Fall; or, Dodge in Hell - Neal Stephenson Page 0,397

that has the power to stop him who pursues us!” And Burr—normally a stand-square-to-the-enemy type—took the unusual measure of turning his back on the Chasmian for a moment and pointing with his sword to the opposite side of the gorge.

“Burr! Look out!” Prim shouted. But instead of taking the time to look, Burr dove sideways and rolled to his feet. In the place where he had been standing a moment earlier, an adamant claw had sunk into the snow and broken the rock. It was the extremity of a writhing snake of stone and aura that reached all the way back to the Chasmian’s shoulder. Both Burr and Prim had assumed the foe to be far out of range; but they now knew it could fling its arms out to a distance many times their apparent length. The claw began to drag backward across the ground, then sprang into the air as its owner retracted it.

While the Chasmian was reassembling itself, Prim spared a moment to look the way Burr had pointed. The last time she had paid any attention to the top of the glacier, she’d seen nothing but a lightning storm, strangely focused on one place. As if all of the Lightning Bears had come together for a purpose. Now, though, there was nothing to see opposite save an individual soul. He was walking along the path toward the far end of the Broken Bridge. He was barefoot, and lightly dressed for the weather in a white robe. In form he was like an angel, but he did not have wings. Circling high above him, like a crow harrying an eagle, was Corvus.

So this, it seemed, was the soul who had followed the Quest all the way across the Stormland. Instead of passing through the cave as they had done, he had simply strolled barefoot along the Shifting Path over the glacier. No wonder the Lightning Bears had been so furious. But they had not stopped him.

Once again the Chasmian lashed out from a distance, forcing Burr to dodge and roll clear of a meteoric claw.

“Sing of me that I fought this,” he said to Prim as he came to his feet. Then he leaned forward and took off running toward the giant, hoping perhaps that in the time it would take the foe to collect itself he could get close enough to attack its legs. “No!” Prim cried, and took off running on a parallel track.

The next blow came sooner than expected, but Burr was in a position to dodge cleverly behind a mound of slag, and so barely broke stride before he was able to resume his headlong attack. Prim could not match the warrior’s pace. But she thought she was close enough now. She fixed her gaze on the storm of stone that served as the Chasmian’s head—

—and found herself skidding across the ground with snow in her mouth. Something had knocked her down. Not the Chasmian, or she’d have been dead. She rolled onto her back and looked up to see Corvus wheeling back around toward her. “You must not do it,” he said. “The Chasmian is the only thing that can buy us the time we need. Spring made it for the purpose it must carry out next, and for long ages it has collected its strength in the deep, preparing for this day. Do not seek to deprive this one of his destiny.”

The light of the angel sword flashed. Prim got to her feet and looked to the Chasmian. Burr had got close enough to have a go at its ankles. Any part of the creature above its shins was out of his reach. The warrior was able to close in and land a few strikes. Even that sword could do little more than cleave off shards of the adamant boulders that served the Chasmian as feet. Preoccupied as he was with avoiding kicks and stomps that the Chasmian aimed his way, Burr was blind to what came from above: a long downward sweep of the arm that caught him full along the side of his body and launched him into the air. Somewhere in midflight the sword fell from his nerveless hand and sank blade-first into the frozen earth, casting the plain into darkness. Burr tumbled and rolled for some distance when he came down again. Some of those movements recalled those of a living soul. But when he stopped, he stopped for good.

“Nothing could have survived that,” Corvus said. “Burr