Chapter 161: The Bell Beneath the Rain Changed Its Mind

Rill answered the hidden homebell before the rain swallowed its third note.

He struck Slate’s chain once, waited, then struck twice.

Far below the nursery cliffs, metal rang back through cloud. One note. A pause. Two notes dragged close together.

The next answer came differently.

One. Two. Then a late third note that sounded almost embarrassed to have missed the others.

Rill went still. "Harrow," he said into the rain.

Ilex twisted in Mottle’s saddle. Pain tightened her face before she could reach the charred bell arc in Slate’s claws.

Two blue strands remained caught under the soot. From beside his egg, the lone pale father crossed the ruined nursery and seized them between his front teeth.

He breathed once over the leather.

Then he pushed it toward the drop.

"Bracken’s line," Ilex said. "Harrow braided that blue because he could never find black leather in rain."

On Rill’s first storm descent, he had repeated Harrow’s signal exactly and sent Slate toward the same downdraft twice. Harrow hauled their line clear, rang the late third note, and told him weather never made the same mistake in the same way. Rill had carried that lesson into every hunt since.

Rill struck the chain again. "He taught me the late third. Never repeat an emergency answer. Make the next one prove it can listen."

Below them, the homebell gave the late note sooner.

Aylin watched the cloud instead of Rill. "Mottle’s bell is still inside something that rolls when it swims."

Mottle’s wounded wing tightened against her side.

The Bellwyrm had gone below cloud with her ordinary homebell between its teeth. Water and a moving jaw could spoil a rhythm. So could a black-green root learning from every strike above it.

Rill knew that. Hope made the knowledge smaller without making him stupid.

"Harrow and Bracken went under this cliff," he said. "That leather came back without them. I am going down."

Slate lowered one dark shoulder for him.

Mottle tried to follow.

Her front feet reached the outer ledge. When she opened the injured wing, the missing flight feather left a gap that rain pushed through at once. Her body lurched toward the broken bridge.

Ilex locked both hands around the saddle rail rather than the reins. "No."

Mottle’s head swung back.

"I am not ordering you," Ilex said. "I am asking which one of us holds their way home."

The nursery knocked behind them with cooling stone and settling boards. Real parents stayed over their eggs. The rust-throated mother had carried her gray hatchling away from the open run, but every exposed copper line still led toward rain.

Mottle looked at the chain in Rill’s hands.

She backed from the ledge and planted both front feet around its upper anchor.

Ilex tied the chain across the saddle rail and her own waist. Her swollen knee remained bound along Mottle’s side. Neither body could follow. Together, they became the point the others might return to.

Jiang crossed to the damaged bronze arch.

The female emperor answered his approach from Ninebell. Her chick lifted its beak from beneath the brood fold and called the ending Jiang could no longer give. Beside them, the male remained down but awake, one eye on the opening.

Valea still held the lower bronze with her damaged knife wedged beneath it. Hest’s iron bar trembled under the upper frame.

Jiang pressed his crown against the female’s free flank.

Air scraped his throat when the chick called again.

He had no promise shaped like a voice. He left his beak against her feathers until she moved first, returning to the chick and the male.

Then Jiang went back to the rain.

Rill had spread a rescue cradle across Slate’s back.

Jiang pecked the leather once and walked past it.

"He does not want another flight," Aylin said.

Jiang struck the reopened cooling throat with his beak.

"You want the water line tied to Slate?"

He struck her boot.

Aylin’s wrong guess annoyed him less than it would have before the nursery. At least she had waited for correction.

Jiang lowered his belly into the throat. Cold runoff moved over his feet and disappeared beneath the cliff.

Ilex understood from above. "The under-run opens below the first cloud shelf. Harrow could not fit through it. Bracken could not put a wing inside."

Aylin crouched beside Jiang and cut a fresh flat strip from her coat lining. She tied it to a wooden toggle and laid the bar between his feet.

"We keep the rule that worked," she said. "Grip means continue. Release means I haul."

Jiang closed his beak around the wooden bar.

Rill and Slate went over the outer ledge. Slate kept his wings narrow until they cleared Mottle’s chain, then dropped into cloud with Rill bent low over his neck.

Aylin hooked herself to the descending chain shelf. Her injured palm made the first grip and failed. She wrapped the line around her forearm, shifted the weight away from the old cut, and followed one ledge below.

Jiang entered the cooling throat alone.

Warm nursery water lasted for the length of his body. Beyond it, mountain runoff struck his crown and found all the torn channels in his oilcoat.

The tunnel fell steeply beneath him.

His broad belly kept him from turning sideways. Both webbed feet pushed against red stone while his working flipper controlled the slide. The failed flipper dragged along his ribs. Each bump found the fresh bruise left by the fallen nursery beam.

He did not fall with grace. Stormdive offered him nothing. Jiang descended like an injured penguin refusing to become a loose object.

The throat opened under the cloud.

Rain did not fall as drops there. Water poured from the cooling mouths above and gathered in a stone bowl hanging beneath the cliff. Its far rim spilled into white air. Old homebells lay under the black surface, their split crowns shining whenever lightning moved inside the cloud.

Cloud pressed beneath the bowl like a second, moving ground. Each overflow tore a brief hole through it before the white closed again. Any body washed over the rim would fall blind until stone, water, or a wyvern found it first.

Jiang struck the basin hard enough to lose the toggle.

The line snapped tight behind him.

Aylin pulled the line with both arms.

Jiang caught the toggle again before she dragged him back into the throat. He bit down and kicked away from the overflowing rim.

Outside the basin, Slate fought the falling water with both wings. Wet dark feathers clung along his leading edges. Rill had clipped their chain to a stone spur and was lowering himself toward a shelf hidden by the cataract.

"Blue leather!" he shouted.

A strip of flight thong whipped from beneath the falling water. Fresh blood marked the cut end.

The homebell rang deeper below.

Rill looked toward the sound.

Jiang put both feet against the basin floor.

Something struck back against his webbing.

No bell made that answer. Human knuckles did.

He released the toggle and dived.

The pull line left without him.

Black water rolled over his damaged coat. Jiang used one flipper and both feet, letting the current turn his failed side toward the wall. Beneath the cataract, a human hand protruded through a slot under the stone shelf.

Its fingers struck again, weaker.

Jiang wedged his crown under the wrist and pushed upward.

A face broke the surface inside a narrow air pocket. One eye had swollen shut. Blood ran from the rider’s hair into his mouth, but he still found enough breath to glare past Jiang at the ringing dark.

"Rill," Harrow rasped. "Do not follow that bell."

Water closed over his chin.

"Ours is gone," he said as water climbed his mouth.