“There are losses the world records and losses no Chronicle can measure.”
— From an unnamed traveller’s lament
Khepri could not remember leaving the ridge.
He remembered Meka reaching for the far ledge. Tàlé trying to help him. The bridge turning beneath them.
After that, there had only been Simi’s hand around his wrist and the uneven forest passing beneath his feet.
His tool case was gone. He had carried it up the ridge; now he kept reaching for a handle that was no longer there.
He did not know when he had dropped it. The resonance reader was inside. Aunt Sẹ́ni had trusted him with it, and he had carried it everywhere since. He could recall the thickness of a support rail and every measurement that had mattered at the crossing. He could not remember putting down the case.
He ought to go back.
He knew he could not.
The left lens of his glasses had cracked. Whenever the frame slipped down his nose, the trees ahead divided into overlapping shapes. He kept adjusting them with his free hand, which made it harder to catch himself when his feet struck a root.
Simi stopped and turned.
“Can you keep going?”
“Yes.”
She looked at his legs.
“Tell me if you can’t.”
“I’m telling you I can.”
It was almost an ordinary argument. Almost. Simi had been telling him to watch his feet since he was little. Usually he found some reason to protest. Tonight he would have given anything for her to sound merely annoyed with him again.
She took his hand again.
Around them, the surviving families stumbled along a track cut through dense trees. Nobody had enough breath to speak unless something was wrong. They followed the lanterns ahead and listened to the clicking that sometimes sounded close, sometimes far away, but never truly stopped.
A woman called from beyond the trees.
“This way! Through the rocks!”
Khepri lifted his head.
He knew that voice.
“Aunt Sẹ́ni?”
A fallen cedar lay across the next clearing. Beside it, an indigo-clad physician was guiding people through a narrow passage between two boulders. The lantern in her hand illuminated a torn sleeve and dust across her face.
“Auntie!”
He broke away from Simi.
Sẹ́ni turned. For an instant she looked too surprised to move. Then she opened her arms, and Khepri ran straight into them.
“Oh, child.”
He held on so tightly that she had to shift her footing. He had imagined finding her at every bend in the road. Now that she was here, he was afraid that loosening his arms might make her disappear into the crowd again.
“You’re here,” he said against her robe.
“I am.”
“The bridge broke. Meka was there, and Tàlé—”
His voice failed. He could still see Meka waiting for the crossing to clear, still hear Tàlé speaking to the handlers. The moment had ended before Khepri could make himself believe it was happening. He pressed his face against Sẹ́ni's robe, unable to finish the sentence.
Sẹ́ni looked past him at Simi.
“The ridge crossing?”
Simi shook her head once.
Their aunt closed her eyes. When she opened them, she examined Khepri’s face as carefully as she would a patient.
“Can you see?”
“One lens is broken.”
“Are you injured?”
He shook his head.
She turned to Simi. “And you?”
“I’m all right.”
Sẹ́ni did not look convinced, but another family was waiting at the passage. She waved them through before returning her attention to the children.
“Where’s Father?” Khepri asked.
Her hand went still on his shoulder.
“I last saw him near the river. I crossed at the eastern ford.”
“He promised he’d follow.”
“I know.”
“He knows the roads better than anyone.”
“Yes.”
Khepri waited for Sẹ́ni to tell him which road his father had taken. She had always had an answer before, even when the answer annoyed him. In his mind Dàre was still somewhere behind them, walking fast with his bow at his shoulder, ready to complain that they had worried for nothing. Khepri tried to hold on to that picture while he waited.
Tonight she looked as if staying calm required all the strength she had left.
She did not tell him his father was safe. Khepri understood that she would not lie to him. He wished, just this once, that she would.
Simi stepped beside them.
“We should move.”
Sẹ́ni nodded. “Both of you, stay close.”
Then the clicking came from the trees behind the clearing.
The last families hurried between the boulders.
* * *
The passage opened into a shallow basin beneath the ridge.
Rocky slopes rose on either side, leaving the centre relatively clear of trees. Moonlight reached the ground, revealing a narrow trail climbing the southern slope. Beyond it, somewhere out of sight, stood the watch station.
Khepri tried to judge the distance. His broken glasses blurred the far edge of the basin, and he had no reliable map of the path ahead. Knowing the direction of a place did not tell him how long it would take to reach it.
