Fall; or, Dodge in Hell - Neal Stephenson Page 0,386

of half-frozen water developed into a steady fall of ice-rain, which prompted them to retreat just a few yards down to a marginally more sheltered place. The light had dimmed, footing was slick, and Mard’s injured legs weren’t moving well. He toppled forward and reflexively threw out both arms to avoid planting his face right on the stones. But only one hand—his good one—made effective contact with the ground. The injured one gave way, so that he twisted at the moment of impact and struck with his shoulder. Momentum then rolled him onto his back, where he lay for a few moments, grimacing with agony.

His injured arm was missing. Or rather, beyond the point where he had cut himself with the sword of Elshield, a forearm, wrist, and hand still existed. But they were made of aura. The fingers were wispy ghosts. Prim could see right through the palm of his hand. She came very close to crying out. What stilled her was not the fear of being heard by Dug. It was the way Mard looked into her eyes: altogether steady and calm. He had known, of course, and had been hiding it under his cloak.

She naturally had a great many questions as to the prognosis, but hiding from Dug patrols during a mountain hailstorm was not a good situation for that kind of talk. They huddled together as they had done at other such times. But on this occasion Prim chose to lie next to Mard so that the two of them could share the warmth of their bodies with each other.

They waited until it was full dark and then began to ascend. “I shall go last,” Edda offered, “as I may touch off avalanches.”

Despite their earlier efforts at memorizing landmarks, had it not been for Mab they’d have been hopelessly lost. Corvus had adopted his human shape again. The occasional lightning bolt lit up the entire mountainside as bright as day, but not long enough for the eye to seek out and fix the location of the cave’s entrance. They learned to cringe and tense themselves in anticipation of the thunderclap that would always follow a fraction of a second later.

“Thingor’s Aura!” Fern called, after it seemed they had been blundering around for an hour. Prim, who had been staring fixedly at the ground in an effort to make out where she ought to plant her feet, looked about to see that the rocks around her were limned in green fire. Before she could feel any sense of wonder or awe at this, Fern followed up with, “Lie flat!” So she tried to do so and learned that the very idea of lying down had no clear meaning on ground as stony as this. A bolt struck very close, the light and the sound penetrating her skull at the same instant. Querc screamed. Prim craned her neck to gaze up the slope. Pulsing rivers of the green fire ran up and down it as fast as thought. Something extraordinarily brilliant could be seen high above, as if suspended in the sky; it had the dazzling brilliance of a lightning bolt, but it persisted, like the sword Burr had taken from the angel. And yet it moved about like a thing alive, sometimes down on all fours and other times rearing up to stand on its hind legs.

It was a bear. A Lightning Bear. It was on the top of the ridge high above them, far beyond where they had any thought of going; but it had seen them and it was not happy that they were coming up its mountain.

It was a short while later that rocks began to tumble down out of the darkness. One came straight for Prim, moving so fast she could not possibly dodge it; but it caromed off another and brushed past her.

It was just like being down beneath the Overstrike with Beedles up above rolling rocks down onto them. But this time, she felt certain, it was Dug who had been alerted to their presence, perhaps by the vigilant bears.

The sun came out, illuminating the whole slope above. She could see all: In the near ground, boulders tumbling toward them. Above that, less than a bow-shot distant, the entrance to the cave. And on the higher ground above that, pale figures with the squat asymmetrical forms of Beedles. Perhaps a dozen of them. The sudden light had caught them in the act of prying rocks loose from the slope. Their work