Jade Mouse

Chapter 21

Once, when I was younger, (and never mind how I got there in the first place, it's a long story) I'd managed to accidentally spring a poison trap, and found myself completely paralyzed and lying face-up in a grassy yard that had . . . not one, but two hungry-looking valeweed houndcats patrolling it.

I managed to wriggle out of that predicament. As it turns out, holding very still is a good way to keep a valeweed houndcat from attacking you or thinking of you as food, so being paralyzed was kind of a mixed blessing, though I hadn't exactly known it at the time.

The thing I remember most were the two hours I spent laying there, helpless, waiting for the poison to wear off, watching as these two massive, gaunt-looking creatures circled me, snuffing curiously at my face every now and again. My imagination painted a vivid picture of what it would be like to get torn into pieces by sharp feline teeth, viciously ripped to shreds while still alive, unable to cry out or do anything at all. It wasn't a pleasant sort of experience.

This was worse.

Watching the stream of stone and mortar falling towards the stairs made my guts turn to water, and every muscle tried to flex, go slack, and cramp simultaneously.

My arm shot through and broke the window pane as I clawed at the lurching window arch, desperate to reach beyond it and grip something solid. The teeth of my metal climbing spikes hooked into the wet stone of the outside wall as my palm slapped against broken glass and rain-soaked rock.

Roaring with effort, I pulled myself through the window, one-handed. Changing the grip I had on my device, I lurched my torso against what remained of the shattered pane, leaned over the sill, and then threw myself into the empty air beyond it, all in the same motion. My legs scraped along the top of the stone ledge, shards of glass snapping off in my thighs with a gravelly crunch, my feet still dangling just inside the window.

I heard the soft click of pebbles striking the stairs.

And then I was falling, like the hundreds of raindrops and bits of broken glass that surrounded me, clutching the wooden stock of my climbing device as my fingers urgently squeezed the lever jutting out from it.

There was a 'wrrp' of metal twine going taut, and I felt a painful yanking sensation in my shoulders right before I slapped wetly against the outside wall of the stone keep. I was now dangling by a metal thread, a mere four feet beneath the window I'd leapt out of. I looked down briefly and noticed that I still had two legs, and that both of them were the correct length.

Both boots were smoking, however.

My left hand reached out to grab onto a portion of the wall so I could steady myself. It turned out to be a very good idea.

The lifeline I'd been desperately clinging to slackened with a strange 'twern' noise, the anchored portion finally succumbing to the hot, black nothingness in the stairwell. My body fell a few sickening inches, my left hand desperately gripping the stone above me. I dropped the wooden rod I held and was pawing the wall with my right hand, climbing spikes frantically searching for an additional handhold on the rocky surface.

The smoking remains of the metal twine fell on top of me, the very end of it glowing white-hot as it fell upon my right shoulder. My cloak absorbed some of the heat, luckily, so it merely felt like I'd been stabbed with a red-hot branding iron.

“Gah!” I exclaimed, flinching my shoulder violently enough to shake the searing metal loose.

It was also enough to shake me loose.

I began falling once more, sliding down the rocky face, both palms extended and pressing against the fast moving surface of the wall. Both climbing spikes rasped their metallic protests, squealing as they scraped against the wet stone, my bleeding fingers clawing for purchase in their effort to arrest my descent.