The Ember Route #2
“We don’t jump,” she said. “We cross together.”
Darian raised an eyebrow. “Together how?”
Lark moved along the edge of the washout until she found what she was looking for: a section where the gap narrowed to perhaps six feet, still too wide for a comfortable step but manageable with support.
More importantly, a gnarled root protruded from the far bank, thick and solid, anchored in soil that had not yet given way.
“Here,” she said. “The gap is narrower. If we hold hands, we can brace each other. One person stretches across, grabs that root, and uses it to anchor while the others follow. We distribute our weight, keep each other balanced, and cross together.”
Pippa looked at the root, then at the gap, then at Lark. “That’s your plan? Hold hands and hope?”
“It’s not hope. It’s physics. Three people connected have more stability than one person alone.
If one of us slips, the others can compensate.
We keep tension in the chain, move slowly, stay low.
” Lark paused. “I’ve done this before. In Summerbright.
The bridges over the lower canals were unreliable.
Sometimes they collapsed entirely. You learned to cross the canals, or you learned to swim in water you didn't want to swim in.”
“I don’t find that reassuring,” Pippa said, but some of the rigid fear had left her shoulders. “What if the root breaks?”
“Then whoever is holding it falls, and the rest of us pull them back. But it won’t break. Look at it. That thing has been there longer than any of us have been alive.”
Darian had risen from his crouch and was studying the narrower section with renewed interest. “I’ll go first,” he said. “I have the longest reach. Once I’m anchored on the far side, I can help pull you both across if the edge gives way.”
Pippa opened her mouth as if to protest, then closed it again. She knew he was right. They all did.
“Fine,” she said. “But if you fall, I’m going to be very upset with you.”
“Noted,” Darian said. A smile flashed briefly across his face before he moved to the edge of the narrower section.
He studied the gap, calculating distances and angles with the practiced eye of a man who had spent years assessing tactical situations.
Then he took two steps back, launched himself forward, and stretched his good arm toward the root.
For one suspended heartbeat, he hung over empty air, rain streaming past his face.
Then his fingers closed around rough bark, and his boots hit the far bank with a solid impact.
The edge crumbled slightly but held. Darian pulled himself up using the root, found solid footing, and turned back to face them. Noctis immediately circled his legs, tail wagging furiously.
“Your turn,” he called across the gap, extending his free hand, the other using the root as an anchor. “Lark, you’re next. Pippa, you anchor until she’s across.”
Lark moved into position. Behind her, Pippa planted her feet and gripped Lark’s free hand with white-knuckled intensity. Ahead, Darian’s outstretched fingers waited.
“On three,” Lark said. “One. Two. Three.”
She stepped forward, stretching across the void. The edge shifted beneath her feet, but Pippa’s grip held her steady, and then Darian’s hand closed around her wrist and he pulled her across the remaining distance. She landed beside him, breathing hard, and immediately turned back.
Pippa stood alone on the far bank, looking considerably smaller than she had a moment ago. Her hair hung in her face, her hands gripping nothing at all, the sudden absence of Lark’s steadying presence leaving her visibly unmoored.
“I can’t,” she said. “I thought I could, but I can’t. The edge is going to collapse, and I’m going to fall, and you’ll have to explain to Rion that you lost his best friend in a hole in the ground.”
“You won’t fall,” Darian said, his voice calm, that of a man who had trained frightened soldiers and talked comrades through worse moments than this. “Look at me, Pippa. Not at the washout. At me.”
She looked.
“Take my hand,” he said, extending it across the void. “I’ve got you. Lark’s got me. We will not let you fall.”
Pippa’s throat moved as she swallowed. She looked at the fissure, at Darian’s outstretched hand, then at his face.
Then she stepped forward and reached out.
Their hands connected, and Darian pulled, not hard enough to unbalance her, just enough to give her momentum.
Pippa reached across the space with her eyes squeezed shut, her breath held and her free arm windmilling for balance.
The edge gave way beneath her trailing foot, a chunk of muddy soil tumbling into the darkness below, but by then Darian had her, Lark had Darian, and together they hauled her onto solid ground in a graceless tangle of limbs and oilcloth, punctuated by a muffled shriek.
They ended up in a heap on the muddy bank, Pippa half on top of Darian, Lark somehow beneath them both, Noctis dancing around them with his tail wagging and his tongue trying to find any available face to lick.
“We made it,” Pippa said. Her voice was muffled against Darian’s shoulder. “We actually made it.”
“We made it,” Lark confirmed from somewhere beneath a pile of wet cloaks and one very enthusiastic wolf.
No one moved. The rain continued to fall around them, steady and cold, the washout continued to crumble behind them, and somewhere far to the east, an army was carrying Rion toward the mountains.
But here, in this moment, they were alive, together and had crossed an obstacle that had seemed impossible.
Then, Noctis finally succeeded in licking Pippa’s ear. She yelped, and the moment shattered into laughter, movement, and the slow process of untangling themselves from each other and the mud.
Pippa struggled upright, wiping wolf slobber from the side of her face and fixed Lark with a look of sudden, appalled realization.
“Wait,” she said. “Wait. Lark. You can create things out of aetheria. Daggers. Shields. Couldn’t you have just made a bridge?”
Lark froze, one hand still braced against the ground, mud dripping from her sleeves.
“I,” she said, and then stopped.
The honest answer was that it had never occurred to her.
She had learned to create daggers first, small and precise and lethal, and now, at Pippa’s urging, she had expanded to other things: cups, keys, the aetheric shield she had used at Autumncrown.
But all of those were objects she could hold, things that existed in relation to her hands, her body, her intent.
The idea of creating something structural, that existed independently of her, and was large enough and stable enough to bear weight?
That had never crossed her mind. Her magic had always been about tools, not architecture.
But that was not the answer that would satisfy Pippa, who was now staring at her with an expression that suggested she was reassessing every decision that had led her to this moment.
“I don’t know. I’ve never tried to make anything that big,” Lark admitted. “Or anything that needed to hold weight without my touching it.”
“You don’t know,” Pippa repeated.
“No.”
“So we just went through all of that, and you don’t actually know if there was an easier option.”
“Technically, yes.”
Pippa looked at Darian. Darian looked at Lark. Noctis, sensing the tension, sat down and began licking his own paw with pointed disinterest.
“Next time,” Pippa said slowly, “we try the magic bridge first. Before the hand-holding, the near-death experience and the landing in mud.”
“That seems reasonable,” Lark said.
“And if the magic bridge doesn’t work, then we try something else that doesn’t involve me dangling over a flooded chasm.”
“Also reasonable.”
Pippa held her gaze, considering, then sighed and extended a hand to help Lark to her feet. “We should probably consider buying some rope.”
“At the next trader we come across.”
They brushed themselves off as best they could, which was not particularly well, given that everything was already soaked with rain.
Darian examined his injured arm with a grimace that suggested the landing had not done it any favors.
Noctis shook himself vigorously, spraying water in all directions.
The Ember Route stretched ahead of them, winding east through darkening curtains of rain toward the distant promise of the High Greenwood. Somewhere in the foothills of those mountains, Rion was waiting.
Lark adjusted her pack and started walking.