Chapter 166

The stair began where the scree gave out, and nobody had made it for horses.

Steps cut in the living rock, each no deeper than a boot, going up the dark band of the cliff in short turns, back and forth, with old snow packed grey into the angle of every one. The edges had worn round under feet that were not ours. In places the snow had melted off and refrozen into a skin you could see the stone through, like glass laid over a page.

Lyra came with us to the foot of it, and looked up the whole height of it to the lintel, and then down at her boots.

“I’ll be at the village,” she said. “I’ll bring bread up every morning and leave it on this step.” She turned and went back down the scree in long sliding strides, and did not look round.

***

Rowan went first, because he said if anyone was going to fall off a mountain it had better be the one with practice. Lucien came last. I went between them, and could not feel the rock through my gloves, and had stopped pret