Hero at the Fall (Rebel of the Sands #3)(66)

Fear of whatever was down there.

And I had the feeling that this time there wouldn’t be any more negotiation. No way to get Zaahir any deeper into this mountain to save Shazad.

So I would start climbing.

I looped a rope around my waist the way I remembered Jin doing once. But my hands were clumsy and unused to it. Ahmed stepped forward. ‘Here,’ he said gently, as if he could read what I was thinking. That I wished Jin were here. Wished I hadn’t left him behind.

‘Thank you,’ I said, letting him tie the knots I didn’t know. When he was done, he cast it over a hook hanging from the ceiling, grabbing the other end and holding on to it. Rahim took hold, too.

And then I lowered myself into the unknown.

The darkness was somehow different on the other side. In the mines there had been noise and heat, but here there was a stillness to the air. Like it was trying to swallow the light in my hand.

I descended slowly. The deeper I got, the more I felt like there was something watching me. Something breathing down my neck. I turned on the rope, dashing the light around the walls of the fissure. But there was nothing but stone.

Then suddenly I felt a tremor on the rope.

I reached out one hand to brace myself against the wall. But it was no good. The rope was still being fed in behind me. I was about to call up, to shout to Ahmed and Rahim to stop.

But suddenly it was as if a hand were covering my mouth. At the same moment I felt a brush of air on my neck. And then, without warning, I was falling.

The drop wasn’t far, but I hit the ground with violent suddenness. The light in my hand didn’t extinguish as I hit. I grabbed the end of the rope, tugging it to me. It looked like a clean cut, as if by a knife. Just like Ahmed had said happened to Shazad. This was not a snapped rope. This was something else.

There was a noise, as if from very far away, climbing up from the ground.

I was hearing things. I had to be. Or it was a drip of water. Or an echo of my own breathing. Except it didn’t sound like that.

It sounded like someone laughing.

And it made me more afraid than anything I’d ever heard in my life.

Then the light in my hand dashed across a figure curled up on one side, dark hair falling across her face, and I forgot everything else. Even though she looked like she wasn’t wholly there in this darkness. I could only make out the dirty white of her shirt and the darkness of her hair.

‘Shazad.’ I dropped next to her, relief rushing through me. I heard the sob in my own voice. She looked thinner, worn. And her eyes were shut. But she was breathing. I had to wake her up. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said to Shazad, leaning over her. I slapped her hard across the face. She came awake ready to fight – just not in any kind of state to. She flinched against the light. I’d never seen Shazad flinch at anything.

‘You’re not real.’ She shut her eyes. ‘You’re not real. You’re not real.’ She said it over and over again.

‘Come on.’ I forced lightness into my voice. ‘You know I wouldn’t lie to you.’

‘Prove it,’ her voice rasped, and she tucked her head further into the crook of her arm.

‘Will you believe I’m real if I can get us both out of here?’

Finally she opened her eyes, though they seemed unable to settle wholly on me, dancing unfocused across my face. ‘It would be a start.’

I glanced up at the opening far above us. I couldn’t see it through the inky blackness, but I knew we couldn’t be that far away. I wasn’t sure they would hear me if I shouted, though. And if they did and tossed us down more rope, what good would it be?

I only had one other idea. And it was an impossible one. Even if it was our only hope. I silently prayed that I had enough of my Djinni gift left.

‘Hang on to me,’ I urged Shazad. I closed my eyes, pouring all my concentration around me. There wasn’t much in this mountain – I could already tell. In here, stone had been melted hard and the dust was made mostly of iron. The desert was far away.

But sand got everywhere. It came with me all the way from the desert, through the mountain, stuck to my skin and in the folds of my clothes. It came trapped in the hair of the other prisoners and on the metal soles of the Abdals’ feet. There was no escaping it.

I took a slow, deep breath, fighting through the pain in my side. And I called it to me. All of it. Every single tiny grain of sand I could reach. I felt it start to shift above us, stirring and then scuttling towards me like hundreds of thousands of tiny insects moving across the cave floor.

It started to rain sand. Slowly at first, then more quickly, and suddenly sand was pouring in around us. I didn’t stop. I was too afraid to take a moment to breathe through the pain, too afraid that if I let it go I would lose it.

I gathered the sand up below us. I tried to think of water, the way Sam and Jin swam, the way they were able to make water lift them up when it seemed to want to drown them instead. I gathered the sand, surging it up around us with everything I had in me.

I felt the sand shift, and I doubled over in pain, gasping. But I knew I couldn’t let go, that if I did now, we would drown. I had to keep going. I had to. The sand poured in around us, lifting us higher and higher. I could see a sliver of light. I reached up, trying to grip the ledge, trying to find an escape from this place even as I felt the sand begin to drop away below me.

Then hands were on my wrists and on Shazad’s arms, pulling us out, and we collapsed on the ground. Solid ground.