by Bill Allen
“If the chasm is bottomless, did you really need to worry about dying?” asked Melvin. In spite of the horror of the idea, Greg had to admit the boy’s question held some merit.
“Of course they did,” said Lucky. “After falling a few days, you’re sure to starve to death.”
“So how did you survive?” asked Priscilla.
“Yes,” said Nathan, “I’m curious as well. I will certainly want to know more before I consider allowing us to choose such a dangerous option.”
“We should listen to Nathan,” said Greg.
“How did you manage to stop before the chasm, Ryder?” Lucky asked.
“We didn’t.”
The others gasped—all except Nathan, who frowned. “But you’re with us today. How can that be?”
“We were fortunate that, try as we might, we were incapable of scrubbing even a slight bit of speed off our descent. We were also fortunate the snow had drifted at the bottom before freezing over, creating a natural ramp at the foot of the mountain.”
“You’re not trying to say you . . . ?”
“Jumped the chasm,” Ryder finished for him. “Yes.”
“But that’s impossible,” said Lucky. “Bottomless Chasm is hundreds of feet across.”
“More like a thousand at this point,” said Ryder, “but you’d be surprised how much speed you can pick up sliding down a nearly frictionless surface for thirty miles.”
“This is crazy,” said Greg. “You can’t jump across a thousand-foot-wide chasm and live.”
“Ah, but you can,” said Ryder, “and I’m here as proof.”
Nathan was shaking his head sternly. “Just because you were fortunate enough to survive once doesn’t mean you’d survive today, or that the rest of us wouldn’t be killed.”
“If it’s luck we need, then say no more,” said Lucky. “I’m your man.”
The others chattered excitedly until Nathan interrupted them with a shout. “No. We are not going to send this boy to his death just because you all think he’s too lucky to get hurt.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I wouldn’t be going to my death,” said Lucky, smiling. “I’d just be sliding down a mountain and jumping a bottomless chasm.”
Nathan scowled. “I won’t hear of it.”
The two spirelings stepped off to one side and held a private conversation without speaking while the others argued. Soon Gnash stepped forward, a stoic look upon his face, if Greg could judge the alien creature’s expressions.
“I will go first,” Gnash told them.
“You?” said Lucky. “Why should you have all the fun?”
“Quiet, son,” said Nathan. “Why would you volunteer to go, Gnash?”
“It only makes sense,” said the spireling. “Even if the boy went first, the rest of us would have no way of knowing if he survived or not. We would find ourselves once again having to decide who should risk his life next, and so it would be for each of us in turn.”
“So, what difference does it make who goes first?” said Lucky, clearly not pleased about Gnash taking away his one chance to slide down a mountain.
“Because of the connection we spirelings share. If I survive, Gnaw will know it is safe, and if not, he can advise you all to take the eastern route instead. It will not be as fast, but at least you will live through the experience.”
Nathan considered the spireling’s words. “You would be taking a great risk.”
“Perhaps, but I am far more capable of surviving than any of you . . . except for Gnaw, of course. As spirelings we are accustomed to traveling at high speeds, and if it is possible for me to do anything to control my descent, my superior reactions could save me from harm.”
“And it’s possible they will not,” argued Nathan. “I think I should be the one to go.”
“You?” said both Gnash and Lucky.
The idea of something happening to Nathan terrified Greg. “Why should you go, Nathan?”
“I cannot be harmed, at least not if our spireling friends allow me to protect myself.”
“If you mean we should let you use your magic, then the answer is no,” said Gnaw. “I do not wish to see Gnash harmed, but I would rather that than to dishonor our queen.”
“You spirelings ought to check your priorities,” Greg said. “If your queen was worthy of the respect you seem to hold for her, she wouldn’t ask Gnash to take unnecessary chances.”
The spirelings’ eyes bulged even wider than normal. “Keep in mind that Queen Gnarla knows what you have said,” Gnaw reminded him. “You would be wise to keep your opinions to yourself.”
“It is decided,” said Gnash. Without another word he stormed down the path to the west. The others shrugged and reluctantly fell into line behind him. Gnaw waited until all the others had left, then followed after, guarding the rear of the party as he’d done throughout their journey.
Here and there Greg spotted breaks in the trees to his right and rushed to look over the edge, hoping to discover another pass. But each new view turned out worse than the last. While Death’s Pass may have had a formidable name, it was a reasonably safe route down the mountain. Here, at each opening Greg spotted, the ground dropped away sharply for what looked like miles. If they stepped over the edge at any of these places, they’d have about as much chance of surviving as they would stepping out of a moving airplane.
Eventually Ryder called the group to a halt. “We’re here,” he announced.
“How can you tell?” asked Greg. “This spot doesn’t look any different from any other.”
“When you’ve stared death in the face and lived, you don’t quickly forget,” Ryder told him. He stood on tiptoes and pointed toward the side of the trail. “We stepped over the edge right there.”
“Aren’t you going over to look?” asked Lucky.
Ryder’s face had gone unusually pale. For the moment he looked far from a leader of men. “Uh . . . no. Ever since . . . well, you know . . . I’ve been a little . . . afraid of heights.”
