LITMIR.BIZ

       ONE

      The woman was an improbable speck on the vertical cliff face. Without skills or tools to aid her, she moved awkwardly up the exposed shale layering. Her close-fitting leather jerkin and coarsely woven trousers were impregnated with gray rock dust. Like an insect, she had taken on the color of the cliff she scaled. Sweat had plastered her brown hair to the top of her skull. Intricate knots and weavings confined the length of her hair, but the wind had picked loose a few strands of it, to spiderweb it across her eyes. She rubbed her narrow face against the gray rock. Her hands were occupied.

      Some long-ago cataclysm had riven this mountain, sending its green face sliding down into a heap of stone and earth at its base. Far above the woman the mountain still wore a cap of earth and greenery. But the woman climbed over bare shale. This morning she had stood in the tangled brush and young trees that sprouted from that long-ago landslide. She had peered up the slick black rock to a certain ledge more than three-quarters of the way up the mountain. She had measured herself against the task of reaching that ledge and found that it was hopeless. Then she had begun her climb.

      Now her left hand clung to a tiny ledge in the shale. She cautiously took some weight on it. The ledge cracked free, clean as if chiseled, and slid down the mountain face. Ki frantically scrabbled her hand into a second crack and clung, panting, to the cliff face. She knew she was close. The ledge, little more than a dent in the cliff’s face, called to her like bloody water to a shark. She could glance narrowly over one shoulder to see the valley floor. She had left in the predawn light. She had to be near her goal. She was pressed too tightly to the rock to turn her eyes up to see. The sun shone down on the top of her head. It had climbed the skies faster than Ki had scaled the cliff. Time was slipping away from her, crumbling under her like the rotten stone she climbed.

      She had climbed recklessly at first, kicking free of ledges and scrabbling for handholds she might never find. Her hatred had burned hot in her. But as the rock face became steeper and more slippery, the holds more precarious, her anger had subsided to a dull, aching emptiness. Now she clung flat to the mountain, her face pressed against its sun-warmed stone. Only death was inside her now. She could remain still for a moment, but she could not rest. With her arms raised to cling, she dared not draw a full deep breath. Every clenched muscle in her body cried out to loosen. Ki ignored them.

      She scraped her left foot up the smooth shale, her softly shod toes feeling for any indentation they might cling in. They found a tiny ledge. Ki placed her toes gently on it, cautiously added the weight of her leg. It held. She pressed more weight on it, sliding her body up. Her chest and belly scraped shale, the cramp in her fingers becoming well-nigh unendurable. Her whole weight hung now on her left fingers and the toes of her left leg. Her right hand was free to crawl up the smooth shale, seeking a place to cling.

      Ki blinked her eyes, trying to clear them of rock dust, stinging sweat, and a strand of hair that clung to her eyelashes. Her forehead pressed hard against the rock. The muscles in her left hand were clamped so tight she could not feel her fingers. Then her creeping hand found a ledge. Her fingers rested on it, then her whole hand. It was a good, deep hold. Ki sucked in another hissing breath. Her right hand had reached high over her head for that hold.

      She put more weight on her left foot and took some of the burden on her right hand. Now her left was free to scuttle up the rock face, seeking a grip.

      Her left fingers fumbled their aching way onto a ledge level with the one her right hand had found. Ki pressed down on her straining left toes to drive

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