Decision hardened within her. She lifted her head and managed a half smile. “Okay. I’m ready.”
The expression that flashed across his face was one of relief and something more. Something deeper and more profound than simple satisfaction. It vanished before she could identify it, and then he was squeezing her shoulders and stepping back. “I’ll get the rope.”
He shrugged off the pack, slinging it around to brace it on his knee. After he helped her drink some water, he tied them together at the waist, putting about twenty feet of slack between them, and they started off again. Callie concentrated fiercely on the link with Elhanu, on the granite wall beside her, on the rocks beneath her feet, and on Pierce, who never got so far ahead that he couldn’t help her if she needed it. More than once she was impressed by the strength with which he hauled her over the rough spots. Rock by rock, bulge by bulge, they inched up the cliff’s face.
The light shifted constantly, brightening, dimming, brightening again as the mists drew in and out. A breeze gusted around her, tickling her face with tendrils of her hair, wafting the tangy musk of the goats.
Occasionally she spied dark grapelike clusters of droppings caught in the cracks and took comfort in knowing the animals had preceded her. Then the path petered out completely and the slope went vertical. Pierce pounded a piton into the rock, hooked on a carabiner, and looped the rope through it. They were anchored now. Nothing to fear.
She started up with inward trembling—and a rising sense of hope. The vertical portion was only about ten feet, and still hardly more than Gerry’s steep hike. Not bad at all. Something she’d done many times before. Light brightened and blue sky peeked through the clouds in promise.
Then a quarrel smacked the cliff wall to her right. She gasped as she watched it skitter down the gray rock beside her. Its descent dragged her eyes downward to the great bowl yawning below her. She gulped and pulled her gaze back up, but her arms and legs were already shaking.
It’s just a feeling. I will not give in to it. The arrows can’t hurt me as
long as my belt’s on
. But was it? She let go with her right hand and pressed the switch to be sure. Breathing deeply, she dove inward, seeking again the precious window of strength and calm.
The rope tugged on her waist, breaking her concentration. Pierce had reached the top and now peered back at her. “Come on, Callie,” he said, his voice low and urgent. “You’ve got to hurry.”
She reached for the next handhold, pulled herself up, and groped for a foothold. Her legs shook deep in the calves. Her shoulders burned. The rope slackened, then tightened again. She heard a distant howl and refused to look down, but the skin between her shoulder blades crept in anticipation of being shot.
She reached for another handhold, clinging to Elhanu’s inner presence as the rope went slack again. Her knee banged into a rocky knob, and she lurched for balance, rough stone tearing at her fingertips.
Clenching her teeth to still their chattering, she lifted her leg again, out and over this time, gaining purchase on the knob. Abruptly the rope tightened, jerking her upward. She lost the knob, the ledge, everything. Gasping and flailing, she was jerked up again as another quarrel bounced off the rock beside her. She grabbed an out-thrust shelf and hauled herself up. Two more quarrels hit somewhere close below her as she scrambled over the edge and into Pierce.
They landed in a heap, gained their feet in unison, and, still bound by the rope, sprinted across the mist-bound flat. Only after they had rounded the base of another slope did they stop for breath.
“I can’t believe they came this far,” Pierce gasped, gulping water and wiping his mouth with his sleeve. Rope burns lashed his wrists and the backs of his hands.
“Do you think they’ll follow us up that cliff?” Callie asked.
“I don’t know. They looked like they were hurting, so maybe not. On the other hand—”
“Maybe we could sit up here and pick them off as they come over.”
He shook his head. “If the clouds close in we might miss them. I doubt they’ll go much farther. Like I said—they’re hurting.” He stood, pulled her to her feet, untied the rope from her waist, and they started off.
They had not gone far when the rocky corridor they were following widened into yet another basin. The goats ranged up ahead and then disappeared into the mist on their left. Pierce stopped abruptly. Callie dodged around him, adrenaline firing for fear the mutants had cut them off.
But there was nothing there.
Wait
. She stepped closer and saw a thin film of light stretching between neighboring rock faces ahead, smears of green and blue undulating across it like a misplaced jellyfish. Dark ink churned between the colors, spilling in and out of the spaces, and a high-pitched hum rode the air, alternately masked and revealed by the errant breeze.
