Chapter 218: Quest Failure

On the southern bank of the Riven, they saw the sky catch fire.

The clouds the young master had cut in half began to glow. First dull red, then orange, then a white so fierce that it was almost as bright as the Dragon’s breath had been. Through the gap between them, something was falling.

It was a stone.

That was the only word for it. A stone the size of a hill, wrapped in fire, coming down out of the night sky above the Darwen Span. The Grand Magus’s tenth circle. The spell that had taken a minute and a half and every ounce of strength the old man had left.

It was falling straight toward the end of the bridge.

Toward the place where the young master lay.

Zuri screamed his name.

Gus did not scream. He could not make a sound. He stood at the edge of the gorge with the lamp and the letters crushed against his chest and stared at the small fallen shape at the far end of the Span, lying among the dead Roamers.

And then, for an instant, there was a second shape beside it.

Gus saw it. He would swear to it for the rest of his life. A dark figure, bending over the young master, where nothing had been a moment before. Lifting him.

Then both shapes were gone.

And the stone came down.

It struck the northern end of the Darwen Span.

The sound reached the southern bank a heartbeat later, and it knocked people off their feet. A deep, enormous crack, like the world itself breaking. A wave of hot wind came across the gorge and tore at their clothes and their hair. Grit and dust stung their eyes.

The Span broke.

The deep-folk had asked the rock to become a bridge a thousand years ago, and the rock had agreed, and for a thousand years it had kept its promise.

Now something stronger asked it to stop.

The bindings woven through the stone flared once, all along the length of the arch, a long line of pale light running from one side of the gorge to the other.

Then they went out.

And the Darwen Span came apart.

It came apart from the north end first, where the burning stone had struck. Great slabs of dark rock broke away and fell into the gorge, end over end, with the dead Roamers still lying on them. The break ran south along the arch, faster and faster, the bridge peeling away into the air piece by piece, until it reached the very middle.

Then the middle went.

For a long moment, the two halves of the Span hung in the air above the Riven, reaching toward each other across a gap that grew wider with every heartbeat.

Then they fell.

The Grand Magus was standing on the very end of the southern half when it began to go. He did not move. He did not seem to have the strength to move. His walking stick was still planted in the stone, and he was leaning on it with both hands, his eyes half closed.

Sir Gareth reached him in four strides. He threw the old man over his shoulder like a sack of grain and ran back toward solid ground. The stone crumbled under his boots. For the last two steps, there was nothing under him at all.

He landed on the edge of the cliff on his knees, with the Grand Magus still on his shoulder.

Behind them, the last of the Darwen Span tilted, slid, and dropped into the gorge.

It fell for a long time.

The white river at the bottom swallowed it without a sound.

? ? ?

When the dust cleared, the Riven was half a mile of empty air.

The burning stone had sunk into the gorge. Its glow still came up from the bottom, red and dull, lighting the walls of the Riven from below. Where the northern end of the Span had been, there was only a jagged shelf of broken rock and a long black scar.

On the northern side, the horde stood at the edge of the gorge.

Tens of thousands of Roamers, stretching back along the road and over the hills. They did not scream. They did not climb. They stood at the edge of the broken rock and stared across the empty air at the people on the other side.

They could not cross.

They would not cross for weeks.

Ysolde was looking for something else.

She stood at the very edge of the southern bank, her eyes narrowed against the dust and the red glow, and she searched the far side of the chasm. The edge of the road. The place where the small wounded shape had been lying, a few breaths ago, with its bent wing and its scarred neck and its jaws still smoking.

But now, the road at the edge of the chasm was empty.

There was no small dark shape there. There was no trail through the horde, no lane of bowing Roamers, no movement anywhere in the mass of grey bodies that might have been something small walking away.

It had simply not been there when the dust cleared.

Then, slowly, the horde began to turn away.

It did not happen all at once. The Roamers at the back went first, drifting away over the hills in loose, aimless groups, the way cattle wander when the herdsman has gone. Then the middle. Then the front. The thin cold threads that had held them together for weeks, that had driven them against the Wall and down the road and across the chasm, were gone.

Whatever had held them had let go.

On the southern bank, no one cheered.

Eight thousand people sat or knelt or lay on the cold ground at the edge of the Riven, and they did not make a sound. Some of them were crying. Most of them were simply staring at the empty air where the bridge had been.

The Grand Magus lay on his back on the rock where Gareth had set him down, breathing slowly, looking up at the sky. The cut in the clouds was still there. The stars still showed through it.

"He held it," the old man said, to no one. "The brat held it."

? ? ?

Far to the south, in the dark, Encrid knew none of it.

He did not know where he was. He did not know who was carrying him, how far they had come, or whether the Span had fallen. He knew nothing of the empty road, the turning horde, or the old man lying on the rock and looking up at the stars.

He did not feel the cold.

He did not feel the wound on his arm or the blood dried across his lip.

He did not feel anything.

He was unconscious.

And in the darkness behind his closed eyes, unseen by anyone, a single window opened.

[ THE WALL AND THE WATCHER ]

[ ? QUEST FAILURE ? ]

[ The Wall has fallen. ]

Encrid remained unconscious.

? ? ?

End of Volume 1 - THE WALL AND THE WATCHER