Broken Lands

“Sophia? Did you find something?”

Sophia shook her head, then changed her mind and nodded. “Yeah, maybe? I found why the station was abandoned; they weren’t having anyone come through anymore so the guards were pulled back and then supply runs stopped. There’s probably more to it than that; there has to be a reason for the change. The last commander didn’t mention the globe or the key, but he did say he hoped this would happen again, which means he thought someone might take over after the crisis passed. Clearly that didn’t happen. If this is real and not just stage dressing.”

“It’s probably not important,” Xin’ri said with a shrug.

“The commander mentioned Mimir. That might be important.” Sophia frowned. “I don’t know the Arcatiz legends well, but Mimir’s a human legend, not an Arcatiz legend. The moon rabbit and the shadow was an Arcatiz legend, I’m pretty sure, from the name of the moon. I’m not sure this is.”

Xin’ri shook her head with a smile. “That’s not what I meant. Should we take the books?”

“If we’re going to find a way out soon, I guess it can’t hurt. It’s not like anyone is going to take over this place and manage it, not inside the World Tree.” Sophia closed the book but didn’t pick it up. “I don’t think I have room for them and the roc eggs. I’m probably going to have to take some stuff out of my pack to fit them all even without the books.”

Xin’ri nodded. “I’ll carry them, then. I don’t like leaving books behind if I have a choice. I also want to check out the rest of what’s down here, but I know you’re not interested; why don’t you check on Dav and Ci’an instead?”

Sophia didn’t really want to say it, but Xin’ri was right and she was glad she had the way out of carefully examining everything the way she knew Xin’ri would. “Sure.”

When Sophia arrived back on the level where they started, Dav put her to work doing something that was worse than sorting through a cellar full of junk: holding the male gryphon’s wing out and manipulating it while Dav set each break and then applied a tiny bit of magical paste that would hold the bones in position for a few hours.

When she asked about the paste, Dav said it was something he picked up before they entered the World Tree. It was usually used to temporarily stabilize breaks to give teams a better chance to make it out, but Dav figured it would be useful for his healing as well as long as he lined everything up properly. He didn’t have either the experience or the imaging technology he wanted, but he did have Ci’an to act as a wing model. She couldn’t help while he was moving things because she had to keep the male gryphon unconscious, but she could afford some distraction while he wasn’t actively moving broken bits of bone.

They finished setting the last bones quite a while before Xin’ri emerged from the lower level.

Some time during that time, the pegasus woke up and jumped into the air. Dav had apparently done well enough, because it was nowhere to be seen when Ci’an went out to scout. Sophia didn’t blame it; if she were captured by a giant bird and then somehow woke up well enough to run, she’d run too.

Ci’an was still scouting when she saw the roc return with a pair of large goats. She stayed outside to watch and reported that it dropped them and flew away again without worrying about breaking the wings they didn’t have.

Once the roc was gone, Sophia headed outside to check on the goats while Dav stayed inside radiating healing. What she found was incredibly strange: a pair of goats that walked at an angle to the world. They had one leg that was longer than the other and walked as though that was the true orientation of the world, instead of purely vertical. It wasn’t tremendously far off vertical, but it was enough to be immediately obvious.

The World Tree quietly informed Sophia that she was looking at a pair of dahu, magical mountain goats that were quite literally made to live on mountains. Not only did they have different leg lengths on each side, they could affect the gravity that affected them so that their leg lengths were always correct. They were also impossible to hurt with a fall, which was immensely useful on a mountain and explained why both of the goats were quite happily exploring the open area they could reach rather than panicking or lying on the ground broken the way the pegasus did.

Sophia snorted to herself. If there was anything that was a worse choice for the roc, she couldn’t think of what it was. Agile mountain goats that were always at the right angle and couldn’t be hurt by a fall? They’d be long gone before the roc returned, much less before its eggs hatched. There was no way they’d be food for its young. It really wasn’t doing a very good job, was it?

On the other hand, maybe it didn’t have to do very well. Two gryphons might well be enough, with the rest of the deliveries meant to feed the flightless gryphons until the young hatched. That seemed possible, given how small the eggs were compared to the roc. It wasn’t efficient, but Sophia didn’t expect any creature to help something else eat it.

“Why don’t we take the eggs now?” Xin’ri suggested when Ci’an gave the all clear. “We know that Dav can heal broken bones faster than the roc will return, so we can be gone before it gets back if we leave as soon as the gryphons are healed. I’ll finish down here while you’re gathering the eggs.”