It was a natural fire curtain, hypnotic and vaguely repellent, yet generating an undeniable allure. It pulled at her, promising respite from the headache, the aching muscles, and the rising nausea of altitude sickness. She turned away, shivering.
Beside her Pierce stepped tentatively toward it. He had balled his fists and clenched his teeth, and the expression on his face made her heart quail.
“Pierce?”
He shuddered and turned off the trail. “We’ll go around it. That’s why the goats were over there, I guess.”
The goat tracks led across a wide, snow-crusted shelf to another valley where Pierce called a rest. Callie fished two pain pills from the med kit and washed them down with a gulp of water, wishing she could wash away the memory of the fire curtain as easily. Even now a perverse longing stirred in her.
Pierce sat with his SI across his lap, staring back the way they’d come. After a few minutes, he got up. “I’m going back.”
She frowned at him. “But you said—”
“They may be sick, but if they get through that curtain we’re in big trouble.”
“I’ll come, too, then.”
“They’ll be less likely to spot me alone,” he said. “You stay here and rest.”
“But—”
He was already gone.
She scowled after him. “I’m not going to stay here,” she muttered and stood—
A little too quickly. The world tilted, her head felt about to split, and she nearly retched. By the time she’d recovered, Pierce was long gone, and all she could do was wait, trying not to dwell on the way he’d stared at the fire curtain.
She sat there a long time. The pain pills finally kicked in, and she was again thinking about going back, when a low boom rolled between the peaks, shaking the ground and spreading the goats like buckshot up the hillside. Peering nervously at the opening across the valley, she picked up her SI and switched it on. Shortly Pierce emerged from the clouds, carrying two bags of E-cubes.
“I got them both,” he said when he joined her. He smelled oddly sweet, almost like actone.
“Don’t they usually travel in threes?”
“The third one probably couldn’t make it up the last cliff.” He set aside the bags and his SI and slung on the pack.
“What if it’s just slow? Once it gets to the curtain—”
“The curtain’s gone.”
“What?”
“I walked through it with the belt on.” He gestured at his waist. “The field acts like a reflector. Sends the waves back to their source and burns it out.”
“You walked through the fire curtain?”
“I blew it up, Callie. Didn’t you hear the boom?”
She regarded him doubtfully, battling unpleasant suspicions. “Why didn’t you do that before, when we were both there?”
“I didn’t think of it. But I wouldn’t have tried it with you around, anyway. I wasn’t sure what would happen. If it worked, I didn’t know how big the explosion might be. Come on. I think we’re almost to the end.”
They descended a narrow chute past a chain of lakelets, silver hued in the misty light. All around them rock lay against rock, dark and ragged, accented with dirty ice fields. Callie wondered how Pierce could say they were almost to the end. Even if they were over the top, who knew what horrors of descent lay before them?
But the slope was not as steep as it had been on the other side, and when they found their first bunch of yellow columbines, she felt a glimmer of hope. Skirting a granite dome, they descended a slope covered with short, thick grass and more yellow flowers and, at long last, stepped out of the mist. Callie staggered to a stop, unable to believe her eyes.
The mountainside tumbled away from her feet, grassy flanks dotted with white humps of granite rolling down to a wide, spruce-blanketed valley. A great crack of a canyon ran up its middle, sections of the green river at its heart gleaming here and there. From this vantage she could even see the tawny cliffs that marked the Gap—just as she had drawn them on the map. Beyond those lay the Devil’s Cauldron itself.
Pierce stopped just behind her. “Wow.”
She glanced over both their shoulders at the wall of mist swirling around the peaks, then again at the spectacular vista before them. Relief flooded her, and on its heels, pure joy. With a whoop she turned and threw her arms around his neck, hugging him so hard he staggered. Laughing, she released him and ran down the slope to the sun and the grass and the bobbing wild flowers. There she stripped off her helmet to let the breeze run through her hair, spinning with a delight so intense it brought tears to her eyes. She tripped and went down laughing, then lay flat on her back reveling in the sun’s warmth and the blue sky and the life that bounced and shone and smelled so pungent around her.
