The Red Sea by Edward W. Robertson Page A

Galand?"
    "I'm starting to think I should. We're out here in the wild. Our survival might depend on knowing what we're all capable of doing. So I'll start. I'm a skilled nethermancer. I can harm and heal. Create light and darkness. I can reshape dirt and rock. I can see through the eyes of the dead. And if we ever find ourselves really, really bored, I can make a troupe of dead rats stand up and dance."
    Blays lifted his hand. "I can disappear. Walk through stone walls, too. Impressive, I know, but I must warn you: I'm already married."
    "I am a Harvester," Winden said. "And you have just seen what I can do."
    "Grow things? Then why not start with that molbry flower we're after?"
    "I can only grow what is already there." She gestured toward the next island. "I can't simply string a vine between here and there. I wouldn't trust it to hold us. But we can use one to climb down, and another to come up."
    She tipped back her head. A few feet above their heads, a vine detached from the high branches, nosing forward like a snake. It lowered itself to the ground and slithered over the side of the cliff.
    Dante kneeled on the rocky edge and watched the vine disappear into the shrubs clinging to the almost vertical slopes. "Are there many of you?"
    "Very few. So my people will appreciate it if you would not get me killed."
    Blays nodded, got a look on his face, and burst into laughter. "Hang on a second. I think she just said something funny."
    Once she'd extended the vine to the bottom of the defile, Winden led the way down. The face of the rock wasn't completely vertical, and though it would have been highly dangerous to descend without their makeshift rope, there were enough holds for her to pick her way down.
    "Have you ever heard of anything like that?" Blays said. "These Harvesters?"
    Dante shook his head. "Never. But it makes a certain amount of sense. The nether resides in all living things. What she's doing isn't so different from when I make a body regrow from its wounds."
    "Oh boy. You're going to spend the rest of the trip trying to figure this out, aren't you?"
    "The thought had crossed my mind."
    Winden called from below. Dante made his way down. The bottom of the ravine was so densely filled with shrubs, thorns, and dead branches that he gave up any thoughts of trying to cross the entire valley from below. At the next island, Winden crawled another vine up to its top. They ascended to its surface, spent a very long time inspecting the rope there, and continued on their way.
    By early afternoon, they stood on the far side of the valley, having suffered no further mishaps. More heights rose ahead. That meant climbing, but after his experience with the rope, Dante was happy with any method of travel that kept his feet in contact with the ground.
    "What if you had died in the fall?" Winden said as they hiked up what appeared to be a game trail. "What would have happened to you?"
    "I imagine," Dante said, "I would have gotten very bloated. And very discolored. And then been devoured by insects until I was nothing but bones and hair."
    "Not your body. Your spirit. Your god, Arawn—he is a god of death. He must be hungry for your soul."
    He shook his head vehemently. "That's nothing but Mallish propaganda. An attempt to discredit him. We all die in time. Why would Arawn be in some special hurry?"
    "Do not get him started on this," Blays said. "Not unless you want a nine-hour sermon on all the ways Mallon has distorted the holy message of the guy who gave us pestilence, famine, and beheadings."
    "I don't give sermons. And it's not about clearing Arawn's reputation. It's about letting people worship as they please without fear of getting strung up for it."
    "This hike," Winden said. "It's long. And it's boring. So I don't care if it takes nine hours to explain. I want to know where Arawn sends you when you die."
    Dante glanced up at the sky. It was hard to see through the leaves, but it was dimming as gray clouds mounted against