Page 60 of Beyond the Shadowed Earth
Eda shivered. “She really thinks she can find Tuer’s Mountain?”
Morin nodded.
“She’s sure of it. But I think—I think some part of her believes she can actually save my father, not just send his soul to rest, but bring him back to life.” Morin’s forehead creased, and he sagged back onto his stool. “I’m worried about her. My father was the love of her life, and I’m not at all sure she was in any state to go searching for a mountain no one’s supposed to be able to find.”
“How long has she been gone?”
“Since the middle of the summer. I’m hoping there will be news of her when I get home. I’m hopingshe’llbe home, too.” Morin rubbed his eyes and took the glass globes from the corners of the map, allowing it to roll up. He found one of the map cases and stuffed the parchment into it, then handed it to Eda. “Please take it. No charge—I hope you’ll forgive me, for before. Your best bet for heading up Tuer’s Rise is to attach yourself to a caravan. They come through here every spring, a mixture of merchants and pilgrims going to Tal-Arohnd.”
“The monastery,” said Eda. She blinked away the image of Lady Rinar’s body sliding into the sea.
“From there, you should be able to cobble together an expedition and gear in the village just beyond. And after that—” Morin shrugged. “After that, gods keep you.”
No, Eda thought,gods beware of me.
Chapter Twenty-Six
EDA STEPPED FROM THE CARTOGRAPHER’S INTO Afreezing rain. She followed Morin’s directions to the money changer, who gave her a heavy pouch of coins for the Emperor’s ring. After that she purchased sturdy traveling clothes from a tailor’s shop, hired a mule, and bought a knife from a swordsmith just before he closed his doors for the evening.
By the time she left the swordsmith it was fully night, the icy rain hardly touching her beneath her new poncho. Her coins had diminished by half, and she needed every one to buy more supplies once she got up to the village beyond the monastery, but her feet still led her to the inn. For a moment, she stared through the window, watching the lodgers eat together at a broad wooden table, a roaring fire at their backs.
Regretfully, she slipped into the inn’s stable and shook the rain from her poncho. She curled up in the straw in an empty stall.
She fell asleep, still feeling the motion of the waves underneath her. Dreams folded over her like water over a sunken ship.
She dreamed of winged spirits leaking through the void. Of agony and terror and darkness.
She dreamed she drove a knife into Tuer’s heart. His blood was silver. His tears were red.
The world was healed, but it didn’t matter. Tuer’s Shadow seized her, and hurtled her into the void.
Agony, terror, darkness. There was nothing more.
There never would be.
Mules were stupid creatures. Eda learned that in her first five minutes riding one. The man she’d hired hers from had also advised her to attach herself to a caravan, which was due any day. But she hadn’t wanted to wait.
Maybe she should have. Maybe in a line of mules, hers would behave himself instead of stopping to nibble at every blade of grass growing alongside the rocky trail, or planting his feet and refusing to move because a rabbit darted across the path three yards ahead. Before half an hour was gone, she was sweating and swearing with all her efforts to drive the horrid thing forward, and bewailed ever hiring him at all.
But as the trail grew steeper, the mule seemed to decide to get down to business; he proved sure-footed over the loose rocks and climbed steadily, his huge fuzzy ears pointed forward. Eda was begrudgingly grateful for him after all.
The map Morin had given her was marked with the most direct route up into the mountains proper, where the endless stretch of peaks known as Tuer’s Rise began. It hadn’t sounded so hard to her before, climbing a mountain and finding the god, but she hadn’t realized she would have to climbmanymountains, and that each one would take a ridiculously long time. At least once she reached the monastery and the village beyond she could replenish her supplies and hire a guide, then lethimconsult the map a hundred times a day to make sure they were on the right path.
She spent two miserable days on the first leg of her journey, huddling against the mule for warmth both nights because she didn’t know how to build a fire. The third morning she found herself on a trail so treacherously steep she was forced to get off the mule and lead him behind her. She felt as if she were clawing her way up into the sky, that the earth was doing its best to keep her from it.
Several hours’ hard climb brought Eda and the mule to a wooden platform built into the side of the mountain that looked very much like a dock for a ship. Strong wooden poles on the end of the platform stretched up into the sky, their tops lost in fog, with thick cables stretching out from them. A young Haldan girl was sitting in a booth on the platform, her nose stuck in a book and the hood of her poncho pulled tight over her ears. She looked up as Eda approached.
“They told me the caravan was due today,” she said, yawning, as she came out of the booth and tucked the book under her armpit. “But there’s only one of you.” She had two short braids tied off with green yarn, and a spattering of freckles all across her nose and cheeks. She was skinny and slight, her knees and elbows poking out. Something about the girl’s honey-brown eyes looked familiar.
“I’m trying to get up to Tal-Arohnd,” said Eda.
The girl jabbed her finger at the wooden poles and the cables. “Only way up to the monastery is in the aerial lift. I hope you’re not afraid of heights. I’m Clet Tainir, by the way.”
The surname sharpened the sense of familiarity, but Eda was foggy and exhausted from the long climb and couldn’t quite place it.
“You can put the mule in there,” Tainir added, jerking her chin at the small pen tucked around the side of the mountain that Eda hadn’t noticed before. “I’ll help you with your packs.”
With Tainir’s assistance, Eda had the mule unharnessed and all her belongings piled on the platform in the space of a few minutes. She was rather afraid to ask the question, but she did anyway. “What’s an aerial lift?”
