Chapter 58

Chapter 58
Abigail's POV

We broke camp before the morning mist had fully lifted.

The others still moved with the loose ease of hunters who'd eaten well and slept well, their steps light, their faces far from tense. But I kept my senses drawn tight the whole way. The footprints I'd found the evening before were like a splinter I couldn't work loose, still lodged in my chest.

Every so often I let my steps drift deliberately off the trail, using the excuse of turning or checking the terrain to test the scent on the wind, to sift past the ordinary rustle of the forest for anything that didn't belong here.

I didn't tell them any of this.

Alarming everyone over a shadow I couldn't yet name would only make the team more likely to slip.

Toward midday the trees thinned and the ground began to rise. I led the team toward the cliff face I'd marked on our route the evening before. The marked beast we wanted was likely hidden among that broken rock, and the narrow, winding passages between the stone walls were well suited to an ambush.

But the moment we came within sight of the cliff, I stopped short.

Something was wrong.

It was too quiet ahead.

The birds were gone.

That cliff face should have been thick with them. The gray cliff-birds nested in every crevice, calling from dawn to dusk without pause.

But now the whole wall stood dead silent.

The ledges were bare, and not a single feather stirred in the cracks. The only movement was a thin drift of dust hanging in the still air, as if something had just disturbed it and it was slow to settle.

I crouched and pressed my palm flat to the ground at the head of the trail.

Packed dirt shouldn't take a mark so easily, yet a small spill of fresh grit and fine stones lay scattered here. The broken edges were pale, plainly just sheared from the older, more weathered rock above.

I straightened slowly, forcing my face to hold its usual look. I bent and picked up a plain, fist-sized stone from the edge of the trail, weighing it in my palm as if I were only toying with it.

"Hold on a moment," I said, lowering my voice to the few behind me. "Before we go on, I want to test the way first."

My words drew their attention.

I didn't explain further.

The next moment, I threw the stone.

It cut an arc through the air and struck the cliff face two-thirds of the way along the passage. That was exactly where we'd most likely pass if we kept going.

For an instant, nothing happened.

The silence held.

I almost thought I'd judged it wrong.

Then a very faint tremor came from deep within the rock. It wasn't a sound the ears caught, more a shudder the soles of the feet sensed first. After it, the ledge above shook loose an entire sheet of dust.

My face darkened.

"Back!" I snapped. "Into the hollow, now!"

Before the words were out, I'd already reached to shove Finn into that shallow recess in the side wall, then grabbed Dara and pulled her in. Elodie reacted fast, all but throwing herself in right behind us.

The instant she squeezed into the niche, the sound burst open.

Shield-sized slabs peeled from the face and smashed hard onto the trail where I'd just been standing. The churning rockfall that followed poured down, and a gray wall of dust swallowed the light in an instant, filling my mouth and nose.

We pressed ourselves against the stone, four of us crammed into that niche barely big enough to hold us. Dara's shoulder shook beside me. Finn, voice low, cursed one steady oath after another, as though that could force the fear back down. Elodie braced one hand on the wall and guarded her head with the other, coughing until her eyes rimmed red.

The collapse seemed to go on a long while.

Even after the roar dwindled at last to the scatter of falling pebbles, then bit by bit into silence, I still didn't move at once.

I forced myself to count to ten.

Only after I was sure there was no second slide from above did I slowly lift my head.

"Anyone hurt?" I asked.

My voice came out hoarser than I'd expected.

"I'm fine." Elodie answered through a cough. "Finn? Dara?"

"Still alive," Finn said quietly.

Dara nodded too, her face pale but unhurt.

Apart from the bruises we'd taken against the wall and the dust that coated us head to foot, we were all whole.

Only then did I realize I'd been holding my breath. When it came out slowly, my chest still felt as if a cold stone were pressing down inside it.

The way ahead was gone.

The narrow passage that had run between the cliffs was now nothing but a wall of broken rock. Those stones rose higher than any of our heads, sealing the route completely.

If we'd been standing on that trail when it came down just now…

None of us would have needed anyone to bury us.

I stepped into the settling dust and forced myself to look at all of it clearly.

I needed to be sure.

And I needed proof more.

I searched slowly along the near edge of the fall, turning the rubble with the toe of my boot. Before long, right beside where the largest slab had torn free, I saw something half-buried in a crack.

I stopped.

A metal wedge was driven in there.

It was sunk deep into the fissure, only a short length of dull iron showing.

I drew my blade and worked it loose bit by bit with the point. As the metal came free it gave a short, grating screech, as if something were finally being gouged from the bones of the rock.

I turned it over in my fingers.

It was heavier than it looked, forged iron. One face flat, the other tapering to a blunt, thick point — exactly the sort of tool someone hammers into a seam to force the rock to split along its natural fault.

No beast could make this.

No landslide would leave a thing like this behind.

Someone had climbed that cliff face and set it into the weakest part of the stone. It would take only a single hard blow — a thrown stone, a careless footfall, even a precisely calculated tremor — and the whole cliff would come down the way they wanted, crushing whoever passed beneath it.

I drew a clean strip of cloth from my pack, wrapped the wedge carefully, then tucked it away against my body where it wouldn't be lost.

My hands were steady. But beneath them, something was not.