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“We can fly or fold them to the bottom of the Chasm,” Ryon nods. “It will be difficult, but if they can be convinced to go, then it may be done.”

“And then they will walk,” Dawsyn agrees, her mind racing ahead to other plans. What provisions to take. What to leave behind.

“The Chasm is filled,” Yennes repeats, an echo of a faint uttering. Her voice shakes as she says it, but she is still louder than Dawsyn has ever heard her. “The path is not empty.”

Dawsyn analyses her. Her eyes are wet with fear, her hands in a free-fall tumble she can no longer control. This is it, then, the thing that changed her. A ferocious woman of the Ledge turned withering and fragile.

“What,” Dawsyn begins slowly, her eyes narrowing, “is in the Chasm?”

Yennes swallows convulsively, her eyes closing against the moisture. “I’ve spent years forgetting…years.”

Dawsyn sighs. More monsters. More beasts. Things of the mountain worse than Glacians. She stands and goes to the woman. She takes her trembling, flighty hands into her own. She feels the way those fingers twitch, desperate to be free, and waits until they relax, waits for Yennes to open her eyes again.

“I am sorry,” Dawsyn says softly, and she means it. She is sorry for all this woman has endured alone. For all of Dawsyn’s ordeals, at least not all were faced in solitude. “But our people don’t deserve to remain on the Ledge.”

“I know.” She nods fervently. “I know.”

“So, we will take them into Chasm,” Dawsyn continues. “Whether we know what awaits… or not.”

Yennes nods again, her head bobbing with deranged compliance.

“Into the Chasm,” Dawsyn says to them all. “And then through it to its end.”

CHAPTERFIFTY-SEVEN

Dawsyn’s plan is uncomplicated, and yet still fraught with a million divinations of failure. Those that are willing will return to the Ledge once more. Dawsyn, with the help of Hector, will say that precise thing that will convince a hundred or so people to go into the Chasm – a chasm they have watched and leant away from for half a century. Ryon, Rivdan, and Tasheem will fly the humans to the bottom, two at a time. Baltisse will fold as many people as she can, without debilitating herself.

“Don’t speak to me as if I don’t know my own limits,” the mage says icily. Dawsyn rolls her eyes but continues her speech to the rest of the group, who stand in a loose formation at the shoreline, eyes on the end of the Chasm.

“How will we avoid the notice of Adrik and the rest?” Tasheem asks. “The palace isn’t so far away.”

“We go at night,” Dawsyn says. “We stay quiet. They are not likely to notice a single Glacian and two humans slipping over the lip. We will be careful.”

“And then?” asks Esra, his eyes round and astonished.

“And then we walk through the Chasm,” Dawsyn says. “And pray we reach the end.”

“We pray thereisan end,” Yennes corrects.

“There is an end,” Dawsyn says assuredly. “There must be.”

Ryon speaks now. “You must all choose whether you join us or stay. The Chasm is not free of threat. There are… things lurking within that will give us no small amount of trouble, should we meet them. Salem, Esra,” Ryon says, dragging the men’s eyes from the Chasm’s maw. “You needn’t come and put yourselves at risk for this quest. You should stay with Yennes in this cove. Build your own home…”

“I won’t be staying,” Yennes says suddenly, the words dry on the breeze, shaky.

Dawsyn frowns at the woman. “Where will you go?”

“To the Ledge,” Yennes says, standing a little taller. “I can fold, so I will come.”

“Yen–”

“I will come,” she says once more, with force this time. She eyes the Chasm’s opening with something that resembles animosity – a threat she has kept in her sight all these years.

“What did you mean, dear Ryon?” Esra asks, his arms crossed. “When you said we should stay? Salem might be two hundred pounds of imbecile, butI’mnot fucking useless!”

Ryon groans. “Es–”

“I’m not the dimwit in thevelvet frock, yeh benign lump,” Salem huffs.