The Born Queen by Greg Keyes

hammock of wild grapevines. Just below, the stubborn forest gave way to a gray stone cliff. If the vines failed to support him, there was nothing between him and the jumble of fallen rock a hundred yards below. He couldn’t even see the river at the bottom of the gorge, so there wasn’t much hope of hitting that.
    He looked back in the direction from which he’d fallen. He and Leshya had been working their way down a groove worn by water running off the plateau. Not quite as perpendicular as the rest of the precipice, it was cluttered with enough debris to offer purchase, or at least so it had seemed from above. It was starting to look more dubious now as the water track steepened. The gray stone was harder, it seemed, than the shale above.
    “What can you see from there?” Leshya asked.
    “The channel hits the gray rock and gets steeper,” he said.
    “Steeper?” she said dubiously. “Or impossible?”
    “Steeper. Work your way to the deepest cut and there should be handholds. Below that, there’s a talus slope, like I reckoned.”
    “How far below that?”
    “I maun thirty kingsyards.”
    “Oh, is that all? Thirty kingsyards of wedging our fingers and boot tips in cracks?”
    “If you’ve got a better idea…”
    “I do. Let’s go back up and fight them all.”
    Aspar grabbed the thickest vine and carefully pulled himself to a sitting position. The natural net creaked and sagged, and leaves and chunks of rotting wood fell silently past him. Then he started working his way toward the rock face, cursing Grim in advance should a vine come unanchored and send him to the bonehouse.
    He reached the wall and managed to scrabble sideways to the ledge, where he spent a few moments appreciating having something solid between him and the earth’s beckoning.
    He turned at a slight noise and found Leshya on the shelf just above him.
    “How’s the leg?” she asked.
    Aspar realized he was wheezing as if he had just run for half a day. His heart felt weak, and his arms already were trembling from fatigue.
    “It’s fine,” he said.
    “Here,” Leshya said, holding out her hand.
    She helped him up, and together they sat, regarding the descent still before them.
    “At least we don’t have to go
up
it,” Leshya said.
    “Sceat,” Aspar replied, wiping the sweat from his brow.
    It had looked somehow better from the other angle. Now he could see the river.
    “You might make it to the talus slope,” she said. “But the river…”
    “Yah,” Aspar snarled.
    The river had dug itself down another hundred kingsyards. Although he couldn’t see the canyon wall on his side, the other side looked as smooth as a fawn’s coat.
    “We need rope,” he said, “and lots of it.” He glanced back at the vines.
    “No,” Leshya said.
    He didn’t answer, because she was right. Instead he scrutinized the gorge, hoping to find something he had missed.
    “Come on,” Leshya said. “Let’s make it to the slope. At least there we’ll be able to camp. Maybe we’ll see a way to the river, maybe we won’t. But if they don’t think to look down here, we could survive for a while.”
    “Yah,” Aspar said. “You said this was a stupid idea.”
    “It was the only idea, Aspar. And here we are.”
    “From here I might be able to get back up. Certain you could.”
    “Nothing up there we want,” the Sefry replied. “Are you ready?”
    “Yah.”
             
    They started from the ledge at middagh, and it was almost vespers when Aspar finally half fell onto the jumble of soil and rocks, his muscles twitching and his breath like lungfuls of sand. He lay looking up from the deep shadow of the gorge at the black bats fluttering against a river of red sky, listening to the rising chorus of the frogs and the ghostly churring of nightjars. For a moment, it almost felt normal, as if he could rest.
    It sounded right. It looked right. But he could smell the disease all around him. It was all poisoned, all dying.
    The King’s