slope downward in front of them was steep and rocky. It would require them to pick their way with care.
'Come!' shouted Je Wen. He started down the slope without looking back.
For a minute it seemed as if Je Wen had been wrong. They picked their way down the mountainside with no hint of anything awry.
Then Silverdun pitched into the air as if he'd been thrown. He heard shouting. There was dust all around him. Sela screamed.
Something roared beneath him, bellowed, rattled the air. Silverdun landed hard, smashing his hip and shoulder against solid rock. The pain was numbing, vibrating through him, matching the vibration of the earth below.
Another ear-splitting bellow, and now the ground fell away beneath him only to let him crash onto it a second time.
'Silverdun!' came a voice through the roar. He felt a hand on his shoulder, saw a face. Je Wen was reaching across to him. 'Jump to me!'
Silverdun looked down and saw the dirt at his feet shake and disintegrate, pouring downward into darkness. He leapt toward Je Wen and landed on a narrow ledge that swayed but didn't topple.
'Where are we?' shouted Silverdun. 'We have to find the others!'
'This way!' Je Wen called back.
It was nearly impossible for Silverdun to find his footing; every time he found a place to step, it jumped away from him. Je Wen didn't seem to have this problem; he stepped where the ground was heading, not where it was.
Sela screamed again, and Silverdun lurched forward. He saw her hair before he saw the rest of her, a gold swirl in a maelstrom of dust. She was hunched beneath an overhanging boulder as rock and dirt poured down around her.
'Come with me!' shouted Je Wen. He reached for Sela and pulled her toward them. He thrust her into Silverdun's arms and pointed. 'Go that way! '
Je Wen stepped forward. The ground lurched beneath his feet, and he dropped to his knees. A thick slab of a boulder slid down on top of him with an ugly thud. Sela screamed; Silverdun wanted to.
Je Wen was dead, his chest crushed.
'Run!' shouted Silverdun.
They carefully crawled past Je Wen's body onto a solid, level place. With a final crash, the ridge rumbled and then fell still. Dirt and rocks cascaded around them from higher up the peak, but the ground had stopped moving. The quake was over.
Silverdun and Sela sat down hard on solid rock, both gasping for air. Dust had settled in Sela's face and hair, and tears streamed down her cheeks. They sat that way, staring at each other, for a long moment.
'Help!' came Ironfoot's voice, cutting through the dust. 'Silverdun! Sela! Je Wen!'
Silverdun was up and running, leaping across the new landscape of the ridge toward the sound of Ironfoot's voice. Dust was still thick in the air. 'Slow down!' shouted Sela, but Silverdun kept running, the panic that had only just begun to settle now rising up in him again. He tried Ironfoot's trick of reaching in, found his panic and quelled it, but not by much.
'Ironfoot!' he shouted, now unsure where to go. The ridgeline here broke in two, split by a steep cleft.
'Over here!' came Ironfoot's voice, strained. 'Hurry, dammit!'
Silverdun ran toward Ironfoot's voice. The dust parted, and he stopped just before falling over a ragged cliff. A thick stream of rocks and dust was spilling down over the edge. Silverdun looked down and saw Ironfoot clinging to the barest of handholds on the cliff face with four fingers, the open air beneath him. The ground was at least a hundred feet below. Ironfoot held Timha slumped in his other arm, and the leather satchel hung on his wrist.
'Get me the hell out of here!' shouted Ironfoot.
'Is Timha alive?' Silverdun asked, getting down on his stomach.
'He's breathing,' said Ironfoot. 'But neither of us will be if you don't get us up!'
Silverdun reached down. His fingertips went down just far enough to graze Ironfoot's handhold.
'Careful!' shouted Ironfoot.
'What now?' asked Silverdun, the panic again rising. He reached in and damped it down again; this time it was easier. In a few seconds, he was calm again.
'You could let Timha drop,' said Silverdun soberly. 'Better him than both of you.'
