“Now.” She jerked her chin toward him. “Look in the direction we need to go.”
Another glare, and some added sulking.
“It’s fine. I can wait.” She glanced around for a halfway comfortable patch of moss to stretch out on. “I’m not the one with internal bleeding.”
Kaelith rolled his eyes so hard it looked painful, exhaling through his nose with enough force to blow his hair off his face.
Then, he looked left.
“That way?” She pointed. “Blink once for yes. Twice for no.”
His eyes closed and opened once.
“Okay then.” She stood, circled behind him, and grabbed hold of the stretcher’s handles.
The frame lurched in her grip, mass swaying awkwardly through dirt and leaf rot. Her shoulders tensed against the strain as she picked her path through the underbrush, and the smothered ranting finally quieted once she got him moving.
“Much better.”
She continued dragging the stretcher as it bumped and skidded over roots and loose stone. And when it caught on a half-buried rock, jolting the frame in her hands, Kaelith’s stifled yelp barely broke through the fabric.
“So much better.”
Picking up her pace, she ignored the sting in her palms and the ache in her legs.
She’d dump him at whatever passed for a healer in this god-forsaken village. Then someone else could deal with him.
Chapter three
“Wemustbeclose,”Kaelith’s voice sounded behind her—dry, unhurried, and far too calm for someone being towed across a mountain.
Rynna started at the sound, looking down at the rocky path she’d been staring at for what felt like days. Shale crunched beneath her boots as she finally looked up, blinking against the muted gray light. The slope had been unrelenting for the last two hours, too steep to run, too narrow to fall out of step, and it had demanded every ounce of her attention.
“He speaks.” She looked over her shoulder. “Finally got the gag out, then?”
All she could see of Kaelith was the messy black knot of his hair, bouncing with each tug of the makeshift sled.
Turning her face forward again, she slowed her steps. The dense, damp hush of the forest had been replaced by a cooler draft and the distant, rhythmic roar of water smashing against stone.
“Did you really think that wad of fabric had lasted this long?” His voice was clearer now, amused.
“No.” She adjusted the grip on the handholds. “I imagine it chose freedom the moment your annoying mouth stopped moving.”
Her eyes tracked the horizon, and there, barely visible through the rising mist, a spire breached the ridgeline. Its silhouette bled into the cliffs behind it, the same color as therock, the same weatherworn texture. Nothing glinted. Nothing shone. But it was there, tall, silent, and watching.
“I wonder…” Laughter barked from behind her, followed by a wet cough. “Just what else that mouth of yours can do besides sling insults,Rynna.”
“In your dreams, pal,” she answered without missing a beat, ignoring the treacherous fluttering in her stomach.
He didn’t answer, and soon the path widened as they crested the rise. The wind shifted, and below, the mountain opened into an uneven hollow in the rock, ringed with jagged cliffs.
“Who says you haven’t already been there?” he said at last, barely audible.
“Huh?”
She stopped, staring now. Structures clung to the inner walls of the crevasse, carved into the stone in staggered layers, their curved roofs covered in lichen and tangled with vines. Rope bridges stretched between crags, swaying over deep ravines. The buildings looked more grown than constructed, as if the mountain had shaped them itself and simply let them stay.
She stared.
