"Be mindful of the altitude effects," Jeffson warned, as if anyone needed to hear that. "Keep the split peak in sight at all times." He pointed to a distinctive formation above us, a mountain summit that had cracked in two sometime in the geological past, leaving twin spires that pointed skyward like broken fingers.
"Charming," Gavon said. "I'm definitely using that in the script."
"What's the working title?" Denna asked from behind us.
"Summit of No Return."
"Lovely," I grimaced. "As if anyone needed more reason to stress."
He shrugged. "Imagining the worst is better than experiencing it, right? And then when you are safely back home and thinking of everything that could have gone wrong, you'll be doubly happy to be alive."
"Is that why you like horror movies?" Denna asked.
The banter helped. It kept the tightness in my chest at bay. I was well aware that we were now in territory that most Tarinians had never hazarded, and for good reasons. First of all, I was pretty sure that we had already crossed the border into Elucia, and the Elucians were very strict about keeping foreignersout. And secondly, these mountains had swallowed their share of fools who'd ignored the boundary markers and continued onward.
The magnetic anomalies up here could disorient even experienced mountaineers, storms were known to materialize without warning, and while there were no Shedun on this side of the mountains, the terrain itself was dangerous enough.
I checked my watch. We'd been climbing for an hour and forty minutes past the boundary. Only twenty minutes remained before Jeffson's deadline.
"There." Denna pointed at a shelf of rock ten meters above the trail, accessible by a narrow chimney in the cliff face. "Is that?—?"
I looked up, and my heart stuttered.
White petals, faintly luminous, growing in a cluster from a crack in the dark stone. The stems were slender and almost translucent, and the leaves had a blue-green cast that matched the descriptions in Professor Haldren's monograph.
"The Silver Princess," I whispered.
For a moment, no one moved. Then I pulled my climbing gloves from my pack and scanned the chimney for handholds.
"Absolutely not, Your Highness." Jeffson positioned himself between me and the rock face. "I'll send Kelth. He's our best climber."
"Kelth doesn't know how to properly harvest a specimen without damaging the root system. The whole point is to get a living sample."
"Then talk him through it."
"At a distance of ten meters? While he's clinging to a rock face?" I shook my head. "I'm an experienced climber, Jeffson. This is a simple chimney ascent."
"Nothing about this is simple, Your Highness."
"Two minutes up, five minutes to collect, two minutes down. I'll be back before you finish worrying."
I didn't need his permission. I was his employer, after all, not his subordinate. Still, I understood his concern and felt a small prick of guilt for overriding it.
Jeffson was worried not only for me but for everyone on our team, and he felt responsible for the porters.
The chimney was narrow enough that I could brace my back against one wall and my feet against the other, inching upward with steady pressure. The rock was cold through my gloves, and the magnetic tingle intensified as I climbed, making my teeth buzz and the hair on my arms stand up beneath my jacket.
"Careful!" Denna called from below.
I reached the ledge and pulled myself onto it. The shelf was wider than it had appeared from below, enough to kneel comfortably. The Silver Princess cluster grew from a deep fissure where water had collected and frozen in a thin glaze of ice.
Up close, the plant was even more extraordinary than the descriptions I'd read and the illustrations that didn't do it justice. The petals were paper-thin and produced a soft glow that became visible when I cupped my hands around them, blocking the ambient light. The root system, partially exposed in the crack, was threaded with metallic-looking, copper-bright filaments that wove through the soil and into the rock.
The roots were growing along the magnetic lines, using them as a vine uses a trellis. Professor Haldren had been right about everything.
"It's even more remarkable than what Professor Haldren wrote in the monographs," I called down. "The roots have metallic threading. They're interfacing directly with the magnetic substrate."
"Magnificent," Denna called back. "Can you take photographs?"
