Chapter 3

  The Secret

  The path was narrow, only fit for travel in single file, and littered with trampled grass through which treacherous stones poked. Sometimes these stones were helpful, as they gave surer footing than the slippery grass, but mostly they were hidden beneath the flattened stalks and more likely to twist the ankle of an unwary traveller than provide a helpful step. The grass that remained upright was its own concern, for anything - whether human enemy or bestial predator - could be hiding in the chest-high field of green leaves and golden stalks.

  Janak looked decidedly sullen as Taya stepped easily over yet another stone that she would not have seen had she been on foot. He seemed to have a sense for the natural pitfalls of the climb, and Janak could not help but be in awe that he was climbing barefoot. He had worn sandals when she met him, but they had gone missing at some point and she wasn't sure if she should ask or not.

  "Mountains are amazing worlds in their own right," Taya was marvelling. "We walk on the face that receives most of the day's sun, and it is a hard climb with little pleasant plant life. But you will see, once we round the spur, the climate is cooler, the plants have brightly coloured flowers and leaves, and even the earth is firmer underfoot."

  "I know this," Janak murmured, thinking back to the mountains of her homeland. Seemingly, it was a paradise of flowers, mountain streams, hidden lakes, and lush trees, and she one of the highest born women in the land, the third child and only daughter of the nation's most celebrated warlord. It should have been paradise, but it had seemed like her private hell.

  Taya did not speak again for a time, and Janak despised herself for her petulant reply, as if the lad had been trying to offend her and not just making conversation. Truth be told, she had felt the dreadful, grasping, hands on her shoulders and back that came with keeping dark secrets, and that had put her even more on edge than she usually was. Her first secret had seemed harmless, and she had kept it as much to start over as to refrain from seeming to boast of her heritage. That had been before she thought there was any chance of her being discovered. Now, her secret had compounded, and there was the additional secret that, not only had she been seen and recognised, but she was now being hunted by someone unfathomably dangerous.

  How do I confess to such an accursed turn of events? she wondered bitterly. And the longer I keep silent, the worse it becomes. Taya will surely leave me this time.

  She gazed longingly up the path, trying to determine some glimpse of the summit, but failing. The cliffs were veiled in those same clouds that promised rain but never delivered. Would she and Taya reach the level of the clouds? What would it be like within? How far must she go to be safe from the man who was, in word, her betrothed, but in practice her master?

  "Do not be ashamed of your injury," Taya said softly. "I have been ashamed of my strength and what I have used it for. Now, for the first time, I am able to use it for good. You weigh nothing. I can carry you all day if need be."

  "To be carried like this ... like a cripple dropped as a child ... it is humiliating," Janak mumbled, her eyes still searching the clouds for any hint of a reward for their efforts. "And yet ... not only must I embrace the humiliation, I must be grateful for it," she continued. "I do not know what I would have done if you had not come upon me." She laughed bitterly. "Not only been there, but offered your aid and practically enforced it. I would never have asked for such help."

  "I could see in your eyes from the moment we met that you were not the sort to ask for help," Taya chuckled good-naturedly. "Your gratitude is humbling. I know you come from a class higher than my own."

  Ah, yes, my attempt to buy his services would have proclaimed that to any who saw. Perhaps even those soldiers. Janak sighed irritably as her own indiscretions piled high in her mind.

  "I seem to have made blunder upon blunder since coming to The Mountain," she whispered, mostly to herself.

  Even so, Taya continued resolutely onward, steadily climbing even as the sun seemed to perch upon the far distant horizon. The red sphere seemed to pulse with a baleful recognition, as if even it was accusing Janak of her very identity.

  Taya chose a few of his next steps more carefully, and then, just like that, the sun was gone, and they were hidden by the cloak of the spur they had just rounded. Just as Taya had said, the air cooled drastically as this place had been out of the direct sunlight for the past two or three hours, and visibility worsened as well. Over the course of the next few paces, Janak saw that the going was firmer underfoot, with fewer loose stones sitting atop packed down earth. Already, far more plants of a lush and vibrant appearance could be seen, although their full effect was lost in the shadow of the mountain.

  Taya journeyed on. He had the steel in his eye of one who had already trod this path, and knew exactly how much ground they had to cover.

  "Do you mean to make The Gate today?" Janak asked with some surprise.

  "Sleeping in the streets of The Gate will be far safer than sleeping on the mountainside."

  "Beasts do not come near me," Janak offered, only mildly smug. "They can smell the fire."

  "It is not beasts that concern me on this mountain," Taya replied firmly. "Many give up on The Mountain and then set their minds to preventing others from even making the attempt. I passed some of these in just the time it took to scout the path."

  "Surely they are all miserable cowards," Janak scoffed.

  "Cowards do the most treacherous things," Taya said softly.

  Janak cursed her own lack of restraint and forward thinking. Of course. While she did not know what had brought Taya to these lands, she did know that he considered himself a deserter. A runaway. A coward.

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  "I do not consider you to have any part with them," she muttered sullenly into his chest. She was well aware that this hardly constituted the apology she begrudgingly felt that he was owed, but her proud spirit would not allow her to make any further concession.

  Taya chuckled roughly, evidently having not expected so much to begin with and more than happy with what he received. They came to a place where the ascent steepened considerably. Those fit and unencumbered might have barely made it up without using their hands, but considering Janak's injury and Taya's burden they were forced to rest a moment as they considered the best way to proceed. They had walked across a great sloping rock shelf to get to this place, with Janak privately certain that Taya would slip on the slope at any moment and pitch them both down the slope that turned into a cliff. Now they were faced with a steep climb of some fifteen paces that would be dangerous for Taya to attempt with Janak in his arms.