“Afraid of heights?” said Priscilla. “But we’ve been hiking through the mountains all week. I haven’t noticed you having any trouble.”
Ryder smiled faintly. “Thanks. I guess I’ve hid it well.”
Melvin stepped up to the cliff edge and whistled. “Where’s the mountain?”
Greg moved beside him and surveyed the slope for himself . . . or at least he would have, if it had extended out in front of him the way slopes were supposed to do. Instead it cut back into the face of the cliff beneath his feet. While better than any of the other spots Greg had seen so far, it was still not something anyone would have stepped over unless intending suicide.
“We can’t go down here,” he said, thinking he better point out the obvious.
“As I recall, that first step was a bit tricky,” said Ryder.
“Nice,” said Lucky, peering over the edge himself. “Why are we standing around talking? Let’s go.”
“Nathan?” Greg said, looking for a voice of reason.
Nathan and Priscilla both stepped up next to the others to take a look. “Hmm,” Nathan said. “Well, Gnash, I suppose there’s no point stalling. You ready?”
“Ready,” said Gnash. He stepped up to the edge.
“Wait,” said Priscilla.
Gnash flailed his arms for balance but was able to stop in time. “What is it?”
She turned to Gnaw. “So we’re just supposed to stand here and wait to see if Gnash dies?”
“If you would prefer, I can make it so you need not wait. You can share the experience with us. Then you will be better prepared when you make the trip yourself.”
“You can do that?”
“I am a mage, remember?” He closed his eyes, and the smell of ozone crossed the air. Suddenly Greg felt a s
ensation nearly as disturbing as the thought of stepping off the cliff. His body seemed to surge with power. He could see better, hear better, smell better. But what was so disturbing was that he felt as if he were seeing, hearing and smelling from two places at once. The sensation was so disorienting that Greg tried to force the spireling’s senses from his mind, but Gnaw was a powerful mage, and Greg found it easier to ignore his own senses.
He felt himself step up to the edge of the cliff and start his first step.
“Wait,” Priscilla said again.
This time it was Greg who waved his arms for balance. He could hardly believe the strength that surged through his limbs. “What is it?” he said, though it was Gnash’s voice he heard.
“You didn’t say good-bye to Gnaw.”
Greg frowned and could feel pointed teeth jutting out at every angle from his jaw. “That is because I will not truly be leaving him.” And with that he turned and stepped over the cliff.
Priscilla’s scream reached his ear from both close by and far away. He plummeted a full sixty yards before the slope eased out into his path. There he struck the face of the mountain for an instant, bounced away slightly, and did not touch the ice again for another sixty yards.
A short time later he contacted the face again, and then he was hugging the steep slope, already sliding out of control and picking up speed with every second. A quarter mile later the face dipped to the left, and he was thrown sideways so quickly he nearly lost his breakfast.
“What happened?” he heard Lucky ask.
“Oh, didn’t I tell you?” said Ryder. “It’s not a straight shot to the bottom. There are a number of twists and turns. Of course, you’ll only follow the ones near the top. Once you pick up speed, you’ll be falling much too quickly to hold the curves.”
“Nice,” Lucky said again.
Greg forced his face—Gnash’s face—to point down the slope, though he was well aware he was moving too fast to alter his course even if the need were to arise. He was thrown into another curve, then another, but his Gnash self was able to handle the forces far better than Greg could have by himself.
Faster and faster the scenery rushed by, until even Greg’s enhanced vision could make out nothing but a blur. He felt a stomach turn and wasn’t sure if it was his own or Gnash’s. He knew the spirelings were accustomed to much higher speeds than humans could fathom, and didn’t want to think how fast Gnash must be moving to lose his ability to focus—especially when Greg considered that he was expected to step over the edge too, if Gnash survived the journey.
“This is not good,” Greg heard Gnaw say beside him. An understatement if ever he’d heard one. “We can no longer distinguish what lies before us.”
Minutes passed, an unbelievably large number of them. Greg strained along with Gnash as he fought to glimpse the way ahead, and then he soared out of a bend and saw the most horrifying sight he could imagine.
“I see the bottom,” shouted Priscilla. “He made it.”
“No,” Greg said. “Don’t you see? There’s no ramp.”
“But that means . . .”
“Gnash will not clear Bottomless Chasm,” Gnaw said in a somber tone.
“And he’ll fall forever,” Melvin said, a little too much excitement in his voice.
Greg jerked himself out of Gnash’s senses and rounded on Gnaw, who was standing with his eyes cast to the ground, looking just as helpless as Greg felt. “Do something.”
“There is nothing I can do from here.” His face adopted a far-off look. “Wait.”
Greg wondered who he was talking to. Certainly he wasn’t expecting Gnash to stop.
Gnaw spun to face Nathan. “Queen Gnarla says, this once, if it is possible for you to save Gnash, you may use your magic.”
“You’re kidding?” said Greg, though he knew even as he said it that the spireling was in no mood for humor.
Nathan wasted no time questioning the decision. In an instant he vanished.
“Where’d he go?” Priscilla asked.
