Page 31 of Chained Knight

The rest of the group set off at a far slower pace, the chained man now at the big black equine’s shoulder though he still held the reins. Ari weighed the advisability of trying to topple out of the saddle. Each measured step, by hoof or spurred boot, brought those terrible arches of bleached bone closer. The skeleton’s strange geometry, just a few degrees off anything earthly, grew more and more apparent.

“What is it you fear?” The chained man looked up, eyebrows slightly raised and his tone holding only mild interest. For all that, those eyes were absolutely scorching. “I am still somewhat fettered, true. Yet I would never imperil my lady upon an unsteady span.”

It didn’t make sense, and Ari was helpless to explain. A giant interior framework of no creature she’d ever seen or imagined, its skull and bony hindquarters sunk deep in grassy earth—a small faint charity, that she was spared the rest of its nauseating insult to all rationality, but not enough. To top it off, the crevasse’s true dimensions became more and more apparent with every moment, and that constant, faint moan-whistle said anything dropped in would fall for a very long time.

Please. Maybe she would have some kind of cardiac event, and this whole shebang would become academic?Don’t make me do this.

Begging wouldn’t help in the slightest; Ari had learned as much over the last three years. No-one cared, so she might as well save her breath. She watched the two riders, Darjeth’s pale hair shining and Sarle on his dark-brown equine pulling slightlyahead as if he couldn’t wait to throw himself onto the damn thing. The giant bridge was absurdly miniature in comparison to the rift stretching upon either side, but that wasn’t helpful either.

The hoofbeats changed. Sarle’s equine thundered up the slight rise, easily dwarfed by the smallest, floating ribs, and clattered onto stone-laced vertebrae. Darjeth followed.

Thankfully the edifice didn’t sway, even minutely. But she still didn’t like it, and cast around once more for some kind of escape. It was awful, watching the thing approach at walking pace—as if the riders were standing still while a vast bone-monster slunk closer bit by bit, humming to itself, contemplating an unwary meal.

“You see?” Jazarl, with an anxious edge to the words. “The Breach is wide, but the bridge has always been here, my lady Ari.”

Please don’t. Oh, God, please don’t make me do this.

By the time the main group reached the bridge’s near end, Sarle and Darjeth were halfway across. Thin rancid horror crawled up Ari’s throat; the sides of the Breach were sheer, plunging down to billows of white mist. Creepers and dark vegetation clung in scallops to the rock walls, life finding a way even on near-vertical faces, and her skin prickled all over.

The chained man dropped back still further, his spiked shoulder very near her knee. Maybe he wanted to be sure she wouldn’t make a break for it. If there were any lemmings around, they might well be hypnotized by both bridge and chasm, gratefully throwing themselves into oblivion rather than suffering the violation of having tolookat the damn thing or hear that awful fluting unsong from wind-caressed ribs.

Ari squeezed her eyes shut, but she still knew the moment hoof touched stone-bound bone. A faint vibration rose, or maybe she was shaking again. Even disassociating couldn’t save her;she had to cling to the saddle. The horselike thing snorted, a dissatisfied sound, and she wondered if her tension was communicating itself to the beast.

“All is well, Ariadne.” Softly, the accent of their strange language caressing her name. “I am with you; there is nothing to fear.”

I really wish I could believe that. It would be nice, especially given the number of times after Mom’s passing she’d longed to hear someone say just those words. There was always plenty to be afraid of in the world; growing up was all about finding out nobody could—or would—help.

Something warm and hard closed around her knee. Ari started violently, the saddle creaking as her eyelids flew open, and the black equine gave another short, unhappy chuffing sound.

The chained man still held the reins loosely in one hand, but the other rested on her jeans. His palm, not the spikes on the back, but still, metal brushed her leg and she was painfully aware of how sharp the edges of his armor were. Not to mention the dangerous chains, one falling from his forearm almost brushing the horselike thing’s side.

He stared up at her, not watching where his feet were landing. Ari’s hair lifted on the breeze, a curl falling in her face, and a scalding flush poured through her entire body.

“You see?” Was he trying to sound, of all things,encouraging? “Wider than the Road itself, my lady.”

Which brought up another interesting observation. She hadn’t seen a single intersection yet, just the endless stone-block highway. But Ari had no time to tease out the implications of yet more weirdness.

She shut her eyes once more, did her best to keep her ears from registering the wind’s plaintive siren hum, and shivered until the sound of hoofbeats changed again, the equine nowplodding downhill. The Breach’s terrible, randomly wandering lament retreated bit by bit. Though the prickles still washed over her, no trace of sweat rose on her skin, and that was almost stranger than the lack of hunger.

Eventually the hand on her knee fell away. Ari kept her eyelids firmly sealed for a long while afterward, her lips moving slightly as she prayed, a chain of words both hopeless and useless when faced with a world where animals with such skeletons had indubitably once existed.

Please, I take it back. I didn’t mean to. Please let me wake up…

There was no answer, just the wind-moan dying behind them, the rhythm of shod hooves on stone, and the sense of being watched even though the chained man faced resolutely ahead.

19

LONG WAIT OVER

Gesthel turnedout to be a town set amid rolling grassland starred with occasional streams and dark copses—or more properly a village, Ari decided, since it wasn’t even big enough for a stop sign, let alone a light. Given that this world looked pre-electricity as well as pre-industrial it was a moot point, but her brain simply wouldn’t stop zigzagging around, staggering drunkenly from one terrible, outlandish implication to the next.

She couldn’t even recite the list of most important foreign words to brood over. They jumbled together inside her head, hopelessly tangled, and each time the wind shushed over rippling grass she had to suppress a shudder. The sun swelled still further as it approached horizon, sinking rapidly through thin indigo cloud-veils into a fury of orange, crimson, and ruddy gold.

She couldn’t even be glad of figuring out the word forwest—more properly,place where the sun dies—in their rolling tongue.

Thatched roofs over white-plastered walls decked with black trim, the houses huddled around the road. Smaller paved arteries now branched off on either side, as if her recognizingthe lack of intersections had summoned them into existence. The houses had window-boxes holding riots of cascading green vines and orange blossom. Windows were all shuttered fast, heavy dark wooden doors tightly sealed. Faint noises wandered between buildings as if the place remembered being inhabited, but not a soul was in sight save small wildlife. Fenced garden plots were overgrown and deserted; small brown and white birds twittered under thatched eaves, hopping along flagstone paths. Something that looked like a bluejay swooped from one roof, wheeling past the group and streaking between two houses. Ari also glimpsed a pair of wide golden eyes and a flash of grey fur, probably another not-possum.

The animal life was reassuringly near-normal—maybe all the creatures shaped like the Breach bridge-thing were extinct? Still, the rest of the surroundings were so creepy she preferred the forest. Except that was crawling with armored robots. Maybe the castle would be better?

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