The smell hit her first. At the horse's first clattering stumble, Challis breathed in a dark, earthy scent pressing in close from her surroundings. Then her face smacked into the saddle as the horse jerked and slid again. She rubbed her stinging nose on her shoulder.

She was still on her belly, and the saddle's horn was digging deeper into her side with every unsteady movement. After some concentration, she realized that they were dropping lower and lower in elevation in short, steep bursts. Her throat tightened with fear, and she locked her fingers closed, willing them to stay strong. The backs of her knees were cramped from her bending them so tightly in the air.

"Will you let me sit up?" she asked, the last word catching on another bump. "I'm going to fall off. Why are we going this way?"

He pressed a forearm to her back as if ducking a branch. Or just holding her down.

"Hold on. This isn't the time." His other arm worked the reins, the sharp elbow helping Challis to stay in place with every tilt and lean. He must have been employing prime abdominal muscle tone. Challis, for her part, kept misjudging when to tighten up and when to relax, and as a result was bone-jarred and sore within minutes. Drunnel spoke again in a rasp that resembled his brother's. "What made you think that was a good idea? Whatever you did."

Challis gritted her teeth, her throat clenching.

"At least we're out of danger, aren't we?" she said. "It worked."

Drunnel let out a short laugh, bitter as vinegar. "Away from the raiders, yes. And now we're scattered around a military city like so many lost mice just waiting to be caught and killed by Hannowold border patrols. It worked perfectly." Sarcasm bit his tone. "Really well done, Chall."

Challis tensed as the horse's hooves slid sideways a bit, tilting her forward. She again fought the nausea of being so vulnerable on a horse's back, her frustration peaking as loose hair strands stuck to her face and neck. She punched at Drunnel's shin. "Let me up, damn you."

A brief, awkward struggle ensued, but Drunnel couldn't control both her and the horse as it scaled the ravine wall. Challis pushed out from underneath his hold, surprising them both, and felt the rush of freefall for an instant before her boots touched ground. Or, more accurately, skidded on a slope. Her knees and hips followed with a crack and she hugged the tilted earth, one foot swinging loose over nothing. Crumbly stone flattened against her stomach and she seized at invisible handholds.

"Don't move," Drunnel snapped, then swore ferociously. "Are you trying to kill yourself?"

"Nuggets, how steep is this?" she gasped, locking her joints at the thought of a chasm yawning open beneath her. The faint sound of water whispered up from too far away, a thought that sent her head spinning dangerously. She couldn't climb blind. Off to one side, the horse clambered down the slope and came to a stop some distance below. Challis felt her breath coming high and quick.

The other's voice came in halting grunts as he seemed to be climbing back up toward her, leaving the horse behind. "You're fine. Now. Bring your right foot up and feel to the side. There's a foothold there."

Challis' head swam with a cold weariness, the whole situation dawning on her. The world was no longer a distant blur of sounds and scents that came to life only in her mind. Holding as still as she was, every nerve ending on her skin's surface prickled in the windswept air or pressed against the hard rock face in a stunning wash of reality. What was she doing here? No. Rasalas had said it, this wasn't the time. No, not Rasalas – that Haske agent. Ras was gone. And it was her fault; she had sold him out. She tightened her grip on a sharp lip of rock and rested her forehead on the stone. Not the time.

"Challis?" Drunnel asked uneasily. No other noise came from him, and the mere tone of his voice painted a picture of him in Challis' imagination. Feet braced wide on the slope, his lean body poised to move, breathing hard as he stared up at her. Ravaged skin from a lost battle against insects. Would he still have his hat? It took Challis an unseemly long time to force herself away from the idea and to focus again.

"What happens if I let go?"

"You don't want to know. Let me help you, and I promise I won't let you fall."

"Really."

"Yes." Drunnel's tone regained some of its characteristic earnestness. "Challis, when have I ever lied to you?"

Of all the times, this was definitely not the one for him to say something like that. She breathed in carefully, then relaxed into a tighter hug to the only piece of earth that she had. For a moment, she wished she could just stay there. No… she wished that he would go away. His presence sickened her. The tripwire tingled hot against her neck.

"Lying," she murmured, "and not giving the truth are two very different things, Director."

Pebbles clattered down as he kept climbing. "You can do this. Come on, reach your right foot over."

"Why did you kill him?" she asked, her voice barely brushing the rock.

Drunnel stopped again.

"Right foot," he said in the same hushed tone. "Please. Get back to safety, and I'll answer your questions, I promise."

Challis felt a tremble begin in her arms. "Stop making promises. Just stop."

"Alright, I get it," he said, frustrated. "You're scared, you're confused. And you're angry. But you need to listen to me. Your influence on your surroundings is unlike anything I've ever seen. That kind of power will change everything about your life, Challis. Oedolon depends on what you can do, and so does the FHF. You can be the frontrunner of an international tripwire program with that thing around your neck, but if you don't listen to me right now, you'll die." He climbed a step closer. "Now follow my lead and get a blasted move on, or I swear down to earth I'll take that tripwire away for good," he finished savagely.

