Elaris Ashwyn's Arc

Chapter 12 of 12

They climbed off the bank and left the river behind them. The stone ground held no water, so it held no trail. But by midday Elaris stopped and stared at the empty land ahead. Bare rock stretched east, cut by dry gullies and low ridges. She had never walked this way. Neither had Ren. The ferry lay somewhere past it, but she saw no road, no marker, no sign of the great water. "You don't know this ground either," she said. It wasn't a question. Ren shook his head. "The king's maps ended at the river. Past this I only heard rumors." He crouched and pressed a hand to the stone, as if the rock might tell him something. It told him nothing. "We could pick a line and hope." "Hope walks us into a cliff or a dead gully." Elaris turned in place. The sun told her east, but east held a hundred dead ends. She thought of Garrick's warning. Trust no face you don't already know. Out here there were no faces at all. That was almost worse. Obsidian dropped from the sky and landed on a spur of rock ahead of them. The raven croaked once, then flew a short way east and waited. He flew again, and waited again. Elaris watched him. The bird had led her to the sprite in the snare. He had cried warning at the river. Now he flew a path and looked back to see if she followed. "He's picked a line," Elaris said. Ren frowned. "A bird's line." "He found the sprite when I couldn't. He heard the trackers before you did." She started after the raven. "He can see the water from up there. We can't see past the next ridge." They followed. Obsidian led them along a shelf of dry rock that bent between two ridges. The path never climbed too steep. It never dropped into a gully. Twice Elaris would have chosen wrong and hit a wall of stone. Each time the raven had already turned them away from it. By dusk they crested a low rise. Below them the land fell toward a wide gray shine that stretched to the sky. The great water. A thin trail of smoke rose near the shore where a ferry landing sat among the rocks. Elaris let out a breath she had held for miles. "There. That's the crossing." Ren stood beside her and watched the water. "You trusted a bird to carry us blind across ground neither of us knew." "I trusted what I've seen him do." She looked at Ren, then at the raven perched on the rise. Eleven years she had trusted nothing living. Now she counted two. "We reach the ferry by morning. Then we cross, and I find out who buried my family." The unknown east was behind them. The great water lay ahead, and past it, the truth.