Pierce came more slowly, eventually dropping the pack and stripping off his own helmet as well. He pulled out the water bottles, handing her one as he settled beside her. It was a perfect spot for lunch, so they got out the ration bars and Snak-Paks.
Pink and lavender flowers danced around them and the scudding clouds played the land with roving shafts of sunlight. Her headache all but gone, her stomach no longer churning, Callie again stretched out on the slope and closed her eyes. She’d made it! She’d come over the mountain and survived. The link was still open, and now she channeled gratitude and newfound appreciation through it. What a remarkable gift she’d been given!
She opened her eyes and grinned at the sky, then tucked a hand beneath her head and regarded her companion. Pierce lay beside her, propped on one elbow as he surveyed the landscape and drank from his bottle. The wind lifted the hair off his brow, reminding her of the day they had come through the Gate, how he’d looked like a captain at the prow of his ship—strong, wise, capable.
“We’ve come a long way, haven’t we?” she said.
He glanced at her, smiling. “Yeah.”
Sweat had kinked his hair and plastered it to the back of his head, and his jaw wore a few days’ growth of beard, but to her he had never looked better. A wave of deep affection swept her. Impulsively she drew her hand from beneath her head and laid it on his shoulder. “Whatever would I do without you?”
He went rigid, a strange light flickering in his eyes. Then the mask fell into place. “You’d manage.” He squinted out over the valley.
“No,” she said softly. “I wouldn’t.” Beneath her palm, his shoulder trembled.
“You’re tougher than you think.” Water sloshed in the bottle as he lifted it to his lips.
“You saw how it was for me back there.”
“I saw you overcome it, too.” He capped the bottle and laid it down between them. “And it’s not me you can’t do without, it’s Elhanu.”
“Maybe. But if you hadn’t been there to make me think of that, I’d be dead. I’m such a wimp. I always have been. Afraid of everything— heights, people . . . my own feelings.” She stroked his shoulder with her thumb, felt hard muscle beneath the knitted undershirt. Then she sighed. “Oh, Pierce, I’m sorry I hurt you that night. I was scared. I didn’t know what to do or even what I was feeling.”
He turned to snare her gaze, his eyes that deep turquoise that made her breath catch. “And do you now?”
She felt poised at the edge of another precipice. Her heart raced.
Blood pounded in her ears. “I think so.”
The wind whipped up around them, setting the wild flowers to frenzied bobbing. He smoothed the dancing tendrils of hair back from her face, fingers trailing moth light along her cheek and jaw. His thumb paused under her chin, and then he leaned down and kissed her.
She felt as if she’d exploded into a thousand pieces of light that whirled up and up into the vast cloud-scudded sky. When he drew away, she was spellbound with wonder. His eyes traveled over her face, his fingers caressing the contours of her lips and again pressing back the dancing tendrils of hair. She touched the grizzle on his jaw, the brown curl by his ear, then drew him to her, drinking him in, shivering with feelings she’d never dreamed she had.
She heard the rattle of stones a second before he broke away. Pushing up onto his knees, Pierce reached for his SI and stared up the hill, while she lay frozen, watching him closely.
“Someone’s coming,” he murmured.
“The third mutant?”
“Maybe. Come on.” He rolled back onto his feet, gave her a hand up, and they were off as if nothing had changed.
They hurried downhill, taking cover behind a granite hump.
It’s
going to smell us
, Callie thought.
The goats are gone, and we’ve been here
almost an hour. But there’s only one, and it’s sick. Pierce destroyed the fire
curtain—
A horrible suspicion knifed her. What if he hadn’t?
He laid a hand on her arm. She looked up to find him listening intently, and instantly she heard distant whoops and shouts that didn’t sound like Trogs. Warily, she peered around the rock. On the slope above, a group of helmeted figures in camouflage danced and cavorted at the mist’s edge.
“Well, how about that?” Pierce murmured, stepping into view.
“They must have been right behind us.”
One of the figures pointed at them, and more whoops rode the wind. Evvi reached them first, long hair flying. She flung herself onto Pierce and spun him around. Then the others were there—Tuck, Gerry, Wendell, and Mr. Chapman—slapping their backs and exclaiming with delight.