Ozben waited until Lina was safely on the ledge before he crawled out behind her. The wind hit him full force, and for a moment, all he could do was crouch there at the opening and try to suck in a breath of air. If he fell, it would probably be because all his limbs went numb from the cold.
But he knew he had no choice but to face the icy night. It was either forward or back into the arms of the assassin and his knife. Ozben risked one last glance back at the dark shape of their pursuer moving steadily toward him.
“Come on, Ozben,” Lina called, her voice muffled by the wind.
Ozben swallowed, steeled himself, and followed Lina out onto the narrow ledge. In his opinion, she’d exaggerated its size by a wide margin. And between the snow, ice, and loose rock, finding a proper handhold would take a miracle.
Ozben pressed his body against the side of the mountain to help him keep his balance. Ahead, the light of the lumatites bobbed on Lina’s wrist. Ozben focused on the light, not daring to look down at the abyss on his other side.
“How far away are the aeries?” he asked, shouting to be heard above the wind.
“Too far for us to crawl all the way there,” Lina shouted back. “But we just have to get around the side of the mountain a little ways so we’re within sight of them. Then I’ll try to signal them with the lumatites. They’ll see the light and come to investigate.”
“But how can you be sure we’ll be able to get close enough to them from here?” Ozben asked. The mountain was huge, and they were like two tiny insects crawling on it.
“Because I’ve been out on these ledges when I was first mapping Ortana’s tunnels,” Lina said. “I needed to see which ventilation shafts emptied to the outside.”
Of course she’s been out here before, Ozben thought. And for no other reason than she’d needed to see where all the ventilation shafts went. Ozben knew he shouldn’t have been surprised, and despite the danger coming up behind them, he couldn’t help shaking his head and grinning at Lina in pure admiration.
“You’re crazy,” he called to her. “Completely insane. You know that, right?”
Lina glanced back at him, her frizzy hair whipping around her face. She matched his grin. “It’s a good kind of crazy, though, isn’t it?”
“The best,” Ozben said.
Lina’s expression turned serious. “Stay close,” she said. “When we see the aeries, I’ll signal with the light.”
Ozben nodded. He was about to ask what would happen if none of the chamelins were outside to see the lumatites, when a voice rang out in the darkness.
“Well, aren’t you a brave one, little prince!”
Ozben looked over his shoulder and choked back a cry of shock and fear. The assassin had reached the end of the ventilation shaft, but Ozben hadn’t put as much distance between himself and the opening as he’d thought. Holding on to the inside of the shaft, the assassin reached out and seized Ozben’s ankle.
“Got you!”
Ozben yelped and instinctively dropped flat to his stomach, wrapping his right arm around the rock shelf and digging his left hand into a crevice in the side of the mountain. The assassin yanked on his ankle, dragging him backward across the icy stones.
“Ozben, hold on!” Lina cried. She was trying to turn around to help him, but there wasn’t enough room on the ledge.
“Keep going!” Ozben shouted at her. Before Lina could react, the man yanked him back another few inches and leaned out to make a grab for his other ankle. Desperate to get loose, Ozben kicked out with his foot, clipping the assassin on the chin. The man grunted in pain and let go of Ozben’s ankle. Off balance from the blow, the assassin grabbed the edge of the ledge to try to steady himself and slipped. For an instant, he scrambled to find a handhold, falling half out of the ventilation shaft. His heart in his throat, Ozben thought the assassin might fall out of the tunnel and down the mountainside, but the man caught himself at the last second by grabbing the lip of the shaft.
Ozben wasn’t about to wait around to help. He surged forward, crawling fast and recklessly around the side of the mountain. Ahead of him, Lina was just as careless, and more than once they slipped and had to fall to their bellies on the ledge to keep from plunging off the mountain. Ozben trembled with cold and fear, but he kept moving. They had to put as much distance between them and the assassin as possible.
He risked a glance over his shoulder and saw that the assassin had recovered from his near-fall and was edging out onto the rock ledge.
But he was standing, not crawling.
“I knew he was a trained ledge-walker,” Ozben yelled to Lina. Sometimes he hated being right.
