Read Online The Red Sea by Edward W. Robertson - Free Book Online Page B

"Nothing. Has this ever happened before?"
    "The only time they go dead is when you use them too long, without allowing their nether to replenish. It's possible we're too far away from the loons they're paired with. The distance could have depleted the nether. Broken them."
    "In other words, we're completely on our own here."
    Dante stared up at the woman's back. "Looks like."
    They climbed on. The trail rolled up and down but did more ascending than descending. Within twenty minutes, the air was notably cooler, though still as warm as an early summer day in Narashtovik. And far more humid. Dante sweated nonstop. Birds hooted and squawked. Insects buzzed everywhere. Dante was soon slapping himself whenever he felt the faintest tickle.
    "Who were they?" Blays said. "The people who attacked your town?"
    Winden's jaw tightened. "People of the High Tower. Tauren, as we call them. Raiders from the south coast."
    "They had swords. Chain mail. Where'd they get it?"
    "Raiding. Trade. Wouldn't know."
    "Does this happen often?"
    She drew a leathery canteen, eyeing him. "It didn't used to. Now it does."
    Patches of the trail were staggered like high steps, requiring them to scrabble up the slick clay. After a few minutes, a rhythmic noise began ahead, booming, hissing, and repeating. It sounded like surf, but they were currently a few hundred feet high and at least a mile inland.
    Ahead, the sun brightened. Winden came to a stop. Stepping up beside her, Dante squinted against the glare, then gasped, shuffling back from the edge of a cliff. Hundreds of feet below, waves sluiced through a gap, white-headed and roaring. Sixty feet away, the land resumed. The ravine was spanned by a web of ropes.
    Blays laughed in disbelief. "I'm to believe a sick old man crossed this?"
    "Of course he didn't," Winden said. "Are we sick or old? No? Then we will cross. It's much faster."
    A set of steps had been hacked into the cliff's edge, leading down to a platform in the rock three feet wide by six across. On it, Winden reached into a wide sack spiked to the wall of the platform and grabbed a carved wooden hook. A thong dangled from a hole drilled through its handle. She tied the cord around her wrist, then secured the hook over the topmost rope and stepped onto the lowermost. As she walked forward, she used her free hand to grab the vertical ropes connecting the upper and lower ones.
    Dante observed her methods, then descended to the dug-out platform, took a hook from the bag, and edged out onto the ropes. These swayed beneath his feet, but he adjusted quickly. Far below, the sea crashed and boomed. Dante didn't mind. The crossing took his mind off the destination.
    By the time he stepped foot on the solid ground of the other side, Blays hadn't budged. Dante grinned, enjoying the rare opportunity to be the first to have braved something ludicrous.
    "Come on!" he called, hands cupped to his mouth. "Or would you rather wait alone in the jungle?"
    As if to punctuate this, an animal roared from inland. Blays grimaced, got out a hook, and crossed over.
    Safely on the other side, Blays glowered at Winden. "Tell me there's a reason you have him stashed in the forbidden heights."
    "It helps the sickness. Not much further."
    They walked on. The woods were as thick as before the rope crossing, but where previously the land had rolled up and down, it now progressed in a series of rises and plateaus, as if it had been sculpted into steps by a giant.
    As Dante grew winded, they topped another plateau. The ground ahead was clear, a pocket of sunny grass within the shaded forest. A square stone building rested in the clearing. It was smaller than the one in town where he'd healed the people wounded in the raid, but given its remoteness, its presence felt greater, like a hidden temple. They crossed to it. A cool breeze stirred the grass.
    "Wait." Winden climbed the three steps to the doorway and entered.
    "You ready for this?" Blays said.
    "I don't see how I could be."