Kitai lifted his chin, though his eyes glittered bright. “My mother,” he said, “would have fetched the Blessing and been back by now while you talked, sire.”
Doroga’s teeth showed, suddenly. “Yes,” he agreed. One of his hands squeezed Kitai’s shoulders, and he released the boy, to turn to Tavi. “We will lower you down and wait until dawn. Once you begin, there are no rules. The results are all that matter. You can choose not to face the trial now, if you wish, valleyboy.”
“And go back to your camp and be eaten?”
Doroga nodded. “Yes. Regrettably.”
Tavi let out a nervous laugh. “Yeah, well. I’ll take my chances with the Keepers, I think.”
“Then we begin.” Doroga turned to one of the lumps in the snow and dug into it with his huge hands, uncovering a great coil of rope of a weave Tavi had never seen before. Beside him, Hashat did the same with a second coil of rope.
Tavi saw Kitai step up beside him out of the corner of his eye. The Marat boy watched the two adults uncovering the rope and testing its length. “It is rope from the Gadrim-ha. From the ones you call the Icemen. Made of the hairs of their females. It will not freeze or break.”
Tavi nodded. He asked, “You’ve done this before?”
Kitai nodded. “Twice. It wasn’t for a trial, before. But I have gone in twice and returned with the Blessing. I was the only one who returned.”
Tavi swallowed.
“Are you afraid, Aleran?”
“Aren’t you?”
“Yes,” Kitai said. “Afraid to lose. Everything depends on this night, for me.”
“I don’t understand.”
Kitai sniffed. “When I return with the Blessing before you, I will have defended my sire’s honor in a trial before The One. I will be an adult and may choose where I live.”
“And you want to live with Hashat,” Tavi said.
Kitai blinked and looked at Tavi. “Yes.”
Tavi studied the other boy. “Do you, uh . . . are you sweet on her?”
Kitai frowned, pale brows coming together. “No. But I wish to be a part of her Clan. To be free with her Clan. Not to plod around with Doroga and his stupid Sabot.” He glanced aside, to be sure no one was close, apparently, and confided in a low voice to Tavi, “They smell.”
Tavi lifted his brows, but nodded. “Yeah. I guess they do.”
“Aleran,” Kitai said. “My sire is right about one thing. You have courage. It will be an honor to face you in a trial. But I will defeat you. Do not think that this will end in any other way, despite whatever spirits are yours to call.”
Tavi felt a scowl harden his features. Kitai’s eyes narrowed, and he stepped back a half pace, one hand falling to the knife at his belt.
“I don’t have any,” Tavi said. “And back at my steadholt, we have a saying about counting your chickens before they’ve hatched.”
“My people eat eggs before they’ve hatched,” Kitai said, and stepped toward the coiled ropes. “I thought you might make it out alive, Aleran, thanks to your spirits. But we will only need to use one rope before dawn.”
Tavi started to say something quick and heated back, but Fade’s hand gripped his shoulder abruptly. Tavi turned to face the slave.
Fade frowned at him, his scarred face hideous and concerned. Then he said, “Be careful, Tavi.” And with that, he took the pack that had been slung over his shoulder and dropped it onto Tavi’s.
The boy let out a breath at the sudden weight. “Fade, uh. Maybe it would be better if I didn’t take anything with me. I’ll move faster without it.”
“Marat stronger than Tavi,” Fade said. “Faster.”
“Thank you,” Tavi said, testily. “I needed that kind of encouragement.”
Fade’s eyes glittered with something like good humor, and he ruffled Tavi’s hair with one hand. “Tavi smart. There. Bag of tricks. Be smart, Tavi. Important.”
Tavi tilted his head to one side, peering at the slave. “Fade?” he asked.
The glitter faded from the man’s eyes, and he gave Tavi his witless grin.
“Valleyboy,” Doroga called. “There is no time to waste.”
Tavi said to Fade, quickly, “If I don’t come back, Fade. I want you to remember to tell Aunt Isana that I love her. Uncle, too.”
“Tavi,” Fade nodded. “Come back.”
The boy blew out a breath. Whatever spark of awareness had been in the man’s eyes was gone now. “All right,” he said, and walked over to Doroga. He shrugged into the pack, drawing the straps down to their smallest size, so that it would fit closely to his back.
Doroga was handling his rope. Tavi watched as the Marat worked a loop into the end of it with the skill of a sailor and drew it tight. The Marat stood, leaving the loop just touching the ground, and in a moment of understanding, Tavi stepped forward and slipped his foot into the loop, taking up the rope itself to hold it tight.
Doroga nodded his approval. To Tavi’s right, Kitai had knotted the rope himself and stood at the edge of the precipice, his expression impatient. Tavi walked awkwardly to the precipice’s edge and stared over it to a drop of several hundred feet down a nearly sheer surface. His head spun a bit, and his belly suddenly shook and felt light.
“Are you afraid, Aleran?” Kitai asked, and let out a low little laugh.
Tavi shot the other boy a sharp glance and then turned to Doroga, who had secured the far end of the rope to a stake driven into the earth and looped it about a second such stake, so that he could let the rope out gradually. “Let’s go,” Tavi said, and with that, took a step back over the precipice and swung himself down into space.
Doroga held the line steady, and after a very short moment of terror, Tavi bumped against the wall and steadied himself, holding on. Doroga began to lower the rope, but Tavi called up, “Faster! Let it out faster!”
There was a brief pause, and then the rope began to play out quickly, lowering Tavi down the face of the cliff at a rather alarming rate.
From above, there was a yelp, and Kitai swung out into space. The boy plummeted down for several yards, and Tavi got the impression that when the rope finally did tighten and catch him that Hashat had only just managed to do so. Kitai shot Tavi a bright-eyed, angry glance and called something up the cliff in another tongue. A moment later, he, too, began to descend the cliff more quickly.
Tavi used one foot and one hand to keep himself from dragging on the stone and found that it was more effort than he would have expected. He was shortly panting, but a swift glance up at Kitai told him that he had thought correctly: Doroga’s huge muscles had an easier time letting out the rope at a faster, controlled rate than the more slender Hashat’s did, and Tavi had gained considerable distance on the other boy as they descended.
As he came down, closer to the lambent green glow of the croach, he shot a glance up at Kitai and smiled, fiercely.
Kitai let out a sharp whistle, and the line abruptly stopped playing out.
Tavi stared up at him in confusion. Until the other boy drew his knife, reached across to the rope that held Tavi thirty feet over the floor of the bizarre forest below and, with an answering smile, used the dark, glassy knife to begin swiftly slicing through Tavi’s rope.
CHAPTER 33