It took all her courage to turn her head a tiny bit to see past her shoulder. There was nothing to see. There were no notches she could shift a hand to, no safer position to crab her body over to. Smooth, gray-black shale. She was pressed flat against the cliff, hands high, body stretched. There was only up and down. She tilted her eyes to peer downward. Her guts tightened inside her. That left only up. She did not stop and debate her next action. She took the deepest breath her position would allow her, sagged slightly from her handholds, and bounced her body up as she kicked free from her toeholds.
Her left hand slapped rock. Her hands jerked as they took her full body weight. She had made a gain. Her left hand was flat on the ledge top. Her right hand, wrist, and forearm rested beside it. Stinging sweat rubbed into her scraped belly and chest. Her legs and feet dangled limply.
Ki pulled. Her spread hands found no place to grip on the flat shale ledge. They began to slip back toward her. The scanty layer of rock dust, twigs, and small shale chips they displaced showered into her face. Twigs clung to her hair, dust coated her eyes. Ki choked, fought the cough that rose in her. When the spasm passed, she drew several short breaths into her laboring lungs. Her muscles screamed as she dangled, her spine twisted in her uneven reach. She imagined tendons snapping free, bones popping from their sockets. Don’t think of that. Force the aching, sweating body to stiffen and straighten. Down she pressed on her hands, refusing to let them slide any closer to the edge. Her weight hung in space, suspended by the puny leverage of her hands. It was impossible. Even if she had been rested and fresh, she could not have lifted her own weight this way. She forced her muscles to try.
Her face scraped the rock as she lifted her chin. Now her eyes pointed up instead of at smooth gray rock. She tightened her screaming belly muscles so that her bent legs and feet pressed lightly against the rock face. She clung like a spider. When her legs had the most purchase she could find, she took one short nervous breath. She frog-jerked her legs straight. The slight impetus pushed her up. She got both forearms flat on the ledge.
She heaved with her arms. A spasm of pain leaped up in her left wrist and shot to her shoulder. That was the wrist that had suddenly taken her full body weight when her right handhold had crumbled away earlier. At this new abuse, it roared a protest into her spine. Ki fought to ignore it.
Her body rose. Her eyes came up above the level of her elbows. Through sweat-stung eyes she saw the ledge. Rain had washed dust and debris onto the ledge. The wind had littered it with tiny sticks and twigs torn from the brush higher on the mountain. It was strewn with shards of black shale worn away to black sand. At first, all Ki realized was that the ledge was large enough for her whole body to rest on. Then her eyes took in its full extent. Back in one corner was a sheltered area, heaped high with sticks and branches. Behind it a heavy woven hanging stirred slightly in the breeze. The lee of the mountain protected it from the ever-present wind. Old bones and gobbets of rotting meat littered the ledge near the hanging. Ki smelled the death stench of it.
Suddenly, strength was hers. Shoulders cracking, she heaved herself up, hooked her chin, then levered her body up, catching her weight on her rib cage. She panted, then scraped more of her body over the edge. For a ghastly moment her body caught and she could pull it no further. She knew what held her back. Sven’s knife in its tooled-leather sheath was tied to her belt. The sheath had caught on the edge of the ledge. Ki strained, but the mass of her body weight was still dangling. Her flat-spread hands found no grips. Panic powered her. She jerked her body with a seallike flop, bruising her thighs as they landed on the cliff edge. She scooted forward, knees and feet coming at last to rest on the ledge. She was up.
Ki rolled onto her back and lay still. Her muscles quivered in relief. The blue sky loomed over her, the fierce white eye of the sun staring down at her. But the sun was alone in the sky. She still had time.
She rolled onto her belly, drew her protesting body into a crouch, and then stood. She glanced about herself, but quickly focused her eyes on the ground before her. To be this high sickened her stomach and whirled her head. Only an icy sense of triumph held her calm. She drew her forearm across her wet forehead, trading sweat for abrasive shale dust. Her heartbeat steadied.
The woven hanging made small popping sounds as it rippled in the wind. Ki stared at it, letting her anger rise inside her. She waited for it to possess her, to give her purpose and drive. ‘As I found mine, so you shall find yours,’ she promised. She strode toward the hanging. A hard stick rolled beneath her foot. Ki glanced down. A bone, brownish-gray, with tatters of sinew still attached to it. Ki set her teeth. She moved past the ceremonial nest by the entrance, a tradition with Harpy folk. That much of their custom was well known. But beyond the hanging, Ki would be venturing into territory no living Human had ever reemerged from. Her hand crept down to check the knife that swung at her waist. Sven’s knife, not Ki’s. His blood still stained the sheath. She snorted the carrion odor of the ledge from her nostrils. Stealthily she pushed the hanging aside. The interior of the aerie den was in semi-darkness. Ki felt her heart hammering in her throat, a pulse pounding in her ears. She stepped within, letting the hanging fall behind her.
The den had been hewn into the cliff. The marks of tools still scarred the stone. A dish lamp, its tiny flame aflicker with the wind of Ki’s entrance, rested in a niche in the wall. Other niches and carved ledges held various possessions: a set of brass chiming gongs; a wooden carving of a diving Harpy, talons outstretched before her; a jumble of silver and ivory ornaments; stone working tools; and various other objects, too foreign to Ki’s experience for her to identify. Ki drifted past them. In a near corner of the room a shallow indentation in the shale held a bed of straw covered over with thick weavings and luxurious furs. Empty. Ki turned her eyes from it. She did not seek plunder or a place to rest. She took the small lamp from its niche and nudged the wick longer out of the oil so that the flame burned higher and cast a better light. She moved forward across the uneven stone floor. It was meticulously clean; no bones or scraps of meat were scattered here. It was the lair of civilized, sentient creatures. Ki set her teeth and clutched her grim purpose as tightly as she clutched the haft of Sven’s knife. She passed a loom with a half-worked tapestry upon it; when finished, it would show a scene of Harpies mating in flight. Beyond the loom was a screen, painted a deep blue with the summer stars white upon it. Beyond the screen was that which Ki sought.
The second indentation in the shale floor was larger than the first. The straw that filled it was yellow, smelling of freshly mown fields. The weavings that covered the straw were dyed in various shades of blue. A single fur of some great white beast was spread over the weavings. Ki lifted the corner, feeling the weight of the thick hide, the softness of the white fur. A thought crawled across her mind – what creature had once worn this skin? She dismissed it. She was here on her own quest. Her fist closed tightly on the corner of the fur. With a shoulder-wrenching jerk, she ripped the hide from the bed. She hissed in satisfaction.
Three eggs. Any one of them would have filled Ki’s arms and been a burden to carry. The shells of the eggs were a dark mottled brown. Individual blue weavings nestled about each one, sheltering it from contact with the others. Their shells had become leathery with their nearness to hatching. They would probably part with a splatter at a blow from Ki’s fist. But she slowly drew from its sheath Sven’s knife. She came close to the eggs, put one knee upon their mattress of weavings and straw. It gave softly with her weight. One egg rolled a quarter turn toward her.
Something brushed Ki’s head. She sprang back from the contact. She looked up, lifting the lamp for more light. Bobbing and floating from her movement, the brightly painted wooden shapes swung on fine strings from their wooden support. Tiny Harpies, painstakingly carved and painted, whirled in a miniature flock over Ki’s head. They circled round and round, like birds coming down to feed. Their bright wings were spread, their dull, turtle-beak mouths were carved open as if they