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When I was a child, she thought, Storn and I used to climb everywhere. I was
whipped once for frightening our nurse out of her senses by climbing to a
third-level balcony and making faces at her from the arbor. I taught Edric to
climb on the balconies down lower. I ve never climbed this high I was afraid
of falling. But this part of the castle should be as climbable as the lower part.
She knew that if she fell she would be broken on the crags far below. But why
should I fall from two hundred feet in the air, if I could manage not to fall
from fifteen feet?
You never thought about that because it wouldn t have mattered if you did fall
from fifteen feet, her common sense told her, but she hushed the voice,
packed up the thought into a tiny box, shoved it into the back of her mind and
left it there. And suppose I do get killed, she told herself defiantly. Edric
didn t mind risking being killed in the siege, or if he did mind, he risked it
anyway. I took bow and arrow myself, and I could have been shot or knifed
down on the ramparts. If I was willing to die then, in the hope of defending
Storn Heights, then why should I hesitate to take the same sort of risk now? If
I get killed, I get killed, and at least I won t have to worry about Brynat s
rabble lining up to take turns raping me.
It wasn t exactly a comforting thought, but she decided that she could make it
do for the moment. She hesitated only a moment, her hands on the railing.
Off went the fur-lined gloves; she thrust them deep into the pockets of Edric s
breeches. She buttoned the cloak back and tied it into the smallest possible
compass at her waist, hoping it would not catch on a projection of stone.
Finally she slipped off her boots, standing shivering on the stone balcony, and
tied them together by their laces round her neck. If the thongs caught on a
stone she might strangle, but without boots she would be helpless in the
snow, and her trained weather sense told her that the snow could not be very
long delayed. Then, without giving herself time to think she swung herself up
and over the edge of the balcony, sat there for a moment taking the exact
bearings of the room and balcony she wanted forty feet below her and
almost a hundred feet away to the left and slipped down, lodging her
stockinged feet in a crevice of the stone, finding a handhold to spread-eagle
herself against the rough wall.
The crevices between the stone seemed smaller than when she had climbed
about on them as a child, and she had to move by feel on the cold stone. Her
feet ached with the cold before she had moved five yards, and she felt first
one, then another of her nails split back and break as she clutched the dark,
rough stone. The moonlight was pale and fitful, and twice a white streak that
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she took for a crevice in the paleness turned out to be a crumbling, evil-
smelling bird-dropping. But Melitta clung like a limpet to each crevice, never
moving more than one hand or one foot until she was securely anchored, in
some new hold.
Evanda be praised, she thought grimly, that I m strong and tough from riding!
If I were a girl to sit over my sewing, I d drop off in two yards! Even strong as
she was, she felt every muscle trembling with cold and tension. She felt, also,
that in the pale moonlight, she must be clearly visible against the side of the
castle, a target for an arrow from any sentry who happened to look up on his
rounds. Once she froze, whimpering as a small light and a fragment of voice,
blown on the wind, came round the corner, and she knew one of Brynat s
soldiers on some business below passed beneath her. Melitta shut her eyes
and prayed he would not look up. He did not; he went on singing drunkenly
and, almost exactly beneath her, a hundred feet below, and on the narrow
path between the castle and the cliffs, opened the fly of his breeches and
urinated into the abyss. She held herself taut, trembling against hysterical
laughter. After what seemed an hour he stooped, picked up his lantern,
shrugged his clothes into place and stumbled on his way again. Melitta
thought she had forgotten how to breathe, but she managed it again, and
forced her taut fingers, gripping at a stone, to move again toward the lighted
balcony below.
Inch by slow inch a finger, a toe, a cold yard at a time the girl crept like an
ant down the wall. Once, her heart flipped over and stopped as a pebble
encrusted in cement broke away under her fingers, and she heard it slide
away and ricochet off a projection beneath her, rebound with what sounded
like gunfire off the rocks below, and finally clatter into the darkness. Every
muscle tight, she held her breath for minutes, sure that the sound would
bring soldiers running, but when she opened her eyes again, the castle still lay
bathed in the empty light of the setting moons and she still clung to the wall in
her comforting solitude.
The moonlight had dimmed considerably past the shoulder of the mountains,
and thick mists were beginning to rise below, when at last her feet touched
the stone of the balcony and she let go and slid, dropped down on the stone
railing, and crouched there, just breathing in deep gasps of relief. When she
could move again, she slipped her hands into her gloves, her feet into the fur-
lined boots, and wrapped herself tightly in the cloak, grabbing it tight to
lessen her shivering.
The first hurdle was passed. But now she must get inside and attract Allira s
attention without running the risk that Brynat would see. She had come too
far to be stopped now!
She crept like a small shaking ghost across the stone balcony and pressed her
face against the veined colored glass, joined with strips of metal, which closed
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