Not that I wasn’t happy when I caught up to Clem and the rest of my friends at the edge of a ravine. The yawning rift in the earth made it appear that the world was splitting in half, all the way to the horizon.
“It’s just me,” I called out when they all spun to face the sound of my boots crunching through the snow. “We’re good. It worked.”
“Then I don’t have to wring your neck,” Clem shouted over the howling wind. “How much time do you think we have?”
I hoped that we had as much time as we needed. My mother had sent a larger force after me this time, and none of those men and women would be available soon. With any luck, the authorities would squeeze them for enough information to hurt the heretics for a long time to come.
On the other hand, it was possible my mom’s resources weren’t as limited as I thought. If she had a hundred hunters standing by, there could be another team on our trail sooner than I’d like to admit.
“I’d guess we’ve got a couple of hours before they can find me and send out another group,” I said. “My trick bought us a little time, but let’s not waste it.”
“There’s a path here.” Eric pointed to a faint white line that ran along one wall of the ravine. “It’s not much, but you can see where the snow’s drifted on it. That’s gotta be the way.”
The trace of snow my friend showed me rose from the ravine’s floor to a height of fifty feet, then vanished around a bend in the chasm. A part of me wondered if the trail would peter out around that corner and leave us stranded far above the canyon’s floor. I shoved the negative thoughts out of my head. If the worst happened, we’d deal with it, just as we’d dealt with every other crazy thing that came our way. The time for fear and procrastination was over.
Now was the time for heroes.
“Let’s go,” I said. “The sooner we get out of this cold, the better.”
Our path descended as we advanced. The walls were so much taller than they’d appeared from our initial vantage. Their black faces loomed over the canyon, leaving only a narrow thread of star-strewn sky visible to us. We didn’t speak as we made our way into that dark chasm. Words were inadequate to describe how small I felt at that moment. It was as if we weren’t walking forward into the unknown, but backward into an unknowable prehistory that dwarfed us with its power.
Eric led the way once we’d reached the path because the fire that emanated from his fists made a natural snow shovel and lantern. It wasn’t the most efficient use of his jinsei, so we saved it until the snowdrifts against the ravine’s side were above our knees in places. Abi followed close behind the Resplendent Sun, ready to grab our friend if he lost his balance or slipped on a patch of ice. Clem and I took up the rear, walking side by side. The walkway was much wider than it had appeared from outside the chasm, and we had room to spare.
“It’s hard to believe it’s almost over,” Clem said, struggling to be heard over the wind. “When you first told us all this, I wasn’t sure we could do it. But here we are.”
I felt the same way. I’d wondered why the Flame had chosen me nearly every day since the end of the Gauntlet. There’d been so many challenges ahead of us that seemed insurmountable. But we’d persevered and pushed our way past one obstacle after another.
I’d worried it would be impossible to find the information we needed, even after I’d received the initial clue from the Temple of Maps. The pieces had all been there, though, just waiting to be discovered. Four kids were about to undo millennia of damage done to the world by a bunch of power-hungry soothsayers.
The path continued around the sharp bend in the ravine and sloped upward at a steep angle. Climbing uphill was difficult enough on its own. The freezing, biting wind and shards of frost kicked up into our faces made it a savage test of our endurance.
The cold-weather gear helped but couldn’t protect us from temperatures that seemed to drop with every step we took. We burned jinsei to heat our bodies and filled our channels to bursting in a desperate attempt to stave off hypothermia. While that worked, we all knew it wasn’t sustainable. If we didn’t find shelter to restore our reserves, our cores would soon empty.
Frost coated my lashes, weighing them down until they cracked off and fell onto my cheeks. It was a constant battle to keep my breath from freezing in my scarf. After a frustrating hour, I gave up on that and let the wind have its way with my chapped lips. My core had protected me from a bullet wound, it would have to protect me from this, too.
When I was at the end of my rope, Eric raised one burning hand overhead and shouted.
“The path ends here.” He limped ahead, his head suddenly drooping, shoulders sagging in defeat.
We scrambled through the snow after him, slipping and sliding into each other in our rush to reach any sort of shelter. We rounded another corner of the path and emerged onto a plateau that sparkled in the starlight. The sight before us stole my breath away.
The path ended a few yards short of a mountain’s face. The sheer wall of stone was covered in patches of frost and snow, but was otherwise featureless.
“No,” Clem groaned. “This is the place.