A physician stumbled behind them.
Sẹ́ni went back at once.
“Can you put weight on that leg?”
“Some.”
“Then give me your arm.”
“You should go.”
“And leave you to argue with a rock? Come.”
He managed a weary smile and leaned on her shoulder until two attendants reached them.
Khepri watched his aunt transfer the man into their care. She did not stop to rest afterward. She counted the families passing through the basin, checked whether the last carriers were moving and sent a child with a lantern towards the southern trail. He had seen her do this at Elune, moving from patient to patient while somehow remembering whether he had eaten. Even now he caught himself waiting for her to turn and ask.
A tremor passed through the ground.
It was so slight that Khepri initially blamed his exhausted legs. Then several loose pebbles shifted beside his feet.
He turned towards the northern opening.
The first Thrall came between the rocks on hooked limbs. Another scrambled over the boulder beside it. More crowded into view, their movements erratic as they forced their way through the gap.
The basin gave them room to spread.
People began running towards the southern trail.
Sẹ́ni looked from the approaching creatures to the fallen cedar beside the path. Its trunk lay against the slope, leaving a narrow opening where the last families had to pass.
She sent the attendants onwards.
“Take everyone up the trail. Don’t wait for me.”
Khepri followed her gaze.
“No.”
She turned.
“Auntie, no.”
“Take your brother,” she told Simi.
“We’re all going,” Khepri said.
“Go ahead of me.”
“You can’t hold them back.”
“No,” Sẹ́ni said. “Not for long.”
The answer frightened him more than any promise would have. Visit g.com for the full chapter.
She knelt in front of him, pushing his broken glasses into place. One indigo thread had come loose from the ivory bead at his left ear. She reached for it automatically, as though there were still time for the small, ordinary attentions she had always given him.
Her hand paused there.
He remembered the countless times she had straightened those threads and told him to stop worrying at them. As a child he had squirmed away, impatient to get back to whatever he was making. Now he held perfectly still.
“You need to listen carefully,” she said.
“I am.”
“Then stop planning an argument.”
He tried to speak and failed.
“The southern trail has a ledge above the main route. Simi knows which rock I mean. If the crowd blocks the lower path, use the upper one.”
Simi studied the slope.
“I see it.”
Sẹ́ni opened her satchel and placed a small glass vial in Simi’s palm.
“Emergency light. Strike the base against stone if the path becomes too dark.”
“Auntie—”
“Save it until you need it.”
Khepri looked at the vial, then at the approaching Thralls.
“I can build something.”
“Not with your Chi in this condition.”
“There’s wood everywhere. If I could move a branch—”
“You don’t have time.”
“I can think of a way.”
She placed both hands on his shoulders.
“Khepri.”
He stopped.
It was the voice she used when a patient refused to hear an unwelcome answer. He had heard it countless times. He had never hated hearing it until now.
“You have so much left to learn,” she said.
“Then come and teach me.”
The words came out before he could stop them. There were things she had promised to show him, things he had been certain he could learn later. He did not want another instruction for surviving the night. He wanted tomorrow, and his aunt there to complain about the way he spent it.
For a moment her expression softened, and he thought she might change her mind.
“You impossible boy.”
She pulled him close. Khepri heard the familiar rustle of her indigo robe and remembered sitting beside her when he was small, pretending not to be tired while she worked. For a moment he was small enough to believe that if he stayed where he was, she could keep everything outside her arms from reaching him.
He clung to her. Behind them, the clicking grew louder, joined by the scrape of limbs against stone.
Simi stepped towards them. Sẹ́ni embraced her too, holding her a moment longer than Simi seemed to expect. Her niece's face tightened, but she said nothing. Then Sẹ́ni placed Khepri's hand in hers, just as Dàre had done at the bridge.
“Keep him with you.”
Simi nodded.
Their aunt rose.
A spear lay beside the fallen cedar, abandoned by one of the guards. Sẹ́ni picked it up. She held it differently from the trained defenders Khepri had watched earlier that night, but she chose her position carefully: between the trunk and the rock, where only one attacker could reach her at a time.
The first Thrall emerged beside the cedar.
“Go!” she shouted.
Simi pulled Khepri towards the upper path.
He kept looking back.
