Agalleos picked up a finger bone and rolled it along his palm. “Death won. My father died somewhere in these rocks. His body was never found. As you have seen, he had many companions on the road to the other side. The Cursed Ones do not like this place. Queen Shuashaana says that is because they can still hear the screaming of the ghosts who were never laid to rest.”
Alain heard nothing but their own small noises: Rage’s snuffling, the press of Agalleos’ feet as he shifted. A golden eagle glided overhead. Wind picked up, casting grit into his face.
“Come,” said Agalleos. “We are almost there.”
They reached the far side of the slide although by this time they had climbed well up the western slope. Above them the valley’s slope cut into a long escarpment, dark and brooding, that ran all the way down the rest of the broad ravine. Beyond the slide, thorns grew in profusion. It was hard to see where they could go from here. Maklos caught up with them, grinning like a boy ready to play a trick on his rival.
The sun had reached zenith, so bright and glaring that its light seemed like an actual weight. Alain was slick with sweat, and the hounds were laboring. His hand was swelling again. He hunkered down in such shade as he could find—there wasn’t much, with shadows so short—and shaded his eyes to stare back across the valley. Was that movement on the eastern ridge? Hard to tell.
Agalleos pointed. “Twenty or more of them.” After a moment, Alain thought he saw a darting movement at the fringe of the distant thorn growth, there on the eastern slope, but when it fluttered up into the sky, he realized it was only a bird.
A horn call rang out. Had the Cursed Ones found their trail, or were they giving up?
“It’s clear,” said Shevros, stepping out from a shadowed cleft, a natural chimney forged by unknown forces long ago.
“We must tie rope to the dogs, in case we need to haul them up,” said Agalleos.
Alain looped a harness of rope around their chests, backs, and bellies so they wouldn’t choke. He led them into the cleft; although it was still oppressively warm, the shade gave some relief from the heat. The builders had taken advantage of a natural incline already present in the escarpment when they chiseled out the steps. Climbing was hard work because the stair steps were not even. Whoever had hewn them out of the rock had merely worked with what was already there, so at times he had to take tiny steps, followed by a big lift. He was soon breathing hard. Shevros, in front, seemed scarcely winded, as though he climbed such staggering heights every morning before he broke his fast.
After about one hundred steps they came to the trap, a swaying bridge woven out of branches and rope and, poised above it, a lattice gate that held back a jumble of stones overbalanced into a horizontal cleft. Soldiers triggering the trap would be crushed once they were strung out on the bridge, and once the bridge was broken, it would be impossible to continue up the trail.