Squinting in the dying firelight, she began to write, until everythinginher wasoutof her.
She had to use five more pages to finish the job.
When she was done, she repacked the satchel, and slept.
Soundly.
16
Astryx had taken on fresh supplies at Bycross, and Fern was glad of it. They breakfasted on flatbread toasted over the last, elderly coals of the fire, then folded over strips of salted ham and sharp cheese.
As they journeyed northeast, the terrain rose and fell sharply, where the earth had been scoured away to expose chalk cliffsides. The stony, derelict road continually narrowed and hugged a series of ragged, white bluffs above a river valley blanketed in mist.
“What are those?” called Fern, pointing from her seat on the cart at a tall, pale pillar beside the way. They’d passed three or four of them already. Hints of a carved figure capped the stone, with the suggestion of a head and outstretched arms, now softened with time. It looked like a half-melted candle nested in a cloud of thistle.
“I’ve no idea,” replied Astryx. She walked several yards in front of Bucket, keeping an eye on the road ahead. “They’ve been here as long as I’ve traveled these roads, and they never looked much newer.”
“Murden-tal,”offered Zyll.
“Now that we know you speak Territories, that’s just exasperating,” said Fern.
The goblin made an expansive gesture with both hands at the river valley below. “Water-watchlings.”
“And what arethose?”
Zyll shrugged, and Astryx answered for her. “If she means water-watchers, they’re stone-fey effigies that purify underground streams. She must be mistaken. They’re likely just forgotten old statues on a forgotten old road.”
Dubiously regarding the route ahead, Fern asked, “If it’s so forgotten, then why arewetaking it?”
“Because if Taltus decides to send anyone after us, they likely won’t think to try it. And if they do, I’ll know long before they catch up.”
With one paw at the clasp of her cloak, Fern took an involuntary peek behind them, half expecting to see a black-clad form pursuing them in the hazy distance. “Um, do you think that’ll happen?”
“That they’ll catch up? No.”
Fern found that answer deeply unsatisfying.
The road continued to narrow and become more treacherous, and while the sun sometimes winked at them from rips in the cloud cover, the light remained silvery and close. At times, the fog from the valley clawed up and over the cliffside to tangle its fingers in the long grass and caress the feet of the water-watchers.
Fern clutched the buckboard with both paws and tried to anticipate the dips and bumps. As the exposed white chalk to their right crowded closer to the cart, and the margin of earth between the road and the cliff’s edge melted away, she found herself leaning hard to the right, even though Zyll was nearest the drop-off.
Astryx now guided Bucket by the bridle, pausing from time to time to assess the state of the road and muttering to herself.
Then, the elf brought them abruptly to a halt. A raven coughed in the mist, and a series of tumbling stones echoed their chattering descent through the valley below.
“What is it?” called Fern, craning to see. Zyll hopped to her feet on the buckboard beside her and jumped up and down to get a better view, rocking the cart in a way that made the bookseller’s stomach knot.
“The road is out,” replied the Oathmaiden. She sounded exasperated. “I suppose it has been a few decades since I passed this way.”
Carefully, Fern clambered down into the narrow gap between the exposed chalk and the cart, and squeezed past the wheel to join Astryx beside the horse.
“Assbadgers,” she said, with feeling.
The ledge widened out for about thirty strides before it sheared away almost completely. Only a scrim of ancient stone still fringed a stretch nearly ten paces long.
Astryx said something delicate and beautiful in an elven tongue, but from the look on her face, Fern was pretty sure it wasn’t that far from “assbadgers.”
“What now?” asked Fern.
