Long before they had finished gazing upon this spectacle, and looking at the white ghosts of each other, they were drenched by spray.
‘This isn’t the way out,’ Iskador said. ‘This is a dead end. Where now, Yuli?’
He pointed calmly to the far end of the ledge on which they stood. ‘We go by that bridge,’ he said.
They made their way carefully towards the bridge. The ground was slimy with ropey green algae. The bridge looked grey and ancient. It had been built of chunks of stone carved from the rock nearby. Its arch curved up, then stopped. They saw that the structure had collapsed, and was no more than a stub of a bridge. Through the milky light, another stub could be seen dimly on the far side of the chasm. There had once been a way across, but no more.
For a while, they stood staring across the gulf, not looking at one another. Iskador was the first to move. Bending, she set her bag down and pulled her bow from it. She tied a thread to an arrow of a kind she had used when Yuli saw her prize-winning performance, a long time ago. Without a word, she placed herself at the edge of the chasm, a foot firm on the edge, and raised the bow. She drew back her arm as she did so, squinting along it almost casually, and let fly.
The arrow seemed to curl through the spray-laden light. It reached its zenith over an outcrop of rock, glanced against the rocky wall above the waterfall, and fell back, its power spent, until it clattered at Iskador’s feet.
Usilk clapped her shoulder. ‘Brilliant. Now what do we do?’
For answer, she tied stout cord to the end of the thread, and then picked up the arrow and drew in the thread. Soon the leading end of the cord ran over the projecting ledge, and travelled back down to nestle in her hand. She then produced a rope on which she made a noose, drew that over the projection too, slipped the other end of the rope through the noose, and pulled the whole thing tight.
‘Do you wish to go first?’ she asked Yuli, passing him the rope end. ‘Since you are our leader?’
He looked in her deepset eyes, wondering at her cunning, and the economy of her cunning. Not only was she telling Usilk that he was not the leader, she was telling him, Yuli, to prove that he was. He chewed this over, finding it profound, then grasped the rope and squared up to the challenge.
It was alarming but not too dangerous, he estimated. He could swing across the chasm and then, walking against vertical rock, climb to the level of the lip over which the waterfall poured. As far as they could see, there was space to climb in and avoid being swept away by the water. The possibilities that followed could be assessed only when he was up there. He certainly was not going to show fear in front of the two prisoners — or Iskador.
He launched himself rather too hurriedly across the abyss, his mind in part on the girl. Striking the opposite cliff rather clumsily, his left foot slipped on green slime, he jarred against the wall with his shoulder, swung into spray, and lost his grip on the rope. Next second, he was falling down the chasm.
Amid the roar of water came their united cry — the first time they had genuinely done something in unison.
Yuti struck rock, and clung there with every fibre of his being. He squeezed his knees up under his body, fought with his toes, and gripped the rock.
His fall had been no more than two metres, though it jarred every bone in his body, and had been broken by a boulder protruding from the cliff. It afforded him little more than a foothold, but that was enough.
Gasping, he crouched in his awkward position, scarcely daring to move, his chin almost on a level with his boots.
His anguished gaze fell on a blue stone lying below his eyes. He focused on it, wondering if he was going to die. The stone would not come sharp. He felt that he might have reached out over the ledge where he crouched and picked it up. Suddenly his senses told him the truth of the matter — he was not looking at a nearby stone but a blue object far below. Vertigo seized him, paralysing him; accustomed to the plains, he had no immunity against such an experience.
He closed his eyes and clung. Only Usilk’s shouts, coming from a long way off, forced him to look again.
Distantly below lay another world, to which the fissure in which he crouched served as a kind of telescope. Yuli had a view no bigger than his hand into an enormous cavern. It was illuminated in some way. What he had taken for a blue stone was a lake, or possibly a sea, since he had a glimpse only of a fragment of a whole whose size he could not attempt to guess. On the shore of the lake were a few grains of sand, now interpretable as buildings of some kind. He lay in a cataplexy, staring senselessly down.
Something touched him. He could not move. Someone was speaking to him, clutching his arms. Without will, he allowed himself to cooperate in sitting up with his back against the rock, and locking his arms about his rescuer’s shoulders. A bruised face, with damaged nose, slashed cheek, and one closed black and green eye, swam before his vision.
‘Hang on tight, man. We’re going up.’
He managed then to hold himself against Usilk, as the latter worked his way slowly upwards and eventually hauled them, with enormous labour, over the rock lip from which the waterfall poured. Usilk then collapsed, flat out, panting and groaning. Yuli looked down for Iskador and Scoraw, just visible on the other side of the fissure, faces upturned. He also looked more sharply down, into the fault; but his vision of another world had disappeared, eclipsed by spray. His limbs trembled, but he could control them sufficiently to help the others to join him and Usilk.
In silence, they clutched each other thankfully.
In silence, they picked their way amid the boulders on the side of the rushing stream of the waterfall.
In silence, they went on. And Yuli kept silence over the vision of the other world he had glimpsed. But he thought again of old Father Sifans; could it have been a secret fortress of the Takers, momentarily revealed to him amid the wilderness of rock? Whatever it was, he took it inside himself and was mute.
The warrens in the mountain seemed endless. Without light, the party of four went in fear of crevasses. When they judged it to be night, they found a suitable nook to sleep, and huddled together for warmth and company.
Once, after climbing for hours along a natural passage strewn with boulders from a long-vanished stream, they found a niche at shoulder height, into which all four could scramble, to tuck themselves away from the chill wind that had been blowing in their faces all day.
Yuli went to sleep immediately. He was roused by Iskador shaking him. The other men were sitting up, whispering apprehensively.
‘Can you hear?’ she asked.
‘Can you hear?’ Usilk and Scoraw asked.
He listened to the wind sighing down the passage, to a distant trickle of water. Then he heard what had disturbed them — a continuous rasping noise, as of something moving fast against the walls.
‘Wutra’s worm!’ Iskador said.
He clutched her firmly. ‘That’s just a story they tell,’ he said. But his flesh went cold, and he grasped his dagger.
‘We’re safe in this niche,’ Scoraw said. ‘If we keep quiet.’
They could only hope he might be right. Unmistakably, something was approaching. They crouched where they were, peering nervously into the tunnel. Scoraw and Usilk were armed with staves, stolen from the warders of Punishment, Iskador had her bow.