Song of Ashes

16: Adventure

"I can't," Sarka said, standing on the brink of almost certain death.

Ro rested his right forearm on her shoulder and made a sweeping gesture with what remained of his left hand. "Ah, but this is adventure, Sarka. Isn't it beautiful?"

The thing of beauty in question was a river of lava. Even standing far above it on the edge of the bluff, Sarka felt her cheeks prickle from the heat of the molten rock. The chasm opened up in the earth like flesh split with a blade to reveal a vital vein. Far in the distance on the other side, across a stretch of ashen plains, there rose a range of spiky mountains, black as tar; these, Ro had informed her, were their next exciting destination.

As Sarka looked back down, a drop of sweat rolled down her nose. "No one can cross this."

"They can. Unless you want to stay back there on the edge of Lady's Wrath and wait for Dak to come check in on you, you'll have to come with me. It's a bit late to decide you want to turn back." Ro pointed with his spear to their left, to a place where the broken earth still connected enough to form a bridge across the bubbling river.

Sarka had determined after she escaped death at the claws of the wildcat that she would no longer be afraid. She now realized that such a determination had been ambitious. She was afraid now. "What if you fall in?"

"I won't fall in. What if you fall in? Well, you won't feel the pain for very long. I do advise against it, though."

Sarka was too apprehensive of the task at hand to be angry at him for making fun of her. She needed him now more than she ever had. This moment recalled the morning she had been desperately thirsty: there was only one choice, and waiting simply pushed out the inevitable.

Sarka struck out toward the bridge, dragging at Donkey-Meat's rein to pull him along.

"That's the spirit!" Ro called, following a few paces behind.

At the edge of the chasm, Ro took Donkey-Meat's rein and stepped out onto the rock bridge. He walked slowly and calmly, and Sarka had no choice but to follow.

It was so terrifying, it was nearly exhilarating. The bridge was a good width for crossing over a creek or even a river, had it rails. But there were no handholds, and instead of water flowing beneath them, there was a current of viscous rock the color of flame.

"I cannot believe she did this to us," Sarka whispered to herself as she followed Donkey-Meat's narrow, swaying hip bones across the bridge. She was trying not to look below, lest she lose what meager scraps of courage she'd mustered. The heat was overwhelming; it was difficult to breathe, and the sweat rolling down her face stung her eyes and cracked lips.

Ro appeared not to have heard her blasphemous whisper. Time seemed to stretched on for a numb and breathless hour to Sarka, but then, they were across. She restrained herself with a great effort from falling to all fours as soon as she was back on safe ground; it might have been in tatters, but she still had her dignity.

"Aneir always used to joke about pushing me in," Ro said, looking thoughtfully back at the river. He handed Sarka a water skin; she fumbled with the stopper as he mused, "She was much more pleasant to travel with than you."

"She was your friend. I'm not." Sarka took several large swallows, then wiped her mouth with her wrist, resisting the urge to upend the skin over her head. On the edge of the precipice, the heat was still overwhelming, and even the extreme distance of the rock bridge from the channel of lava beneath hadn't shielded her feet from the heat. Her toes were tingling.

"Well, I'll soon be rid of you. Once we get through the Razors, we're pretty much there. Now, let's go on a bit and then make camp. We want to get through in a day...there's no sleeping in there."

"The Razors?" Sarka accepted Donkey-Meat's rein from Ro, pointing at the mountain range with her other hand. "That?"

"Aye. Stub your toe in there and you may lose it. The rocks are sharp as knives. Aneir and I came across a traveler once, another ash-walker like us, who'd fallen and gotten himself killed-impaled on a spike as long as your forearm, right through the side. Must have been an ugly way to die."

Sarka stared at the sheet of rock rising up out of the earth like the wall of a fortress. "I was wrong, Ro. I could not have done this on my own. I'm not sure why you decided to guide me. Or why you didn't leave me behind."

Ro shrugged one shoulder, beginning to unpack the tent. "You were going, with or without me. And I was preparing to go, anyway." He hesitated. "I thought you might get your fill of adventure and decide to take up as an ash-walker. I could use a companion with Aneir gone. That's all. I may joke, but I'd never leave you on your own out here."

Sarka thought, I would have left you.