Page 8

Tasheem and Rivdan have remained at the back of the horde to ensure none fall behind. Dawsyn suspects it also allows them to hide their ailments from her and Ryon. They seem to struggle to keep pace. Salem and Esra stay close. Every so often, Dawsyn can make out Esra’s despair – the quiet sniffs and rattling breaths. Salem murmurs to him in an attempt to mollify, but the sniffing continues.

“Dawsyn?” says a voice. Hector’s. His face is suddenly thrown into relief, hanging there in the dark as though detached from his body. “Mind if I walk by you?”

Dawsyn grins wanly, but doesn’t break pace, “You’ve never asked permission before.”

“You weren’t the almighty leader of our people before.”

“I am hardly that now,” she scoffs. “The word ‘leader’ implies compliant underlings.”

“That’s rather tyrannical of you,” Hector comments. “Alvira and Vasteel probably thought the same.” This gives Dawsyn pause. “I think the word ‘leader’implies the action of leading. Which you seem to be doing as we speak.”

“It isn’t democratic. These people would rather have me out front as their sacrifice.”

He shakes his head. “There’s never any point arguing with you. If I point to the sky and call it ‘up’, you’ll call it ‘down’.”

“And yet,” Dawsyn drawls. “You can’t seem to help yourself.”

Hector shoves her lightly and she smiles. How different the setting for such familiar habits. He has always managed to claw even the most reluctant grin from her. It is possible that Hector, despite the similarities in their upbringing, has retained a nature that is whole and good.

She prays she has not forsaken it. Guilt swells once more. “Do you think I made a mistake?” she asks. “Deceiving them?”

Hector’s footfalls, dulled by the ash, are all she hears for a moment. He seems deep in contemplation, though she can’t make out the nuances of his face. “I understand why you felt you had to. But… I do not think deception a good tool for a leader.”

“I’m not a–”

“Youare, Dawsyn.” Hector’s interjection slices the thinness of her refusal in two. “Whether you choose it or not, whether you believe yourself capable, the charge of these people has fallen to you. Denying it will do you little good.” Hector raises his head to the thread of sky above. In a whisper, he says. “Should they find out you have led them astray, you will have made an enemy out of every one of them.”

Despite herself, defensiveness encumbers her. “And if I lead them to their salvation, they will be none the wiser.”

“Quite the gamble,” Hector remarks casually, though there is a shake to his voice, a barely contained dread. “But as you know, I’ve placed my bets with you.”

She feels the weight of it, of all of them.

Hector continues on beside her, staggering every so often over stray rocks. He leaves Dawsyn to dissect the enormity of this journey and all the lives she has put on its course. Entrapping them. Enslaving them to it. She thinks of Ryon and Hector and their small band of rebels. Should the Ledge people learn that she is walking them away from Terrsaw, and not to it, their wrath will not befall only her.

CHAPTERFOUR

If Dawsyn believed the slopes above were a test of great endurance, they now appear child’s play in the wake of the Chasm’s path.

It seems to her that this middle world was made torturous by design. The graphite walls narrow and widen without warning, giving Dawsyn the impending dread of constriction. At times, the path becomes so thin the water spans from wall to wall. If she walks with her arms outstretched, she can touch either side. Here her heart stutters, her throat closes. She becomes sure the next bend will reveal the meeting of those two walls, pulverising any hope for freedom – a dead end.

She walks with her hands pressed to either side as though she might hold those walls apart, praying they do not collapse their efforts. Then, miraculously, they begin to widen once more.

Those walking between them fall constantly. The Chasm echoes their grunts and groans as ankles buckle against the hazardous rocks protruding from the path. Dawsyn’s palms are torn from catching herself on the ground. The children often need to be carried, and it only serves to slow them all.

Slow… agonizingly slow. They travel at such an aching pace. It is perhaps the most painful torment of the Chasm. This black abyss thwarts any attempts of haste. The only sign of time passing is the strip of light miles above them and its incremental changes. The growing amber, the slow waning to grey. Without it, the illusion of night would be uninterrupted. It is the only measure of their progress. The only tether they have to the surface.

When it seems they have pushed onward as far as they can, Dawsyn calls for rest. They will eat and drink, sleep a while. After, there will be nothing else to do but forge onward.

The people of the Ledge let their bags and burdens fall with resounding groans. Many converge at the stream and lap up handfuls of water. There is very little conversation among the groupings – evidence of lives lived in wary solitude. They seem to struggle with the proximity of their neighbours now. Dawsyn watches them clamour for safer positions along the Chasm’s wall, where their backs are protected. They huddle their possessions behind them, lest they be stolen. There is not a single ounce of trust among their number and Dawsyn cannot blame them. It would be so easy to rob one’s fellow here in the dark.

She sighs as she lets her own pack fall from her shoulder. It is full of the most valuable resource they have – food. Dawsyn trusts only her inner circle of outcasts to carry it. Somewhere in this crowd, Ryon, Salem, Esra and Hector carry more. Combined, it still amounts to very little. Enough to quell the appetite of a hundred for a couple of days. Beyond that, they will be walking against the pangs of growing hunger, against time itself. If the end of this Chasm does not reveal itself to them soon, then more dangerous measures will need to be taken. Ryon, Tasheem and Rivdan will be sent atop the mountain in search of sustenance, but only if they are recovered enough to fly – and even in this, Dawsyn has her doubts.

She wipes her tired eyes with the back of her hand, and shuffles with her torch through the bodies to an open space.

“Stifle your torches,” she calls. They must preserve their torch light for travelling less they burn down to cinders. Gradually the halos of light among their party diminish, except for her own. Without the orange glow illuminating patches of dark, the blackness is practically absolute.

It does not take long for Ryon to find her. The torch is a beacon in the dark, and for all Dawsyn knows, perhaps the charmed necklace she still wears around her neck beckons to him as well. Perhaps it mimics this constant searching she feels within her at his absence.