Sẹ́ni thrust the spear to keep the first creature from passing. It retreated a step, and the family nearest the southern turn escaped into the trees.
Another Thrall climbed across the trunk.
Then another.
Sẹ́ni moved backwards towards the opening, still keeping herself between the creatures and the fleeing families.
She looked frightened.
Khepri had somehow believed she would not. Sẹ́ni had always been the person who knew what to do when others panicked. Seeing fear on her face made him understand that she had known the danger all along and had stayed anyway.
“AUNTIE!”
She did not turn.
“RUN!”
Simi dragged him around the rock.
For one last instant he saw Sẹ́ni’s indigo robe beyond the cedar, then the gathering Thralls hid the passage from view.
He called again.
No answer reached him.
Only the clicking followed them up the ledge.
* * *
The upper path narrowed until the rock wall brushed Khepri’s shoulder.
To his right, the slope fell steeply towards a stream hidden among the trees. Ahead, the ledge curved around a projecting wall of stone. Simi moved first, testing the ground before she put her weight on it.
Khepri followed because her hand was still holding his.
Every instinct urged him to turn around.
He wanted to go back for Sẹ́ni. He wanted to find his father, and Ibara, and Meka and Tàlé. He kept assigning each of them a place in his mind: Dàre on the road from the river, Ibara somewhere below the ridge, Sẹ́ni behind the rocks. If he could picture where they were, perhaps he had not truly lost them. But each imagined route ended at a place he could no longer reach.
There was no path he could take.
The ledge ended abruptly.
A section had broken away, leaving a gap between their position and the continuation on the far side. It was not enormous, but Khepri could barely trust his legs. A jump was out of the question.
“We can’t cross,” he said.
Simi looked down.
Below the gap, a fallen tree rested against the slope. One thick branch extended from its trunk towards the far ledge.
“We can use that.”
Khepri studied the branch. It was not level, and he could not judge how securely the trunk rested against the rocks.
“It will move.”
“Probably.”
“It might break.”
“I know.”
He looked at her.
“That’s a terrible plan.”
“Then tell me a better one.”
The clicking answered from behind them.
Simi took a short length of rope from her waist, looped it around a root emerging from the rock wall and tested the fastening. Then she secured the other end around Khepri with a knot he could release on the far side.
“You’ll lower yourself onto the thick part of the branch,” she said. “Keep your weight near the trunk until you can reach the other ledge.”
“And you?”
“I’ll come after you.”
He stared at her. Dàre had promised to follow. For the first time all night, he was afraid of those words themselves.
He looked towards the dark slope.
“Simi—”
“Look at me.”
He did.
“You know how to move across something unstable. You’ve been building things like this for years.”
“Usually when I can test them first.”
“You’ve already told me all the ways it might fail.” She held his gaze. “Now show me how to cross it.”
A Thrall appeared around the bend.
There was no time left to argue.
Khepri lowered himself onto the branch.
It bent under his weight. He held the bark with both hands and moved carefully towards the far side, keeping his body close to the wood.
“Khepri, move.”
He edged forwards.
A smaller limb cracked beneath his boot.
He froze.
“Keep your hands where they are,” Simi called. “Look at the ledge in front of you.”
He could see it through the broken lens. A pale edge of stone. Close enough to reach if he moved another few inches.
He shifted his grip.
His fingers caught the far ledge, and he dragged himself onto it. For several breaths he remained on his knees, trying to stop his hands shaking.
Then he released the rope and turned.
“Simi!”
She stood on the opposite side.
Two Thralls had reached the bend. A third was climbing along the outer edge of the shelf, blocking the route back.
“Come on!”
Simi gathered the loose rope and stepped towards the crossing.
The nearest creature rushed her.
She moved aside, but the action forced her towards the damaged outer edge. Stone shifted under her boot. She reached for the same root anchoring Khepri’s rope and caught it before she lost her balance.
A crack widened along the wall.
Khepri saw it immediately.
“Don’t pull against the outer shelf!”
She looked up at him.
“I know.”
She tested her footing, trying to transfer her weight towards the solid rock. A Thrall crowded the narrow ledge behind her.
Khepri dropped flat on his stomach and reached towards the gap.
“Take my hand.”
“Stay back.”
“I can reach.”
He stretched farther.
