The Bitterbynde Trilogy by Cecilia Dart-Thornton Page A

rope out of his pocket to tie on the bars so that he could walk. Then he looked down.
    Presently the young lord called in a low tone, “Playing statues is not part of the game. This bores me.” He drew out a dagger and started cleaning his fingernails with it.
    â€œTie them on, Tren, just tie them on,” came Sheepshorn’s urgent whisper.
    After a minute, the boy in the air moved. He moved as if he were made of crystal and the dark were a tightening vise.
    He moved, and he fell.
    The hidden watcher caught his breath. A dislodged stirrup clattered to the floor near his shoulder, but the noble and the servant made no response. Spatchwort had caught hold of a sildron bar as he fell and now hung there by one hand. He simply hung, as if he had no strength or will left. An image of his own recent past formed in the watcher’s mind. Sheepshorn pulled a coil of rope from a wall-hook, unwinding it rapidly.
    â€œCatch hold when I throw to you,” he called. As he prepared to throw, Ustorix took the rope out of his hands and tossed the entire coil out the gate.
    â€œWhat are you doing?” Sheepshorn’s face blazed with anger and disbelief.
    â€œLet him hang there awhile longer. Give him a chance to prove himself by pulling himself up on top of the bar.”
    â€œNo one could do that. It is not possible. The ingot is too small.”
    â€œImagine if the unstorm came now and blew off his taltry.” Ustorix smiled. “What a joke! They wouldn’t want to use this gate for a thousand years!”
    Sheepshorn grabbed a second rope and held firmly to it, tossing one end out toward the dangling figure. Spatchwort reached for it but missed. At the second try he caught it, and Sheepshorn reeled him in like a fish. Ustorix was laughing silently. Spatchwort collapsed, trembling, on the floor. Sheepshorn lassoed the hovering ingot and drew it in.
    â€œYou didn’t succeed,” said the Son of the House, regaining his customary coolness, “so you haven’t earned your reward. This time. However, you have another chance.”
    â€œHow gracious of you, my lord,” replied Sheepshorn with eyes of flint.
    Lord Ustorix drew two rectangular plates of a dull blue metal from his cloak and clipped them onto the upper surfaces of the sildron ingots. The container for sildron had been made from the same stuff.
    â€œAndalum!” cried Sheepshorn. “Not andalum!”
    â€œHush—do you desire discovery? This will be easy for you, as you boasted. It is no more difficult than what you have just done, and it will earn you two more gold eagles each. I want to see it.”
    â€œBut if we should somersault, if the andalum should come between the sildron and the ground, we should fall.” Sheepshorn opened his hands palms up in a gesture of honest astonishment.
    â€œOf course you would, but it shall not happen—why should it?”
    â€œMy lord, we have never practiced with real sildron before, as you know.” An edge of real fear had crept into the servant’s voice. “We have only practiced with wheelboards, and with ice in Winter. What we have done is no mean feat. But to do it with an andalum surface could be suicide. We never agreed to this.”
    Ustorix shrugged. “I will leave now.”
    â€œNo, wait.” Sheepshorn licked his lips nervously. His eyes were very bright, as bright as coins.
    â€œCur, you do not honor me sufficiently,” hissed Ustorix, now irritable.
    â€œI am sorry, my lord—prithee wait, my lord. I will do this.”
    Ustorix threw the ingots into the air. One came down and settled at its usual height, about two inches above the floor. The other crashed on the floor, the blue side facing down. He flipped it over casually and pushed them both out of the gate. They hovered. Sheepshorn walked to the back wall. He prepared to run, to build up speed for that final leap off the ledge.
    To fall four hundred feet would take