by Liz Delton
She yelped as another spray of seawater exploded off the rocks below.
Quickly she reached up for the handhold she had spied, and raised her body just a little farther to try and get higher above the violent waves.
The other initiates were spread out beside her, clinging to the rock as she did, huddled against the raging wind that buffeted the cliff. They had each been given a black, datawoven jacket before disembarking from the ship that brought them here, and Sylvia was grateful for its warmth.
The goal of this Trial was very clear: get to the top.
Sylvia had already seen some flashes of bright light out of the corners of her eyes—some of the others had clearly decided to connect to their datastrands. But Sylvia was struggling just to stay on the cliff, she didn’t think it would be a good idea to empty her mind right now.
She found a better grip for her left hand, and pulled herself up a little farther. Her eyes searched the moon-bright cliff face for the next crevice.
As she was situating her foot sideways on a narrow outcrop, she heard a masculine voice on the wind. “A map,” drifted to her ears, one of which held her inactive earlink.
A map?
And then it dawned on her—why else would they have given her datawoven fabric? It felt like a stone dropped into her stomach as she realized it.
She groaned, but the sound was lost to the wind. She had known this task would make her use the earlink. She had practiced for hours on end with Atlan. She just hadn’t thought to practice as she hung by her fingertips, hovering over her death. But what else could be a better motivator?
Her left foot sat snugly wedged between stone, and her right was stable enough now, sideways on a thin ledge. She adjusted her dusty fingers, and reached out to grab better hold of the crack with her right hand.
With her body stretched across the cold cliff, the salty wind taunted her, testing her holds, but she closed her eyes, determined to connect to her earlink.
It was already black inside her eyelids, a feat not hard to imagine in the night. Her fingers and toes held her weight on the cold cliff as she shut her mind to distractions.
She pictured the familiar mental light of her earlink glowing brightly from her right ear. It easily met with the datastrands at her shoulder. The silver light grew and spread down her arm and back. Slowly the crisscrossing threads came alive with light.
A strong gust of wind barreled down the cliff, threatening her hold, so she tried to strengthen her grip without loosing focus. With her eyes still closed, she went back to forging the connection.
The strands in the fabric were almost entirely lit up in her mind’s eye, and she pictured the light surging, completing the connection with her earlink.
She felt a sudden snap inside her mind, and she knew it was made.
Hesitantly, she opened her eyes, focusing on the feeling of connection to keep it alive. She allowed some of her focus to drift to her hands, and assessed their position.
Her fingers dug into the rock to get a better grip, and Sylvia remembered the voice she had heard on the wind—a map.
But how to find it?
Perhaps she should reach out to Atlan. She knew she could do it, she had done it so many times in her warm room, sitting comfortably at the table. It had been the oddest thing in the world, speaking mind to mind with Atlan—linking, he called it. She could do it now. Anything to get her up this cliff faster.
She took a deep breath and the cold salty air settled into her lungs. The datawoven threads buzzed in her mind as she reached out, picturing a thread of her light seeking Atlan; more the thought of him than his actual presence, since she had no idea where he was on the cliff.
She imagined the thread looping and riding the wind as it searched for the sharp mind behind those grey eyes, his sly grin, the jolt she felt when his hands grazed her skin, even accidentally.
With a pulse of electricity, she felt the link snap into place.
Atlan?
I’m here. She could nearly feel him grinning at her.
Did you hear something about a map? she thought at him, as her somewhat long fingernails started to shove themselves painfully into the bones of her fingers. She belatedly wished she had cut them.
Colin said Emrick found the data in his strands, I’m still trying to get at mine, he told her.
What do you look for? Sylvia wondered across the link. Her fingers were starting to cramp up. She needed to move.
Your mind has its own way, he linked to her. You need to figure out your visual to make the connection work through the earlink.
Despite the growing cramps in her hands, Sylvia smiled. He always knew how to explain things for her.
I’ll let you know if I find it, he told her.
Good luck, she linked, then let the connection drop. They both needed to concentrate.
First, she lifted almost all of her body weight up onto her left foot; she steadied herself by clinging to the insides of the vertical crevice with her hands. She flexed her fingers and hands one at a time, giving each of them a break for a moment before she tried to search for the data. She grimaced at her hands, some of her nails were torn and bleeding from the pressure of holding herself up.
With both hands firmly back in place, she snapped her eyes shut and imagined the datawoven fabric glowing faintly, still actively connected to the earlink, which was a beacon glowing brightly from her ear.
Her mind’s eye scanned over the glowing fabric, with its black and bright contrasting threads. She tried to look for threads that were different than the rest.
What had Atlan said? You need to figure out the visual to make the connection work.
She pictured scanning the different threads, but it felt useless. She couldn’t just imagine one being different—she had to train her mind to find the data that was actually there. But she didn’t know what data looked like. She groaned to herself.
Her foot wedged itself deeper into the crevice, crushing her toes, but she kept her eyes closed.
What would data look like? she wondered.
She was searching for a map. One that would show her the climbing routes up the cliff, she hoped. She had only ever seen a map in books when she was in lessons, or the ones her father had drawn of Arcera. Those were the only kinds of data she had ever seen, or held.
