3. Idrilia
IDRILIA
The Silver Princess is more than a botanical curiosity.
If Professor Haldren's analysis of the dried specimens is correct, the root compounds interact with neural pathways in ways no synthetic drug can replicate.
A living specimen could open doors in pharmacology that we haven't even thought to knock on.
Some will call this expedition reckless. I call it necessary.
—From the journal of Princess Idrilia of Tarina
The air thinned noticeably as we pushed past the fifteen-hundred-meter mark.
Denna's breathing had gone ragged, and Palel had fallen quieter than usual, which was saying something.
The porters were managing well enough, their mountain-bred lungs handling the altitude better than the university-educated flatland researchers.
The medic had distributed mild stimulant tablets to anyone who wanted them.
I had declined. I wanted my senses unaltered.
Sorel. That was the medic's name. I was glad that I finally remembered.
The landscape was changing. Below the boundary, the slopes had been covered in alpine scrub, tough, wind-stunted bushes and hardy grasses that clung to the thin soil.
Up here, vegetation grew sparse and peculiar.
Mosses clung to rocks in patterns that seemed almost deliberate, interspersed with tiny flowers that had faintly shimmering petals, as if reflecting light that wasn't visible to the naked eye.
The magnetic fields were strong here, enough that I could feel a faint tingling in my teeth.
"Be mindful of the altitude effects," Jeffson warned, as if anyone needed to hear that.
"Keep the split peak in sight at all times.
" He pointed to a distinctive formation above us, a mountain summit that had cracked in two sometime in the geological past, leaving twin spires that pointed skyward like broken fingers.
"Charming," Gavon said. "I'm definitely using that in the script."
"What's the working title?" Denna asked from behind us.
"Summit of No Return."
"Lovely," I grimaced. "As if anyone needed more reason to stress."
He shrugged. "Imagining the worst is better than experiencing it, right? And then when you are safely back home and thinking of everything that could have gone wrong, you'll be doubly happy to be alive."
"Is that why you like horror movies?" Denna asked.
The banter helped. It kept the tightness in my chest at bay.
I was well aware that we were now in territory that most Tarinians had never hazarded, and for good reasons.
First of all, I was pretty sure that we had already crossed the border into Elucia, and the Elucians were very strict about keeping foreigners out.
And secondly, these mountains had swallowed their share of fools who'd ignored the boundary markers and continued onward.
The magnetic anomalies up here could disorient even experienced mountaineers, storms were known to materialize without warning, and while there were no Shedun on this side of the mountains, the terrain itself was dangerous enough.
I checked my watch. We'd been climbing for an hour and forty minutes past the boundary. Only twenty minutes remained before Jeffson's deadline.
"There." Denna pointed at a shelf of rock ten meters above the trail, accessible by a narrow chimney in the cliff face. "Is that—?"
I looked up, and my heart stuttered.
White petals, faintly luminous, growing in a cluster from a crack in the dark stone. The stems were slender and almost translucent, and the leaves had a blue-green cast that matched the descriptions in Professor Haldren's monograph.
"The Silver Princess," I whispered.
For a moment, no one moved. Then I pulled my climbing gloves from my pack and scanned the chimney for handholds.
"Absolutely not, Your Highness." Jeffson positioned himself between me and the rock face. "I'll send Kelth. He's our best climber."
"Kelth doesn't know how to properly harvest a specimen without damaging the root system. The whole point is to get a living sample."
"Then talk him through it."
"At a distance of ten meters? While he's clinging to a rock face?" I shook my head. "I'm an experienced climber, Jeffson. This is a simple chimney ascent."
"Nothing about this is simple, Your Highness."
"Two minutes up, five minutes to collect, two minutes down. I'll be back before you finish worrying."
I didn't need his permission. I was his employer, after all, not his subordinate. Still, I understood his concern and felt a small prick of guilt for overriding it.
Jeffson was worried not only for me but for everyone on our team, and he felt responsible for the porters.
The chimney was narrow enough that I could brace my back against one wall and my feet against the other, inching upward with steady pressure.
The rock was cold through my gloves, and the magnetic tingle intensified as I climbed, making my teeth buzz and the hair on my arms stand up beneath my jacket.
