Kem had shepherded the others on to the next pier. Xilsi staggered up and followed Ipis, Luviara, and the haunt to the sturdier spans of the permanent rope bridge that reached from pier to pier and on to the north wall, where steps led up to the north rim.

On the other side, the enemy soldiers closed cautiously in on Fulmo.

“Fulmo!” Elen shouted. “Cross now!”

Simo came up behind her. “He’s too heavy to cross.”

“We can’t just leave him.”

“Fulmo won’t leave the prince. There’s another path for him, one only he can take.”

“What path is that?”

Fulmo tipped sideways off the path and twisted, brawny arms and tree-trunk legs tucked tight. He crashed and bounced down the rock face, the noise echoing. He thudded hard where the ground leveled out at the base of the cliffs. His momentum rolled him into the streaming thread of Pall that oozed along the bottom of the canyon.

“Merciful Heavens,” Elen breathed. Had he killed himself rather than be taken prisoner?

An arrow thumped down a body’s length from her as the pursuers began to shoot at her and Simo. A few arrows arched toward the far rope bridges, where the others were hurrying toward safety.

“You need to move out of range,” said Simo. He knelt and set knife to rope.

“No!” Kem’s voice startled her. She’d been so fixed on Fulmo she’d not noticed the boy return. “Warden, let me loosen the ropes. If they’re smart, they won’t try to cross, but if they aren’t, the ropes will give way when they’re partway across.”

Simo slapped Kem on the shoulder. “Good thinking.”

Elen was still staring at Fulmo’s body. It had rolled all the way through the thread of Pall to fetch up in the shallows of the river. His form lay as still as if he had turned into stone, in truth. Water rushed over him as over a mostly submerged rock.

“Hey!” Kem barked at her. “Go!”

She moved in a daze. It was so difficult to absorb it all. But she had to keep moving. That was how you survived.

45 THE MOST EFFICIENT WAY