Silver Eve Page 14

  “More algae,” I told her. I brushed my hair from my face and scooted to the end of the bed for the tray. “It only stains to look like blood.”

  She dismissed that. “Those who go in do not come out. It is their blood.”

  I grinned, morbid as it was. “You are glad ’tis the most treacherous choice. I think you wish you could join us.”

  “I do join you!” She bounced a little. “I volunteered to lead you to the falls. I know where it is and I am quick.”

  “Lill!” The tea sloshed, scalding my fingers. “ ’Tis too dangerous for one so young!” Not the paths, I was thinking, but what if Breeders were watching?

  “Young!” Lill tossed me a towel, scoffing. “I am hardly younger than you, and I know my way around this quarry as good as any founding family. Besides,” she said with a sigh, “I lead only. I do not travel into the falls; that is for you.” Then she was brightly eager again. “So we say goodbye today, for you will not return!”

  “Well,” I took a piece of her dry bread and slathered on extra jam. “I can hardly imagine I won’t come out—what would be the point of finding my shell?”

  “Your shell! If it’s your shell, how did it get so lost?” She watched me eat for a moment. “You don’t scare easily, all my talk of blood and dead ends?”

  I shook my head. “But I think it scares you.”

  “Hah! I am wily. I am fast. I am a survivor.” She listed these as attributes, things she’d been told, obviously, and she was proud of them.

  “I imagine you are. I heard you escaped the slavers from Tyre.”

  “Yes! We were being taken for the mines. But I got away.”

  Not quite as Laurent had described, but then, he’d not been there. “I was faster than my sister,” she added. “She was not saved.”

  “Is she in the mines?” The bread stuck in my throat. I could not imagine being a slave.

  “That’s where they all go.” Lill’s voice was hushed now, and her eyes gleamed with her story. “But the Riders brought me here.”

  “Would you save her? Can you save her?”

  “She’s probably dead, since the mines are killing places. ’Tis like Hooded Falls, the mines of Tyre. If you go in, you won’t come out. But mayhap I’ll seek revenge someday.” She twirled in the center of the room, suddenly, and wielded an imaginary weapon. “Mayhap the Rider will teach me how to use his sword.” And she thrust forward as if to spit me on its tip, grinning. “Smite the enemy, leave no prisoners. Revenge for the wrongs done.”

  I felt the stab. “Be careful,” I said. “I’ve been told your passions can be turned against you.”

  She shrugged. “Or make you fierce.” She dropped her arm. “The mines yield the most beautiful of gems. People kill for them. Sometimes—only sometimes—one or two are smuggled from the city. I will take a few of those as well when I avenge my sister.” She spun around, showing off an imaginary bejeweled gown. “Wouldn’t you want to be drenched in such color?”

  I laughed. “Flowers are just as pretty and they’re freely harvested.”

  “Maybe.” Lill stopped spinning, then sniffed. “But flowers die.”

  So do slaves. I worked at the bread, watching her. Lill was restless, picking my clothes from where I’d laid them last night and waiting for me to finish, so I dropped the piece of bread on the plate with a clatter and swallowed the last of the tea. I drew my hair quickly into a braid, thinking about what Eudin had told us the night before when Laurent and I returned to the Great Room.

  “Hooded Falls,” he’d announced gravely when I described where I’d seen the shell. “Not part of Gren Fort, exactly, but a day’s hike from here at the northernmost tip of the quarry. One of us will guide you to it. I fear if we send more it shall spark interest. Grackles have been spying on the plains above.”

  “Do you know how we might navigate the falls?” I’d asked. “I’ve heard that those who go in do not return.”

  The large man had nodded and handed me another cup of cider. “That is the rumor. I hope you prove it untrue. I can’t say I’ve met any survivors.” He’d turned then. “How’s that for a challenge, Rider?”

  Laurent had snorted. “You leave much to hope, Captain.”

  But Eudin had grinned and said generously, “My friend, know this: Hooded Falls is beyond our regular patrol, but should you need help, we will come—”

  “Evie!” Lill waved her hand before my face. “ ’Tis time we moved.”