"Careful!" Denna called from below.
I reached the ledge and pulled myself onto it. The shelf was wider than it had appeared from below, enough to kneel comfortably. The Silver Princess cluster grew from a deep fissure where water had collected and frozen in a thin glaze of ice.
Up close, the plant was even more extraordinary than the descriptions I'd read and the illustrations that didn't do it justice.
The petals were paper-thin and produced a soft glow that became visible when I cupped my hands around them, blocking the ambient light.
The root system, partially exposed in the crack, was threaded with metallic-looking, copper-bright filaments that wove through the soil and into the rock.
The roots were growing along the magnetic lines, using them as a vine uses a trellis. Professor Haldren had been right about everything.
"It's even more remarkable than what Professor Haldren wrote in the monographs," I called down. "The roots have metallic threading. They're interfacing directly with the magnetic substrate."
"Magnificent," Denna called back. "Can you take photographs?"
I pulled the camera from my pack. It was a sturdy field model, built to withstand rough handling. I documented the Silver Princess from every angle, then carefully began extracting a specimen, using the fine tools from my collection kit to preserve as much of the root system as possible.
I was so focused on the work that I almost missed the tremor.
It wasn't the magnetic tingling I'd been feeling since we'd crossed the boundary. This was a vibration that traveled through the rock beneath my knees and into my bones, subtle, like the byproduct of heavy equipment working on a distant site.
I froze, my hands still cradling the half-extracted specimen.
The tremor stopped.
I held my breath, counting seconds. Below me, the expedition members were talking among themselves, oblivious. Gavon was gesturing dramatically about something, probably describing a scene for his screenplay. Jeffson was studying the sky to the east, where clouds were forming.
Five seconds. Ten. Nothing.
I resumed my work, faster now. The root came free with a soft resistance, trailing its metallic threads. I tucked it carefully into the specimen case packed with moistened moss.
The second tremor was stronger.
The ledge vibrated beneath me, and this time I heard it too, a low groaning from deep within the mountain, like the sound of a massive door being forced open. Small rocks rattled loose from above and bounced past me, clattering into the void.
"Jeffson!" I shouted.
He was already looking up, not at me but at the mountain above us. His usual worried expression had shifted to recognition and then to horror.
"Everyone, move!" His voice cracked like a whip. "To the rock wall! Now!"
The third tremor hit like a fist.
I was thrown sideways on the ledge, my specimen case skidding toward the edge. I lunged for it, caught it, and pressed myself flat against the rock face as the mountain above us began to move.
It started with a sound, not the dramatic roar I would have expected, but a grumble that grew. A hiss of snow shifting, of ice cracking, of a million tons of white death succumbing to gravity.
Then came the roar.
From my position on the ledge, I had a perfect and terrible view.
The avalanche originated from a cornice high above us, a wind-built overhang of compacted snow that had been waiting for exactly this seismic nudge to release.
It peeled away from the mountain in a single massive sheet, then shattered into a churning wall of white as it gained speed.
It wasn't coming directly at us. The main flow would pass to our right, channeled by a natural gully in the mountainside. But the debris field, the spray of ice and rock and displaced air that preceded the wall, was spreading outward like the wake of a ship.
"The wall!" Jeffson screamed. "Get against the wall!"
He flattened himself into a crevice, pulling a porter in after him. Sorel, the medic, dove behind a boulder. Three of the crew found shelter under an overhang that looked barely large enough for two.
Others weren't fast enough.
The debris field hit the trail like a wave hitting a beach. Denna stumbled, a blast of displaced air and ice knocking her sideways. Palel was struck by a rock dislodged from above and went down hard.
Gavon.
I couldn't see Gavon.
The noise was beyond anything I could have imagined. Not just loud but a physical pressure that compressed my chest and made breathing difficult. Ice crystals filled the air, turning the world white, and the ledge beneath me shuddered as chunks of debris slammed into the cliff face.
I pressed myself flat, arms over my head, the specimen case crushed between my body and the rock. The roar went on and on, far longer than seemed possible, as if the entire mountain was coming down.
Then nothing. The mountain held its breath, and so did I.