“It might not be gone as long,” Sophia countered. “It’s getting late and If it finds something faster-”

“It won’t be. Get inside, Sophia.” Ci’an interrupted. “The roc picked up something off the next peak and is headed back.”

Ci’an sent the entire scene as it happened. It was soundless because of the distance, but it was still easy to follow.

The goats didn’t run until the shadow of the roc swept over them. At that point, it was too late for them to get away. The roc dropped the actual rock it was carrying in order to snatch up the goats as they jumped over the wall. It rose higher into the sky and dropped the goats into the courtyard.

They ran immediately when they landed, so the roc caught them and dropped them again.

And again.

By that point, Sophia couldn’t restrain her laughter. Neither the roc nor the goats were willing to give up, and it was funny.

All the roc had to do was actually hurt the goats, but it didn’t seem willing to do that. Sophia wasn’t sure why.

All the goats had to do was stay put until the roc lost interest or left, but they weren’t willing either. Sophia could completely understand that one.

The roc had to be spending more energy, but it probably had more energy to spend, given its size. The fact that it could fly at all meant it had to have a trick. It could catch the goats even when they went different directions, which had to be discouraging for the goats.

In the end, it was the goats that gave up first. After the seventh time they were both caught, one of them chose not to run; it leaned forward and panted instead, clearly exhausted from the stress as well as the effort. It took two more falls for the second goat to give up and stand there.

By the time the goats were done, the light was clearly failing. The roc landed and waddled over to the eggs and curled up on top of them and the towering building. The goats simply stood where they were, shivering.

Ci’an waited about half an hour, then flew to the building’s entrance, keeping it between her and the roc the entire time. By the time she was inside, Xin’ri was done sorting junk and they were all eating a cold dinner. It wasn’t worth having the roc notice a fire to have warm food when they had food that could be eaten cold and the interior of the building was warm.

Ci’an and Xin’ri checked out the bunkbeds and rejected them as “too much work to clean and the bedding’s half rotted anyway,” so they ended up setting a cold camp just like they had in the Maze, minus the fire. The gryphons woke while the team ate dinner, and it turned into a nice evening.

Morning was announced by a creak in the building as the roc shifted position. Sophia didn’t like what she heard, but nothing fell and they weren’t going to be there another night. The goats were already gone. Sophia didn’t know when they left, but they managed to sneak away at some point while the roc slept.

A few minutes later, the roc was gone, probably off to hunt for more food for its hatchlings. Sophia started to take down her tent, but Dav waved for her to go outside. “Xin’ri and I will handle the camp. Ci’an needs to watch for the roc while you deal with the eggs.”

“I’m not sure I can handle them alone. I really need someone to either roll the egg or hold the bag for me.” The problem wasn’t the weight; it was the sheer size. The eggs were only barely smaller than the opening of her pack and she couldn’t pick them up in a single hand; she had to sort of roll them in, and that would be exceedingly awkward without help.

“Then I’ll handle the camp,” Xin’ri declared. “Dav, you’ll be more help for Sophia than I would be. I’ll come join you once we have everything packed up.”

“Can you carry both tents?” Sophia usually carried them both in her pack.

“I’ll get the gryphons to help,” Xin’ri said with a grin. “I talked to them last night and they’re willing to carry stuff for us; I even made a pair of pack harnesses. They’re not particularly good, but they’ll hold long enough to get us to the young gryphon and we can rearrange things there.”

Sophia snorted softly and shook her head. That was Xin’ri, all right. She was always prepared. Sophia was pretty sure she did it by preparing for at least half a dozen different possibilities; that way, she was ready for the one that actually happened.

The eggs were not exactly the same size and shape, which turned out to be unusually annoying. One of them was just a little bit rounder where the others were a bit more oval, which made it just enough wider than the others that Sophia couldn’t push it into the mouth of her backpack even with all of the expansion flaps open. She’d have to stretch it just a little. Back home, that wouldn’t have been a problem; if it failed, she could just get another pack. There were several possible ways it could fail, and all of them were fixable. Sophia had seen them over the years; gear wore out or was damaged and then it failed.

This wasn’t back home. If her backpack failed, it might be impossible to replace … and it was not a young backpack. The enchantments weren’t likely to be in much better shape than the material and the material showed wear in places. If she pushed her luck, her backpack would fail.

There was one benefit of not fitting in the last egg, at least. She didn’t have to dig stuff out of her backpack the way she expected. There wasn’t much extra space but everything did fit.