To do communicate back to Dr. Burdock, though, they would have to make it to Thyrion. As happy as Calea was with her progress with the crutch, she was still slower than Bron and Nyasha. It also bothered her to realize how used she was getting to always leaning on a stick of wood. She didn’t want to get used to it. Before them, the BurntMountains grew, hour by hour and day by day, until they filled the horizon and dominated the sky.
As difficult as the foothills were to traverse, the mountains would be worse. Calea’s heart sank when they finally reached the foot of the nearest mountain and found themselves looking up and up and up a slope that seemed unending, bare and rocky and hostile. Nyasha calling the BurntMountains “lovely this time of year” had never seemed more ironic.
Nyasha fluttered around, looking for the path she remembered, muttering to herself in a way that might have been hilarious if Calea’s heart hadn’t turned into a brick at the sight of the ascent. “I know it was nearby…. Papa always said it wasn’t the easiest but it was the best. Fastest, right, that’s what you wanted?” She called this last over her shoulder to Calea.
Calea turned to Bron, who was looking up the mountain, his head craned back, with an expression of subdued dismay. It was his version of sobbing aloud in terror. They were both such tenderfoot city folk, they truly were.
“Bron, I’m not sure I can do this,” Calea admitted quietly.
He looked at her gravely. “You think perhaps the caravan might have been better?”
It stuck in her throat to admit her wrong, but after a moment, Calea jerked out a nod. “It might have been better.”
Bron didn’t look smug or satisfied at the admission, just accepting. He nodded, taking her words for the apology they were, and went back to staring up the mountain.
“I found it!” Nyasha called. She turned to face them, hitching her pack higher on her back and grinning. “It’s a good path. I knew I could find it.”
Calea and Bron made their way to her, choosing their footsteps carefully through a loose fall of pebbles and grit, and stood beside her to see what Nyasha considered “a good path.” It was wide enough for them to walk only single file, but it didn’t go straight up the slope, instead crossing the face of the mountain at a moderate angle. Some way up, it made a hairpin turn in the opposite direction, and so on up the mountain.
“It’s a switchback path,” Nyasha said, as proud as if she’d made it herself. “There aren’t any good passes through the Burnt Mountains, not for days and days in either direction, so this will take us pretty near the top before we cross over. We’ll be able to see Thyrion from above, and it’s something to see. Quite a distance away, though. Once we see it, it will still take a few days to get there.”
“We’ll be able to see the Great Well,” Calea said. “I’ve seen maps of the city. They call it the Heart of Thyrion. It was once a canyon, and it’s like a small sea in the middle of the buildings and walls.”
Nyasha nodded. “Yes. I thought it was pretty, like a huge bubble in the ground, never still.”
Calea breathed deep, shoring up her confidence and her strength, and started up the path. It wasn’t quite as impossible as Bron and Calea had feared, but by the end of the day both were worn thin. For the first time, even Nyasha looked bedraggled and weary. Nyasha had stopped adjusting the pack higher on her back, letting it droop until the straps dragged on her upper arms.
Even so, they had made it the right distance, as evidenced by another previously used camping spot in a place Nyasha recognized, this one on a wide shelf of rock where a few hardy bushes had contrived to grow into the side of the mountain. Bron did not seem enthusiastic about sleeping in such a place. There was little chance of being ambushed here by man or beast, but they would still set a watch, one of them sitting nearer the edge while the other two slept pressed against the mountain. Small protection, but better than none.
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