The Sundering: The Sentinel Part 21

With a river of tumbling rock following close in that second boulder's wake, the survivors scrambled for shelter beneath outcroppings and behind huge monoliths. It was impossible to see how well the strategy protected them, but it allowed Kleef plenty of time to feed the avalanche. He continued to push and hurl boulders as fast as he could move them. Soon, his muscles were trembling and he was out of breath, but the avalanche had become a cras.h.i.+ng, rumbling thing that shook the ground and filled the chute with billowing clouds of dust.

Kleef turned away and saw that Malik was already halfway up the cliff, clutching the rope with both hands and walking his feet along the sheer face as Arietta and Joelle pulled him up. Knowing this would be when the little man would be most vulnerable to a Shadovar attack, Kleef pulled Watcher off his back and scrambled up the slope.

But the agate on Watcher's crossguard remained dark, even when he reached the base of the cliff. And that only made him worry more. The orcs could not have found Kleef and his companions without Shadovar help. Yet the Shadovar were nowhere to be seen-even now, when it would be difficult for Malik's companions to defend him.

Kleef could not quite figure out what that meant. Perhaps the orcs were not in constant communication with their allies, or perhaps they did not entirely trust the Shadovar. But what Kleef feared-the thought that was tying his gut into knots-was that the Shadovar were using the orcs to herd them into a trap.

Kleef was still pondering these fears when Malik reached the top of the cliff and disappeared. When none of his companions reappeared in the next couple of minutes, Kleef began to worry that the cliff had been the trap, that perhaps it had been the Shadovar pulling Malik up.

Then, finally, Arietta peered over the edge and smiled. "I suppose another apology is in order."

"An apology, my lady?"

"For underestimating you." Arietta glanced down into the dust-choked chute, where the rumble of the avalanche was just starting to fade. "That was a lot more than a hundred orcs you just killed."

She threw the rope down.

Kleef climbed to the cliff-top and saw that the companions had floated so far down the river they had left the Chondalwood behind. Now, they stood on the edge of a wide flat plain with yellow flowers rising from a blanket of new gra.s.s. A few leagues distant, the expanse dropped away into a jagged-edged abyss so deep and immense that its shadows seemed to swallow even the far horizon. Above the chasm, a vortex of purple clouds hung swirling with sheet-lightning and b.a.l.l.s of green flame.

He was looking at the Underchasm, Kleef realized, and now he knew why the Shadovar had given up the chase.

Now, they could wait for the Eye to come to them.

CHAPTER 17.

AFTER TWO DAYS OF EIGHTEEN-HOUR MARCHES ON NOT MUCH sleep, Arietta was so foggy-headed that she didn't realize Joelle had stopped moving until she felt the heartwarder's back against her chest. She quickly reached up and caught Joelle by the shoulder, steadying them both.

"My apologies," Arietta said. "I wasn't paying-"

"No need to apologize." Joelle placed her hand over Arietta's and left it there. "We're beyond that now, don't you think?"

Arietta allowed herself a hint of a smile. "I suppose we are." In truth, she wasn't quite sure how she felt about the night before-except that it gave her a secret thrill to hear Joelle mention their intimacies. "But that doesn't give me leave to run you over."

Joelle shot her a sly grin. "Maybe that was the idea."

Arietta's cheeks grew warm. While it was true that she had developed a deep and pa.s.sionate affection for Joelle, it was equally true that she was just growing accustomed to the idea of being in love with another woman. She cast a nervous glance back at Kleef and Malik, who were coming up the gentle rise behind them, then slipped her hand from beneath Joelle's.

"Bad timing, I'm afraid."

Joelle laughed. "Concerned about what our friends may think?" she asked. "I thought you were done worrying about your n.o.ble decorum."

"I am." Arietta stepped around to Joelle's side, where their bodies would not be in such obvious contact. "But there's a difference between following one's heart and making a spectacle of oneself."

"As you wish." Joelle feigned a tone of disappointment. "I suppose I'll just have to control myself until we make camp."

By then, Kleef and Malik had joined them atop the rise. Malik looked from Arietta to Joelle with a smug little grin that suggested he'd seen what had pa.s.sed between the two and knew exactly what it meant. Kleef simply avoided their eyes and stopped alongside Malik, his gaze fixed on their destination.

