CHAPTER THREE
C HAPTER T HREE
The people of the Ledge ready themselves to journey. They don their hoods and pull sacks over their shoulders, sling bags across their backs. The children are fed meagre amounts and led to the stream to drink. All energies seem renewed, with the exception of a few.
Ryon, Tasheem and Rivdan wear the remnants of their battle. There is a gash along Tasheem’s cheek that looks days old, though it isn’t. She limps badly, her left leg barely able to bear weight. Rivdan is little better. He holds his arm close to his chest. Dawsyn remembers the sight of a blade sinking into his shoulder up on the Ledge. When they escaped the battle and fled into the Chasm, both seemed near death. It was Yennes who saved them, though her already depleted power made healing them to completion an impossibility.
Ryon is still wounded. Dawsyn watches him wince as he bends, his shoulders shaking, brought back from the brink of demise but not nearly whole. Dawsyn is bruised and sore but otherwise unharmed. It is the weakening of her own magic that bothers her most.
As for Yennes, the woman seems… unstable. She is exhausted. That much is clear. She had folded many times into this Chasm, healed and helped as many as she could, pushing her capabilities to their limits. But Dawsyn suspects it is not her expended labours that ail her now.
Yennes’ tightly curled hair begins to free itself from the head scarf she uses to encase it. She gives Dawsyn the impression of a cornered animal – fearful and frenetic, twitching at each sound and movement. As is her tendency, the extent of her discomfit is channelled through her hands. They fret and worry incessantly.
Dawsyn approaches the woman, grabbing her hands through the darkness. Yennes startles.
“Easy,” Dawsyn tells her, her voice low. “I didn’t mean to frighten you.”
Yennes gulps, eyes wide. “Dawsyn.” Her head whips back and forth. “We must go. We’ve remained still too long already.”
Dawsyn nods. “Are you well?”
Despite the chill, a bead of sweat falls from the woman’s hair line and slides down her cheek. “We must go!”
“Walk with Ryon and the others,” Dawsyn says. “Nearer to the front. It may ease your nerves to have them close.”
The woman gives a dry huff of mirth behind pursed lips, a shudder rippling through her. “I fear they’ll be no match for what lurks here.”
Dawsyn takes Yennes’ hand and begins to lead her away. “Whatever comes,” she says, “will not have met a group quite like this.”
Yennes looks around at the glint of knives and swords reflecting firelight. At the hardened stares of people tried and tested on the Ledge. She seems to quell a little. Her hands slow, if only slightly. “I hope you are right, Dawsyn Sabar,” she says. “Or may the Mother have mercy on us all.”
“We’ve come this far,” Dawsyn reminds her. “Perhaps the Mother favours us already.”
Yennes grimaces. “If She truly favours us, She will make this journey upstream a short one.”
“Upstream?”
The familiar voice is close – to Dawsyn’s immediate left. This darkness is disorientating. How easy it is for shadows to lurk.
Nevrak stands there, his brows pinched in confusion. The Splitter, they call him, after his propensity for splitting skulls as easily as timber. The man’s grey beard reaches his chest. He stands easily a head taller than Dawsyn and he uses his height to his advantage now. “Did the woman say ‘upstream’?”
Dawsyn glimpses his tensed hands. She answers carefully, aware that others nearby have halted to listen. They turn to hear her answer. “Yes,” she says, and means to move on.
She takes not two paces before Nevrak calls to her back, attracting even more on-lookers. “But… Surely we should follow the water?” he asks. Dawsyn turns to see him looking at bystanders for their assent. Some of the men and women nod. “Does the water not lead to the valley, girl? You said you’d lead us off this mountain.”
Yes, Dawsyn thinks. But leading them to the valley means leading them into the arms of a queen who would entrap them once more. A queen who, learning of their presence in her kingdom, would see them as an invasion. A threat to the peace she’d traded them for in the first place.
Dawsyn has no intention of leading them out of the hands of one tyrant and into another. But, how to explain to them?
The people of the Ledge do not know of how Queen Alvira sold them to the Glacians all those years ago. Most were born on the Ledge, like her. They only know as much as she did before she left it.
How to tell them all now that she will lead them away from the promise of a green valley? How to tell them that, instead, she intends to lead them to a place unknown, toward mere possibility? How to tell them now without having them turn their backs, without them fleeing in the other direction? How can she be sure they will listen, that they will follow her to uncertain ends?
