Page 79 of Beyond the Shadowed Earth
“Maybe it wasn’t Rudion,” said Morin. “Maybe Tuer was protecting us.”
“Tuer doesn’t care if I live or die.”
Morin raised an eyebrow. “We both know very well that’s not true.”
She didn’t answer.
They passed a fitful night’s sleep on the mountainside, Eda and Morin taking turns keeping the fire going while Tainir tossed and turned on the hard ground, tears leaking from her eyes. Eda slept for the few hours before dawn, and woke to find Tainir awake and kneeling beside Morin’s ayrrah.
“You’re still too weak,” Morin protested, hovering over his sister like a mother hen.
But Tainir shook her head. “I have to try. It might already be too late, and he saved you, back there against the spirits. It’s the least we can do.”
Tainir shut her eyes and put her hands on the ayrrah’s broken wing, a song spilling from her lips. Those golden sparks danced around her face as she sang, and the ayrrah’s wing knit itself back together, the blood fading from the feathers, the bones growing straight again.
When Tainir finished singing, the ayrrah bowed his head to her, as if she were an Empress, and then he gathered his wings and leapt into the sky.
Tainir crouched back on her heels, looking after him. “He’s gone to find the others.”
“I hope he does,” said Eda, though she knew in her heart he would be searching for them the rest of his life.
Morin gave a sharp nod, his eyes flicking to Eda and then away again. “What now?”
Eda knew the answer to that, too. She hardened herself to it. “I continue on foot, alone. You two go back.”
Morin and Tainir exchanged glances.
Tainir shook her head. “We’re with you until the end, Eda. We’re not leaving you.”
“You can’t just abandon us on a mountain peak miles and miles from civilization,” said Morin, trying for lightness.
It was hard for Eda to look at him. She couldn’t stop thinking of his hands, gently spreading salve on her wounds in the flickering firelight. She forced herself to stop, to close herself off to him. “I can’t ask that of either of you. I won’t ask it.”
Morin’s jaw went hard. “You’re not asking it, Your Majesty. We’re offering.”
It hurt to hear him call her that, a rigid wall of formality suddenly between them.
Tainir gripped Eda’s arm. “We’re not discussing this any further. The three of us are stronger together than we would be on our own. We’re coming with you. Now. Morin. Do you know where we are?”
Morin glanced once at Eda, as if expecting her to protest further, but she didn’t.
She was glad they were coming. She wouldn’t have been able to bear it if they’d agreed to her going on alone.
Morin pulled the map out of his pack and unfolded it, tracing their journey along Tuer’s Rise with one finger. “The spirits knocked us a little off course, but I think we’re past the Singing Mountain here, which just leaves a day’s climb that way”—he pointed westward—“until we reach the end of our mother’s map.”
Eda shivered. “And then?”
“Then we’d better hope we find Tuer’s Mountain,” he said grimly. “And not tumble off the edge of the world.”
It was strange, hiking up the mountains after so many days of flying over them. Strange and awful andslow.None of them had breath to spare for talking, so they climbed in silence, winding their miserable way up and up, over a treacherous path of snow and rock. The sky stretched wide above them—it seemed close enough to touch—and the air grew thin. Eda felt like something heavy was pressing against her chest; she couldn’t get a deep breath.
Clouds gathered dark and fast, and snow came down in thick, smothering flakes. It grew worse the higher they climbed, until Eda couldn’t even see a foot in front of her. Morin had them all stop and put their climbing harnesses on, and then he tied the three of them together with a length of rope before they trudged on into the blinding snow: Morin in front, Eda in the middle, and Tainir behind. Eda was relieved to be tied to Morin with something as solid and tangible as the rope. She wished she could see him, walking just a pace in front of her, but it was enough to know he was there, that the storm wasn’t going to rip him away from her.
“I should change into the snow leopard,” came Tainir’s voice, the wind whipping it strangely around them. “I could lead us.”
“We can’t afford to have you weakened again,” Morin called back. “We can’t stop.”
Eda knew that was true—they had to go on, had to hope they found shelter before they collapsed from exhaustion.
