Starside novel · Chapter 14 of 24

Chapter 14: The Glass Bridge

The white crack in the glass stopped a hand short of my heel.

Behind me the bridge went from red to dull orange where Marek had fallen through.

Nobody on the bank spoke.

I turned and looked at them, eleven challengers with their boots in their hands.

A woman near the front had her mouth open.

"She walked it," she said. "She walked it and she isn't burning."

I turned my back on all of them and kept going.

The far end of the bridge was a hundred paces off, and I did not run.

The cord lifted from the glass between my wrist and Dain's, and I felt it go tight.

I made myself not look back.

I heard him anyway, one step and then another, coming out onto the glass in his bare feet.

A Warden's skin burns like anyone's.

He made no sound at all, and that was how I knew how much it cost him.

The glass hissed behind me.

When I reached the rock on the far side, I stepped off and went three paces further and stopped.

Dain came off the bridge a moment later and went down on both knees.

The soles of his feet were split and red, and he left bright prints on the stone.

Two stars fell over the gorge while I stood there, one after the other.

Somebody behind us had taken the bridge in their boots after all.

I didn't count the sky.

There was a hollow in the rock above the gorge, out of the wind, with a floor of pale sand.

I dragged him into it by the arm.

"Sit," I said.

He sat.

I tore the hem off my shirt and poured water over his feet from my flask, and he put his head back against the rock and shut his eyes.

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