The Witch's Eye (9 page)

The space between the walls was wider
where the cables stretched across.  He guessed he’d have to traverse nearly six-hundred feet.

Of course
. 

He didn
’t look down.  He heard whispers in the wind.  It might have just been a natural effect of the cracks in the walls.  It also might have been the sirens from the stories, mutated creatures from the depths of the canyon, enticing him to jump.  Either way, he’d pay them no mind.  He couldn’t afford to. 

Cross checked his shoes
and his hands.  He’d have to scale back up the rock to reach the cables, no easy feat given the lack of handholds, so he found a cleft, a vertical flaw where the stone had split apart.  He wedged the dead man’s blade into the crack, edge down.  Cross put all of his weight behind it and shoved the sword in as deep as it would go. 

Wind filled with rotten fruit
scent pushed him against the rock.  His fingers were freezing.  Bitter fog curled around his body.

When the blade was secure, Cross
used it as a step.  He lifted himself up and balanced his weight on the hilt where it protruded from the cliff.  The blade was held tight: so long as the rock held and didn’t crumble or flake away, he’d be fine. 

Famous last words
, he thought bitterly.

The steel cable wasn
’t as solid as he’d hoped, but it ran deep into the cliff, so even though it shook and wobbled when he grabbed hold he felt certain it wouldn’t slide out.  The other cables were the same, but they were spaced just far enough apart that he doubted he’d be able to make use of more than two of them – one to grip, and one to walk on.  Cross guessed this was how the crossing had been designed in the first place, and the third cable, which stretched another three feet over the central line, was meant to accommodate larger creatures like Doj, or else to slide equipment across in harnesses. 

The cable wobbled beneath his feet, but held.  He gripped the overhead
line tight.  Cross gulped, took a breath, and tried not to think about the depths below.  The steel wire shook with every motion.  He felt like he was floating in mid-air. 

A scale of soot covered the
cables, which were so frayed they’d become razor sharp.  Cross stepped back off the line and onto the sword hilt, ripped away a shred of his tattered outer shirt and used it to wrap up his hands.  It wouldn’t help much for maintaining a grip, but hopefully it meant he wouldn’t slice his palms and fingers to pieces. 

Cross looked up
at the sky.  Powdery rock flecked off the rotting crust near a cave mouth up above.  He glimpsed the orange sun through gaps in the charcoal fog.  Purple-black mists drifted across the gulf below.  The Rift vented darkness like steam. 

He
’d been so lucky in his life, and he hadn’t even known it.  He’d had Snow, and Graves.  He’d met Dillon, and he’d become friends with Black and Kane. 

Some part of him believed he
’d never see anyone he cared about ever again.  That he’d never taste happiness…that all he could hope for now was to stumble, blindly, through the dark.

No
.

He couldn
’t accept that.  He wouldn’t.  He hadn’t come this far – hadn’t survived battles with Jennar and been imprisoned at the hands of Margrave, hadn’t escaped the Whisperlands and dealt with murderous arcane natives – just to die as a forlorn man on a ledge in the middle of nowhere.

It was time to go.

Cross gripped the cable and pulled himself up.  The canyon seemed to vibrate all around him.  He sensed the emptiness beneath his body.  Electric shivers ran up his arms.  He felt something in those depths, some magnetic force that threatened to rip him down through layers of smoke and darkness. 

Fear seized his chest.  He
felt like he’d swallowed knives.  All his life he’d feared floating away, falling into the sky.  This was worse.

Ice cold
wind that smelled of copper slammed into him.  Dust smoked from the cave walls as he made his way across the open maw.  He kept his eyes on the ladder at the far side.  Cross tried not to look down, but it was impossible.  A river of darkness stretched under his feet, and his body bobbed like a trinket in the wind.  His hands were raw and his shins ached.  His shoulders were stiff, but he kept moving, one hand and then the next, shuffling sideways. 

The line shook with every blast of
the black wind.  He imagined the breath of some vast beast coming up at him from below.

Cross
looked back long enough to gauge the distance, and allowed himself a smile.  He was just over halfway there.  His body was sore and tired, but his grip was strong and he felt no more fatigued than when he’d started.  He could withstand the wind gusts.  He was well on his way to the ladder, and freedom.

That was when he glimpsed eyes in the cave overhead.

They shone like broken shards of white glass.  Whatever watched him was mostly concealed by the darkness.  Cross stared for long moments before he could make the creature out.  Its flesh was grey and black, scaly but with tufts of hard fur like tarnished silver.  Its eyes were the color of the moon, as were the claws on its three spindly arms.  The face was long and misshapen, snouted like a deformed warthog, but as Cross watched it transmogrified into something human-like. 

The
towering three-armed monstrosity of ungainly jaws and twisted talons changed to a beautiful and silver-skinned female, a naked woman with elaborate tattoos and eyes like melting stars.  Her long hair hung over one shoulder, and her fingernails glittered green in the uncertain light.

He heard voices in the wind.  Whispers.  Deep song
s from the dark.

No
.

Cross moved as
fast as he could.  He nearly lost his footing, and his hands sliced open on the steel cable in spite of the cloth.  Pain shot through his palms and blood fell in thick drops. 

He only
had a hundred feet to go. 

A
jagged sphere of broken teeth launched from the cave above and barely missed his skull.  It exploded against the cliff wall behind him. 

He moved faster.   

The whispers of the Rift intensified.  The song made his thoughts heavy.  He pictured himself slipping and falling into the warm embrace of the shifting fog under his feet. 