“I do not know,” Gnaw told her. “As you know, Gnash does not see him. Nor does he see much of anything at this point.”
The sound of Gnash’s name caused Greg to slip back into the spireling’s senses. Amazingly he seemed to be sliding even faster than before. The edge of the chasm lay all too close ahead.
“Where’s Nathan?” Greg asked.
“We do not see him,” said Gnaw, “but wait.” He sounded encouraged.
Greg strained to see what about the path ahead could possibly be encouraging, and then he saw it too. A wall of ice, a barely detectable white on white, lay between Gnash’s position and the lip of the canyon. The slope veered right, Greg realized, the last thought he was able to get in before he hit the curve. The change in direction was so sudden he thought he would be crushed by his own weight, or rather Gnash’s weight, but then he came out of the turn and realized he was sliding parallel to the edge of the canyon.
“He’s going to make it,” squealed Priscilla.
The others cheered.
“Where’s Nathan?” Lucky asked. “Does anyone see him?”
“We see exactly what you see,” Gnaw told him, “which does not include the magician. But then, Gnash is moving much too fast to focus on anything as small as a man. He was lucky to make out the base of the mountain.”
“Where do you suppose he is?” asked Greg.
“I’m right here,” said Nathan, suddenly stepping up from behind and placing a hand on Greg’s shoulder. Greg felt proud that he jumped only a foot off the ground.
“Nathan,” said Priscilla. “Where did you come from?”
“The bottom of the mountain.”
“What were you doing?” asked Melvin. “Why weren’t you helping Gnash?”
Greg frowned at the young boy’s bluntness, but he was wondering the same thing. “What were you doing, Nathan?”
“You saw how difficult it was to see through Gnash’s eyes. I went to see for myself if there was a ramp at the lip of the canyon like the one Ryder was telling us about.”
The others just stared at him.
“There wasn’t.”
“But there was a curve in the slope,” said Priscilla. “We all saw it.”
“Not when I first got there,” said Nathan.
Gnash’s senses tried to creep into Greg’s head again, but he shook them away. “What are you trying to say, Nathan?”
“Well, I knew of no magic I could perform that would build up a ramp the size I needed in the few seconds I was given.”
“So, what did you do?” Lucky asked.
“I also knew that at the speed Gnash would be moving I couldn’t expect to bring him to a stop in such a short distance without harming him. I chose instead to redirect him to the side, where he could coast to a stop at his own leisure.”
“Which he is about to do at any time,” Gnaw noted, and for a very brief instant Greg allowed himself to feel what Gnash was feeling. Already the trees to his right were zipping past at a more reasonable speed, but to his left the land dropped away into nothing, and Greg couldn’t say he liked the view.
“But how did you redirect him?” Priscilla asked Nathan.
The magician tapped his staff on the ground absently, looking as if he wanted to avoid the question. “It was all very complicated. Let’s just say it involved moving an adjoining hill over a furlong or so and leave it at that.”
“You moved a mountain?” said Greg.
“Nice,” said Lucky.
Nathan waved away the thought. “Not a mountain, just a hill. It wasn’t more than a furlong across.”
“You moved a mountain,” Greg repeated.
But Priscilla didn’t seem satisfied. “Gnaw finally let you use your magic. It seems to me, if you could mov
e a mountain you could have built a ramp to get us over the canyon. Now we’ll never make it to the border in time.”
Nathan frowned. “Moving a mountain is easier than reshaping one.”
But Priscilla didn’t look convinced. She stood with her arms crossed and her brow furrowed, looking at the man as if he’d disappointed her rather than just saved Gnash’s life.
“Besides,” said Nathan, “there was also the matter of the wyverns.”
Greg looked at him quizzically. “What wyverns?”
“Oh, um, nothing.” Nathan took a step to the side and peered over the edge of the mountain. “Now, who wants to go next?”
Expanding Forces
Greg could find no words to describe his own slide down the mountain. Actually, he could find no words at all. He’d screamed himself hoarse the entire way, or at least until he lost consciousness about two minutes into the trip.
The trouble all started as Greg took his first step over the edge, when the shadowcat popped out from under his cloak and started flailing its limbs in a desperate attempt to return to the top of the mountain. Between Rake, the sting of the frigid wind, and the stars that burst in front of Greg’s eyes when his skull hit the ice, Greg saw very little during those two minutes he was awake. He wished he had seen less. And while he had already experienced the trip once through Gnash, he should have realized that living through it with a spireling’s senses would be nothing compared to barely surviving it with his own.
Oddly enough, he’d traveled just as fast before on several occasions, each time he flew with Ruuan, but none of those trips seemed as terrifying—with the possible exception of the time Ruuan carried Greg up to his lair in his mouth. Greg supposed it was the dragon’s magic that made those trips seem smooth in comparison. Or maybe it was because he was safely stowed on the dragon’s back—or at least in its mouth—and not actually touching the ground as it rushed by. Still, Greg remembered touching the ground very little on the mountain either. He woke up briefly when the curve Nathan had built tossed him roughly to one side, but fainted immediately again once he witnessed the view from the lip of Bottomless Chasm.