I went back to my knapsack, picked up the coil of cable and my knife, then shouldered the bag and crossed over to the northside ledge. As I sheathed the knife and put the pistol in my belt, I began to feel something – a rising---a sense, a power, a force---

It was everywhere – in the air, the sky, the stars---in my flesh, in my mind, my memories, my blood---in the tower itself, in the walls, the stone---

It was everything.

The rising.

The dogs were here.

I looked down over the parapet and saw them – a ragged army of silent beasts waiting outside the wall, their vast gathering stretched out across an area of glassrock the length of the wall – and half as deep – with more dogs arriving all the time, streaming in out of the Deathlands to swell the ranks of the hundreds---

My mother was there. I could see her sitting with her pack, calm and serene---and I could see myself through her eyes.

I was with her---

I was with them all.

We were one.

The rising.

I didnt understand it, but I knew it.

Just as I knew that Chola Se was down there somewhere, waiting for me to join her.

I got to work.

First I tested each of the battlements to see if they were strong enough to take my weight. One of them was visibly cracked and loose, and another was slightly unsteady, but the rest felt sturdy enough. Next I unwound the loop of twined cable, checking it wasnt tangled, and tied one end to the strongest battlement, winding it round twice and knotting it tightly. And finally I took hold of the rest of the cable, leaned out over the parapet, and launched it into the air. As I watched the coil of cable tumbling down, unraveling as it went, the image of Chola Se came to me again – the moment before shede jumped – and although I knew now that shede somehow managed to fix her cable to the bracket in the wall before shede jumped, I still couldnt imagine how terrifying it must have been for her to have to just leap over the wall into the unknown – not knowing if the bracket would hold, or how the cable would unwind, or how she could possibly control the fall and somehow stop herself from either hurtling straight down to the ground or slamming into the wall or falling halfway before the cable suddenly caught hold and snapped her spine or her neck---

No.

Shede made it, she was safe.

She had to be.