Fortress of Ice

CHAPTER EIGHT

i

SNOW HAD GIVEN WAY TO NIGHTBOUND MIST, ALL-ENVELOPING MIST, SO THICK Elfwyn could not even see the ground under Feiny’s hooves. He had searched and called until he was hoarse, looking for Paisi, and now that it was this ghostly mist, he decided that Paisi, having better sense, and if he had lost him, would either wait for the fog to clear and track him by his trail through the snow, or he would have gone back to town, giving up altogether, and perhaps concluding that he wasn’t meant to go to Ynefel with him this time, either.

“Please,” he asked the gathering dark, in hope that he would cross Lord Tristen’s path. “I have something I must give you. Please find me. Please keep Paisi safe.”

The ring that he had hoped would inform him of Lord Tristen told him nothing. At this point, he only hoped he was headed aright, that Owl would come sweeping out of the fog and guide him… Owl had seen him safely both ways, and this time his journey was for Lord Tristen’s benefit, and for Paisi’s, none of his own, that he knew… because the very last person his mother would destroy would be him, if only because a fool might still be useful to her. He had no wish to be a fool, but he began to think he was not clever enough to do otherwise where his mother was concerned.

Speed, tonight—speed. As much as he could manage and keep Feiny from going down under him.

The wind picked up. He thought it might sweep away the fog and give him and Paisi a means to find each other, but the wind became a stinging gale and the fog was no less at all. It sighed, it moaned—

And then he thought he heard a voice within it, faint and far, something trying to get his attention.

It might be Tristen—but there was no reason for Tristen’s voice to be so soft, that he knew. He began to think it came from his left, then from his right and again, behind him, as if it sported like the wind, and mocked him, as he was sure Lord Tristen never would. It wanted his attention, and now he began to believe it was his mother. He reached a sheltered place, beside a tree-capped and cup-shaped ridge, and for the first time he could see the snow underfoot.

Now the one voice began to be many voices, and streaks appeared in the snow, deep gouges, one and four and six and more in the bank beside him, then underfoot, as the horse jumped forward as if something had touched him with a whip.

He patted Feiny’s neck with a gloved hand, trying to keep both of them from panic, and he began to wonder distractedly if he had heard Paisi hunting him, and mistaken his voice for a haunt. He grew so fearful that he kept Feiny still, still as he could, cold, now, so very cold.

Here, however, seemed safer than going on with the voices in the wind, and he turned the horse full about, walking a line, a circle, and doing it three times, and wishing his little Line to hold fast, such as it was.

Streaks ran across the snow as far as his Line, and stopped. Then he knew what he heard was no trick of the wind. He got down from the saddle and held the reins close under Feiny’s jaw, where he could get good leverage. He wished them safe, wishes such as Gran would make when they slept at night, and wished the same for Paisi, wherever he was.

Nothing was going right. He was exhausted, and wanted just to sit down, but he feared doing that—he saw the streaks scarring the snow all about his Line, like some ravening beast trying to get in, and he dared not relax a moment.

“Lord Tristen,” he whispered, carrying the ring to his lips. “Lord Tristen, help us.”

But it was as if, as the haunt battered the Line he had drawn, he himself grew wearier and wearier. Feiny, too, drooped, and his head sank, tail tucked for warmth. He opened his cloak and pressed it across the horse and his body against it, and stood there, growing more confused by the moment and no longer certain of the world beyond. He’d lost Gran, lost Paisi, lost everything—

Everything but one. For some reason he began to think of Aewyn with a vividness that overwhelmed the snow—there was one warm presence in the world, one point of warmth in all this storm. He began to believe there was, and that they could reach each other no matter the distance.

The laughter of children came down the wind. He blinked, his lashes frozen half-shut, and he saw a strange, sober little girl peering at him from among the rocks.

The girl faded suddenly, gasping in alarm, and the wind blew a blinding gust into his eyes, making him blink.

But his brother wanted him. That, above all things.

His brother needed him.

Knew everything he had done, and still loved him.

He thought about that, as his knees went, and pitched him down into the snow. He didn’t stay there. He found purchase on the rock, then on the horse’s stirrup, and levered himself back up.

“Aewyn!” he shouted against the wind. “Aewyn! Do you hear me?”

ii

AEWYN!” THE SHOUT CAME DOWN THE WIND, AND AEWYN KEPT ON, KEPT ON, though the borrowed horse fought to turn and take them away from the blasts, and, riding bareback and with just a halter, he fought to keep the horse going. It might be the wind itself that made that sound. It might be a trick of his ears. In the blowing snow and the dark he had lost all referents. He had no notion at all where the town was, or where he was. He had been foolish—when was that a novelty?—and now he had lost himself so thoroughly in the dark that if he did turn back, he could only hope the honest Amefin horse could find his way home and let some horseboy know there was trouble. He had studied his map. He knew every detail of the land. He had had every confidence in his knowledge; but the dark and the snow took all that away from him, and there had been a fog, of all things, a fog with a blasting wind. He had no recourse now but to go as near west as he could imagine, to keep on the horse’s back, and keep the horse moving, by little increments, until the dawn could warm them.

Then came that voice, not on the course he chose, but over to the right, and far away. And did he then take himself off what he thought was the right direction, and go aside for a ghost of a voice on the wind? He would be a fool.

“Aewyn!” it said, and he was all but certain he heard it.

There were haunts in these places. It was far from safe to listen to voices. But hadn’t his father said to him that his deafness to magic was a defense?

He turned the horse off toward that sound, and called out, “I’m here! Do you hear me?”

He didn’t know if he heard an answer. He thought he did. The blowing snow completely obscured what, by the horse’s lurching and stumbling, was rough ground, and he and the horse together could as likely drop off an edge into a snowbank without warning.

But a shadow appeared in the white, the shadow of a horse, and the shadow of a rock, and a strange border of snow, streaked and gashed as if a whole herd of cattle had tramped it. He was uncertain of that ground, but his horse headed for the shadow-one willingly enough, and having reached that horse, Aewyn slid down beside an object mostly plastered over with snow. It was a body. It was a smallish body. He tugged and heaved, and saw it was his brother.

“Get up,” he cried, hoarse from his shouting. “Get up, damn it!”

His brother flung his arms about him and struggled to get up, holding to him as if he were a rock or a tree, and managed to stand. The horses on either side of them cut off the wind, blessed relief, but his brother seemed to drink the warmth away from him; Aewyn began to shiver, and tried to get his brother to his horse, and held the stirrup, but his brother had no strength to hold on and help himself.

“Damn,” he said, shaking at him. “Otter, you have to. You have to, is all. Hold on to the cursed saddle.”