My heart pounded high in my throat. Horror gripped my chest. We were going to fall.
With another step, the camel in front of us dropped down and out of sight. The people in the cages attached to it screamed. Then all went silent again.
Our camel stepped over the edge next.
“Nooo!” I screamed, too, gripping the bars of the cage so hard, my fingers ached.
The camel stepped down, but we didn’t fall. We turned to the left. The cage tilted forward, following the position of the camel as the animal kept walking in the same steady, swaying gait.
“What’s happening?” I stared straight ahead but saw nothing.
“It’s a cliff,” Erik’s voice reached me. “With a path down along its side. See?”
I glanced down but saw only darkness again.
“No,” I whimpered. “I don’t see shit.”
“It’s a rocky path,” Erik explained, “just wide enough for the camel with the cages. There's a drop straight down on our side here. The face of the cliff is on the other side of the camel. We’re moving down the path.”
I peered carefully through the darkness. It rose as a black monolith on our left—the face of the cliff as Erik had said, rising straight up into the sky and blocking the stars.
The rhythmic swishing sound grew stronger as we descended. The air felt different from the air in the desert too. It was moist here, rich with a briny scent.
“What’s down there? To our right?” I asked, gesturing at the vast dark expanse under the star-studded sky.
“That’s…an ocean,” Erik said.
“An ocean? In Alveari?”
This world was filled with sand, dry winds, and scorching heat broken only by the cool stillness of the night.
But there it was… An ocean.
The rhythmic powerful hum came from the swells rolling onto each other, then onto the black sand below. As the sky lightened with the approaching sunrise, I could see the silver foaming crests of the swells rolling ashore.
“And there is the city,” Erik announced grimly, gesturing at the cliff face.
The black rock glimmered in the pale light of the sunrise. However, its surface was far from smooth. The vast expanse of the cliff face was pocked with dark gaping caves. Shadows moved in and out of them—the shadow fae, I assumed, unable to see the details without my glasses. A few lights flickered here and there, not nearly as plentiful or brilliant as in Teneris, but they were the signs of life.
People lived here. Hundreds…no, thousands of them, it seemed. The dark wall of the cliff face stretched out into the distance as far as I could see, with a myriad of cave openings and flickering lights along it.
As the morning sun rose, I made out balconies, canopies, and ladders that stretched like a web along the wall of the cliff.
“That’s where they live,” I guessed. “In the caves inside this cliff. Is that the city, you think?”
“There are so many caves,” Erik drawled quietly, staring at the view as it emerged, illuminated by the rising sun.
“Ashgate isn’t a hill city like Teneris then.”
“No,” Erik echoed my words. “It’s a wall city.”
A vertical wall at least a hundred stories high that stretched for as long as the eye could see. It was filled with thousands of caves. How deep did these caves go? How many fae lived here?
It wasn’t just a city. It could be a kingdom on its own. A lawless kingdom. With no rules and no ruler.
As we kept moving down the path carved into the side of the cliff, I could finally make out the line where the wall merged with the black sand below. A beach stretched between the rock and the silver lace of the surf for as long as the wall city itself. The beach was so wide, it could easily accommodate a regular city block or two between the rock wall and the water’s edge.
Piles of rocks and rubble littered the beach. Only when our camel had finally descended all the way and stepped off the path onto the sand did I realize that all those piles were actually dwellings. Apparently, the caves weren’t enough to accommodate all the shadow fae in Ashgate. Its inhabitants spilled onto the beach, building shelters from driftwood, rocks, and rags.