  I nodded and stood. She held out my frock, gave it a final shake, and handed it to me. The daisy—Lill’s daisy—that Laurent had passed to me fell out of the pocket.

  There was silence. Lill looked at it, then at me. Her face darkened. “You told me it would work.”

  “I didn’t,” I protested. “Daisies can enhance feelings if they already exist, but you cannot make someone love you. You should not want to.”

  “But he noticed me! If—” Her voice had a sharp little edge before she shut her mouth.

  Piqued, I returned as harshly: “Lill, he must be five and twenty! Ten years your senior at least!”

  “And you? He’s much older than you as well,” she retorted.

  “Me? This has nothing to do with me!”

  “No? What magic trick did you save for yourself?” Lill muttered. She scooped the wilted stem from the ground, crushed it in her fist, and threw it out the window. “Never mind. We’d best be going, Healer.” She hit the word with such venom she might as well have called me Breeder.

  —

  No one watched us go. Lill led the way up the narrow path; I followed, and then Laurent. The rasping of footsteps on rock, a sharp call of a bird…There was little noise to entertain. There was no conversation. Lill was angry with me about the daisy. I concentrated on my footing, ignoring Laurent for Lill’s sake. Laurent was studying the skies.

  ’Twas a steep climb. Insects droned, the sun burned hot—more so than usual, for I felt a grimness seeping in, which had less to do with Lill and the supposedly impossible task than my own temper. I tugged my braid off my neck, reshouldered my satchel where it stuck to my damp skin. More than once we paused by a waterfall to cool off; I stepped right under the streams to soak, the sun quickly drying after each reprieve, but it did not make me feel better. Once, I stumbled, and Laurent’s hand shot out to catch my waist. “Careful,” he murmured.

  “I am being very careful,” I gritted.

  “I’d rather not lose you over the edge.”

  I bit out, “Breeders have not got me yet, so you can hardly think the drop is a challenge.”

  Laurent released me without another word.

  From her farther position Lill sniffed and said, “We’ll not make it in time if you dally. We’ll lose the light.”

  “Better than we don’t make it at all,” Laurent returned easily enough, which seemed to mollify her. But she did not turn around. My head ached.

  —

  We reached the height of the quarry just past the sun’s midpoint. “It’s straight from here on,” Lill said, “except…”

  I looked to where she pointed. There, just ahead, were some of the slingbridges that Laurent had mentioned. They spanned a series of splits in the ground. Gren Fort truly was impenetrable—unreachable from the bottom and from the top, if bridges were downed. And they were easily downed. These were rope bridges, for foot traffic only, suspended over the deep fissures and swaying in the breeze.

  “One by one,” Lill announced, and then practically skipped across the first. I held on to both sides and stepped carefully from sling to sling, while the breeze buffeted the bridge and rocked me, even though Laurent and Lill tugged the ropes at both ends to hold it steady. I got over safely enough, and I think Lill was peeved that I didn’t panic. Together we pulled on the ropes as Laurent traveled over. It was only then that I swallowed hard, for I could see how the bridge sank and stretched beneath his weight.

  Laurent arrived on our side. He shielded his eyes with his hand and looked up—t
o judge the sun’s position, I thought—then gave us a grin. “How many more?” he asked Lill.

  There were four bridges, all told. We crossed them without incident. Twice more, Laurent took a position of the sun. “You waste time by judging it,” I said crossly while he squinted at the sky. “We’ll need to camp at the falls tonight before attempting.”

  “I say we try today,” he said. Then, “How long, Lill?”

  “Not far.” She beamed at him. “Straight on this path.” She started off again with a flounce of skirt. I wiped my face with my sleeve and followed, feeling a hundred years older.

  Any trace of the fort disappeared behind us. The path was wider hereon; the insects more shrill. Laurent walked at my side. I looked over at him and pointed. “Your hand is on your sword.”

  He only nodded, and so I said, “You can hardly think there is something waiting to attack.” I swung my arm at the flat, broiling trail. “Not even a tree to hide behind.”