  "You must ride on my back for this climb," Taya decided, as if that made all the sense in the world.

  Janak went a bit grey and stared up at him with indignation.

  "No," she said curtly. It would be bad enough being seen carried in his arms like someone diseased or infirm, but in her land, to be carried on someone's back was an intimate gesture not afforded lightly.

  "Why?" Taya frowned. "It is merely a change of position."

  "You should not offer your back lightly in strange lands," she snapped, well aware that this was not the true cause of her misgivings.

  "I have no reason to distrust you," Taya said bluntly. "I must carry you or you must climb this stretch yourself."

  "Then I will climb it myself!" Janak retorted. "Set me down!"

  Taya did as she bid him, albeit with a deep furrow in his brow and a frown on his lips. He clearly did not think this wise, and Janak bitterly knew the same. She was being a fool for her pride, but there were still walls built over the past two decades of her life that even she could not dismantle in one day.

  She stood shakily on her own feet, her torn knee still burning when she moved in the wrong way. Taya eased past her and made the short climb with ease, his spear held at the ready as he crested the rocky ascent. For a heart-stopping moment, Janak was convinced that he meant to continue on and leave her behind, her irritability and ingratitude the final few straws. But he stopped at the crest, and turned to face her, looking down with a challenging grin spread across his dark face.

  "I will keep watch from here. Now you know the place that you must climb to is safe, and I can keep watch on the area behind you as well. Come."

  There was nothing else for it. The time had come for Janak to truly show her resolve, but it made her burn with frustration to know that this challenge would have been nothing if her knee was uninjured. She looked up and felt an odd heat spread across her face at the knowledge that she must crawl up this rapid incline on her hands and knees. It seemed to her incredibly improper, and she fervently wished she could demand that Taya turn around. Instead, she grit her teeth, and stumbled forward to the progression of natural stone steps leading up to Taya. The foot corresponding to her injured knee was on the first step, but she could barely put any pressure on it, instead having to rely on the strength in her arms and hands to pull herself up far enough to position her good leg. That step up was far easier, but even so, she could see that there were several steps of uneven rises still to overcome. She was thankful that at least she had excellent core strength from her culture's traditional dance, and how she had incorporated that into her Oddity. Another painful step up, and she hissed out her breath at the shooting pain in her knee. She had initially hoped it was only a minor injury that had hurt at first, but would then die away over the course of the day. This felt no different to when she had first tried to walk on it ... perhaps even worse.

  Her current climb became a far lesser hurdle by comparison, as her thoughts turned then to how she realistically intended to climb this mountain in her condition. She might conquer this pitiful rise through grit and determination, but this was seven steps of stone. The handholds were good and sturdy, the footing sure. As her gaze was drawn away from her current trial and towards the obscene slopes of the higher columns and mountain passes, Janak felt a cold dread that she was only climbing to fail. That failure might be her own surrender and retreat, or it might be Taya finally tiring of her and abandoning her on the side of the mountain somewhere, unable to ascend or descend by her own power.

  Janak's fingers scratched at the next step for a handhold, and she concentrated her efforts desperately. A moment's distraction and lack of conviction had almost cost her more than just some dignity on a climb that should have been child's play. I cannot afford another injury, she thought, shaken by her own lack of focus.

  Something rapped on the stone in front of her, and Janak looked up irritably, her sweaty hair sticking to her face and stinging her eyes. It was the shaft of Taya's spear, and above, lying on his stomach with arm outstretched to ensure his weapon came within Janak's reach, Taya grinned cheerfully down at her.

  "You are within reach!" he nodded, as if she had accomplished the conquest of the known world. "Take hold and I will pull you up!"

  Without a second thought, Janak clung to the offered handhold as if it were life itself, and Taya hauled her easily up the rest of the way. He gently set her down at the top of the climb, and sat there with her in silence, waiting for her to catch her breath. As her breathing slowed and her mind cleared, Janak's thoughts turned again to the climb ahead of her.

  "Is there any hope of me being anything but a burden on this journey?" she whispered bitterly.

  "You think very highly of yourself if you think you are a burden to a warrior," replied Taya with good humour. "If I had less respect for you I could put you over my shoulder and travel much easier."

  Janak glowered at the thought, but eased her expression after a moment and sighed the irritation away. She was too tired to be annoyed, and the act of taking her frustrations with herself out on others was becoming her own private shame.

  "Look to the peaks, Taya. How are you to climb those while carrying me? Whether in your arms or over your shoulder ... I admit that you could carry me all day." She smiled tentatively, but thought it had probably resembled more of a grimace. "But those slopes ... I feel I would be on my hands and knees regardless of my fitness."

  Taya grinned widely. Janak thought he was a very happy person for a self-professed coward.

  "You will be healed by then, surely," he said with great assurance. "We will arrive at The Gate just after sundown. There we can rest as long as need be to ensure you are fit for the climb. And even if you are not wholly fit, there seems to me to be some distance between us and where the slopes become truly difficult. There is time. Do not worry about tomorrow when today is struggle enough."

  Janak stared desolately at the inflamed and bruised graze on her knee. Visibly, it did not look like much, which only deepened her shame, but the rock she had fallen on had struck her at precisely the right angle and place to leave her incapable of moving forward alone. What if the damage was permanent? As someone who had danced among her own flames and been praised for her athleticism, beauty, and grace, it was a bitter future to consider.

  Taya rose to his feet, and from under his cloak he pulled a skin of water that Janak had not noticed before. It suddenly occurred to her that he had misplaced his sandals and acquired water. Had he traded with someone during his scouting mission? Without ceremony or any sort of expectation, he offered it to her as a soldier might offer another soldier.

  "Drink." He smiled. "And then we must press on."