Authors: The Summer Tree
"There's a land fault here," a light voice said close to his ear. Kevin stiffened, but Diarmuid went on casually. "Cathal lies about a hundred feet lower than us; you'll see when we go forward.
And,"
said the Prince, his voice still light, "it is a mistake to mate judgements too soon. That man had to die-had he not, word would be in the palace by now that I was encouraging treasonous talk.
And
there are those who would like to spread that word. His life was forfeit from the time he spoke, and the arrow was a kinder death than Gorlaes would have granted him. We'll wait for Rothe here. I've told Carde to rub you both down; you'll not make it across with muscles that won't move." He walked away and sat on the ground, leaning against the trunk of a tree. After a moment, Kevin
Laine, who was neither a petty man nor a stupid one, smiled to himself.
Garde's hands were strong, and the liniment he used was extraordinary. By the time Rothe rejoined them, Kevin felt functional again. It was quite dark now, and Diarmuid threw back his cloak as he suddenly rose. They gathered around him at the edge of the wood and a ripple of soundless tension went through the company. Kevin, feeling it, looked for Paul, and saw that Schafer was already gazing at him. They exchanged a tight smile, then listened intently as Diarmuid began to speak, softly and concisely. The words spun into the almost windless night, were received and registered, and then there was silence; and they were moving, nine of them, with one man left to the horses, over the slope that led to the river they had to cross into a country where they would be killed if seen.
Running lightly beside Coll, Kevin felt his heart suddenly expand with a fierce exhilaration.
Which lasted, growing brighter, until they dropped to a crouch, then a crawl, and, reaching the edge of the cliff, looked down.
Saeren was the mightiest river west of the mountains. Tumbling spectacularly out of the high peaks of Eridu, it roared down into the lowlands of the west. There it would have slowed and begun to meander, had not a cataclysm torn the land millennia ago in the youngness of the world, an earthquake that had ripped a gash like a wound in the firmament: the Saeren Gorge.
Through that deep ravine the river thundered, dividing Brennin, which had been raised up in the earth's fury, from Cathal, lying low and fertile to the south. And great Saeren did not slow or wander in its course, nor could a dry summer in the north slake its force. The river foamed and boiled two hundred feet below them, glinting in the moonlight, awesome and appalling. And between them and the water lay a descent in darkness down a cliff too sheer for belief.
"If you fall," Diarmuid had said, unsmiling, "try not to scream. You may give the others away."
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And now Kevin could see the far side of the gorge, and along the southern cliff, well below their elevation, were the bonfires and garrisons of Cathal, the outposts guarding their royalty and their gardens from the north.
Kevin swore shakily. "I do not believe this. What are they afraid of? No one can cross this thing."
"It's a long dive," Coll agreed from his right side. "But he says it was crossed hundreds of years ago, just once, and that's why we're trying now."
"Just for the hell of it, eh?" Kevin breathed, still incredulous. "What's the matter? Are you bored with backgammon?"
"With what?"
"Nevermind."
And indeed, there was little chance to talk after that, for Diarmuid, farther along to their right, spoke softly, and Erron, lean and supple, moved quickly over to a large twisted tree Kevin hadn't noticed and knotted a rope carefully about the trunk. That done, he dropped the line over the edge, paying it out between his hands. When the last coil spun down into darkness, he wet each of his palms deliberately and cocked an eye at Diarmuid. The Prince nodded once. Erron gripped the rope tightly, stepped forward, and disappeared over the edge of the cliff.
Hypnotically, they all watched the taut line of the rope. Coll went over to the tree to check the knot.
Kevin became aware, as the long moments passed, that his hands were wet with perspiration. He wiped them surreptitiously on his breeches. Then, on the far side of the rope, he saw Paul Schafer
looking at him. It was dark, and he couldn't see Paul's face clearly, but something in the expression, a remoteness, a strangeness, triggered a sudden cold apprehension in Kevin's chest, and brought flooding remorselessly back the memory he could never quite escape of the night Rachel Kincaid had died.
He remembered Rachel himself, remembered her with a kind of love of his own, for it had been hard not to love the dark-haired girl with the shy, Pre-Raphaelite grace, for whom two things in the world meant fire: the sounds of a cello under her bow, and the presence of Paul Schafer.