From this close, the Underchasm looked like the end of the world, an immense dark void falling away from the jagged edge of a gra.s.sy, windswept plain. Here and there, thumb-sized crags of gray stone rose out of the murk like islands out of a foggy sea. A couple of the crags were connected by pale lines that seemed to be ropes or bridges, and the largest was topped by a crownlike shape that suggested a castle and its turrets.

After a moment, Kleef worked his gaze across the gra.s.sy plain ahead, no doubt searching for an orc scouting party or Shadovar ambush. When he spotted neither, he frowned and said, "I don't see anything."

"Out in the Underchasm," Joelle said. She pointed at the large stone crag with the crown of castle turrets. "That's our destination: Sadrach's Spire."

"That's where Grumbar's Temple is?" Arietta asked, confused. "A castle aerie?"

"Grumbar's Temple is beneath the castle," Malik said. "Sadrach was a student of elemental magic. He kept temples to all of the Elemental Lords in his home."

"That castle must be leagues from the nearest solid ground," Kleef said. "How do we reach it?"

Arietta pointed at the pale lines she had observed earlier. "Across those bridges, I would wager."

"Bridges?" Kleef's face fell, and he turned to Joelle. "Is there another way across?"

"Not that I'm aware of," Joelle said. "Unless you can fly."

"Or we wish to climb down and go through the Underdark," Malik added. He cast a wary glance toward the angry sky, where a boiling red rift was opening between two banks of purple clouds. "But I do not think we have time for that."

Kleef let out his breath, then said, "Well, at least we know where the Shadovar mean to ambush us."

Arietta saw what he was thinking and nodded. "On the bridges."

"How can you know that?" Malik asked. "The Shadovar are many things, but seldom predictable."

"They are this time." Kleef glanced back over his shoulder, toward a distant, brownish-gray blur-the orc horde coming over the horizon behind them. "Yder has been using the orcs to wear us down. When we reach the bridges, he'll use them to push us into his trap."

"So we destroy the bridges behind us," Arietta said. No sooner had she said this than an even more alarming thought occurred to her. "Unless the Shadovar have already destroyed the bridges."

Kleef was quick to shake his head. "They haven't."

"Why not?" Arietta asked. "It would prevent us from delivering the Eye to Grumbar's Temple."

"It would force us to try something desperate," Kleef said. "They'd rather have us on the bridges, where they can antic.i.p.ate our moves."

"Nor would it be easy for them to undo Sadrach's magic," Malik said. "Those bridges have been there since the Spellplague. If they could be destroyed, I am sure someone would have done it by now."

Arietta frowned. "Why would anyone want to destroy those bridges?" she asked, instantly suspicious. "There's something you haven't told us."

"Nothing of concern," Malik said. "Only that Sadrach and his servants were much changed by the Spellplague, and I doubt the nomads of the Shaar are fond of having them visit in the night."

"Changed how?" Kleef asked.

Malik shrugged. "I know only what my G.o.d has shared with me, which is little enough," he said. "But have no fear. He has promised to protect us."

Kleef looked skeptical. "He'd better keep that promise," he said. "Because if one of these servants so much as looks at us wrong, I'm throwing you to the orcs myself."

Malik grew pale. "There is no need for threats," he said. "We are all here to stop Shar."

"Just remember that." Arietta caught Kleef's eye, then added, "But if Malik is right about those bridges being indestructible, we have a more urgent problem. We can't allow ourselves to become trapped between the orcs and the Shadovar."

"Good point." Kleef glanced back toward the orc horde, then started toward the Underchasm. "We need to keep moving."

It wasn't quite what Arietta had meant, but she saw no harm in talking while they walked. She fell in beside the watchman and started through the tall gra.s.s.

"Actually, I was thinking of something a bit more unexpected," Arietta said. "We need to find a way to pit the orcs and Shadovar against each other."

"Perhaps you could ask Siamorphe to fly us across the chasm," Malik suggested, squeezing in between Kleef and Arietta. "Surely, even she is more likely to grant such a miracle than are the Shadovar and the orcs."

Kleef scowled at the little man's rudeness, then turned to Arietta. "I hate to say it, but he has a point."

Arietta shook her head. "It doesn't take a miracle-not if we can make them see that their interests are no longer aligned. For instance, if Gruumsh were to recover his eye, what's the first thing he would do?"

"Take horrible vengeance on Luthic, without a doubt," Malik said. "But what good is that to us? Then Luthic would be dead, and Grumbar would have no reason to stay on Toril."

