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Storm Runner-Wolfwalker 03-Harper, Tara K
the Ancients Library immediately, and it had taken them only a few hours
to locate the map he wanted. Another several hours had been spent
designing and carving the message ring that would represent that map for
his men. But with the message ring, it had been easy to locate the cavern.
The wooden ring had been so vivid blue and black and carved with the
fast fall of water and the abrupt chasm of rocks that now, when Dion
stared at the cavern, she still saw the ring s design. She remembered the
cold she had felt when she first viewed that ring, the shiver that had clung
to her back, as if the carver had somehow captured a piece of the Phye and
wrapped the wooden column with it. The place was exactly as she had
viewed it from the ring. Moons, what she would give to have a talent like
that&
She stood huddled in Aranur s arms, their bodies clinging to the memory of
heat in each other that was now absent. Her glance darted from one dark
corner in the cave to the next, cataloging the shape and comparing it to the
image in her mind. The cavern was narrow and jagged behind the falls. Its
wet surfaces were slick with glacial cold, glistening in the faint light that
dared to cut through the falls. It was as if the torrent that pounded below
stole the light from their eyes as well as the sound from their ears. Aranur s
lips moved, and she knew he was shouting. She shook her head, and he
pointed again. This time, she saw what he pointed at. There was a rope
slung along the rock wall, providing a handhold across the slick stones.
Hewn beams were jammed in new frameworks on which the walking
platforms would rest and from which the rope bridge would be suspended.
She followed Aranur, edging along a tier where a rut gouged down the
center from the water running down from the fall s outside edge. When the
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tier ended, Dion stepped across onto a wooden platform and slid
immediately onto her knees. Aranur grinned wryly as he helped her up. The
wood in this cavern had not taken a day to slick up with mold.
They crossed the platform carefully, then stepped onto another tier along
the cave s back wall. This one was wide, but shallow, the overhang of the
cavern s roof closing at shoulder height. Twice Dion almost banged her
head on the protrusions. The water that gathered on her skin and ran from
her bangs down her cheeks blinded her so that she ducked the slick
blackness of the stones by instinct more than sight. Although the cavern
blackness swallowed the light, she could see the pale wood of another
platform to the fore. It was bulky, strangely shaped. She was almost on it
before she realized what it was: a large pulley system installed between the
roof of the cavern and the platform. Clever, she thought. The double lines
that led up and out made a clothesline hauling system that a single person
could operate. One more person, to go up on the rope, find the refugees, and
help them back&
Neither Aranur nor Dion bothered to try hiding their shivering. They
scrambled up on the second platform, where Aranur unlocked the ropes and
gave them a jerk. They slid easily through the pulleys and he nodded
toward the corner of the platform. Two bales of material squatted there, and
Dion explored the first one, finding with relief, for the refugees would not
be well clothed boots and raingear. The other was a mess of straps, hooks,
cleats, and pulleys; boxes of nails, tubes of bioglue, coral starters, and a
tangle of rags and used-up clothes. She pulled the straps apart to find six
climbing harnesses. Five of these she slung over her shoulder. The sixth she
stepped into, drawing the straps up around her thighs and buttocks. The
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Storm Runner-Wolfwalker 03-Harper, Tara K
design was as simple as it was ancient. To the front, she clipped several of
the metal rings, then turned back to Aranur.
He pointed at a third line that was tied to the end of a flag. He made a
jerking motion. She nodded. When she was at the top, she would pull on
that line. The flag would twitch, and Aranur would know that the first
refugees were ready to come down. He checked her harness, then pointed at
a thick spot in the dripping rope. The two eye splices that marked the two
ends of the line fit into each other, forming a low-profile loop and making
the long rope one massive circle that stretched from behind the falls out
through the water, and up the cliff on the west side of the Phye. Where the
double eye splice hung, Dion clipped in. Her carabiner hung from the top
eye splice, and she clipped another in reverse next to the first. The water
that fled down the rope from the falls found a second channel to run off
with her  biners. She hissed at the chill, shuddering. Then she grabbed
awkwardly at the rope as Aranur hefted her up. She twisted, hanging in
midair, glaring at him for not giving her warning.
He grinned. Better get used to it, his gleaming eyes said. He hauled at the
rope, and Dion spiraled up, her right leg wrapping around the rope to
stabilize her body. The torrent of the Devil s Knee blasted Aranur s image
from her mind. The rope made a straight line into the wall of water, and as
she lifted within five meters, the freezing wind coming off the falls sucked
at her strength. And then she was suspended beside the Devil s Knee,
hesitating. She knew dimly what would come next. She caught a breath,
ducked her head, wrapped her arms, and drew her body in on itself.
Fists of steel slammed her head. Legs of iron kicked her neck. Massive
hands of water forced her head down, down against the river s plunge. Her
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Storm Runner-Wolfwalker 03-Harper, Tara K
shoulders shuddered, blasted in their nerves by downward spears of ice.
And then she was through, and the fists slammed the last time on her neck,
and she was out and merely blind in the blistering white mist of the falls.
Something cut across her ears, thin and weak, and she realized that she had
screamed coming through the cascade. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]