Chapter 6
She must have dozed off, because she started awake and choked all over again on the dust and leaves. She fought her way out of her pile of debris and stood spluttering and coughing in the misty morning. At least that night was over. She set off once again right away and wound her way downward, always downward, into deeper darkness and thicker stands of trees, away from the bright sky in search of water.
Time disappeared without the sun to guide it. She pressed on and on. Most of the day vanished under her feet, but she couldn’t stop. Unbearable thirst drove her forward. She had to find water, and soon. She couldn’t last the day without it. The sun touched the treetops. It must be close to noon. She couldn’t go on this way. She needed food and water. Then something like music tickled her ears. It soothed her, but her heart sank at the sound. Was she hallucinating in her dehydrated delirium?
Then she listened to the music closer and recognized it. She fought off the exhaustion threatening to drag her down. She had to move. She would die if she laid there any longer, and the sound gave her one last glimmer of hope.
She started forward, toward that wonderful sound. The sound drove her mad. She put out her hand from one tree to the next, when she almost fell headlong down a sheer cliff to an expanse of stony rubble below. She dug in her heels and clawed the crumbly soil for support, but her foot hung in mid-air over a towering canyon of sheer rock.
At last, she dared to look over the edge at the rocks below. Trees and brambles dotted the ground between the rocks, and light glistened on ripples of water snaking through the canyon. The soft musical sound she heard higher up thundered against the canyon walls and echoed in her ears. The river crashed over waterfalls and giggled through deep pools.
Chris caught her breath. This was so much more than the stream she hoped for. This river would turn into a major waterway when it left the forest. It would lead all the way to the sea, through continents and into the territory of the other factions. It would lead her where she wanted to go.
She stepped back away from cliff edge and skirted around to her left to find a way down. The cliff stretched as far as she could see in both directions, but she didn’t care. She followed it with her spirits soaring to heaven. She’d done it. She’d escaped.
After an hour or more of searching, she found a path down the cliff to the boulder field. She spent another hour picking her way over boulders and between puddles of algae to a rivulet of clear running water. She knelt down on the hard stones and lowered her parched lips to the blessed water. She touched the silver liquid to her lips. Then she cupped it into her mouth, and at last gulped it down in mouthfuls.
When she sat back on her heels and gazed across the water at the woods on the other side, her eye fell on a patch of low-growing moss wedged between the rocks. Tiny blue balls dotted the grey-green surface, and Chris held her breath to stop the apparition from vanishing before her eyes.
She picked her way across the treacherous riverbed. She stepped from one teetering rock to the next. She dragged her eyes away from those tantalizing blue beads to place her feet at each step, only to lock her gaze on them again.
Closer and closer they drew, but still she dared not hope they were what she thought they were. They might be poisonous, and she’d be dead out here in the middle of nowhere. No one would know where she was or how she died.
But she didn’t care. Her stomach told her to hazard everything on this one slender chance. She tiptoed across the river, and her hands shook when she plucked the shiny blue berries from their bush. They dropped into her palm, hard and taut with juice, and pearls of river foam clung to their dusky skin.
She popped the first three into her mouth and bit down. The juice squirted down her throat and pricked her tongue. Oh, she never tasted anything as good in her life! She clawed handfuls of the berries off their bushes and crammed them into her mouth as fast as she could. She would probably give herself a gut ache, but she didn’t care. She would suffer any torture to satisfy her hunger—and what a way to satisfy it!
She ate as many of the berries as she could find, and at last her hunger faded. She drank some more water to wash down her meal and sat down on a rock to rest. Her legs and feet burned from walking. She sighed and looked around the canyon.
These sheer walls wouldn’t let her follow the river bed very far. She would have to hike back up to the tablelands to follow it. But at least she could come down to the water’s edge for a drink and something to eat. She could follow the river wherever it led her.
But right now, she had a different problem. Where was she going to spend the night? She couldn’t spend it down here, and she didn’t care much for the idea of spending it inside a pile of leaves again. If she was going to spend any time near this spot at all, she would build herself a sturdier shelter, something more like the Lycaon’s dwellings.
She hated to imitate them, but they must have learned a thing or two about living in this landscape. Marissa said they were nomadic and moved around. They kept their dwellings simple and temporary. In retrospect, with the benefit of a full stomach, their practicality made sense. How could she think them squalid and dirty? Wasn’t Marissa’s food good enough for her?
The sun sank below the cliff rim, and the canyon fell into shadow. In an instant, all the warmth vanished from the world. Chris definitely couldn’t spend the night down here. But she couldn’t force herself to stand up. She would rather freeze to death than to take one step away from the precious water and berries. She might wake up in her leaf pile again and find out it was all a dream.
Then, out of the shadows across the pool, two glistening black stars pierced the gloom. She stared at them, but they never wavered. She blinked, but they didn’t. Her scalp prickled. Would some fearsome creature leap out and tear her limb from limb?
The last light sparkled on those two unblinking points. Dense foliage surrounded them on all sides so she couldn’t make out the shape behind them. But the longer she stared at them, the more certain she became that two eyes watched her from a hiding place beyond the water.
She tore her gaze away from them just long enough to look around. A stick stuck out between some rocks nearby, but it was too far away. She would never reach it before the creature attacked. Instead, she bent down and picked up a baseball-sized stone from the riverbed at her feet. She kept her eyes locked on the creature the whole time.
She hefted the stone in her hand. It was perfect; round, smooth, and heavy. It sent a surge of adrenaline through her. She squared her shoulders and gritted her teeth. She would have one shot at this, but if she hit it hard enough, it would probably run away without a fight.
She did this once with a brown bear in the mountains near her home. One good hit with a rock stopped it in its tracks and sent it running for the hills. Most wild animals didn’t want to fight something that would fight back. They wanted easy prey.
She wouldn’t be easy prey. She never had been, and she wasn’t about to start now, not when she finally found food and water to help her on her journey. She eased herself up off her rock and planted her feet wide.
The eyes narrowed at her in malicious rage. The branches swayed around it. Chris pulled her hand back and cocked her wrist. She wound up all her strength to send the rock smashing through the undergrowth.
But at that moment, the creature broke cover and charged toward her. It rushed at her so fast she never got her weapon launched before he struck her with all his weight. Chris recognized him halfway across the pool, but the sight of him only enraged her even more. It was Turk.
He’d followed her. He was probably laughing all the way at her hunger and thirst, at the night she spent in a pile of leaves. He probably got a good chuckle out of her staggering halfway across hell and gone trying to find her way out of that wilderness.
And now here he was, attacking her the way she always knew he would. He was dangerous. She knew that the moment she laid eyes on him. She didn’t care what Marissa said about him and the rest of the Angondrans. She would never trust him. He was a killer, and here he was to prove it.
The moment she recognized him, she changed her strategy. She didn’t hurl her rock at him. There wasn’t time. Instead, she gripped it tighter and waited for the impact. His arms closed around her, and he knocked her backwards onto the ground.
A stick stuck in her back and sent a lightning bolt of pain through her, but she paid it no heed. She brought her rock up and slammed it with all her might into the side of Turk’s head. He bellowed in rage, and his lips peeled back from sharp pointed teeth. He snarled and snapped in her face, but she didn’t waste an instant. She drew back her hand and hit him again, harder this time.
Turk roared into her face, but he kept control of himself. He reared back just enough to get hold of her wrist. He smashed her hand down on the gravel, again and again. Chris shrieked in pain, and her hand fell open. The rock tumbled out of her grasp and joined all the other rocks in the riverbed.