Dawsyn realises she cannot.
If they know, they will not follow.
They’ll run to Terrsaw.
To their recapture. To their end.
Dawsyn’s breaths come faster. Her fists ball. The faces around her wait impatiently. Confused. They grow ever more persistent with every wasted second.
Dawsyn spies the rest of their party across the way and they too stare. She silently begs them not to contradict her. Silently, she apologises to them.
“The water leads to an ocean,” Dawsyn says, loud enough that her voice carries. “We cannot reach safety that way.” This, at least, is not wholly untrue. “We will travel upstream.”
“In the opposite direction?” Nevrak asks. His voice hits her from several angles, refracting from the rock. “Where does it lead?”
Dawsyn does not hesitate. She turns on her heel to look back at Nevrak and meets his eye. “It will take us to Terrsaw,” she says.
She feels the emitted tension from Yennes. She notes the uncomfortable shift in the posture of her friends, now complicit in a plan made of lies. Remorse floods her.
But the Ledge people around her are unsuspecting. Their ignorance is what Dawsyn depends on. “The path will take us back,” Dawsyn says now.
“And have you seen it yourself?” Nevrak calls once more. His is the only stare that appears dubious, though there is uncertainty too. The deeply etched lines around his eyes flinch with it. His son stands at his side, and Wes imitates his father’s stance, though he is not half Nevrak’s height. He pushes his chest out, looks down his nose at her.
Dawsyn smiles coldly. She takes a step toward them and Wes’s feet shuffle back an inch.
She tilts her head to the side and laces each word with arrogance – the only language men like Nevrak are likely to understand. “I’ve seen a great many things,” Dawsyn says. “But I’ve no time to paint you a picture. By all means, walk yourself into that ocean,” she nods her head down the Chasm. “You don’t need to take me at my word.”
She can see Nevrak biting down on his tongue. His jaw rolls beneath his beard.
Dawsyn can suddenly feel Ryon standing close behind her. She feels the threat exuding from him, all the way to her bones.
Nevrak and his weasel son must feel it too. They back away several paces, conceding.
Dawsyn nods to them one last time and then shows them her back.
“Dawsyn,” Ryon says immediately, his face one of grim reproach. His eyes beseech her.
Dawsyn barely meets them. There are too many people watching. Listening. “Time to move,” she says simply, and walks by him.
She meanders through the horde, looking for its end, but Ryon follows close behind. She can feel him at her back once more.
“Malishka,” he rumbles darkly.
“Not here,” she bids, tunnelling through the people at greater speed. Space lies ahead, away from the crowd. Space and more bleak darkness.
The second they are free, Ryon has her wrist in his grasp. It is a testament to her affection for him that she does not immediately wrench it free. Instinctively her body tenses, combative.
Ryon pulls her to the wall of the Chasm, pulling her in front of him, so that his body blocks her from view of the others.
“You lied to them?” he says at once, his voice so low, there would be no hope of anyone else overhearing. His eyes flick back and forth, searching her face. Always searching.
Dawsyn is momentarily distracted by him. The closeness of him always drives her mind far away from the set course.
“Dawsyn.”
“Yes,” she says, finally. She looks away. “I lied.”
“Why?”
“ Why ?” she repeats. “What do you believe they will do now if I tell them that the kingdom below is just as wretched as the one above? Just as dangerous?” Dawsyn awaits an answer that does not come. Ryon’s expression only darkens. “Do you truly believe they will follow me deeper into this Chasm with no knowledge of what lies before us? With no reassurance that it won’t all be for nothing?”
“They followed you here, Dawsyn. And you did not need to deceive them to do it!”
“And it was a miracle,” she replies icily. “The quantum of which will likely never be matched.”
Ryon shakes his head at her, his temper rising. “You must tell them the truth, Dawsyn. Now. Before it makes folly of this plan.”
Dawsyn grits her teeth to keep her voice from rising. And yet, shame climbs the walls of her throat. “I’m sorry,” she tells him. “I’m sorry for not speaking with you first. But I know these people. I understand how they think, how they behave. They will not follow me down that path, Ryon. Not unless they believe it has a known end.”
Ryon gives a frustrated huff. “Then you have very little faith in them,” he says.
