Minstrel (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781940938783)

Lydia's knuckles were bleached white in the moonlight. Her arms were already beginning to grow tired. She looked at the windowsill, which was mere inches above her tightly clenched fists, and knew that it was as out of reach as the sun. Her gaze traveled down the makeshift rope to where the base of the tower was lost in the rising fog. She swallowed and closed her eyes briefly. Then, with a whispered prayer, she forced her left hand open.

The jerk as her body dropped was just short of too hard; the fingers of her right hand held. Her grip, at least, was strong. She wrapped her left hand around the rope and eased down as best she could with a jerk that was a little less intense. Her legs twisted involuntarily around the rope and she found that it lessened the strain. The desperate jerks became more of a controlled fall than climbing.

Then, the bottom of the knotted bedding slipped around her legs and she found herself at the very bottom of the rope. Her feet swung freely as she panicked for a moment.The fog was truly thick now. The ground could be just beyond her toes or a deadly length below. Lydia had no way of knowing.

She couldn't climb back up even if she wanted to. Her arms were screaming in pain. I'll have to drop, she thought, and began to count. One, two...

The ground rushed up to meet her. She hit and rolled, tumbling down the embankment until her feet splashed into the river.

Lydia looked numbly at the end of the rope, still clutched in her hands. Three? Then the momentary shock wore off and she swallowed. A look for the top of the tower revealed nothing but increasingly dense fog. She threw the remains of the rope from her and got to her feet, re-settling her small pack on her back.

She stumbled away from the tower, not stopping to check whether the rope had broken--or whether it had been cut.