Sawyer Jackson and the Shadow Strait by Kevin Tumlinson

Author:Kevin Tumlinson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Happy Pants Books

EIGHT | Book's Library

We might have been making faster progress to the Shadow Strait now, but you couldn’t tell it from all the walking.

The twists weren’t always close together, so a hop might mean stepping into a place and then hiking for a few miles to get to the next. Xander assured us all that we were making excellent progress.

“No airplanes in that batch of Teth tech, huh?” Gramps asked Tuck.

“What’s an airplane?” Tuck asked.

“Never mind,” Gramps said. “I can’t believe that in all the time I spent here, cobbling things together in that workshop, I didn’t think to build one knotwork-powered airplane.”

Gram patted him on the shoulder, “Next time, dear.”

We stopped for a rest, and were sprawled on the bouldered and rocky bank of a river that cut through rising stone cliffs. A waterfall poured over the edge just upstream from us, filling this little canyon with an all-encompassing white noise that was oddly comforting.

I studied the rock face closely, fascinated by the weirdly geometric patterns of the stone. Large octangular columns clung to the wall, in erratic natural patterns. But the hard edges and regular, repeated shapes made it feel almost man-made.

We were settled into a camp under an overhang of these shapes, and the varying elevations and depth of the stones above us worked like a kind of sound baffling, keeping our voices from echoing. The combination of white noise from the waterfall and the noise baffling from the stones above made this a really good spot to doze, which I found myself doing from time to time. Road weariness helped a bit with that, too.

Beyond this little canyon and safe haven, the river wound its way through great hills that became mountains in the distance. There was something nagging me about the place. It felt oddly familiar.

“When I came to the Long Land the first time,” I told Gram, “I was standing on a mountain top, and I was looking out over everything. I think I was here. Or there,” I said, pointing at the mountains. “I think I was looking out over this place.”

“The Fractum Lancea Mountains,” Xander said. “The name means ‘broken lance.’ At the foot of those mountains was the site of a huge battle, back before even I was around.”

“There was a before you were around?” I asked.

“Your Gramps is teaching you bad manners,” Xander frowned.

I smiled. “You told me that mountains tend to be favorite spots for wizards to create tears, because they’re so remote.”

“That’s true,” Xander nodded. “Less human-made knotwork to contend with or work around. It’s thinner, high up on a mountain top, because fewer people tend to go there and do things that might add to the pattern of the Omni.”

“So is there a tear at the top of those mountains? Is that how I came through?”

“Seems to be,” Xander said.

I nodded, thinking about all the implications of tears and knotwork and mountains. As I stared off in the direction of the waterfall I saw Cenna walking along the water’s edge.

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