A World Without Heroes - Brandon Mull [46]
“Let’s check for hoofprints,” Rachel suggested.
In the growing light, breathing foggy air, Jason searched inexpertly for fresh signs of a horse. “I don’t see anything,” he finally announced.
“Then let’s be extra ready for our enemies to approach from behind,” Rachel replied.
Briskly they followed the lane toward the ocean. After cresting the rise from the day before, the lane wound down to the coast, snaking back and forth to offset the steeper portions of the slope. The farther they descended along the path, the denser the fog became. Jason threw a stone as far as he could and watched it disappear into grayness long before it thudded against the ground, rustling the brush. Before long he could see only a few paces ahead. At any moment he expected a fearsome horseman to lope out of the murk.
As they approached the cliffs, the view of the ocean returned. Low sunlight spread over the water from off to the left, texturing the surface in striking relief by shadowing the troughs between swells.
“Pretty,” Rachel commented. “But I miss the cover of the fog.”
They reached the point where the road elbowed left, paralleling the cliffs as far as Jason could see. As Galloran had instructed, they abandoned the road, continuing south. They soon reached a gentle trickle of a stream.
The stream flowed toward the cliffs, slurping away into a narrow crack not ten paces from the edge. Unhealthy tufts of scraggly weeds flanked the feeble rivulet.
Jason cautiously approached the rocky brink of the cliff. The view was spectacular. He stood more than seventy feet above the churning surf, at the center of a curving amphitheater of cliffs bordering a wide inlet. At either hand sheer faces of dark stone towered above surging bursts of foamy spray. No reef or shallows slowed the swells as they rose up and flung themselves in frothy explosions against alien formations of rock.
Rachel came up beside him, her stance casual, a hand on one hip. Then she stepped even closer to the edge, leaning forward to gaze straight down. Her proximity to the brink gave Jason chills, but he kept quiet.
“Looks like suicide,” Rachel said, drawing back from the edge.
“Maybe it will look better at low tide,” Jason hoped.
“There will probably just be more rocks poking up,” Rachel said. “You a good swimmer?”
“I’m fine,” Jason said. “I’m no Olympian. How about you?”
“I’m pretty good. I’ve done a fair amount of snorkeling and scuba diving. But no serious cliff diving. This is high.”
Turning, Jason stared back at the slope they had descended, realizing that they commanded a clear view of the lane for miles. At least no manglers or other sinister creatures intent on hacking them into confetti should be able to sneak up on them.
“I guess we wait here for midday,” Jason said, sitting down and settling back against a little wind-warped tree. Hands in his lap, he gazed at the long slope and its serpentine lane.
“Let me guess; you’ll take the first watch? Then we’ll wake up at midnight?”
“I’m not sleepy,” Jason protested.
“Neither am I,” Rachel said, sitting down cross-legged. “So, how do you think we’ll get back up?”
“There must be a way. Maybe the person in the cave knows how.”
“Are we really going to do this? Jump off a cliff and swim into a sea cave? We’ll probably die.”
“What else are we going to do?” Jason asked. “If there were any other option I might take it. But it seems clear that if we abandon this quest for the Word, we’re doomed. I’d rather risk my life than lose it for sure.”
“You believe everything the Blind King told you?” Rachel asked.
“Yeah, I think so. It matched what I read in the book, and what I heard from the loremaster.”
“You believe him enough to risk our lives?”
Jason paused. “No. I believe him enough to risk my life. I don’t see why both of us should jump.”
Rachel scratched her arm. “Why do you get to jump? Because you’re the boy?”
“It isn’t a prize; it’s a punishment.”
“It’s something important that