Saint Elm's Deep (The Legend of Vanx Malic) (27 page)

Everything started happening quickly after that. Kegger took the two lines, and Darl stood patiently feeding rope from the coils as the bigger gargan eased his way out along the edge. After only a few moments, he was curving out of sight. Chelda was next, using wrist spikes and toting another line that they would use to pull the trolley across. Xavian stroked Poops and apologized to the dog before gently sending him into a deep, magically-induced slumber. His spell was so effective that Vanx found himself yawning and incredibly tired for a short while, but the feeling quickly passed when Gallarael excitedly clipped her lanyard to the hand line and waited for the signal that Kegger had secured it.

While they listened, Xavian put Poops gently in one of the corpse rigs. It was then that Xavian confessed his fears to Vanx in an anxious whisper.

“I can’t do it, Vanx,” he said. Stark terror showed plainly on the wizard’s face.

“Are you sure you can’t manage it?” Vanx asked. “The girls are handling it just fine.”

“I don’t care if you make fun of me.” Xavian was trembling so hard that he couldn’t even tie the leather thongs together that would keep Poops snug and tight. “I’m sorry, Vanx. I’ll freeze up or fall. I-I-I don’t want to cause a problem here, but—”

“Drenk these,” Darl said almost jovially. He started digging in one of the packs while keeping his eyes on his duty. He tossed Xavian a silver flask and went back to minding the coils of rope. “Just a few deep seeps, no more.”

“It won’t help to get me drunk,” Xavian said, but he took a deep swig anyway. Liking the sweet taste, he took another and swallowed it down. He was about to take a third when Darl leapt over and snatched the flask back.

“Wha-What is this?” Xavian looked around wide-eyed and suddenly giggling. “Is it dopor, man?” Xavian reached forward and a long strand of thick slobber dripped out of his mouth.

“Why did you give him that shit?” Vanx was suddenly angry. “He won’t be able to pull himself across now.”

Darl pointed to another of the canvas corpse rigs. After tying off the ends of the rope he was watching, he took Xavian’s place securing Poops. “Put him en a reeg. I’ll help ye get them festened. We’ll pell them both across in the trelley-line weeth the gear.”

Vanx was about to protest, but a distant horn sounded.

“It is secure. I’m going,” Gallarael called out to them. “He sounded the horn.”

“Be careful. I don’t want to have to explain any of this to your brother or father.”

“I’ll be careful, Mom,” she jested, and eased her way slowly out onto the ledge. Then she was off, sliding her lanyard’s ring carefully along, just as Kegger had instructed them to.

There was a long silence until Vanx watched her disappear around the curve of the cliff face. A pair of short, bright blasts from Kegger’s horn came to them, then.

“Sheet,” Darl cursed. He rummaged around and came up blasting quick triplets from the horn he’d found.

There was a single blast in response, and Darl began hustling to fasten the end of the trolley-line to a larger iron ring that had been buried in the snow. Deftly, the knot was tied and tested. Only then did Darl stand up and respond with two solid blasts.

A few moments later, the slack disappeared in that particular line. Vanx could hear the hum of it tightening like a string on his xuitar. Darl rigged another line, this one to the end of the line Chelda had taken with her. He fastened it to a heavy jumble of well-oiled chain that was in turn connected to a long iron “A”-frame. He carried this contraption down the path a short way and hung it from the tightened trolley-line. After a moment, Vanx realized that it was the trolley.

“The trolley is a problem for the ferst tweenty yards or sew,” Darl said. “It’s too close to the cliff face, see.” He pointed where the trolley-line ran tight against the cliff just a few feet above the hand line. “We have to welk the loads until the trolley-line is clear of the eedge.”

Vanx could see what he meant. As soon as the cliff started curving away, the trolley would hang freely, but until it did, it had to be dragged along the cliff face.

Darl took the pack that held Kegger’s weapons and some of the other personal gear and carefully hung it from the trolley. He then fastened another length of rope to this end of the the device. Vanx knew that he and Darl would use that line to pull the empty trolley back, so that they could send over Poops, Xavian, and the rest of their gear.

“We seend the packs first, to meke sure the line is safe for theem.”

Vanx watched the first time but eased the second load of gear out himself. Poops was next, so he waited for it to return. He saw the line dip down into the gorge from the trolley’s weight and then rise up again across the span. There was Kegger standing atop the far edge, steadily pulling the load across.

Vanx hadn’t ventured far enough out around the edge to see the ice falls yet. He waited until Poops was safely across and Xavian was well on his way before he started his own trek along the ledge. It was just as he began to see the first great crystalline icicles that formed the majestic sight that the familiar feeling of warning assaulted his guts and caused him to lose his footing. This feeling wasn’t from Poops, though, and as he fell in an awkward tangle, his lanyard pulled tight and his head cracked hard against the wall. A blinding flash of pain collided with his hammering heartbeats, and the knowledge that there was terrible danger about came flooding through him.

Gallarael’s shrill scream cut over it all, and then there was the hissing roar of some gargantuan beast.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Anytime I’m fishing
and my line is in the water,
nothing really matters,
but the bobble of my bobber.
--A fisherman’s song

Scrabbling like a four-legged spider, Vanx managed to get one of his spiked cleats to catch hold of the cliff. From there, he kicked himself upright. Following a primal surge of instinct, he used every bit of his dexterity and his training to hurry himself toward where he’d last heard Gallarael. His razor-sharp eyes spied his footholds for him, and he didn’t even pause in stride when he unhooked his lanyard, passed it over the ring, and then reattached it.