She was silent. From somewhere above, a bird whistled and fluttered away.

Drunnel sighed, and his voice eased. "Look, I'm sorry. And I'm sorry he's gone. You have to believe me."

Challis stopped listening. She closed off every other sensation too, rising up out of the cloud that his words had pushed her into, and let the tripwire fizz comfortingly against her skin. At least she had the tripwire. What else did she need if she had that?

She sent her awareness spreading out and down behind her. Drunnel, the poor horse, then a series of cold little energies wriggling along the surface of the ravine's wall. She reached down, down, her mind shooting along the jagged narrow gorge that gurgled with trickling water. The deep expanse of the Reach was far from legendary, but at just a foot slip away, it might as well have been bottomless.

Then she caught a heated, bulkier presence just around a bend in the trench. She could recognize it anywhere. A dynamic creature with full sheetlike wings and dancing, clawed feet. Challis' heart soared with excitement, and impatience. The thrike's mind snapped together with hers, and Challis tugged, gently at first but then with a firm pull that finally released with a surge of relief. The flap, flap of wings in flight eased into the air.

She waited, her entire concentration on bringing the pterosaur to her. The throbbing mass of energy became a pattering heartbeat, powerful thrusts embracing the air, and the zinging eagerness of flight that centered on a tiny destination on the cliffside. It lifted its feet out in front of it like a hawk bearing down on its victim, and Challis braced herself. The onrush of the thrike came too quickly for her to specify exactly what she had wanted it to do, she realized in a flash. Was she about to be –

"Oy, now!" a yell broke through. "Stupid, clever animal!" A scrabbling crunch landed off to her right, and a blast of wind and rubble made her nearly lose her hold on the rock. Another flap of the thrike's wings blew her hair off her face, more mildly than the first, and she let out her breath. Then the voice came again, pinched and slightly stammering.

"Well, now! You, uh, you two in trouble?"

Whoops, Challis thought. The thrike had a rider.

"Right on time," Drunnel called cheerfully. "Groffoco, is it?"

"Yes, sir, yes." The other sounded impatient. "Is the lass stuck? Here now, here now, I've got you." The thrike's claws scraped closer, and the edges of a wing flapped against Challis' shoulder blade and the back of her head. Something tore down the back of her hand and she let out a sharp noise of pain without letting go.

"Help me please," she said. "I can't see and I can't move."

"Right, right." Leather creaked, and she felt strong fingers grasp her wrist. "Alright, this, grabs here." He directed her hand up onto a thick cord that was tight against the thrike's skin. Challis' fingers were stiff and tingling, but they weren't numb yet. She pushed her fingertips underneath the cord and held on. Groffoco patted her hand more to the right until her arm wrapped around the quivering muscles of the thrike's neck.

"Good, yes," he said. "Alrighty. You got a belt? Can't tell under those, uh, flappies."

He grunted as he reached, and Challis felt a hand digging under the fabric strips at her waist. When he had a firm hold on her belt, Groffoco paused.

"On three, you're gonna let go that rock there, and pull yourself up and over onto the saddle right in front of me, got it? Ready, set, go." Waiting for the three, Challis scrambled a bit as Groffoco heaved her across the folded wing and onto her stomach on the saddle. It wasn't meant for more than one rider, and Challis' legs lay on either side of Groffoco's knees as he braced himself with the foot grips. A thrike's wings connected all along the sides of its body and legs, so Challis knew her boots were hammocked in the lower half of the wings and had to be uncomfortable for the animal. She lay as relaxed as she could, still gripping the halter, and let out a squashed noise as Groffoco flattened himself almost completely on top of her. There was no other way for them both to ride, but there was nothing quite so comforting after dangling from a rock over empty space and thinking depressing thoughts.

"Director?" Groffoco asked over to the side. "That your horse? Well, then. We're not much of a party, but Tofflar and I were pitching around down behind that bend, over there by the flattops, before Flasher here went crazy. You see it?"

"I see it."

"Great. See you there."

Unprepared, Challis' heart leaped up into her throat when they wheeled around off the rocks and plunged into the rapidly cooling air of the ravine. Wind gusted into her face, whooshing through her sweaty hair with a coolness that had never felt so refreshing. She didn't dare let go to rub at her eyes, so she squeezed them shut and let herself be carried over every lift and tilt and dive of the thrike's movement. Even with Groffoco on top of her, it seemed a weightless rush of pure airflow.

It ended all too quickly. Groffoco's knees shoved upward as he braced his feet, leafy twigs whipped Challis in the face, and a terrific thudding pounded into her bones. When it stopped, she gasped for breath and released a short rush of laughter.