Darkwell - Douglas Niles [31]
For an hour or more, she made steady progress. The walking wanned her body, and all her attention was focused on the placement of the next step. She had no time to brood about her surroundings or her plight.
The steep ridge led to a broad shoulder. The air felt noticeably warmer here, and the snow had nearly stopped. She looked into the gray clouds surrounding her and imagined that she saw all manner of hideous, deformed figures there.
Suddenly she stopped in shock. Something had moved within those looming clouds. She saw it again, a vague shape that soared through a thinning of the mist, only to disappear again within the folds of the cloud. It could have been a great bird, or something else. Whatever its nature, it looked to be nearly the size of a man.
Nervously she tightened her grip on her staff. By instinct, she probed with her feet, finding a broad, flat slab to provide a secure foothold. All the while, her eyes searched the clouds on all sides and above her. For many minutes, she stood alert, unmoving except to roll her head to look everywhere.
But she saw nothing, nothing except the vastness of suddenly threatening nature. Her feet began to ache from the chill of inaction, and she started to descend again. Robyn moved more carefully now, cautiously planting each foot on the broken ground and then searching the skies for the hidden threat.
The length of the broad shoulder behind her, she once again confronted a steeply descending ridge. She slid along a knife's edge of stone, ignoring the dizzying drop on either side. She saw two tiny lakes below her. One, to the south, lay beneath a white sheet of ice, covered by a thin layer of snow. A dusting covered the lake's small basin, only the larger jumbles of rocks poking through as proof of solid firmament below.
The other lake lay to the north, just beyond the narrow gap in the crest that marked the border between Corwell and the vale. Here no ice had formed, and no snow remained on the ground. The rocks of the valley floor were rounded and worn, a dark gray shade. The water itself festered in choking weeds. Patches of scum floated on the surface, among the brownish green tendrils of algae.
Robyn reached a sharp drop. She looked at a wide ledge, twenty feet below, and considered jumping. The alternative was to turn and face the rock, working her way carefully down one of the wide cracks in the stone face. At the same time, she would leave herself terribly exposed to any menace from the sky. She looked again at the drop and realized that a slight miscalculation in her jump would plummet her to certain death, off one side of the ridge or the other.
The clouds still oppressed her, but her descent had carried her far below the heavy gray mass. She stared intently for minutes but saw nothing moving among them. Tucking the staff across her belt and lashing it in place with the apron, she turned to face the rock and climbed over the edge.
A small fissure gave her a toehold, and she reached down to grab a spur of stone with her hand. She lowered her other foot and wedged it between two outcroppings of rock. And then she felt a presence behind her.
Instantly she let go of the rock, dropping free at the first prickling of alarm. Thumping to the ledge, she fell to the side to absorb the force of her fall and then whirled to stare upward.
Suddenly a creature crashed into the wall where her back had been. She heard a cracking of bone as the thing, eerily silent, fell beside her. She dared not look at it as she desperately tore her staff from her back and climbed to her feet, scanning the skies for any other attackers. Her timely drop had saved her life, for the thing would have smashed her body brutally if she had remained on the cliff.
But what was it? The limp body sprawled beside her, issuing a heavy stench of rot and corruption. She felt her eyes drawn toward the corpse, but then another flash of movement in the sky drew her full attention.
She saw another of the things – it looked like a great bird – diving from the clouds,