Cinda Chima - The Exiled Queen

Amon knelt at the edge of the precipice, examining a rusted metal apparatus bolted to the rock. “We use ropes as a fail- safe,” he said. “It’s too risky to go down unroped.” He turned and shouted orders to the other Wolves, who produced coils of rope from their saddlebags.

“What about the horses?” Raisa asked.

“They go down roped, too.” Amon shouldered open the rotting door to the garrison house. Raisa heard him rummaging around inside. He emerged several minutes later, smeared with dirt, cobwebs powdering his hair, but looking pleased with himself. He carried an armload of leather straps, iron fittings, and swivels.

Raisa eyed them distrustfully. How long had they been there? How badly were they damaged by rot and rodents? Switcher tossed her head and snorted, as if sensing Raisa’s dismay. Raisa stroked the mare’s nose to soothe her.

Amon deftly looped a rope around the large pulley attached to the rocky outcropping, secured it with an iron catch, and attached a swivel. Then he strapped a broad leather harness around his body and between his legs, clipping it to the rope.

“How do you know this will work?” Raisa asked, imagining flailing horses slamming against the cliff face, breaking their legs.

“I’ve done it before.” Amon turned to Mick and Hallie. “I’ll go down first, secure the other end, and scout the situation at the bottom. I’ll pull on the rope three times to let you know when to pull me up.”

Amon tugged on a pair of deerskin gloves. He grasped hold of the rope with both hands, backed to the edge of the cliff, pushed off, and dropped out of sight.

Stifling a cry of dismay, Raisa leaned over the cliff and looked down. The cliff jutted into a severe overhang, nothing but yawning space below. Amon was a hundred feet down already, running rope through the pulley, using his legs to kick off from the cliff face. A moment later, he was swallowed by the mist.

He’s done this before, Raisa told herself. How many other secrets was he hiding?

It took the better part of the day to lower the horses, soldiers, and all their supplies down the cliff face to the bottom. The Gray Wolves cut down several thick lodgepole pines and used them to build a hoist for the horses. Amon blindfolded the horses before they lowered them in great leather harnesses fashioned for the purpose. This arrangement kept the horses far from the rocky escarpment, so they couldn’t injure themselves, and kept pony panic and mayhem to a minimum. To Raisa’s relief, the leather strapping held.

Raisa descended halfway through, when there were equal numbers of guards on top and bottom. Aside from a nasty bruise on her elbow where she struck the cliff face once, some rope burns on her hands, and a raw place on her thigh where the strap chafed her, she arrived uninjured. She found the bounding descent exhilarating— like flying. It helped that she couldn’t see all the way to the bottom because of the fog.

Amon seemed vastly relieved when she made it down in one piece. “Just don’t ever mention this to the queen, all right?” he said, as if there weren’t already a whole list of things not to mention to Marianna. “And don’t tell my da you went down on your own.”

By the time everyone was settled at the bottom, the daylight was fading. They pitched their tents in the shadow of the rock wall and struggled to kindle fires in the misty damp. After feeding and watering the horses, they stuffed down a quick cold meal. Nobody said much. The freezing fog seemed to press in on them from all sides.

“I’m surprised nobody is here to greet us,” Amon said. “The Waterwalkers usually keep a close watch on the Cascades. I’d think they’d come meet anyone crazy enough to use the old road. Rivertown’s just a little ways south, right on the river. Tomorrow we’ll stop there and pay our respects and ask permission to pass through.”

The wind picked up as dusk fell, and the mist stirred and eddied like restless spirits. Several times, Raisa thought she saw pale faces gazing at them through the trees, their eyes like dark holes torn in linen corpse wrappers. It was a relief to crawl inside her tent with Talia and Hallie and close the flap, shutting out the weird landscape.

What would it be like to live here full- time, walled in by mist?

The Gray Wolves rose early the next morning and struck camp without prompting. Everyone seemed eager to mount up and ride on.

The Dyrnnewater was like a river transformed. Rough and rowdy above the falls, it became a sluggish, placid, wide river that leaked listlessly into tributaries on all sides.

It was an alien landscape— tall grasses quilted with waterways and no way to tell where the solid ground was. Fallen trees lay everywhere, like a giant’s game of pitch sticks, rotting and covered in a white, leathery fungus. The mist had frozen overnight, and the ground crackled under their boots. Ice glazed the still pools and every blade of grass, twig, and branch, transforming the marsh into a surreal, colorless world.

“It used to be drier here,” Amon said. “They’ve dammed the Tamron River downstream, and water’s backed up into these wetlands. That’s what killed the trees.”

The murk closing around them was oppressive. An enemy could be lurking a few feet away and there’d be no way to know. Plus, the moisture seemed to dampen and distort sound, so Raisa couldn’t tell what direction it came from or how close the source.

Raisa’s teeth chattered, and not just from the cold. It was like walking through a nightmare when at any moment a demon might reach out with cold fingers and grab you, claiming you for the Breaker. The cadets peered about, straining their eyes; their hands never far from their swords. Their usual cheer dissolved in the frigid damp.

After a half hour of walking, they rounded a curve in the river, and Rivertown loomed out of the mist. What was left of it, anyway.

“Blood of the Demon,” Amon whispered. “Who could’ve done this?”

There hadn’t been much to begin with— just a collection of frail stick- built dwellings centered around a small temple at the river’s edge. Now it lay in ruins— most structures knocked down or burnt to the ground. A few boats lay foundered at the edge of the river like empty crab shells, their hulls pierced through or crushed. A series of pilings marched out from the shoreline, the remains of what had been several small docks.

The Gray Wolves dismounted to search the site, looking for traces of those who had once dwelt there. They found no corpses, at least, but perhaps they’d been dumped in the river or the survivors had carried them off.

Amon bent and picked up a rotting fish basket woven of twine and reeds. He turned it in his hands and poked at it gently with his forefinger. “Well, this was Rivertown,” he said grimly. “Looks like nobody’s been here for a couple of months at least.”

“Do you think they were attacked, or did they destroy it themselves before abandoning it?” Raisa asked.

Amon shrugged. “I don’t know, but I’d guess they were attacked or driven off. These people didn’t have much to start with. They’d have taken everything with them, if they could.” Blinking away raindrops, he looked downriver. “Could’ve been freelancers, come up from the south. But it’d be bloody hard to get to for what they got.”

“I wonder where they went,” Raisa said. “The Water walkers, I mean.”

“Who knows?” Amon whistled to recall the other Wolves, who had spread out over the village. “Guess all we can do is go on,” he said, when they had regathered. “Have your weapons to hand and stick close together. Morley, you’re with me.”

They rode on— for miles, it seemed— following the river until, as Amon had predicted, it fragmented into a web of streams in a trackless maze. Raisa had hoped the murk would clear, but it seemed only to thicken. It was impossible to get her bearings by looking at the sky. Up, down, all around— everything was a milky white blank.