So pretend it’s a book, she told herself, ignoring the squeezing pain in her left foot. She could worry about that later.
Eyes shut, she brought her mind back to the datastrands that glowed in her mind. Turn the page, she thought, and she pictured a layer of light peeling up like paper, revealing the next bit of information underneath, the next layer of the intangible data.
And there it was.
Suddenly she had a clear black and white image of the cliff inside her mind, as if it were a memory of something she had seen, and remembered perfectly. Glowing in white were the routes—some led to the top, most not. The one she was on went nowhere quickly. She groaned. She would have to go back down.
Briefly suspending her bewilderment at the map—and how it could possibly be inside her head like some perfect memory—she wondered if she should link with Atlan again and tell him she found it. But she didn’t want to throw off his concentration, so she tugged her foot upwards out of the crevice, and balanced herself with her fingers. She shifted more weight onto her other foot while she let the blood flow back into the crushed one. She wiggled her toes and looked down for a place to lower herself.
As soon as she thought about the map, it bubbled back up as if out of her memory. She kept thinking about it, holding it in her mind, as she carefully wove her way back down the cliff to meet up with a path that would let her rise.
She crammed her fingers into small crevices, balanced her toes on anything that stuck out enough, and decided that going down was far worse than going up—she had to constantly look down at the drop, and the churning sea below.
The glowing trails on the map led her down, and her heart sank as she did. S
he was losing all the upward progress she had made.
She knew Lady Naomi had said this Trial was about connectivity, but she was sure they would take into account the time it took to get to the top when judging the initiates.
At one point, she reached a fairly wide ledge that she could actually put both feet on and stand properly. She took the opportunity to rest her arms, massage her palms and roll her shoulders out and back one at a time, away from the cliff. She still had a lot of climbing to do.
A scrape of rock above startled her, and she looked up to see one of the other initiates hanging onto the cliff face only a few feet above, to the right. The girl clung to the cliff, with her auburn hair flying in the wind. She didn’t seem to be going anywhere though, only hanging. Sylvia wondered if she was trying to link with her data.
Sylvia checked her map again, with its glowing routes as clear as her sharpest memory, and saw that she now stood at the base of a path that could get her up to the top. But the girl was already on it, blocking her way.
She took the time to massage her fingers as she waited for the girl to move. There wasn’t much else she could do—there was no way around the girl. Sylvia stuck one of her bleeding nails in her mouth; it tasted like rock, but it would hopefully stop bleeding for a moment. She spit the blood and dust into the sea and assessed the gruesome finger. Immediately she stuck it back in her mouth.
Was the girl trying to access the data? Or was she just frozen?
“Alice?” Sylvia shouted over the wind, thinking that might be the girl’s name.
“Y—Yeah?” came from above.
“Are you okay?” Sylvia asked, and laced her fingers behind her back, stretching her arms away from the cliff.
“I—I can’t climb—I—” she stuttered, her already demure voice trailing off into the wind.
“Did you find the map?”
“What map?” the girl asked, now somewhat panicked.
“In the data—can you connect to it?”
Sylvia could see the girl shake her head as she clung to the ledge.
“Alright, well I have it, and you’re already on the right path, so I’ll just tell you which way to go and I’ll follow you, okay?”
Sylvia hadn’t been told how they were being judged—on their time, or the order they reached the top, or anything else; but she didn’t care. Nothing had been said about disqualification, and if she didn’t help Alice, she wouldn’t be able to get up to the top either. She didn’t care if the girl made it first, she just wanted to get back on solid ground and pass this Trial. She would work with what she had.
She consulted the map again and instructed Alice to go to the right, which would lead them upwards. She watched the girl carefully grip the rock, edging sideways and then slowly rising when she found the next vertical holds.
A sudden flicker of a foreign presence was all the warning Sylvia had of an incoming link, and then Atlan’s voice flitted across her mind.
Did you find it, then?
Sylvia nodded, now focusing on pulling herself up with both hands, which grasped the one solitary handhold available to her. Then she realized he probably couldn’t see her nod, so she replied across the link, Yes!
She shifted to rest her weight onto her right foot, stable on a protruding ledge, while Alice tried to reach for the next hold. The Seascape native, as pale as the stone in the bright moonlight, was almost too short to reach. Sylvia craned her neck up to watch. “You can reach!” she called aloud. “Just a bit further!”
The girl stretched her hand up, and her fingers scrabbled for a moment until they finally reached. Alice gripped hard and began to rise once again.
I didn’t want to break your concentration, she told Atlan as she followed the girl, and then immediately felt guilty for not making sure he had found the map too.
It’s alright, he said, clearly having heard the guilt in her tone. Eda is having trouble climbing—Colin and I are trying to help get her up.
She smiled despite the growing fatigue of her muscles. I’m helping Alice up. She’s above me, but couldn’t connect to the map.
The worry gnawing at the back of her mind eased. At least she wasn’t the only one helping someone.