But Lina didn’t hear him. She continued to crawl for several more feet until finally she stopped. “There!” Lina shouted above the wind. “We’re here, Ozben—look!”
He craned his neck to see over Lina’s shoulder and glimpsed what appeared to be a large dome carved out of the tip of one of the mountain peaks about a hundred yards above where they were. Six open archways were visible around the dome, evenly spaced and large enough for a chamelin’s height and bulk. Golden light glowed from within the structure, like a lighthouse in the middle of a dark sea. Seeing it gave Ozben a surge of hope. Please, let the chamelins be watching.
As he looked on, Lina said something to the lumatites that Ozben couldn’t hear, then lifted her arm above her head. The fireflies took off, leaving the sanctuary of the leather band on her wrist to hover several feet in the air above Lina’s head. Ozben stared in fascination. He’d never seen the insects leave Lina’s wristband. Their twinkling lights were tiny but bright, cutting through the vast darkness.
“Come on,” Ozben murmured, shooting a glance over his shoulder. His heart skipped a beat. The assassin was only twenty feet away. Though he moved slowly, Ozben calculated they had a minute at most before he caught them.
“Come on!” Ozben repeated, his voice rising in desperation. “We need help over here!” He squinted into the darkness, straining to see any sign of movement from within the dome above. But there was nothing.
They weren’t going to make it. Ozben shot another quick glance over his shoulder and came to a decision. No way was he going to let the assassin get Lina too.
Slowly, Ozben began shimmying backward on the ledge. He would close the distance between himself and the assassin, creating a buffer to protect Lina.
At least, that was his intention. Until he felt Lina’s hand snag his wrist and clamp down in a grip that was like cold iron.
“What do you think you’re doing?” she yelled at him. She’d managed to turn around and was staring at him, her face red and chapped from the wind, her eyes two angry brown dots.
“Let go, Lina,” he said, using his most commanding tone. He didn’t dare try to pull free, or he risked knocking her off the ledge. “The chamelins aren’t coming. We’re out of time.”
“They’ll come!” she insisted. “Trust me, Ozben.” Her gaze was pleading.
“I’ve always trusted you, Lina,” he said. His chest tightened. “But I can’t let you get hurt.” He glanced down at the abyss below them, vowing that if the assassin pushed him off the ledge, Ozben would make sure he took the man with him. It was the only way to protect Lina.
Then, as he stared down at his fate, he realized there was something else out there besides empty air and the infinite dark.
A winged shadow glided through the night. Ozben would never have seen it if it hadn’t flown over a patch of moonlit snow. The shape—a melding of a lizard and a bat—was unmistakable.
It was a chamelin, and not just any chamelin.
“Nirean,” Ozben gasped, and all the hope he thought he’d lost suddenly blazed inside him. “We’re going to make it!” he cried. He looked up at Lina. “We’re going to—”
“Ozben, watch out!” Lina screamed, and before Ozben realized what was happening, she jerked hard on his arm.
With a cry of shock stuck in his throat, Ozben fell, plunging headfirst off the ledge.
When Lina saw Ozben grinning and shouting that they were going to make it, hope stirred inside her. Then she looked over Ozben’s shoulder, and it vanished. The assassin was no longer moving carefully on the ledge. He was running toward them, his knife in hand, murder gleaming in his eyes.
“Ozben, watch out!” she screamed, and before she had time to consider what she was doing, Lina jerked on her friend’s arm.
Ozben’s eyes went wide as he lost his balance, and then he was toppling off the ledge. The assassin slashed the air with his knife, missing Ozben’s neck by a hairsbreadth. Lina held on to her friend, stopping his fall, but Ozben’s weight wrenched her arm and dragged her halfway off the ledge. She flailed with her other hand against the mountain, trying to find something to stop them both from falling over the edge. Her fingers dug into a small crevice, clutching it with all her strength.
Lina looked up, and the assassin overbalanced. He scrambled to grab the icy rocks, but his feet slipped out from under him, and he sailed over Lina, catching the rock ledge at the last moment. Lina watched his knife spin away into the darkness.
