry and caked with dust. She tried again, and emitted a faint croak. She could hear the bootsteps on nearby stone; that sounded louder than her attempt. Once again—a louder croak, but no human sound. Then the dust caught her nose again and she sneezed. Boots scraped on rock.

“Phaer! Are you alive? Paksenarrion?” The sounds came nearer.

Paks tried again. “Ennh! ‘Ere. Down here.” It was not loud, but the rangers’ hearing was keen.

She heard a scraping and swishing sound very close; more light scattered down from above. “Under this tree?” asked Giron, overhead somewhere. “Who is there?”

“Paks,” she managed. “Down here.”

“Where’s Phaer? Is he alive?”

“I don’t know.” But as she said it, she realized what the “sack of meal” weighing down her right arm must be. She tried to sense, from that arm, whether he breathed, but could not; the arm was numb. “I—think he’s under this too.”

“Can you move, Paksenarrion?” That was Tamar, now also overhead.

“No—not much. I can turn my head.” She tried to unfold the arm cramped under her, without success.

“Wait, then, and don’t fear. We’ll free you.”

“What is it that’s holding me down?” There was a brief silence, then:

“Don’t worry about it. We’ll free you. It will take some time.”

In fact, it seemed to take forever. The sky was darkening again when Tamar was able to clamber down cautiously and touch Paks, passing a flask of water to her lips. Then she planted one foot in front of Paks’s nose and went back to work. By the sound of saw and knife, Paks knew that much of the weight and pressure came from a tree—or many trees. Gradually a wider space cleared before her. She could look down her body now, and see Tamar trimming limbs away from her hips. Directly above was the main trunk of the tree; she still could not raise her head more than an inch or so from the dust. She worked her left arm out from under her body. It felt heavy and lifeless; she could not unclench her fist. She turned her head carefully to look the other way.

Phaer’s face was as close to her as a lover’s. Cold and pale, stern, and clearly dead. Paks froze, horrified. She had not known he was so close—and being so close, how had he been killed while she was safe? She crooked her neck to look over her right shoulder. Phaer lay on her arm; tree limbs laced across him, and on the limbs a tumble of great boulders that ran back up the slope to the base of the ledge she had seen. Paks tried again to pull her arm free, but she couldn’t move it.

“Tamar!”

“We’re working, Paks. We can’t hurry; the tree could turn and crush you completely.”

“I know. But I can turn a little, and I saw Phaer—”

“We know.” Giron’s voice came from the other side of the rock pile. “Tamar was able to see past you.”

“But he—” Paks found her eyes full of tears suddenly.

“He died well. He shot the daskin arrows, didn’t he?”

“Daskin? Those with the crystal?”

“Yes.”

“Yes—he did. They both went in. But then the tail end whipped over—”

“I know.” Giron sighed; he was close enough for her to hear it. “Yet we must call ourselves lucky, Paksenarrion, to lose only two to a daskdraudigs. We might all have been killed, and the foul thing loose to desecrate the very rock. I honor your perception; none of us sensed it before you did, and none of us could find it. That is its skill, to spread its essence through the very stone so that it cannot be found.”

“Paksenarrion,” said Tamar, now back at her head. “Can you tell how much of your body is trapped under Phaer’s?”

“No—at least my right arm—maybe a leg—”

“We cannot hurry this, but you are weakening. Here—drink this, and let me feed you.”

Tamar sat in the space she had made, and held the flask to Paks’s lips. She drained it slowly; she could not take more than small sips. Tamar massaged her left arm, and slowly sensation came back, first as prickling, then as a fiery wave. Paks flexed her fingers, wincing at the pain, but was able to take a bit of waybread from Tamar and get it into her own mouth. Meanwhile, Tamar had taken off her own cloak, and she spread it along as much of Paks’s body as she could reach. “Don’t lose heart,” she said. “We will certainly free you, and Phaer’s body.”

“What is a daskdraudigs?” asked Paks. “Phaer kept yelling that, and I didn’t know.”

“Hmmmm—” It was almost as long as the Kuakgan’s hum. Finally Tamar said, “If you truly don’t know, I would rather not speak of it here. Time enough when we are far from this place, and at peace.”

“But it’s dead—isn’t it?”

“Do you sense any life in it?”

Paks shivered; she didn’t want to feel for that foulness again. But nothing stirred in her mind—no warnings, and no revulsion. “No,” she said finally.

“Good. Then we needn’t worry, for now.” Tamar stood, after laying her hand lightly on Paks’s brow. “Trust us, and lie still. Be ready to answer us when the load begins to lift. We do not wish to cause you more injury.”

But darkness rose from among the trees of the forest as they worked. The stones in the pile were large and heavy, and awkward to lift or move. Twice they shifted suddenly under Giron’s feet. He and Tamar both came near being crushed by the stones they tried to move. Ansuli came and tried to help; Paks heard the pain in his grunts of effort. Finally Giron stopped them.

“We cannot work this pile in the dark; we could all be crippled by a misstep here. We must make a light, or use other means, or—Tamar, do you think Paksenarrion can last the night?”

Hearing that question, Paks wanted to cry out. She could not—could
not
—stay under that tree, motionless, another night. She clenched her jaw. She could not make them do anything: if they decided to leave her there, there she would stay.

“Giron, she has withstood more than I would expect of any human. But another night, in this cold—with no way to ease her limbs—no. We must keep working somehow.”

“We agreed we would not use the elfane hier before her—”

“She is one of us now. We owe that to our own.”

“I think so too,” said Ansuli. “She has seen the elfane taig, she has been in the hands of the daskdusky cousins—and were we not told that the Lord Ardhiel blew that elfhorn, of which it is said that the High Prince of the Lord’s Inner Court will hear the call, and bring aid. She has seen as much elfane hier as many elves, already.”