The Great Rift by Edward W. Robertson Read Free Book Online

people, either."
    Mourn dogged their heels, running close enough to trip them. "You can't go up there!"
    Dante didn't look back. "Our upward progress suggests otherwise."
    "Pedantically speaking, you can move up this hill. But don't say I didn't warn you when they throw you back down it. Because that is what I am doing right now."
    They caught the two clan chieftains before they were halfway up the switchback. Vee gazed at Mourn with distilled reproach, her orange eyes withering him. Orlen coughed into his hand and then considered the contents of his palm as if they contained a half-ruined map.
    "No," he said.
    "No what?" Dante said.
    "Further."
    "Why on earth not?"
    "Because you are a human, and this is norren business for norren ears."
    At first he thought this was a strange joke—in contrast to every other part of them, the ears of norren were bewilderingly small, coin-shaped and often lost beneath their tangled hair—but Orlen and Vee were staring at him with the gravity of a prince's funeral.
    "I'm aware of your tradition," he tried, "but given how many lives may be at stake, I think an exception—"
    Vee shifted forward. "The next step you take up this hill will be your last with the clan." She drew her brows together. "That sounded more ominous than I meant. I didn't mean we'd throw you down the hill. Just that you'd no longer be permitted to travel with us."
    "This is stupid," Blays said, but apparently had nothing more convincing than that. Considering the affair settled, the two norren chieftains turned and continued uphill.
    Mourn folded his arms. "See how futile that was?"
    "So what now? Sit around and wait to be told what's next?"
    "No," Mourn said. "You don't have to sit."
    But Dante was tired from yet another day of relentless walking, so sitting beside his tent in the field was exactly what he did, at least until he nodded off, at which point he slumped around waiting for word from above. News arrived after nightfall when Blays shoved him all the way over, jarring him awake. Orlen and Vee had returned from the hill.
    He rousted himself, knees popping, and headed to the shoreline. Boar roasted over a firepit, smogging the air with rich, crackling meat. At the water, bulky silhouettes cast nets fringed with small rock weights. The two chieftains sat on their heels by the fire, gnawing pork, wiping their greasy faces with their sleeves. Dante sat across from them.
    "Did you find anything out?"
    "Yes." Orlen thought for a moment. "That the mayor had nothing to say on the matter."
    "But I thought he'd seen them."
    Vee wiped the back of her hand across her mouth. "He said the slavers didn't pass through here after all. Which doesn't tell us nothing. It tells us the slavers didn't pass through here."
    Frustration welled in Dante's throat. "I thought Josun Joh told you to come here for answers."
    "He did."
    "And here we are," Orlen said. "Which is closer than we were before."
    Vee raised her right fist and held it to her coin-sized ear. "Where we'll wait to hear from Josun Joh again."
    Dante nodded, too wound up to speak. Blays gestured downriver. Dante followed him along the pebbly shore, where the smell of wet moss and faint fish carried on the river's gentle waves. Mourn walked some ways behind them. When they paused, the norren did too, crouching beside the water and pretending to investigate the rocks. He pursued Dante and Blays all the way to the other side of the piers where the town ceased and the waterfront woods resumed.
    Dante stopped there, gazing out across the wide black river. "I'm beginning to think they should be enslaved."
    "Is this because they live longer?" Blays stooped. He picked up a pebble and slung it over the flat waters. It sunk without a single skip. "They think they can just wait around for a god to billow orders from the clouds?"
    Dante stared at the steep hill beyond the plaza. Skeins of smoke curled from its crown, venting the hearths of the homes in its side. "Does encamping their