What if…?
The thought struck him, and his eyes narrowed.
If he dropped to the second ledge, he’d be roughly twenty feet out and thirty feet above the island. He could ignite, leap, and activate his steel rod midair. Then lower himself every ten feet or so with renewed activations, till he touched down upon the island.
But how to get back up? The bridge wouldn’t cross the thirty or forty-foot span from the island back up to the ledge.
He rubbed at his chin, glancing back over his shoulder occasionally to scan the street.
What if from the column he tied his rope to the steel rod and hurled it up into the air? Activated it at his limit, climbed up, and then used it as a base to prop the bridge? Race across before it all fell, and used the rope to retrieve the rod?
Unshouldering his coil, he tied it experimentally to the rod. At first, he was sure it wouldn’t work—the rope refused to tighten sufficiently around the rod’s smooth surface to prevent it from slipping free.
Experimentation, however, resulted in his tying a cradle of sorts around the rod, with one length wrapped all the way around its long span. Using all his strength, he tightened it as best he could, and then gave it a few experimental whirls.
It held fast.
But at what range could he activate it?
Playing out the rope, he stepped back five feet and summoned his Heart. He reached out his senses, gratified to feel the rod with ease.
He’d grown more sensitive since the caverns when he’d first found the rod, it seemed.
Walked back another five feet.
Now it was difficult; the rod was barely detectable, a faint tug at the edge of his will. Swirling the Coal about himself, he directed it toward the treasure and found that he had to really focus to get it to activate—no longer could he do it reflexively as before.
Ten feet.
He edged back to the chasm and looked down. That’d put him twenty down, twenty out.
The bridge was some ten yards long. Could he balance it on the rod? Would it be enough to reach?
Taking up the rope and rod, Scorio spent a while practicing hurling it up into the air and trying to activate it at the right moment.
It was hard. Very hard. But by tying the rope around his waist, Scorio could ensure that he could take as many attempts as necessary.
Over and over again he whirled it around and threw it high, only to summon his Heart and seek to activate the treasure. At first, in his haste, he’d just activate it anywhere; but soon he learned to both measure his throw and time his activation.
After some fifty attempts, he felt confident.
Then he worked at propping the bridge upon the rod at a good forty-five-degree angle. That meant the rod had to be perpendicular to the bridge’s direction, which would endlessly complicate things.
Scorio stood there, thwapping the rod against his palm, until he realized he could wait for the rod to deactivate, position it as he began to fall, and activate it immediately again.
Once more he set to practicing, pausing only when a school of luminous jellyfish wafted by, yard-long tendrils drifting across the broken street. Second Clay was just about to end when he decided to give it a go.
He should be able to reach it. And if he did? It could prove the perfect site.
Fool, he heard Naomi whisper in his mind. You risk everything for-
He banished her voice and took a deep breath. Heart pumping, chest tight, he climbed down to the first ledge, then carefully leaped to the second. The albino spidercrabs below stopped their movements, lifting their forelegs to wave them at him as if trying to determine if he was coming farther down.
Scorio backed right up against the chasm wall. He had three good steps before he had to leap.
Taking a deep breath, rod clenched tightly in his hand, he ignited his Heart and ran forward.
Leaped, straining to get as far out as he could.
The urge to yell was overwhelming, but instead, he clenched his jaw, stomach inverting itself as he began to fall, and activated the treasure.
The rod stuck firmly in midair, and his whole body swung out beneath it, rocking back and forth until he hung still.
Hanging by one arm, Scorio looked down. Not quite over the island, but if he rocked again and released at the right moment…
He did so, the rod deactivating at just the right moment, and he fell once more, another ten feet.
He swept Coal into its funnel, and his fall was arrested once more. He was just over the island’s edge, so he swung back and forth, and with a final kick released the rod and dropped the last ten or so feet into a heavy crouch atop the island’s surface.
Grinning, pulse racing, he rose to his feet and looked around. The island’s surface was soft with what looked like granulated black sand, and it couldn’t be much larger than some fifteen feet a side.
The rod fell, and he pulled it in with his rope. Then, he crouched beside each Black Star plant, worked the seed up the stem, and then held them up to the red light.
Tiny dimples showed that they were almost ready to be extruded.
Taking out his simple knife, he cut them into quarters and dropped them into his sack.
Then he set to walking the little island’s surface from side to side and all around, pushing his fingers into the soil, pausing to gauge how far it was from the closest chasm wall.
Anything that wanted to feast on a Black Star would have to cross some twenty to thirty feet of perilous air over the raging heat below.
Wiping sweat from his brow, Scorio bit his lower lip, scrutinizing the tiny plot of land.
It was perfect.
He set his burlap sack on the ground, took out the first seed quarter, and dug a hole some six inches deep. Dropping a seed quarter within, he pressed the dirt back over it, and tamped it shut.
One seed quarter done, a hundred and fifty-seven more to go.
Chapter 26
“I can’t find a way across,” Scorio said, hunching over his plate and stabbing fitfully at the slice of grilled steak that lay across a bed of delicate purple leaves. “The direct approach is a broad bridge that looks structurally sound, but under which passes what must be a truly powerful current of Coal mana. A huge, eyeless toad lives at the far end of the bridge, in this ruined building that’s nearly toppling into the chasm, and it’s easily the size of a cart. It’s so infused with Coal that it looks like liquid mana is constantly oozing off its body. I’ve seen it capture all kinds of prey with its tongue. They go rigid the moment they’re hit, as if its tongue paralyzes them.”
“Cart-sized toad,” said Leonis sympathetically, nodding to Lianshi as if this was a problem they encountered all the time. “Paralyzing tongue. Rough.”
“So I explored off to the radial east, just a half-dozen blocks, and discovered that area is the domain of this… I don’t even know how to describe it. It has arms and legs like a person, but is massively hunched over, with… gills? Or vents? Running down the side of its head and ribs? From which copper light burns out as if it’s venting mana. Its head is just a massive snout, no eyes that I can see, with these huge… snaggly-looking teeth. And arms that reach down to its ankles.”
“You sound really upset,” said Lianshi. “I’m sorry.”
“And it doesn’t even… I mean, I haven’t seen it actually move, anywhere. It just seems to step out of shadows when prey comes close, and then drags them into the darkness and disappears with them.” Scorio cut a chunk off the steak and held it up, scrutinizing the rich meat. “And then on the other side, if I came at the Academy from radial west, there’s a huge white worm. Thick as a tree, and at first, I thought it had human arms just randomly sticking out of its snout like whiskers, but no. Of course not. The worm’s head is actually a man’s torso.”