“Just as they do in me,” Dawsyn rebuts, quietly seething. “I have persuaded them into this hole. I will not test the extent of their leniency once more.”
Ryon’s jaw ticks. He stands tall, looking over her head, and down into the interminable nothingness of the path ahead. “You test their leniency already, malishka,” he says grimly. “We have no idea what may lie in wait here.”
“No,” Dawsyn cedes. “But I know what lies in the opposite direction. And if I must use their ignorance against them to give them freedom, then so be it.”
With that, Dawsyn leaves his side. She steps closer to the middle and holds her torch high above her.
Soon she sees the glow of a dozen torches rise in response, signalling their willingness to be led through the dark.
Dawsyn turns, facing the road ahead.
When you lie within the mouth,
The cost will be no fewer.
They go against the flow of water, lumbering with aching slowness. Trepidation coupled with the lack of light means they must trek slowly and yet still people fall. The ground hosts sharp rock that seems to appear from nowhere. Dawsyn remembers the feel of differing terrain beneath her feet the first time she stood on ground that was not covered in snow and ice. It makes their steps overly cautious, their gait unsure.
The glint of flame that reflects the black rockface plays tricks on the eyes. Dawsyn finds herself walking with her ax in hand, if only to quell the rising fear in her belly. The magic within her is disturbed by its surroundings as well. It roils at each foreign echo, each speck of light.
Dawsyn looks behind her often, letting the light of her own torch shine over the hoods of the horde behind her. All squint and bend their heads to the ground, trying to make out the hazards there.
Tasheem and Rivdan have remained at the back of the horde to ensure none fall behind. Dawsyn suspects it also allows them to hide their ailments from her and Ryon. They seem to struggle to keep pace. Salem and Esra stay close. Every so often, Dawsyn can make out Esra’s despair – the quiet sniffs and rattling breaths. Salem murmurs to him in an attempt to mollify, but the sniffing continues.
“Dawsyn?” says a voice. Hector’s. His face is suddenly thrown into relief, hanging there in the dark as though detached from his body. “Mind if I walk by you?”
Dawsyn grins wanly, but doesn’t break pace, “You’ve never asked permission before.”
“You weren’t the almighty leader of our people before.”
“I am hardly that now,” she scoffs. “The word ‘leader’ implies compliant underlings.”
“That’s rather tyrannical of you,” Hector comments. “Alvira and Vasteel probably thought the same.” This gives Dawsyn pause. “I think the word ‘leader’ implies the action of leading. Which you seem to be doing as we speak.”
“It isn’t democratic. These people would rather have me out front as their sacrifice.”
He shakes his head. “There’s never any point arguing with you. If I point to the sky and call it ‘up’, you’ll call it ‘down’.”
“And yet,” Dawsyn drawls. “You can’t seem to help yourself.”
Hector shoves her lightly and she smiles. How different the setting for such familiar habits. He has always managed to claw even the most reluctant grin from her. It is possible that Hector, despite the similarities in their upbringing, has retained a nature that is whole and good.
She prays she has not forsaken it. Guilt swells once more. “Do you think I made a mistake?” she asks. “Deceiving them?”
Hector’s footfalls, dulled by the ash, are all she hears for a moment. He seems deep in contemplation, though she can’t make out the nuances of his face. “I understand why you felt you had to. But… I do not think deception a good tool for a leader.”
“I’m not a–”
“You are , Dawsyn.” Hector’s interjection slices the thinness of her refusal in two. “Whether you choose it or not, whether you believe yourself capable, the charge of these people has fallen to you. Denying it will do you little good.” Hector raises his head to the thread of sky above. In a whisper, he says. “Should they find out you have led them astray, you will have made an enemy out of every one of them.”
Despite herself, defensiveness encumbers her. “And if I lead them to their salvation, they will be none the wiser.”
“Quite the gamble,” Hector remarks casually, though there is a shake to his voice, a barely contained dread. “But as you know, I’ve placed my bets with you.”
She feels the weight of it, of all of them.
Hector continues on beside her, staggering every so often over stray rocks. He leaves Dawsyn to dissect the enormity of this journey and all the lives she has put on its course. Entrapping them. Enslaving them to it. She thinks of Ryon and Hector and their small band of rebels. Should the Ledge people learn that she is walking them away from Terrsaw, and not to it, their wrath will not befall only her.