It had seemed like the right thing to do, she just didn’t want it to affect the judgment of her performance. But if Atlan was doing it too, she should be fine. Perhaps she wasn’t cut out for ruthless competition; because she knew deep down that the other initiates weren’t her real enemy. The real reason she was here doing this, the real enemy, was perched atop his mountain up north, spewing lies and spreading destruction.
But she still hoped she wouldn’t be the last to reach the top.
See you at the top then, Atlan’s voice caressed her mind once more before Sylvia felt the extra presence leave, and the link closed.
See you, she thought to herself, her heart inexplicably racing faster. A wave of energy flew through her veins, a second burst of adrenaline that would push her onward.
She guided Alice up, sometimes pausing for minutes at a time so one or the other could find their grips and footing. All the while, the corners of Sylvia’s mouth were turned up in a smile.
They encountered no other initiates on their path, but Sylvia did catch the occasional shout on the wind, sometimes above, sometimes to the side. She wondered how many initiates had already made it to the top.
A while later, she craned her neck to look up higher than the next handhold. The stark outline of the cliff’s edge was now visible, its ragged outline bleached white against the night sky. They were almost there.
After telling Alice where the final handhold lay, the slight girl lifted herself up and disappeared.
A pale arm shot out over the edge, fingers open wide. Sylvia lifted herself high enough to grab it, and pushed up with her feet. She could feel the enormity of the drop behind her as she grasped the earth, and she was suddenly in desperate need to get on steady ground. Her other hand scrabbled at the earth, rocky with clumps of grass that she used to drag the rest of her body up, while Alice pulled her other arm.
At last her body was on solid ground. Her fingers curled into claws from the strain of climbing, and her nails and fingertips were torn and bloody. She got to her hands and knees and her brain registered a strange buzzing sound as she rose wearily to her feet.
The buzzing erupted into applause and she whipped her head up to see a massive crowd gathered.
It seemed all of Seascape had gathered on the wide cliff, just like the first Trial. Throughout the crowd glowed small round lanterns, showing Sylvia just how far back people had gathered on the southern shore. Absently, she dusted herself off, gazing at the crowd, which had turned its attention toward several large panels which Sylvia suspected were enormous looking-glasses.
High above the crowd, five looking-glasses hung from shadowy black structures. Even those in the back of the crowd would be able to see what the panels displayed. Her stomach jolted as she realized the people of Seascape had watched her entire ascent up the cliff.
Sylvia’s eye caught a glimpse of silver, which turned out to be Lady Naomi. The woman stood with one hand propped on an old stone podium, around which the other initiates had gathered. Sylvia unglued her feet from the earth—where they had been perfectly content after desperately clinging to the cliff for what seemed like hours—and headed over to the other initiates.
The moonlight was enough to make out their faces by. Alice sat by herself, clutching her knees to her chest and staring at the ground. She gave Sylvia a weak smile as the Rider approached. The other initiates were focused on the looking-glass nearest, their faces craned up to watch those who remained on the cliff.
Sylvia sat down on the ground next to Lena, who had already taken off her datawoven jacket and let her pale blonde hair fly in the wind. Just behind her, Talia lay flat on her back, her fingers twining themselves in the grass, clearly happy to be back on solid earth.
She had somehow known Atlan hadn’t made it up yet, f
eeling as if he would have at least come to greet her when she arrived; but not seeing his face in those gathered ignited a spark of fear. Her eyes darted to the looking-glass.
It showed two views. On the right, one lone initiate clung to the cliff, unmoving. The left side showed three figures bunched together, one of whom was being helped up by another.
That must be Atlan with Colin and Eda, Sylvia thought, her eyes boring into the looking-glass, watching their every move. Suddenly, the looking-glass image of Atlan became smaller, and now she could see the top of the cliff, giving the image perspective. They didn’t have far to go.
But the lone climber still hadn’t moved. Sylvia leaned over to Lena, and whispered, “Who is that?”
“Faye,” the Seascape girl replied, not taking her eyes off the looking-glass.
Sylvia almost didn’t want to ask it, but she had to. “What happens if she doesn’t make it up?” she whispered, then wondered if Lena would even tell her—being an outsider.
But the girl leaned in closer to Sylvia. “They said they wouldn’t help, at the beginning, remember? But there’s no way they would let any of us die.”
Talia had sat up, and was now nodding in agreement. They seemed very sure of it, but offered no explanation. Sylvia hid a smile—she was triumphant in her own way: she had finally talked to some of the other initiates.
Sylvia looked back at the looking-glass to see Atlan’s group nearly at the top. Her eyes darted between the real cliff and the one on the glass, sure she would see someone coming over the edge at any second.
Finally a moonlight-pale hand jutted up and grabbed hold, followed by the arms and face of Atlan, his dark hair more askew than ever. Sylvia wanted to run over and help him up, but she was sure that wouldn’t be allowed. Eventually, he pulled his whole body onto the grass, then reached down to help Eda, who, Sylvia could see in the glass, was being pushed from below by Colin. Then, all three initiates stood at the edge.
The crowd burst into applause once more as the three walked shakily forward, all eager to be away from the edge. Atlan clapped Colin on the back, and Eda was beaming at the two boys.