“Did you hear that?” The haunt raised a hand. “A shout. From back the way we came.”

“Most likely our pursuers,” said Elen as she kept moving. The mine gambit hadn’t worked. This meant the archon was almost certainly working with someone from the palace who knew where the prince was headed, possibly the same person who had stolen the griffin scout’s message pouch—or ordered it stolen.

“Maybe they’ll fall off,” muttered Xilsi. She gave a choked-off cry and said, shakily, “Curse it, I looked down.”

“Keep moving,” said Elen. “We’re almost there. We’ll make it.”

At a switchback, a secondary trail headed up, instead of down, and Elen took the ascending trail. It led to a rocky point thrust out from the south wall of the canyon. Their party gathered on what was essentially a wide ledge about one hundred ells from the bottom. The walls towered above them.

“I feel trapped,” muttered Jirvy.

“I’ve heard that song before,” said Xilsi with a contemptuous curl of her upper lip.

Simo snapped, “Enough!”

Ipis murmured, as if to the air, “Why will they not let it go?”

Kem said, “Let what go?”

Luviara said, “May I sit for just a moment?”

“You may rest,” said Elen, “but you’ll need to be ready to go as soon as I’m across.”

The haunt said nothing. He was studying the scene with intense interest, as if he’d been here before, but surely that was impossible.

They were now so close to the bottom that the river was audible, burbling in counterpoint to the whine of the wind. At this time of year the waters ran low, but even if a person could climb all the way to the bottom of the canyon, which in theory they could, they could not cross without wading through the Pall. And that would be the end of them.

Beyond the rocky point the big canyon split, as if an axe blow had splintered the high plateau with extra cracks. Two tributary rivers fed into the main river, creating a kind of intersection with a wider gap. The ground was quite rugged but included shelves of higher ground rising like islands into the air, like stepping stones. The sides of the big cut were layered with terraces and ledges. In other words, it was one of the few places for a hundred leagues in either direction where it was plausible to span the canyon with a bridge.

Whoever had built the road had attempted to bridge this specific gap, perhaps first, although eventually they had abandoned it and farther to the west had built the more feasible but much longer sequence of Five Bridges.