Нил Стивенсон - Fall; or, Dodge in Hell

She reached the shadow of the stone anvil. Risking a look behind her, she saw that the danger was past. The Chasmian had lost interest in her. It stood with its back to her now, facing north toward the bridge.

Curiosity now overtook her good sense. She trotted up a set of rude stair steps that led to the anvil’s flat top. There she had a look round. First she looked south, thinking only to glance at the rest of the party and make a note of where they were. Which she did; but then, gazing a little farther down the road, where it led deeper beneath the overhang, she spied something that demanded a longer look.

She had imagined for some reason that the Fastness would be farther away and more deeply embedded in the Knot. But there it stood. It was right before them. And sweeping her gaze quickly from side to side, she took in the whole scene and understood how it was that the four great mountain ranges of the Land came together in this place, each with its own kind of rock, and were involved with one another in a manner that explained why it was called the Knot and why it could not be undone without breaking the Land asunder. Looking up at the Overhang, she could see snow and loose stones resting upon surfaces where by rights they ought to have fallen down on her head. She sensed that, had the Quest approached from some other direction, they might have been standing there right now and looking “up” at where Prim stood and wondering why she did not fall off the anvil.

But if you approached it from the north, as they had done, why, then when you reached this place the Fastness stood upright as a proper castle ought to and the road led straight to its front door. It was not surrounded with a moat or other fortification, like some castles down in the Land, for it was guarded by the Evertempest and all the terrain the party had put behind them during the last few days. Its walls rose sheer from the black bedrock to a great height. For Egdod had raised it with the power of his soul, the same that had made the entirety of the Land, and observed no ordinary limits as to where building stones might be quarried or how high they might be stacked up. He had done it, according to legend, to prove to himself that he still had that power, at least when he could work in a solitary place without the eyes of other souls upon him. So its bastions and towers borrowed some of their general shapes from fortifications of a more practical nature, but were fantastical and strangely wrought according to Egdod’s whim. The front of it was symmetrical, perhaps as a way to discourage curious visitors, but farther back along its sides Egdod had experimented with more fanciful inventions in the way of high towers and oriels, some of which were still connected to the living rock of the Knot that enfolded the whole structure. The road led straight to its front gate, and the side fork of the Chasm tunneled beneath.

But those parts Prim had to guess at and see in her mind’s eye, for, as Weaver had sung, the whole top of it was surmounted by an iron dome of curving plates riveted together, rough and ready like the battle helms that Beedle smiths hammered out in their forges and issued to Beedle sergeants. From the rim of it, chains and straps of iron depended and lower down were connected in a haphazard improvised style to more ironmongery that encircled the walls, clasping plates over windows and doorways. From this distance it put her in mind of how it looked when a carter piled a lot of assorted cargo on a wagon and then threw loops of rope around it every which way, tying a knot here, bending a rope through another rope there and hauling it tight, not caring whether the web had any order or symmetry about it provided it served its purpose. She almost wondered whether its very crudeness had been intended to mock the beauty of what it enclosed.

Beneath her feet the anvil shook. She whirled about to see that the Chasmian had turned about and was now headed her way! But during the few moments that she stood paralyzed with shock, it diverted to one side and stepped over toward the huge curved plate of iron she had noticed earlier, leaning against a cliff. She had assumed it was a portion of the great dome that for some long-forgotten reason had never been used. And perhaps it was; but the Chasmian intended to use it now. The giant gripped the plate between its claws and rotated it to show its concave side. This had a length of chain riveted in place like the straps on the back of a warrior’s shield. The Chasmian slung it over its shoulder.

While it was thus occupied Prim had a clear view north up the road to the bridge. The white figure had by now advanced from the far side of the Chasm all the way up the bridge to the first gatehouse. Calmly he raised his hands, and the bridge began to grow ahead of him. He strolled forward, planting his bare feet on newly made bridge deck that had not existed moments earlier. Beneath that, the supporting arch mounted at a pace to match. The near stump of the bridge had become tinged with chaos, like Mard’s arm where it had been cut. It began to extend itself north, reaching across the gorge to join up with its other half.

The Chasmian picked up a chain link that had been lying discarded on the ground for millennia. It had been made by taking a rod of iron as thick as the body of a full-grown man and looping it round. The giant reared back and slung it directly at El. For the white figure on the bridge could only be El himself. El saw it coming and with a casual flick of the arm made it falter in its flight and crash down upon the bridge. There it did damage. But El had the means to repair it and so this did not much slow him. The Chasmian threw other things, with similar results; the bridge, on the whole, continued to heal itself. The gap narrowed. El advanced.

The dawn had progressed to the point where the whole scene was well lit. Prim could see Corvus silhouetted, wheeling about the Chasmian and apparently trying to offer suggestions. And somehow he must have got through to whatever passed for its mind, for suddenly it unfixed its gaze from El and looked straight up. Then directly it hove up its shield, just in time to deflect a rock the size of a house that had dropped straight down out of the sky. The sound that it made when it caromed from the iron plate was sickening.

Prim looked up and saw a rock falling directly toward her . It, and more, were coming from the Overhang. El, through some conjury, was reversing the direction of gravity up there. She ran across the flat of the anvil and dove over its edge just before the boulder smashed into the place where she had been standing. The stairway caught her fall. Immediately she rolled onto her back and gazed up, expecting more. El’s strategy was clear. He knew that he faced Death. He must keep Death at bay.

That being the case, she did not wish to endanger her comrades by coming too close to them. They were struggling up a long stair that led to the front gate of the Fastness, where the great lock hung askew in its web of chains. They were most of the way there. Prim could see a mote of light orbiting round the lock, darting into its keyhole and out again. Lyne was up there, moving on a chain like a spider on silk. Querc and Marc had already got to the lock. Mard was reaching into it with his auric hand, perhaps cleaning out thousands of years’ piled snow and dirt. Fern was pacing Edda on her slow and labored ascent of the stairs, turning to face her. Prim knew what she was doing: talking to the giantess, who now looked like nothing other than a poor hag bent under a burden far too heavy to bear. Yet there was nothing Fern could do to help her other than to offer words of encouragement. With each step Edda surmounted, Fern celebrated and praised her and urged her to the next.

Battle had been joined at the bridgehead, and part of Prim regretted she was not there to witness it and perhaps write it in a song, or, one day in the future, describe it to a weaver who could make of it a tapestry. She looked up to see if any more boulders were falling but saw none. Perhaps El had his hands full for the moment fighting the Chasmian. One would certainly think so! There had to be limits even to El’s power. If not, why did he fear Egdod so? Why had he not, in El’s absence, altogether remade the Land as he wished to see it?