Fall; or, Dodge in Hell - Neal Stephenson Page 0,400

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?

And he feared Prim. He feared the power that was hers enough that he had tried to kill her once already.

Did El know—could he know—that they had a key to the Fastness? It must have lodged in that cube of stone for a long time. Had El known of its existence, he’d have destroyed it. They had only got it free of the Cube this morning. But El had been following them across the Stormland for days. So it could not be the case that the knowledge of the key had drawn him here.

Sophia had drawn him here. Even at the Quest’s outset, El had somehow known that a person of interest would be passing through Secondel and had alerted Elshield. The death of Elshield and of several others must have confirmed what he had perhaps suspected, or feared: that Sophia was abroad in the Land and knew her power. He had made a second attempt to catch her at the Asking, but she had vanished. And at almost the same instant, one of his angels had died at Lost Lake. El must have known of Pluto’s system of chaos tunnels and must have guessed that Sophia had made use of one. He had gone to Lost Lake and followed their trail. Now he was here, raining boulders against the Chasmian’s shield while advancing one step at a time across the remade bridge. The Chasmian was giving almost as good as he got, lashing out with his claw to attack while shouldering his shield to defend. His weapon did not seem able to penetrate the sphere of aura that surrounded El.

As Prim watched, its claw faltered in midstrike and fell like an amputated hand into the gorge. The Chasmian was soon able to replace it with a discarded piece of ironmongery, a huge tong that must have been used once to hoist a crucible. But while he was doing so, El advanced, at last putting the bridge behind him and setting foot on the near side of the Chasm. Prim had the presence of mind to guess that El might now take advantage of his foe’s disordered state to aim more attacks at her, and she was correct; looking up she saw several more rocks fall loose from the Overhang and come her way. Seen, they were easily avoided.

She was more worried about the party on the front steps of the Fastness. Preoccupied as they were with the key and the lock, they wouldn’t know that El had crossed over and would not be looking for incoming rocks. But El did not seem to be sending any their way. Which confirmed in her mind that El might not even have known about the key. He might have been asking himself why Sophia had gone to such trouble to come here, where her one power was of no use; but his only thought was to get to her and kill her.

So she ascended the stair again, all the way to the flat top of the stone anvil, and put her back to the Fastness and walked north to the very edge, making sure that El could see her. She could actually feel his gaze upon her when he had a moment to take his eyes away from the Chasmian. She felt almost close enough to look him in the