When Penrys found there were no more steps, she stopped and swayed, puzzled. Rude hands behind her pushed her forward and out of the way, and she concentrated on staying upright and letting her vision recover from its reddish, tunnel-focus on her feet.
Over the pounding of her heart she could hear the noise and bustle of many people. When she blinked and raised her head, she discovered the top of the Horn was a wide plateau, sloping down to the west in front of her as if there were no drop-off on that side.
An entire population seemed to be up here, dwarfing the encampment they’d passed through at the base of the ridge to the east. There were so many that they stirred up enough dust from the rocky surface to create a local haze in the air.
Their captors escorted them north along the eastern edge, where a wide space had been left open, not bothering to retrieve the rope from around Zandaril’s neck. Where, after all, could we go?
There were women up here, she saw, part of the throng that waited, milling about. She saw no tents, and few cooking fires. Where do they get their water? How long have they been there?
Quiet. They were very quiet. Unlike their passage through the men down below, Penrys and Zandaril attracted little attention up here—just the occasional raised head and dull stare.
She spared a glance at Zandaril’s back, but he seemed well enough, limping a bit. Like her, he was studying the situation. A recently dug channel on their left dodged downslope from the spot they encountered it and terminated in a pool where a line of people waited to fill their water vessels.
Where does the water come from? Somewhere ahead of us. She could smell moisture in the air.
There was a separation in the crowd on the other side of the channel, a gap of a good fifty yards. The people on the far side were different. She spotted few women. All of them, men or women, wore leg shackles, and their clothes were ragged. She could hear the occasional clink of chain. Thirty or more of them stood around a shallow pit, the source of the water channel.
Penrys didn’t dare lower her mind-shield to check, but she knew what she was looking at. These were wizards, captive wizards. They were pulling water from the air into the pit.
She felt the hair rise on her forearms. Were they all Rasesni? They were too filthy for her to be sure, but she thought so. The quiet crowd she’d seen first seemed to be dressed the same way.
She tugged twice on the rope, surreptitiously, to bring them to Zandaril’s attention. He nodded slightly without looking back at her.
Where are they taking us? To add us to the working slaves?
Up ahead, she spotted a cluster of tents.
Their captors walked them to the start of a guarded avenue leading through the tents, leaving them twenty feet from the eastern edge. They parked a man to the north and south, and two more on the open west. The remaining two, the ones they’d first met, trotted up the avenue past the guards and out of sight.
Penrys looked over at Zandaril. His face was set and grim, and he glanced at her and shook his head.
How long have those wizards been captive? How long do they survive?
There was movement, coming back down the tent avenue. A tall young man led the way, dark haired and clean-shaven, his unbraided hair hanging to his shoulders. Not the same as the scouts at the base of the horn or the people camped up here.
Behind him strutted their missing captors, with a few others, but Penrys only had eyes for him. The chain around her neck started to throb fiercely.
He casually reached with his mind for Zandaril and tore the protection of her shield from him. “Zan, this time. That’s a rare flavor. Maybe we should go south, next.”
Then he turned his attention to her, and his eyes widened. “At last!”
He leaned forward, and his shirt gaped open to reveal a thick chain around his neck.
Zandaril felt his borrowed shield ripped apart and his mind riffled for anything of interest. When the tall man withdrew again, his relief was cut short by the sight of the chain around his neck.
Another chained wizard! I will not be owned.
Penrys spun around. “Trust me,” she cried. “Run!”
She dashed for the unguarded cliff edge, and he followed before the twelve feet of rope between them could even tighten.
She’s right. Death is indeed preferable.
He was not quite even with her before they reached the edge, and she took the first leap into the void, with him following immediately behind.
The air rushed past his face and he lost sight of her, but then his arms were yanked up with all his weight on them, and he looked up to see her above him, with wings outstretched, longer than her body, struggling to support them both and failing.
The best she could achieve was a controlled fall.
As he looked at her wings in amazement, one of them sprouted an arrow and blood, and her face contorted.
Pain exploded in his left calf, and he felt a jerk above him. When he looked up again, there was an arrow sticking through her side.
Her face expressionless now, she stopped flapping and locked her wings into a glide, angled north and east. The ground still approached, but much more slowly.
Too many trees. We need open ground.
She must have had the same thought, for she slid sideways through the air, his own body trailing hers like an anchor, swinging out at the curve on twelve feet of rope.
I hope the knots hold. Wish I could drop the weight of my pack and make it easier.
There was a tail, too, he saw, flaring as it tried to keep the too-heavy mass on course.
How far can we get?
They had started from several thousand feet up but lost quite a bit of height in the first few moments. They were stable now, descending shallowly, but she had to be weakening and there was no way to defeat the pull of the ground. Distance was what they needed, and a safe landing.
Neither of them could reach a knife, with their roped wrists holding them together, so there was nothing he could do to improve her chances alone, but he was strangely relieved to think she could get away on her own, if he was captured again.
He could no longer feel his hands, as the bonds tightened even further.
How far could that chained wizard track them?
He didn’t dare mind-speak to her. They were leaving no trail for the scouts, but that would be futile if that wizard could sense them from ten miles away.
The ground of the Craggies fell away below them—not as quickly as they were sinking, but it helped prolong their time in the air. Penrys slid sideways again, this time to the east, choosing to stay in the northern foothills with their pockets of shelter instead of the open plains just north of them.
Zandaril gave a passing thought to the danger of running into Tlobsung’s scouts working the Rasesni back trail, then dismissed it. Rather be captured by them than that slave camp up there.
Their glide developed a jolt and he looked up. She was just about done, her legs dangling loosely instead of held out to lower her air resistance.
“Hang on,” he shouted up to her. “Just find a place to get us down.”
His eye caught the glint of water. “This would be good, if it opens up.”
She revived a bit and looked more alert. “Bend your legs. It’s going to be rough,” she called.
The stream he’d spotted dropped over a small waterfall and widened into a pool. The low-water shingle around it made a dry, open gap between the trees, and she circled around it, coming in low over the water until his feet hit the gravel and he tumbled to the ground. His landing forced her down in an uncontrollable sprawl as the rope yanked on her arms, and she crashed with a thud and didn’t move. Her wings vanished.