  “You acknowledged something back there,” Laurent said, refusing to quarrel. “Something that troubles me. The Breeders know who you are, and we are nearing their hiding place for the amulet. Why did they bother with wisps and such in the marsh if they do nothing else to stop you?”

  “Because I give them no opportunity.” I didn’t know why I was so contrary. I wiped my forehead again as if that would clear away my anger, or at least the droning of insects. Laurent did not snort as I anticipated, but it was hardly out of respect for my prowess. So I added, “You were the one who said Gren Fort was well hidden.”

  “We are beyond Gren Fort.”

  He looked to the sky again, and I left him there and stalked on. I thought I could see some sort of rock formation ahead, past Lill’s lithe silhouette. It would be good to arrive, to stand under water again and soothe my aching head. I should even take time to be worried, maybe, of what lay behind Hooded Falls—I’d hardly given thought to it all the way here, letting peevishness claim everything. I was worse than Lill.

  I set my jaw and tried to storm through the irritation by quickening my pace.

  But I got no farther. “Something’s wrong,” I gasped. ’Twas as if I’d smacked into a wall. A whine—a hundred scythes honing on whetstones—filled my head, sinking me to my knees. “Swifts…” My hands dug into my ears; I slammed my head on the stone to shut out the pain. I heard Laurent shouting my name, running up from behind, heard Lill screaming only a moment later, “What are those?” And then Laurent was yelling at her, “Run!” He’d scooped me up and was running too.

  I went limp, bouncing like a doll in the Rider’s arms. The whine was louder, unbearable, and Laurent was pounding forward on the hard ground so my teeth chattered. Somewhere farther Lill was still shrieking, and Laurent shouting, “Get under the rock! Under!” A shadow passed over my face and I thought we’d reached protection, but then there was an enormous explosion, heat, dust spewing up—and I was flung to the earth.

  The whine would eat through my head.

  Hands grabbed and dragged. Laurent’s voice was hard, commanding Lill to push under the rocks as far back as she could, and I was pushed too, painfully so. Another explosion, and another, and something garbled. Laurent was saying, “They touch earth on purpose—” and there was a roaring sound coming closer, and Lill was screaming Laurent’s name, and somehow that sounded soothing against the fierce-pitched whine, and then I heard nothing at all.

  —

  Hands again. Gentle on my shoulders, shaking me. “Evie.”

  I pushed against the pressure, slapped it away, but the hands returned harder. “Evie, wake up!”

  And I blinked against blinding sunlight and saw the silhouette of a boulder looming over my head at such an angle that I jerked away from the hands and rolled, coming hard against rock.

  The hands righted me. “Evie, it’s all right, they’ve gone.”

  “Let me…” I shrugged free, then pushed onto hands and knees, dizzy and aching, a dull roaring in my ears. But the whine was gone, so too the gripping irritability—and though my mind was raked bare by the sound, the relief was breathtaking. I stayed hunkered for a time, breathing, trying to remember details. Then I shook my head and crawled out from under the rock shadow to where the sun hit full on and where Lill sat crying.

  “What happened?” she sobbed.

  “Swifts.” Laurent slid out behind me. “The sound destroys Healers.”

  “They were birds but not birds.” Lill’s teeth chattered. “They had eyes—human eyes!”

  “We were safe enough; we found cover.”

  I looked at Laurent, at where his shirt was singed by the explosions. “Safe enough?”

  “Laurent saved you!” Lill jumped to his defense. “He ran with you to these boulders, to hide you. He was nearly struck!”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. And to Laurent, “Thank you.” Then I rubbed my ears, wincing at their tenderness. “I should have recognized the sound earlier.”

  “I should have,” he corrected, then shook his head in disbelief. “No method to the attack, a suicide mission. The swifts made no effort to avoid the rocks. I wonder if my comment brought them”—then softly—“just for fun.”

  I stared at him and realized his face was pale beneath its tan, that he was worried—for the skirmish, for me—and that it made Lill angry. I said quickly, “I’m fine,” and turned to Lill. “Hooded Falls?”

  “Just beyond the outcrop.” She nodded in that direction, envy and residual fear making her snip: “ ’Tis obvious we’re here.”

