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“Ah,” Jacobs announced from ahead. “I believe we have found your River of Smoke.”
He had stopped on the flat, truncated edge of a high rock outcropping. Adam climbed up to join him there—and then promptly wished he hadn’t.
Rows of dark green pines fell away from beneath the spit of rock, along with the ground. The trees and the meandering line of the caravan unwound far beneath Adam’s boots. Beyond that lay the broad, rolling sprawl of the mountains.
Adam’s head was floating. The distance from his brain to the ground seemed to grow, lengthening like a tunnel.
That wasn’t good.
In the back of Adam’s mind, some rational sliver of his brain was hollering at him—loudly and vociferously—to throw himself down to the ground and cling to it until the world stopped threatening to go into a spin.
Adam settled for taking a single, careful step backwards. The move brought the edge of the stones on which he stood back into view. That was slightly better, if still far from great.
The change in position at least allowed Adam tolookat what lay before him, instead of succumbing to the urge to drop to his gut on the stones and hold on for dear life. He forced himself to study the view, even as a burst of queasiness jolted through his stomach.
The mountain range curved to the east in a thick barrier of dark forest punctuated by the occasional sliver of a tumbling stream. Directly to the south, a high cliff of pale gray stone broke through the wall of green.
The surface of the cliff was marred by a sinuous line of coal-black stone which spilled down the face of it like the frozen imprint of a long-dead waterfall—or a river.
Jacobs was right. They had found the last landmark on the map—the gateway to a lost world.
“Aw hell,” Adam exclaimed as he fought the urge to puke.
?
They rejoined the caravan at the base of the ridge. Adam carved an unerring route back to the slow-moving line of men and beasts.
Jacobs stayed with him until they passed the place where Staines shuffled along with the others. Then he tossed the rifle to the startled guard, tipped his hat politely to Adam, and strode up to the front of the line to confer with the foreman.
Adam watched his back uneasily the whole way.
Staines shuffled his gun. He jumped away from a nippy nearby mule, muttering a curse.
Charles Goodwin stepped neatly into his place. His lanky stride made it easy.
“I can’t tell if you look like you want to strangle a man or throw up on your shoes,” Charlie commented. “Go that well up on the hill?”
“We found it,” Adam reported bluntly.
Charlie glanced over at him.
“You don’t sound too happy about that,” he noted.
Adam caught sight of Ellie through the shifting bodies of the pack animals and men. She had turned on her mule to glance back at him, frowning as her gaze shifted between him and Jacobs.
She was almost certainly counting the minutes until the time when she could ruthlessly interrogate Adam about whatever had passed on the ridge.
Oh, not much, Adam imagined himself telling her.Just me guessing that Jacobs can somehow read minds and plans to kill us both the minute he and Dawson have what they’re looking for.
With effort, he tore his gaze from Ellie to return his attention to the friend who walked beside him.
“I’m afraid I gotta call in that underpants favor,” Adam declared flatly.
“Raass,” Charlie swore with a groan.
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Thirty-One
