Page 137 of On Brutal Thrones

Thorian checks his sword and turns toward the route leading higher. “Come on.”

I draw one last deep breath and look up. The mountain has already tried to convince us to lie down and die. The Vultures have already tried to finish the job. We’re exhausted, battered, and still nowhere near the top. But for the first time since these Trials began, the end isn’t some distant place I can barely imagine.

It’s right above us.

All we have to do is reach it.

19

Nyx

Our climb up the mountain continues, and the landscape changes with it. The reddish soil and stubborn patches of scrub have long since disappeared beneath black rock that looks as though it once poured molten down the mountainside and hardened there. It’s smooth in places, sharp in others, and slick enough that my boots skid whenever I put my weight wrong.

We’re forced to use our hands now. My palms are already scraped raw from the climb below, and every time I grab another ridge of stone, grit digs into the cuts. My legs shake with exhaustion, but when I glance up, the Spire seems to consume the sky above us. We’re no longer walking toward some distant landmark. We’re climbing directly beneath it.

We’re almost there.

Then the mountain begins to shake.

“Hold on!” Thorian bellows.

His eyes find mine immediately. He reaches for me, and I grab his hand as the world bucks beneath us.

Rock grinds against rock with a sound so deep I feel it in my teeth. Fenric loses his footing and slides several feet before Talon throws himself down and catches his wrist. Fenric’s boots scrape uselessly against the black stone until he finds a narrow ledge and hauls himself onto it.

I reach desperately for any life around us. There isn’t much this high on the mountain, but I find roots buried deep inside cracks in the rock and call to them. Thin green shoots force their way through the stone, twisting into thicker vines wherever our hands can reach.

“Grab them!”

Thorian releases me only long enough to seize one. Fenric catches another, and Talon wraps his hand around the vine nearest him just as the mountain gives another violent jerk.

For a few seconds, all four of us hang there. Then the shaking stops.

I suck in a breath.

A tremendous crack splits the air, and my stomach drops. I know that sound. The memory of the ground opening beneath me flashes through my mind an instant before Talon grabs me around the waist and throws us both sideways.

The mountain splits.

Fire erupts from the jagged crack, roaring upward in a blast of heat. I hit the rock hard enough that pain radiates through my hip, and Talon lands half across me. Fenric slides backward with a shout, but Thorian lunges, catches the front of his leathers, and hauls him away from the opening.

Heat slams into us.

It was cold when we began climbing. Now the air burns my lungs. Sweat runs down my temples and stings my eyes, and my braid lies against the back of my neck like a wet rope.

“We have to keep moving!” Thorian shouts over the roar of the fire.

Fenric pushes himself upright. Sweat already shines across his forehead. “Nyx, come on.”

Talon hooks his hands around my waist and lifts me over a ridge of black stone. I scramble forward the instant my boots land, and we keep climbing.

The mountain seems determined to shake us loose.

Another quake hits before we’ve gone fifty feet. Rocks break free somewhere above us, the first few bouncing harmlessly past before a whole section of the mountainside comes crashing down.

“Thorian!”

He turns too late. Fenric and Talon hit him at the same time. All three go down as a boulder slams into the place Thorian stood a heartbeat earlier. It strikes hard enough to shatter, fragments of black stone exploding across the slope. The three men stare at the spot Thorian had nearly been killed, a tangle of limbs on the ground.