She was still too far away.
The creature advanced. Simi planted one foot against the wall to keep it from forcing her off the ledge, but the root shifted in the fractured stone.
More dust fell.
A hairline crack spread from the root’s base towards the edge of the ledge. Khepri had seen the same failure in wood and metal; rock gave him nothing he could mend from this distance.
“Let go of the root,” he said. “Use the wall. Slowly.”
She tried.
The Thrall rushed forward.
Simi turned to keep it from reaching the gap.
The damaged section broke away.
Khepri lunged across the opening.
Their fingers touched.
For one impossible moment he thought he had caught her.
Then the rock gave way beneath her, and her hand slipped out of reach.
“Simi!”
The sound echoed across the slope.
Khepri stayed at the edge, reaching into the darkness where she had vanished.
He waited for her voice. He waited for the familiar sharp instruction to get up and stop doing something foolish. He had spent his childhood answering her advice with objections, convinced she would always be there to give it again. He would have obeyed without arguing now. Just once.
There was no answer.
Behind him came the scrape of hooked limbs against stone.
The collapse had destroyed the immediate approach, but the Thralls were already finding ways around it.
Khepri stood.
He did not remember deciding to run.
* * *
The forest became a blur of trunks and roots.
Khepri had lost his sense of direction. He did not know how long he had been running or whether he had travelled south at all. His glasses slipped off and struck a stone. The cracked lens fell free.
He stopped to retrieve it.
It was a ridiculous thing to do. He knew that even as he knelt. Yet he could not leave the glasses behind. Simi had pushed them up his nose so many times, scolding him for forgetting they were there. He reached for them now as though recovering the familiar weight could return him to the moment before he had let go of her hand.
He climbed to his feet and nearly fell again.
A clearing opened ahead.
Khepri staggered into it, breathing so hard that his chest ached.
The clicking came from the forest around him, but the nearest creatures did not emerge.
Instead, a pale shape descended through the branches.
The winged Vekari.
It hovered a few paces above the ground. Its dark eyes followed him as he backed away.
Khepri stopped.
It watched as though his struggle to remain standing were more interesting than ending the pursuit.
“Why?” he whispered.
The narrow head tilted.
“Why are you doing this?”
The creature gave no answer.
Khepri thought of his father's bow, Sẹ́ni's medicine wagons and Ibara's workshop. He remembered Simi arguing about the carrier, correcting his plans, and taking his hand whenever he was too distracted to notice where he was going. He had thought of those things as ordinary irritations. Now he searched the silence for the sound of her voice.
Only hours earlier, they had been beneath the lanterns together.
He still knew how every piece of the carrier was supposed to fit. He could remember the measurements of the resonance reader. He could picture the workings of the damaged crossing.
None of that knowledge could tell him where his family had gone. He tried to imagine a machine that could find them, something that could search every road and every ravine. The thought formed as easily as any other invention. For the first time, he could not bear to follow it through.
The Vekari descended a little.
Khepri stepped back.
It watched.
He turned and ran.
The clicking rose around him, answering the shift in the creature’s wings. Thralls moved through the trees, closing paths and forcing him towards a lower stretch of ground.
Khepri scanned the trees for something he could drop into the path: a loose trunk, a hanging branch, anything. Every shape he reached was rooted too firmly or too far away. The nearest Thrall was already leaping for him.
His earring struck his cheek with every step.
Knowledge. Healing. Protection.
He had known the words since he was small.
He heard Sẹ́ni telling him to stop pulling at the threads. His hand went to the bead anyway, and he almost stumbled.
A distant boom sounded beyond the clouds.
The winged Vekari stopped.
Another sharp report crossed the night. The branches overhead trembled, and the air seemed to tighten around the clearing.
Khepri stumbled.
The sound did not roll and fade like ordinary thunder. It travelled in a straight, furious rush, followed by a crack that echoed through the forest.
The winged Vekari folded its forelimbs close to its body and tilted its head towards the sound, no longer watching Khepri.
Khepri raised his head.
Beyond the northern clouds, something was moving towards the clearing at tremendous speed.
The roar became deafening.
He dropped to one knee, staring into the sky.
Whatever was coming was heading straight towards him.
Khepri raised his arm as the roar filled the clearing. He never saw what came out of the clouds.