She was going to have to get out of this by herself.
The wind caught her in a sharp gust, and she found herself swinging in wide arcs over the chasm—out into the void and back over the rocks—a pendulum out of control. She gritted her teeth and tried to will herself to stop, to make her body be still.
Then the rope that suspended her gave way, and she dropped several feet before it caught again.
She closed her eyes against the wave of fear that coursed through her.
What can I do to save myself?
She looked down again, searching for something that might offer a way out of this. But there was nothing within reach she might grab on to and nowhere to attempt to swing herself and land safely.
Even if she managed somehow to free herself from the safety line.
Then she remembered her throwing knife. She had tucked it into her belt when the coin had broken and the throwing competition had ended. It should still be there.
She reached back, fumbling for the handle, grasping at hope.
But the knife was gone.
She felt all the air go out of her. No surprise, she told herself. She must have lost it in the fall. And she had no other blade. No other weapon at all.
She heard something beneath her, a kind of hissing sound. She glanced down and saw the lizard looking up. Or something like a lizard, only much more unpleasant. It was big, fully eight feet long. Its mouth opened as it lifted its head toward her, perhaps thinking she might fall into it like a piece of fruit. Except she didn’t think this creature ate fruit. Not with so many sharp teeth and such strong jaws for snapping bones and chewing flesh. No, this was a meat eater, and it was hoping to make a meal out of her.
Her eyes shifted.
A second lizard had appeared off to one side, even bigger than the first.
Mirai took a moment to catch her breath. She had imagined this expedition would be dangerous, and she had prepared herself for what she might encounter. But she had not prepared for this, and suddenly all she could think about was how foolish she had been to come. How foolish all of them had been. She should have refused to accompany Redden and Railing, and then perhaps they wouldn’t be here, either. Now all of them were caught up in a world of monsters and bleakness and rapidly vanishing possibilities.
Or that was how she saw it as she dangled helplessly over a chasm with a pair of hungry lizards waiting for her to drop.
But Mirai Leah was not the kind to give way to either despair or fear, so she gathered up the shreds of her courage and resolve and tried anew to find a way to save herself.
Then a shriek sounded off in the darkness to one side, piercing even the sounds of the wind and rain. The lizards turned at once, hesitated only a moment, then skittered off into the brush, leaving the clearing empty.
Mirai waited, searching the gloom. A stout figure wrapped in the black robes of the Druids stepped into view, moving toward her.
“Mirai?”
She exhaled sharply. “Seersha!”
“Are you all right?”
“As all right as I can be, trussed up like this. Can you help me?”
The Dwarf moved over to the edge of the chasm, glanced down, and stepped back again. “Close your eyes and keep them closed. Hold tight to yourself. Don’t move, no matter what you feel. Not until I tell you to. Ready?”
Mirai closed her eyes, hugged herself as best she could, and grunted affirmatively. Almost instantly she felt herself being lifted away, and then she was floating weightlessly. The wind and rain still buffeted her, but she was no longer swinging in midair. Mirai wanted desperately to see what was happening, but she had been told not to try and she wouldn’t have been told that if there wasn’t a good reason.
She felt herself moving, and then the rain-soaked earth was pressing up from beneath her, and she was lying on the ground.
Seersha was next to her at once, cutting away the remnants of the tangled safety line, tossing the pieces aside. “Must be a good story behind all this,” she said.
Mirai finally opened her eyes. “Not if you’re me.” She stretched her arms and legs as the rope fell away. “How did you find me?”
The bluff face wrinkled with her smile. “The pieces of the coin. It works both ways. When they started to glow brightly enough, I knew you were close. I heard something scrape and tear and came looking. The coins brought me here.”
“We got caught in the storm, and the Walker Boh struck a cluster of stone spikes. I was tied to the railing, but it tore away and took me with it.”
“Not a good time to be looking for anyone,” Seersha observed as she helped the Highland girl to her feet. “For either of us. We have to get out of here. This whole place is crawling with things that want to kill us.”
Although Mirai could stand, she could barely walk, her legs numb from being trussed up. Seersha had to support her, an arm wrapped around her waist as she helped her move away.
“Is the ship still flying? Or did it go down, too?”
“Still flying, so far as I know.” Mirai hobbled along as swiftly as she could, casting anxious glances over her shoulder in the direction the lizards had taken. “What’s happened?”
“Good question. I only know a little of it. Let’s save that for when we’re safe. Was it the coin that brought you?”
“It was.”
“Not very quickly, though.”
“The Rovers and I decided not to risk it at night. Too dangerous to try to maneuver a big airship. So we waited until this morning to set out.”
Seersha snorted. “Which didn’t turn out to be of much help, did it?”
“No. The storm just made things worse. I’m sorry.”
The Dwarf tightened her arm about Mirai’s waist in a brief hug. “Don’t be. I’m just glad you came at all.”
The hissing sound was back, suddenly right behind them. Without releasing her grip on Mirai, Seersha wheeled about, stretched out her free arm, fingers extended, and sent an explosion of blue fire into the creature that was reaching for them with open jaws. The lizard flew backward into the dark and disappeared.
“And that’s not even the worst of what’s here,” the Druid said, exhaling sharply.
They moved ahead as swiftly as they could, and slowly Mirai regained the feeling in her legs and her strength began to return. Twice more the lizards came at them, and each time Seersha used quick bursts of her Druid Fire to fling them away.
“Trouble is,” she said, panting for breath as they slogged through the mud and rain, “the more I use the magic, the more of them I attract.”
“How many are there?”
Seersha gave her a look that said it all.
Mirai was moving on her own now, stumbling a bit but able to support herself. Together they pushed on, making their way through a tangle of woods and heavy grasses and then clusters of boulders and empty flats. The lizards had been replaced by something that resembled Gnomes with lots of teeth. These new creatures were smaller, but attacked in packs. There seemed to be more of them gathering with every step.
“We have to climb that cliff just ahead,” Seersha said suddenly, pointing. “The others are up there.”
Somehow they made it to the base of the cliff and found the trail. Together they started up, clawing their way from handhold to foothold, the pursuers snapping at their heels and trying to pull them down again. The rain made their grip on the rock uncertain, and the gloom hid their attackers until they were almost on top of them. Mirai kicked out behind her as she climbed, trying to keep the creatures at bay, but they seemed able to scale even the sheerest of surfaces and came at her from both sides, grasping her arms in an effort to dislodge her.