“Surely mice feel like I do now, before being swallowed,” murmured Adica.
He laughed softly, draping his arm comfortably over her shoulders. “They will not eat you.”
Content, she settled her head against his chest and dozed off again. He sighed, well satisfied by her weight leaning against him, the symbol of her trust. Wasn’t this what mattered most in life? They would live many long years together, raise children, rig a better plough, one with a coulter and moldboard. Somehow it would all work out….
A cough woke him. He started awake, shivering. Sunset gilded the ridgeline in rose and purple. The sky had not a breath of cloud in it. The line between earth and sky seemed as stark as though it had been drawn by a human hand wielding charcoal and paints. He was alone except for Sorrow, sitting on watch. What had coughed? He felt the prickle of an unseen gaze, not malevolent but merely curious.
He rose gingerly. His neck ached because he had slept at an awkward angle, and his hands, knees, and calves stung horribly, red from sunburn and beginning to blister. Thirst had dried out his throat. Fortunately the hidden spring, bubbling up among the rocks, flowed boundlessly. Moss grew along the bowl of rocks that bordered the spring, and he used this as a sponge to wash his face and arms.
“Where is Rage?” he asked Sorrow. “Find Adica.”
The hound rose with a massive yawn and a grunt, yipped once, and padded silently away. Alain grabbed his staff and followed him. Spires of rock loomed above them, swathed in darkness. Only the eastern ridges still caught the last of the sun.
He met Laoina coming back around the rock face. “You come, quick.” Laoina pointed to the sky. “Night come. Stars come.”
They collected their gear before following the tracks. The cliff face gave way to a defile, descending in stair steps. Here, the air smelled of water. Hardy plants grew in the walls, finding any purchase that they could. Some had prickly skins, harsh to the touch, and others lay low along the ground, snaking through tiny crevices.
The defile ended in a steep wall. Here an unknown tribe had erected a stone loom of peculiar design, constructed out of pillars instead of megaliths. Adica walked among the pillars, measuring their distance and angle, glancing frequently at the sky as twilight fell. The pillars had the sheen of granite but the feel of snakeskin frozen into stone. The upper portion of each column was carved into the torso of a woman, arms pressed flat along a scaly gray side. Fanciful stonework decorated the capitals, stonework ropes and vines that half-concealed the sly faces of smiling girls. It took Alain a moment to see that these wreaths of vines and ropes were actually carven snakes.