To his right were the glittery blue ice falls, hanging like a tumble of melted candle wax. There were at least ten paces worth of open space out to the backside of what might have been a roaring waterfall in a warmer climate. The frozen spill was easily thirty full strides wide, and the sunlight reflected through the thick ice, creating an eerie blue glow.

Had he taken the time to look up, he would have seen how, a few hundred feet above him, the frozen flow poured out over the edge of a jutting shelf of granite that cantilevered over this part of the passage. Under any normal circumstances he would have been taken in by the majesty and beauty of such a rare sight, but as it was, he was cursing the placement of the frozen fall of water because it blocked his view of what was transpiring farther along the ledge.

Again, Vanx deftly slipped his lanyard’s hook off of the hand line and over the next ring without even slowing down. Then he was out from under the falls and curving even farther to his left around the ledge. The roar that accompanied the shocking sight he came upon nearly caused him to fumble and fall again.

A giant snake was extending out of the cliff face. It had a wide, triangular head with a horned snout that reminded Vanx of the rhinosours back on Zyth. The hole it was using was just ten feet above the hand line and a few feet ahead of where Vanx had stopped. Already, enough of the sinuous, tree-trunk-thick body was extended out from the wall that it had doubled around on itself and was striking back at Gallarael, who had moved a good distance from where she should have been.

The cliff face kept curving to the left but came back in a horseshoe shape. Gallarael was in the crook of the horseshoe, at least fifteen feet below the ledge on which she should have been. Vanx couldn’t see her blackened skin, for her coat was strapped to her with all the climbing gear, but he knew she was in her changeling form. She was clinging to the cliff face with her long foreclaws and nothing more. Above, half of her lanyard was dangling uselessly from the hand line as she craned her head about, looking for a way to go.

Chelda was almost directly across from where Vanx was now. Over there, the ledge was wide enough to provide substantial footing. Chelda was trying desperately to string a bow. The contents of several of their packs were strewn about the ground at her feet. Apparently, just finding the bow had been a chore. Vanx cringed, for Chelda wasn’t wearing a harness anymore. If she slipped, she would die.

Kegger wasn’t far from her and was still hauling mightily on the pull-line. Vanx followed its taut length to the trolley. There, still seventy feet or more from the cliff face, with his arms and legs dangling from the corpse rig, was Xavian’s still form. Trussed in the canvas cradle, he lurched along, suspended over nothing but a few thousand feet of open space. Kegger was doing all he could.

The serpentine monster darted in at Gallarael with swift and explosive speed. She screamed again, only this time there was a primal quality to the call, like that of a cornered animal knowingly about to make its stand.

Vanx felt for a weapon, but with the thick shrew fur coat that was belted tightly around him, all he could get at was the plain utility dagger he kept in his boot.

The slithery beast roared, and Gallarael leapt away from the cliff in a backward arcing flip that carried her body just over the striking serpent’s stubby snout horn and out of its snapping jaws. She landed face down on the serpent’s neck, just below its yellow-green, plate-sized eyes and, like a clingy cocklebur, she dug her claws into its scaly hide and held on.

The serpent must have felt her claws. It began twisting and thrashing about violently. It slammed its neck into the cliff face in an attempt to throw Gallarael, then tried to crush her between its body and the rocks, but her claws held firm. Just above the serpent’s impact, a pair of terrified ramma bolted frantically in opposite directions.

Vanx made to unfasten his lanyard so that he could chance racing up the cliff face to see if he could get his dagger into the beast. Maybe he could distract it so that it didn’t crush Gallarael against the wall or shake her loose.

With a deep, resigning huff of breath, Vanx steeled himself and pulled his lanyard free. It wasn’t meant to happen, though, for no sooner did he start up away from the ledge than one of the ramma came tumbling down, almost on top of him. It was all he could do to reset his lanyard and hug the cliff so the falling animal didn’t smash him off and take him tumbling down with it. It screamed and bleated when it went by and thrashed its hooves wildly at the air as it continued down into the gulch.

“Nooo!” Chelda shouted. “Oh no!”

Vanx saw that she was looking at Gallarael.

Then he saw Gallarael sailing, feet over head, as she was slung from the serpent’s neck by the whipping force of its flailing. It looked as if Gallarael’s body would crash into the cliff almost directly under where Chelda stood, but the downward pull of her fall kept her from making it that far across. Vanx saw Chelda sprawl face down over the lip of the canyon. When she looked up, even from the great distance between them, he could see tears welling in her eyes.

“Come on, Chelda,” Kegger yelled. “Help me save this one!” He gave out a roar and hauled on the rope. The rope seemed to be pulling back at him.

Craning his head around, Vanx saw that the serpent had fouled itself in the trolley-line. It was hissing and twisting and coiling around as it tried to pull itself back into its hole. One of its eyes was a goo-dripping ruin.

By the time Chelda gained Kegger’s side, the trolley-line was stretched as tight as a harp string. Out over the open nothingness, Xavian was being tossed and yanked about like a rag doll. The pull-line went slack for the sudden lack of dip in the other rope, and in that moment Kegger took off running toward the tree line, taking the slack of the pull-line with him. Vanx saw him hook his huge arm around a tree’s trunk and spin with his momentum, as if the tree were a dancing partner. Then he was pulling in slack and tying knots, just before the trolley-line snapped with an earsplitting “CRACK.”