Ipis said, “No one ever mentioned His Exalted Highness trained as a healer.”

“I’m glad to see you alert and awake, Jirvy,” said Elen, to change the subject.

“You more than some,” he remarked with a sidelong glance toward Xilsi, who was waiting at the end of the bridge to greet Simo.

Ipis said, “What is it with you two?”

Jirvy shut his eyes.

Elen didn’t want to know, so she said, “Where is the prince?”

“He scouted ahead,” said Ipis. “Said to wait for Simo and follow.”

Elen found an open patch of ground, sat, pulled on socks over numb toes, and laced up her boots. There was a lot of congratulatory back-slapping as Kem and Simo arrived, and then everyone had to discuss how to get Jirvy up the steps to the rim.

Elen left the wardens to it and started up, so she was surprised to reach the first switchback and find that the haunt had halted there instead of continuing the ascent. He was gazing into the canyon’s depths.

“Here you are,” he said. “Will you come with me? I need to fetch Fulmo. I could use your help.”

“Isn’t he … dead?”

The haunt gave her a disbelieving look. She might as well have suggested the sky was green. “Why would you say that? Are you coming?”

The rock face on this side was steep but not a sheer escarpment the way the cliff face was on the south rim. There was even an old trace of a trackway leading down, worn by goats or sheep or maybe by locals brave or desperate enough to hunt among the shrubs and stunted trees on the north side of the river, which animals and people could do because the stream of Pall flowed on the south bank of the river.

The haunt began scrambling down. Elen left her pack on the landing and headed after him. She’d been down this way only once before, exploring. It was a climb, but not dangerous if you kept your foot- and handholds steady.

Without looking back at her, he added, “A gagast can harden their outer skin to make themself impervious to physical damage taken from metal or rock. The fall won’t have hurt him. Not in any way we understand such falls.”

“How do you know so much about gagast?”

“Why would I not? They are people too.”

People who had been around back when he’d been around, but why would that be surprising?

She sighed. “What I mean is, even if he survived the fall, he rolled through the Pall before he reached the water. And while the water will wash some of it away, the river is shallow this time of year, and he wasn’t ever fully submerged. So he’s got Spore still on him.”