Kevin had seen, and caught his breath to see, the look in her dark eyes when Paul would enter a room, and he had watched, too, the hesitant unfolding of trust and need in his proud friend.
Until it all went smash, and he had stood, helpless tears in his own eyes, in the emergency ward of St. Michael's
Hospital with Paul when the death word came. When Paul Schafer, his face a dry mask, had spoken the only words he would ever speak on Rachel's death: "It should have been me," he had said, and walked alone out of a too-bright room.
But now, in the darkness of another world, a different voice was speaking to him. "He's down.
You next, friend Kevin," said Diarmuid. And there was indeed the dancing of the rope that meant Erron was signaling from the bottom.
Moving before he could think, Kevin went up to the rope, wet his hands as Erron had done, gripped carefully, and slid over and down alone.
Using his booted feet for leverage and control, he descended hand over hand into the growing thunder of noise that was the Saeren Gorge. The cliff was rough, and there was a danger that the line might fray on one of the rock edges-but there was little to be done about that, or about the burning in his hands as the rope slid abrasively through his grip. He looked down only once and was dizzied by the speed of the water far below. Turning his face to the cliff, Kevin breathed deeply for a moment, willing himself to be calm; then he continued, hand and foot, rope and toehold, down to where the river waited. It became a process almost mechanical, reaching for crevices with his foot, pushing off as the rope slid through his palms. He blocked out pain and
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fatigue, the returning ache of abused muscles, he forgot, even, where he was. The world was a rope and a face of rock. It seemed to have always been.
So oblivious was he that when Erron touched his ankle, Kevin's heart leaped in a spasm of terror.
Erron helped him step down onto the thin strip of earth, barely ten feet from where the water roared past, drenching them with spray. The noise was overwhelming; it made conversation almost impossible.
Erron jerked three times on the slack line, and after a moment it began to sway and bob beside them with the weight of a body above. Paul, Kevin thought wearily, that'll be Paul. And then another thought invaded him and registered hard over exhaustion: he doesn't care if he falls. The realization hit with the force of apprehended truth. Kevin looked upwards and began frantically scanning the cliff face, but the moon was lighting the southern side only, and Schafer's descent was invisible.
Only the lazy, almost mocking movement of the rope end beside them testified that someone was above.
And only now, absurdly too late, did Kevin think of Paul's weakened condition. He remembered rushing him to hospital only two weeks before, after the basketball game Schafer shouldn't have played, and at the memory, his heart angled in his breast. Unable to bear the strain of looking upwards, he turned instead to the bobbing rope beside him. So long as that slow dance continued, Paul was all right. The movement of the rope meant life, a continuation.
Fiercely Kevin concentrated on the line swaying slowly in front of the dark rock face. He didn't pray, but he thought of his father, which was almost the same thing.
He was still gazing fixedly at the rope when Erron finally touched his arm and pointed. And looking upwards then, Kevin drew free breath again to see the slight, familiar figure moving down to join them. Paul Schafer alighted moments later, neatly, though breathing hard. His eyes met
Kevin's for an instant, then flicked away. He tugged the rope three times himself, before moving down the strand to slump against the rock face, eyes closed.
A time later there were nine of them standing spray-drenched by the river bank. Diarmuid's eyes gleamed in the light reflected off the water; he seemed feral and fey, a spirit of night unleashed.
And he signalled Coll to begin the next stage of the journey.
The big man had descended with another coil of rope in the pack on his broad back. Now he unslung his bow and, drawing an arrow from its quiver, fitted an end of the rope to an iron ring set in the shaft. Then he moved forward to the edge of the water and began scanning the opposite shore. Kevin couldn't see what he was looking to find. On their own side a few shrubs and one or two thick, short trees had dug into the thin soil, but the Cathal shore was sandier, and there seemed to be nothing growing by the river. Coll, however, had raised his great bow with the arrow notched to the string. He drew one steady breath and pulled the bowstring all the way back past his ear, the gesture smooth, though the corded muscles of his arm had gone ridged and taut. Coll released, and the arrow sang into arching flight, the thin rope hurtling with it high over Saeren-to sink deep into the stone cliff on the far side.