"Wrong." Kleef was starting to sound interested. "Grumbar wouldn't let it go that far. He'd be honor-bound to protect his lover."

"Which means he would have to stay on Toril," Arietta said. "And that's exactly what the Shadovar don't want."

"Wait-you want to give the Eye to the orcs?" Joelle's voice was aghast. "Please tell me that's not what you're saying."

"Not quite," Arietta said. "I'm just saying that if we want to reach Grumbar's Temple alive, we need to make the orcs see that the Shadovar are no more on their side than ours."

The companions continued toward the Underchasm, refining Arietta's plan as they walked. Malik favored trying to strike a deal with the orcs, then double-crossing them when the Shadovar arrived to interfere. Kleef thought it made more sense to challenge the orc chieftan to single combat and put the Eye up as the prize. In the end, they realized they needed to be subtler-that it wasn't the orcs they needed to trick, it was the Shadovar.

They stopped long enough to make a few preparations, then resumed their march. Although they were now so close to their goal they could actually see it, the scale of the Underchasm made it difficult to estimate the remaining distance. For the next two hours, the swath of gra.s.sy plain in front of them never seemed to narrow, nor the stone crags out in the abyss to grow much larger or more distinct. Only the red rift in the sky appeared to draw nearer, becoming wider and brighter and driving the two banks of purple clouds down toward the horizon.

Every now and then, a blazing white vortex would form somewhere inside the rift and drop a swirling column of flame down into the Underchasm. The plain would shudder and the wind would boom and shriek, and sometimes there would come a blast of heat so ferocious that gra.s.s withered and dirt smoked. Other times, ranks of lightning would dance across the horizon, seeming to wall off some distant part of the world and cleave it away forever. Once, a sheet of blue ice dropped from the sky and sliced into the ground alongside them, opening up a mile-long fissure that immediately began to vent a curtain of frigid white fog.

Finally, the gra.s.sy plain began to narrow, and the rim of the Underchasm drew visibly closer. The nearest of the stone crags slowly swelled into a mountaintop, and the pale line that connected it to the lip of the abyss became an impossibly long bridge. A pair of stone pylons appeared on the brink of the chasm, serving as the entrance to the bridge and anchoring the thick, translucent cables that held it suspended in the air.

Kleef removed his sword and scabbard from his back and, keeping one eye on the agate on Watcher's crossguard, cautiously led the way forward. As the companions drew nearer to the bridge, the plain grew barren and lifeless, exposing a powdery brown loam that had been compacted into a network of foot trails. The trails converged at the bridge entrance, where a dozen wood poles stood, planted in a rough semicircle. Some were no more that waist-height, and a couple were as tall as Kleef. But all had a chain dangling from the top and a carpet of bones scattered around the base.

Lying chained to one of the shorter posts was a black-and-brown billy goat. When he noticed the companions, he staggered to his feet and turned to watch them approach. His eyes were wary and pale, with elongated horizontal pupils that reminded Arietta of the agate on Kleef's sword.

Kleef stopped a few paces away and asked no one in particular, "What's this? An offering?"

"Or perhaps a gift," Malik suggested. "If the nomads leave food here, Sadrach's servants will have less reason to visit their camps at night."

Kleef studied the goat for a moment, then went to his side and kneeled next to his head. The goat s.h.i.+ed away, but Kleef reached out and gently drew him back, then began to fiddle with the iron collar around his neck.

"Are you mad?" Malik demanded. "You will turn Sadrach's servants against us if you steal what is meant for them!"

Kleef continued to work on the collar. "Sadrach's monsters have nothing to be angry about," he said. "The only ones I'm stealing from are the orcs."

He looked back the way they'd come, to where the orc horde had become a churning ma.s.s of flesh and iron, spreading across the plain behind them. Arietta could already see the advance guard out in front, distant knots of stooped shapes that left ribbons of trampled gra.s.s in their wake, and she knew it would not be long before the first scouts arrived at the bridge.

"Kleef's right," Arietta said. "The first orcs are going to be here within the hour-and there's no need to appease them."

She retrieved the top of a human skull from among the bones surrounding one of the tall poles, then filled it with water and kneeled down in front of the goat. The beast fixed his eerie eyes on hers, and for an instant she felt as though she were staring into the heavens themselves, a realm of iridescent clouds and mountains the color of molten gold, of endless silver waterfalls and alabaster palaces reflected in s.h.i.+mmering lakes.

