Page 54 of Cursed Shadows 4

Ridge won’t make it five hours.

He needs the white powder now. And then hours to pass out, let the powder work.

I don’t need a crossing of the river.

I need shelter.

Pressing my spine against the trunk of the tree, I move around to face the other side—in the opposite direction of the river. Further down the mountain slope.

My legs tremble as I take careful steps to the other side of the tree. Ignoring the deep ache of my back, probably black and blue from my landing and the battering of the boulders in the river, I narrow my eyes on the cliffside that plummets into something of a ridge.

Huh.

If that isn’t irony, I don’t know what is.

And if I hadn’t climbed up here, I wouldn’t have figured it out. The forest is narrowing. Pinched in from both sides, two cliffs, one that drops to a river and the other into a ridge.

If I followed this path, this forest, the way I was headed before I heard the battle, then I would have been led further up the mountain, and right into the colourless woods of frost and ice. Barren, dead land I want to avoid.

I doubt there are many berries up there to snack on, and far too many fae to fight off.

Finding Ridge might have saved my life. It seems to have at least saved me some time.

Maybe it isn’t irony that I found Ridge, then saw the ridge from my vantage point. Maybe it’s fate.

I side-step another branch, then lean around to check the other direction.

A rockpool down the way, less than a half-hour walk.

It’s hard to make out from this distance, but the puddle of water glimmers blue—and it’s interrupted in a wedge of grey. I guess it to be a rock overhang from the cliffside.

A small little curve of rock-shelter, beside a water source. It’s less than I hoped for. But it’s more than I asked for.

Shelter and water.

I murmur a curse under my breath.

With no other options in sight, none as close at the overhang, then that is the one we have no choice but to take.

My descent of the tree is slower than the climb. Whether it’s the worsening sharp pains in my side, or the sudden slippery surface of the dewy branches, I don’t know, but by the time I land on the mossy ground, Ridge is on his bottom, head leaned back on the tree, his lashes low over whitish eyes.

If I was in a romantic mood, I might think him a perfect blend of this mountain, something that was crafted from the frost and ice, then the gods breathed life into him.

But I’m not, so I grab his arm and, not so gently, wrench him to his feet. If he was unconscious already, there is no way in all my muscles that I would find strength enough to lift him. But the gods are giving me so many favours on this mountain, and Ridge clinging to the land of awake is one of them.

15

DAXEEL

††††††

Darkness steals the sky. The sun is hibernating until its return.

Nightfall is longer here on the Mountain of Slumber, longer than the daylight muted by the eternal clouds. Still, no time is wasted.

Rune takes point at the roots of the tree.

Daxeel climbs.

---