NOMI WAS EXHAUSTED. She had never felt so tired or drained. Her arms and legs shook, sweat soaked her back, she could not bring herself to look back, down or up. The rock before her was her whole world, and to look farther afield than the next handhold would be to doom herself to terror.

Because Nomi was scared of heights. That had come as a shock, but the realization also struck her with a force too powerful to deny. In Ventgoria, she had sometimes felt nervous climbing the vertical ladders to their stilted dwellings, but now she was higher above Noreela than she had ever been.

I won't look down.

Rhiana had gone first, rope slung over her left shoulder and belt jangling with hooks and pitons. She took her time to begin with, selecting handholds with care, hammering the pitons in and marking the route with rope. But within an hour of beginning she was far up the cliff, and Noon and Ramin had followed. Beko insisted that Nomi go next.

I won't look down.

Another hour into their climb, Ramin had slipped. He cried out as he slid down the vertical stone-face, hands slapping and scraping for purchase, knees bent and feet held back in case they struck a protuberance and flipped him out into space. Noon shouted up to Rhiana and the two braced themselves, taking the weight as Ramin jerked to a halt.

“It's okay!” he had shouted, finding a grip and scrabbling at the rock with his feet. “It's okay!” But his voice had sounded far from okay.

I will not look down.

She tried to follow Ramin as best she could. He called down to her now and then, guiding her hands or feet left or right to where he had found handholds. She did not look up to acknowledge him. If she did that, she would see Noon past him, and then Rhiana higher still, and the clouds way above her, and something about the scale of what they were doing would suddenly hit home. Then she would have to look back down at Beko—

I will not pissing look down!

—and that could well be when her real problems began.

She did not want to freeze. Panic ran its fingers through her chest and down into her groin, a curiously intimate sensation, like a malevolent ex-lover. If she froze, Beko would come up for her and try to ease her fears, and if she knew there was no one below her she would . . .

“I'm going to look down.”

Panting, sweat cooling on her skin and chilling her whenever the breeze blew, Nomi looked down between her feet.