Then the goat lowered his nose, and the image vanished from Arietta's mind so quickly she was not even sure she had seen it. The goat drank until the skull was empty, then nosed the makes.h.i.+ft bowl from Arietta's hands and turned his gaze on Kleef. A moment later, the iron collar finally snapped open, and the goat bleated in what may well have been grat.i.tude.

Kleef pointed in the direction opposite the approaching horde. "You'd better hurry," he said. "You don't want those orcs catching sight of you."

The goat looked from him to Arietta, and a tree of lightning snaked across the red sky. A heartbeat later, a peal of thunder crashed over the Underchasm, so sudden and loud that Arietta found herself curled into a ball on the still-shuddering ground, with dust billowing up around her and no clear memory of how she had gotten there. Kleef was next to her, and Malik and Joelle were close by, also on the ground and looking frightened and confused.

Only the goat remained standing, his eerie eyes watching them with an expression that seemed both expectant and mocking. He shook the dust from his coat and trotted over to stand between the stone pylons that served as the gateway onto the bridge.

Kleef looked over at Arietta, his brow raised in bewilderment. "What do you make of that?"

"I have no idea." Arietta returned to her feet. "But did you notice that his eyes-"

"Look like Helm's Eye?" Kleef stood and retrieved Watcher, then turned the agate on the crossguard upward and spent a moment examining it. "How could I miss it?"

"Then perhaps we should take that as a sign and keep moving," Joelle said, joining them. "We aren't all that far ahead of the orcs."

Malik also joined them, and they stepped between the pylons with the goat. For a moment, they all stood waiting, looking down at the beast and half-expecting it to lead the way.

Finally, Malik let out an exasperated snort. "It is just a stupid animal that does not have the sense to run from its own destiny."

The goat looked up at him and bleated.

"Sadrach's servants are going to eat you alive," Malik said. "That is your destiny."

The goat lowered his horns as though he were going to b.u.t.t Malik, then simply backed away and looked at Kleef.

Kleef laughed. "I'd like to kill Malik, too," he said. "But Joelle keeps saying we need him."

He led the way onto the bridge itself, with the goat close behind. Malik followed, and Arietta and Joelle brought up the rear, walking side by side on a thin metal deck barely wide enough to hold a donkey cart. As they moved away from the anchoring pylons on the rim of the Underchasm, the deck began to shudder and bounce beneath their footfalls. But the translucent suspension cables, which looked more like twisted gla.s.s than any sort of metal, remained taut and unmoving. Arietta thought about the weight of the orc horde pursuing them and wondered if the structure was as indestructible as Malik had implied. She tried to take comfort from the goat, which seemed completely at home on the bridge, trotting along close on Kleef's heels and nonchalantly peering between the support lines into the abyss below.

When Arietta finally gathered the courage to look for herself, her heart sank. Hundreds of feet below lay a gray blanket of shadowstuff, its surface an indistinct zone of slowly expanding murk. She looked back at the rim of the Underchasm and saw a dark stain creeping up the wall, just a little above the shadowstuff itself.

"It's started," Joelle said, also peering over the side of the bridge. "Time is against us."

Arietta looked toward the center of the Underchasm and found herself inclined to agree. Though she could see a second bridge curving out from behind the mountaintop ahead, it quickly narrowed into imperceptibility, and she could not tell which of the distant crags it led to-or how many more such bridges there might be between them and Sadrach's Spire. But they clearly had a long walk ahead-and plenty of trouble to face along the way.

They continued along the bridge at a steady but unhurried pace, deliberately giving the orcs time to close the gap behind them. Given the rising sea of shadowstuff and the uncertain distance to their destination, it was a nerve-racking way to travel-but far better than running headlong into a Shadovar trap.

Soon enough, a line of distant figures appeared on the bridge and rapidly began to swell into the stooped shapes of running orcs. As the column grew longer and more distinct, the decking began to tremble and thrum beneath the pounding of hundreds of hobnailed boots. Arietta looked back to check on the ever-growing column and was surprised to find the orcs running down a slight incline. It didn't make sense, but that was definitely the way it appeared.

Whether the bridge had always run at a slight downward angle or had simply begun to sag beneath the weight of the horde, she could not say. But after a while, the suspension cables began to hum and s.h.i.+mmer, and when she looked over her shoulder again, she found that the orc column extended a full league behind her, all the way back to the chasm rim.