Carde, who'd been holding the free end of the rope, quickly pulled it tight. Then Coll measured and cut it, and, tying the free end to another arrow, proceeded to fire the shaft point-blank into the rock behind them. The arrow buried itself into stone.
Kevin, utterly incredulous, turned to Diarmuid, questions exploding in his eyes. The Prince walked over and shouted in his ear, over the thunder of the water, "Loren's arrows. It helps to have a mage for a friend-though if he finds out how I've used his gift, he'll consign me to the wolves!" And the
Prince laughed aloud to see the silvered highway of cord that spanned Saeren in the moonlight.
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Watching him, Kevin felt it then, the intoxicating lure of this man who was leading them. He laughed himself in that moment, feeling constraint and apprehension slip away. A sense of freedom came upon him, of being tuned to the night and their journey, as he watched Erron leap up, grab the rope, and begin to swing hand over hand, out over the water.
The wave that hit the dark-haired man was a fluke, kicked up from an angled rock by the shore.
It slammed into Erron as he was changing grips and threw him violently sideways. Desperately Erron curved his body to hang on with one hand, but the wave that followed the first buffeted him mercilessly, and he was torn from the rope and flung into the mill-race of Saeren.
Kevin Laine was running before the second wave hit. Pelting flat out downstream along the strand, he leaped, without pausing to calculate or look back, for the overhanging branch of one of the knotted trees that dug into the earth by the river. Fully extended in flight, his arms outstretched, he barely reached it. There was no time to think. With a racking, contorted movement he twisted his body, looped his knees over the branch, and hung face down over the torrent.
Only then did he look, almost blinded by spray, to see Erron, a cork in the flood, hurtling towards him. Again, no time. Kevin reached down, tasting his death in that moment. Erron threw up a convulsive hand, and each clasped the other's wrist.
The pull was brutal. It would have ripped Kevin from the tree like a leaf-had not someone else been there. Someone who was holding his legs on the branch with a grip like an iron band. A grip that was not going to break.
"I've got you!" screamed Paul Schafer. "Lift him if you can."
And hearing the voice, locked in Schafer's vise-like hold, Kevin felt a surge of strength run through him; both hands gripping Erron's wrist, he pulled him from the river.
There were other hands by then, reaching for Erron, taking him swiftly to shore. Kevin let go and allowed Paul to haul him up to the branch. Straddling it, they faced each other, gasping hard for breath.
"You idiot!" Paul shouted, his chest heaving. "You scared the hell out of me!"
Kevin blinked, then the too, too much boiled over. "You shut up! I scared you? What do you think you've been doing to me since Rachel died?"
Paul, utterly unprepared, was shocked silent. Trembling with emotion and adrenalin afterburn, Kevin spoke again, his voice raw. "I mean it, Paul. When I was waiting at the bottom . . . I didn't think you were going to make it down. And Paul, I wasn't sure if you cared."
Their heads were close together, for the words to be heard. Schafer's pupils were enormous. In the reflected moonlight his face was so white as to be almost inhuman.
"That isn't quite true," he replied finally.
"But it isn't far wrong. Not far enough. Oh, Paul, you have to bend a little. If you can't talk, can't you cry at least? She deserves your tears. Can't you cry for her?"
At that, Paul Schafer laughed. The sound chilled Kevin to the core, there was such wildness in it.
"I
can't," Paul said. "That's the whole problem, Kev. I really, really can't."
"Then you're going to break," Kevin rasped.
"I might," Schafer replied, scarcely audible. "I'm trying hard not to, believe me. Kev, I know you care. It matters to me, very much. If . . . if I do decide to go, I'll . . . say goodbye. I promise you'll know."
"Oh, for God's sake! Is that supposed to make me-"
"Come on!" Coll bellowed from the shore, and Kevin, startled, realized that he'd been calling for some time. "That branch could crack any second!"
So they moved back to the strand, to be disconcertingly enveloped by bear-hugs from Diarmuid's men. Coll himself nearly broke Kevin's back with his massive embrace.