the cliff with his feet.
“Long as I need to.” Dev leaned over the ledge’s rim again. “You’re tied in to the rope, remember? No need to clutch it like a southerner with a devil-ward charm. Shake your arms out, it’ll help them recover faster.”
Finger by finger, Kiran released his white-knuckled grip. The rope remained reassuringly taut. He swallowed and let his arms drop to hang at his sides. Dangling from the rope wasn’t at all comfortable—his knotted harness dug painfully into his upper thighs and groin, and already his legs tingled with impending numbness—but the relief to his forearms and hands was immediate.
Kiran peeked again at the dizzying void beneath him. He’d once been accustomed to placing his life in another’s hands. The trust between focus and channeler must be absolute, Ruslan had always said. Kiran had believed him; had trusted both Ruslan and Mikail without reservation.
What a fool he’d been. Worse, Alisa had been the one to pay the price. Guilt tore at him. If he hadn’t loved her, if she hadn’t trusted him...the terrible memories crowded in, full of blood and screaming. Kiran shook his head, violently. If he didn’t escape Ruslan, Alisa’s death would only be the first of many.
He scrabbled at the rock and managed to cram his fingers back into the crack. “I’ll try again,” he yelled.
“Ready when you are.” Dev sounded pleased. Kiran summoned his concentration. He’d watched Dev climb, and years of channel pattern exercises had honed his memory. You place your feet right, the rest is easy, Dev had told him. So where had Dev put his feet? Kiran examined his memory and compared it to the cliff face before him. Ah—there. He balanced one foot on a rounded protrusion, wedged the other in a crack, and pressed upward.
Without the fear of falling overshadowing every move, the rest of the ascent was only an exercise in endurance. His muscles trembled with fatigue again by the time he wormed his way onto the broad ledge where Dev waited. Kiran settled himself cautiously in the spot Dev indicated and slumped back against the cliff with a sigh of release.
“Not bad for your first time.” Dev’s fingers flew as he tied a second, shorter length of rope from Kiran’s harness to a nearby piton. At Kiran’s skeptical glance, he nodded. “Seriously, I mean it. You did better than most would.”
A tendril of warmth stole through Kiran. He rubbed his aching forearms. “If that was an easy climb, I don’t ever want to see a hard one.”
Dev’s mouth twitched. “Don’t worry, showtime’s over. Now you get to relax a while.” He glanced down at the head of the convoy, where the steady flow of men and tool-laden mules on the trail continued unabated. Their destination was out of sight around a bend, but the clink of tools on rock and the wavering tones of a Sulanian chant song echoed back down the canyon. “Let me stow some gear, and then we’ll talk carcabon.”
The sun-warmed rock felt good against Kiran’s sore back. He flexed his hands, the burn in his muscles finally relenting. The canyon was oddly peaceful. Somehow colors seemed stronger and more vivid than in the city. The craggy cliffs forming the opposite canyon wall were blindingly white, with only occasional streaks of rust-red or gray or brown marring their purity, and the sky overhead was a deeper blue than Kiran had ever seen.
To Kiran’s relief, the azure depths of the sky contained not even the smallest puff of cloud that might build into a storm. Ruslan couldn’t know for certain which route Kiran had taken out of Ninavel. Since his storm had been unsuccessful at forcing Kiran to reveal himself, Kiran might have a few days’ grace while Ruslan hunted in other directions. Or so he devoutly hoped.
A rattling noise called him from his thoughts. Dev was running his fingers over a set of pitons on a rope sling, as if counting them. But his eyes were fixed high above on the cliff, and his expression was oddly remote.
“What are you looking for?” Kiran asked.
Dev blinked and set down the sling of pitons. “The red bands of rock are where you find carcabon. I think that one’s our best bet.” He pointed to a red streak slashing across a sheer section of cliff, high and to the left of the ledge.
“Please tell me you’re joking!” The angle of the rock edged past vertical, and Kiran couldn’t see a single crack or ledge blemishing the