Celestia Threadwhisper's Arc

Chapter 4 of 6

By morning the guide line had sagged. It dipped low over the chasm, close enough that the updraft plucked at it. Celestia stood at the edge and watched it swing. Lyra sat behind her with the half-spun bridge thread across her knees. The child on the far cliff had backed away from the edge, but the crack behind him had opened wider in the night. "We can't run the bridge thread on that," Celestia said. "It'll drag the guide down into the gap before we're halfway across." Lysander crouched beside her. He tested the guide with two fingers. "It needs lift. And tension. From both sides." "He can't pull it from over there. He's a child. He'll snap it or fall." "Then we lift it from here." Aldric came up the path in his gossamer robe, leaning on a peeled stick. He was the grove's oldest scholar, and Celestia had not asked him to come. He looked at the sagging line and did not speak for a long moment. When he did, it was flat. "You need weight on this side and a hand you trust on that side. The child is the hand. The weight is the problem." "We have no anchor stone here," Celestia said. "Only root and soil." "Then buy one." Aldric tipped his chin down the slope. Grendok was already climbing toward them, a short stocky troll with a chisel through his belt. He did not greet anyone. He looked at the line, the lip of the chasm, and the loose soil, in that order. "What's the pay?" Grendok said. "Moth-silk scraps," Lysander said. "All we have left." Grendok grunted. "Show me the edge." He knelt and pressed his palm to the rock beneath the soil. He worked his fingers along a seam Celestia had not seen. Then he drew the chisel and cut. Three strikes. A block of granite came loose the size of his chest. He rolled it back from the lip and drove an iron pin through a natural crack in the top. "Tie here," he said. Celestia guided Lyra's hands. They looped the guide line around the pin and drew it tight. Aldric called across the gap, slow and clear, and the child braced his small weight against the anchor stone on his side and pulled. The line rose. It stopped sagging. It hummed. Lyra lifted the bridge thread and fed it onto the guide, hand over hand, letting the taut line carry the weight. The bridge thread crept across the chasm. Halfway across, the ledge behind the child gave. A slab the size of a door broke off and fell. The child scrambled back onto solid rock, still holding the anchor pebble in place. But the anchor stone shifted an inch toward the new edge. "It'll hold for now," Grendok said. "Not for long."