  My ears were clearing; I could place the roar of water. It was obvious. “I’m ready,” I said.

  Laurent snorted. “Hardly.”

  “I am fine.” I pushed my hair off my face. “The day is wasting.”

  “You need time to recover.”

  “This, to a Healer!” I scoffed. “I think I know my strength.”

  “I think you pretend it.”

  That last retort unnerved me, for he looked at me so keenly that I was sure he could read me straight through. And read what? That I liked him too much? That I wanted not to like him?

  “The Healer is right, Laurent,” Lill said sharply, making us both look to her. “The day is wasting.”

  Laurent’s mouth tightened. “Then we go. But at the site, my lady, you will take a moment to eat, drink, and rest.”

  “Fair enough.” Though I glared at him for his presumptuousness. And he was only making Lill angrier by attending to me. This was hardly any way to heal.

  The Rider stood, leaned over, and pulled me to my feet. Lill lurched up and stomped off. “This way,” she ordered.

  The roar grew louder. We climbed over the cropping and found ourselves at the top of a smooth slope, one side of a V. Centered between spewed Hooded Falls.

  The torrent of water gushed from above, where boulders piled tall and jutted out. There was no trickle or stream of origin—water simply exploded out and over this hood of rock, and spread like a sheet that was as wide as three men were tall. Yet it wasn’t a sheet, for that implied softness and pliability. This fall pounded as unyielding as a wall, its sound ferocious. It beat straight down upon a narrow half saucer of stone and cascaded over into a mist of oblivion.

  Somewhere behind that crushing water was a cave, and somehow too the shell.

  Laurent made a low whistle under his breath. With a triumphant flourish of hand, Lill said, “See?”

  I understood why people did not return from these falls. They couldn’t. Even if you were fortunate enough to make it through the force of water, there was no footing on that tiny lip of glass-slick rock upon return. The torrent would shove you straight over the edge for the long plunge.

  “My mistake,” Laurent murmured. “ ’Tis not easy.”

  I murmured back, “How could the amulet even be placed in something so…so impossible?”

  “Conjuring. Or summon a creature; work a spell…” He glanced at me. “Breeders have many tricks at their disposal without having to con
front an obstacle head-on.”

  I would have to confront the falls head-on. We stood together considering the shape of the entrance, the surrounding rock. Slab, mostly, with few footholds. Laurent had brought ropes, but they seemed now of dubious use—fragile against such an assault.

  “Well?” Lill called, impatient.

  I looked at her; I looked at Laurent. I still felt queasy from the swifts’ attack, but said simply, “We eat.”

  We sat at the top. The relentless sun baked the slab, but a faint mist from the falls cooled us before evaporating. Lill had carried the meal and now she spread it out to share: plums, apples, squab legs, and bread. I ate, studying the falls. Laurent watched me.

  “What are you thinking?” he finally asked.

  I grinned a little. “How to survive.”

  “Impossible,” said Lill, fully convinced that this was our last meal and she would soon—and now happily—bid me good riddance.

  Laurent frowned. But I only winked at him and said louder, “I am thinking that this fall is of the same way a wound gushes blood. As in a severed artery or an amputation—”

  “Ugh,” Lill said, and threw her plum over the side and got up.

  We watched her leave. Laurent raised a brow and I smiled back serenely.

  “That takes care of one thing,” he said with his own hint of smile, “but not the other.”

  “ ’Tis true, though,” I answered. “If one suffers a wound, the first thing to do is to stop the bleeding. So it is with this water; the answer is the same. Apply pressure. Or a tourniquet.”

  Laurent laughed, “And do you have a tourniquet for this, my lady?”

  “As it happens…” I pointed up at the jutting boulders. “The water bursts from above those rocks. If we moved one, would it not shift the direction or at least lessen the flow?”

  Laurent looked at me, looked at the fall, then was on his feet, disappearing up the tumble of boulders. I watched two or three heavy-looking stones go flying over the cliff, shot away by the water. Moments later he was down again, drenched and panting and grim. “Nothing that can be moved will hold, but I might give you just enough time to exit the falls.”