“Lina!” Ozben cried. He was trying to get his footing on the side of the mountain, but the surface was too sheer. “Let me go, or we’ll both fall!”
“We’re not…arguing about this…again,” Lina said, straining with every muscle in her body to keep hold of him. She knew she was fighting a losing battle. She wasn’t strong enough, not against the cold and the pain in her injured arm.
“Lina, it’s all right,” Ozben said, and—she couldn’t believe it—he actually smiled at her. While he was dangling by one arm, thousands of feet above the ground.
And he thought she was the crazy one.
Then Lina saw it: the source of Ozben’s hope. A shadow flew toward them, beating its wings against the wind, and when Lina saw who it was, tears of relief and joy filled her eyes.
Nirean landed on the ledge in front of her, her claws digging into the rock. She plucked Lina and Ozben up, one in each arm, as if they weighed nothing. Then, with one massive beat of her leathery wings, she launched herself off the mountain in the direction of the aeries. Lina looked down at the dizzying view of the assassin below her. He strained to hoist himself back onto the ledge, but he was slipping.
And then he fell.
Lina’s heart stood still in her chest, and a chill went through her. The assassin was falling to his death. But…could it be? Another shape materialized out of the blackness below. There was a second chamelin. Wings flapping, he caught the assassin midfall and bore him away. In only a few moments, Lina lost sight of them completely.
She turned to Ozben to ask if he was all right, but her vision blurred and her head started to spin. She looked down and noticed that she was trembling, cold and shock seeping into her body. All around her, the lumatites hovered, one by one returning to her wristband. Lina tried to hold her arm steady to help them. Their silvery lights wavered and danced in her vision. Lina closed her eyes and let her head drop onto Nirean’s shoulder, trying to clear the dizziness.
“Are they all right? Get them up here quick!” a human voice called from somewhere above. It almost sounded like Zara, but why would she be in the aeries? Lina tried to open her eyes but found she didn’t have the strength. She was slipping into a deep kind of blackness, and now that she and Ozben were safe, she was more than willing to let it take her.
The first thing Lina became aware of when she awoke was that she was warm—wool-socks-and-a-thick-quilt-in-front-of-a-fire kind of warm. And when she opened her eyes to look around, she realized that her imagination wasn’t far off. She was lying in a large four-poster bed beneath a blue and white patchwork quilt. To her left, a fire roared in the fireplace, giving off waves of delicious heat. Lina closed her eyes and soaked it in. During her and Ozben’s journey on the mountain, she’d become convinced she’d never be warm again.
She had her eyes closed for only a few moments when she remembered Ozben, and they flew open. Was he safe? What had happened to the assassin? She remembered Nirean saving them, and another chamelin had rescued the assassin. But where were they all now?
And come to think of it, where was she? Lina didn’t recognize this room. It was small but cozy, with a tapestry of a colorful garden hanging on the back wall. On the other side of the fireplace, there was a small table and three chairs. A tea tray with a china pot and two cups sat on the table next to a thick hardbound book.
Carefully, Lina sat up, and as she did so, the quilt slipped off her shoulders, and she looked down at herself. Someone had bandaged her arm and dressed her in a thick cotton nightgown. She lifted the blanket to get a look at her feet. Yep, she even had on the wool socks.
She was about to climb out of bed to search for her clothes when the door on the far side of the room opened and Zara poked her head in. When she saw Lina, a bright smile crossed her face.
“I’m glad to see you’re awake,” she said, stepping into the room and shutting the door behind her. “You were asleep for over twelve hours.”
“That long?” Lina threw the covers back and started to get out of bed.
“Not so fast,” Zara said, holding up a hand. “I want you to stay put for a few minutes while I check you out.” She took one of the chairs from the table and brought it over beside the bed. Sitting down, she put her hand against Lina’s forehead. “You’re a little warm,” she said.
“It’s the fire,” Lina said. Zara’s hand was cool on her flushed skin. “Is Ozben all right?” she asked.