He heard a slurping sound,
a gurgling cough like sewage erupting.  Cross smelled acid and bile.  Another chunk of dripping teeth flew through the air.  Its shadow passed over him before it struck the cable. 

The
line snapped.  Blood flew across his face as he fell.  His body slammed into the stone, and he cried out as pain shot through his ribs. His hands reached out and grabbed hold of the cliff wall.

Cross
choked on blood and dust.  His feet dangled over open air.  He looked up and saw he’d fallen some hundred feet below the ladder.  The shadow of the siren dove at him. 

He
desperately clawed his way up towards the ledge.  His fingers were stiff and bloody. Rock powder fell onto his face.  Bits of rubble flew out from beneath his boots.

Sharp wings sliced
through the air as the beautiful silver face twisted back into something bestial and foul.  Black lips pulled back from small rows of razor teeth. 

Cross
’s heart hammered.  He struggled to maintain his grip. 

T
he shadow drew closer.  He tried not to look at it, tried not to listen to the dirge that called to him from below. 

H
is feet found purchase on the wall as he grabbed the ledge with one hand.  He yanked his blade free and turned his eyes skyward.  The howling demon loomed close.  Wicked talons and blade-moth wings splayed out around its screaming face. 

Cross
sliced up.  Pain flooded his arms, and something sharp raked his cheek.  Dead breath washed over him and blood spilled into his eyes.

The screams of the siren faded and echoed
as she fell.  Cross wiped the gore from his face and saw the creature vanish into the swirling mists. 

Cross felt where the claws had sliced open his cheeks and nose.  He made it up to the ledge and stood against the cliff wall while he held a ripped piece of cloth to his face.  The bleeding slowed, but didn’t stop. 

T
he touch of the wind made him wince.  His hands were bloody where the cable had sliced them open, and he’d cracked open the fingernail from his left pinky when he’d fallen and clawed his way up the stone.  The injured finger bled almost as badly as his face did. 

His shins and arms were bruised and sore, and every breath he
took felt like it came through a filter of broken glass.  He rested for a while, too weak to climb.

There were sparse hand and footholds between
him and the ladder above. He was too close to stop now.

Not having magic sucks
, he decided judiciously. 

Cross
wrapped his wounded finger.  He tried to get his bearings so he could take his mind off the pain. 

The entirety of the Carrion Rift stretched along the
north end of the Bone March and west of the Reach.  It would be a long trek back to civilization.  He’d heard that Rhaine had been repopulated since he’d last been there, but he had no way of knowing where along the Rift he’d emerge.  He could be a hundred miles from Rhaine, for all he knew.

After a
short time he returned to the task at hand.

The climb was grueling, but Cross
took things slow.  He grimaced at the pain in his fingers.  Small nicks in the stone wall provided footholds, even if his boots were no longer suitable for climbing. 

Cross hauled himself up.  He focused on the stone
, and barely registered the void of smoke around him.  He tasted glacial salt in the air and heard whispers in the wind, but he paid them no mind.

He thought of Snow.  He remembered Rhaine,
remembered standing there and looking out over the smoke-filled Rift after Viper Squad had perished.  He’d known even then that crossing the bridge meant walking to his doom. 

He
’d hoped against hope he could find his sister before something terrible had happened to her.  But he’d been too late.

You
’re more than this
, he told himself as he climbed. 
The Soulweaver tried to tell you.  You define yourself with your pain.  You won’t heal, because you won’t
let
yourself heal. 

You can be more
.

Cross
reached the ledge beneath the ladder.  He slowly pulled himself up and onto solid ground, shaking from exhaustion. 

He saw the
bottom rung.  The large plate on the ledge was right in front of his eyes as he knelt at the foot of the ladder and gasped for breath.  The plate bore an arcane inscription covered in black frost and ice dust.  Cross wiped it away.

Set by Bram Steelrazor.  AB 9.  The first to come.

He’d heard of Bram Steelrazor, a Gol explorer who’d worked with the Southern Claw and had headed up the first expeditions in the area near what had eventually become Rhaine.

You
’re nearly there.  You’ve almost made it. 

You can be more
.

H
e took hold of the rung and made his ascent. 

The climb up the ladder took another hour.  He passed dark caves filled with foul-smelling fumes.  Sometimes he heard the echoes of monstrous stirrings within, but whatever dwelled in those holes let him be. 

The limestone
surface eventually gave way to crumbling soil.  Blade-like tree roots protruded from the Rift wall.  The cold wind nearly shook the ladder loose from the stone on several occasions, but Cross just closed his eyes, gritted his teeth, and held on tight. 

He
’d never been so exhausted.  His fingers were numb and his face stung.  He tasted his own blood, and his wrapped finger oozed puss that made his grip tenuous. 

Grim roars and twisted voices howled
up from the darkness.  He climbed through a cage of smoke and steam.

You can be more.

At first he didn’t even realize he’d made it to the top.  Smoke pressed around him.  He saw a red glare from above and the shadows of distant fliers.  The wind blasted harder, and he thought he heard a wolf’s howl.

Cross pushed up through the
soiled sea of smoke.  He saw the top of the canyon, and his heart leapt.  His muscles shook as he made the final ascent, another few feet up the cliff wall. 

The sky
was vast and pale.  The setting sun cast silver-grey light that turned the clouds the color of burnished steel.  Cross smelled fresh air, tasted the ice of frozen streams, and felt the sting of the tundra wind on his face.

He was less than
five rungs from the top of the Rift when a figure leaned over the side and aimed a wide-bored gun right at his face.