“He’s fine.” Zara sighed and folded her hands in her lap. Lina noticed there were dark circles of sleeplessness under her teacher’s eyes. “When I saw you two hanging limp in Nirean’s arms…” Zara shook her head. “You scared me to death.”
So it was Zara’s voice that Lina had heard just before she lost consciousness. “I thought we were going to fall off the mountain,” she said, shuddering at the memory of clinging to the ledge and trying to hold on to Ozben. Lina’s arms were stiff and sore.
“Nirean got to you just in time,” Zara agreed. “Both of you were nearly frozen. Ozben woke up a couple hours ago, but then he was less banged up than you are.”
Lina thought that seemed like good news. So why was there such sadness in Zara’s eyes? “What is it?” she demanded. “What’s wrong?”
“I’m afraid Ozben’s had another shock,” Zara said. “We received a message from the palace in Ardra. His grandfather, King Easmon, is dead. He succumbed to his illness.”
Lina’s heart sank. Poor Ozben. She wished she could have been with her friend when he got the news. “Where is he now?” she asked. “Can I see him?”
“He’s in his room. Nirean’s with him,” Zara said. “You can see each other shortly.” She frowned. “He’s also been asking to speak to the assassin.”
Lina wasn’t surprised to hear that. “The man told him that he’d killed Ozben’s parents,” she explained. “I said it was a trick.” Dread coiled in her stomach. “He was lying, wasn’t he?”
Zara nodded. “Yes, it was a lie. I contacted the palace in Ardra an hour ago to assure the royal family that Ozben is safe.”
“You contacted the palace an hour ago?” Lina said, confused. “How is that possible?” It would take a messenger several days to reach the palace under the best conditions, but with the winter storms in the mountains, it would likely take over a week.
Her teacher smiled enigmatically. “We have ways. We’re experimenting with a new technology that’s been in development for some time, a form of long-distance communication that uses wires.”
“Wires?” Lina was intrigued. “Can I see it?”
“Maybe when you’re recovered,” Zara said. Her brow furrowed, and she looked at Lina intently. “Are you really all right?” she asked. “Ozben told me everything that happened—”
“Everything?” Lina interrupted. Did that mean he’d told Zara about the Merlin?
Zara raised an eyebrow. “Everything about yo
ur run-in with the assassin,” she said. “We found your guard unconscious by the museum gates. He’s going to be all right.”
Lina was grateful for that, but as soon as she could, she needed to go back down to her workshop to check on Aethon and the Merlin. Knowing the cat, he’d probably slept through all the excitement, but what about the ship? What was it thinking right now?
Lina’s chest tightened. If she and Ozben had died, Aethon would have had to fend for himself, and Zara would never have known about Lina’s secret, the wondrous airship. Worst of all, though, the Merlin would have been alone again, lost, without ever knowing why Lina had abandoned it. She’d made so many mistakes, she wasn’t sure how she would go about untangling all of them.
But she could at least start here with Zara.
“There’s something I want to tell you,” Lina said slowly. “But it might take a while to explain, so if there’s something you need to do, or…” She trailed off uncertainly.
“Wait,” Zara said.
The woman stood up, and a wave of disappointment hit Lina hard. Zara was going to leave again, and Lina didn’t know if she’d have the courage to tell her teacher everything later. “Don’t go!” she blurted without thinking.
“I’m not going far,” Zara said, shooting Lina a look of surprise. The teacher walked to the table, picked up the tea tray, and carried it back over to the bed. Placing it beside Lina, she sat back down in her chair. “Do you want to pour the tea, or should I?” she asked.
Relieved, Lina relaxed back onto the bed and nodded for Zara to pour her a cup. Steam rose from the pot, and the scent of chamomile tickled her nose. It was her favorite tea. Zara added one small lump of sugar, just the size Lina liked, and handed her the cup.
“Thank you,” Lina said, taking a sip.
“You’re welcome.” Zara made herself a cup and sat back in her chair. “Whenever you’re ready,” she said. “Take your time.”
Warmth spread through Lina’s chest that had nothing to do with the tea or the cozy fire. She snuggled in against her bed pillows with the teacup warming her hands and told Zara everything.
The Secrets of Solace Page 20