XIII
LARIA HEARD WYTHCOMBE’S decision with a degree of relief. She’d been looking up along the rise of Mount Ambition and, even if the path that Farborn promised was there, the climb did not look as if it was going to be easy. Despite her relief that she wouldn’t need to end the day’s hike by climbing a mountain, Laria felt anxious. Was it wise to camp in these dead lands?
Clearing her throat uneasily, Laria said, “If you don’t mind, I want to check the area where we plan to camp. Sometimes what seems like nothing turns out to be something taking advantage of the fact that you’re already sure there’s nothing there… I mean, like those butterflies. They looked like the rock they were covering, until they weren’t.”
Ranz grinned as Laria finished her convoluted explanation, not as if he was laughing at her, but as if he appreciated how hard it was to explain something so tenuous. “I think Laria has a good idea. If there’s nothing here, she’s not taking any risk. If there is, well… I’d hate to find out about it in the middle of the night. We know what she’s going to try, so we can look out for her.”
Wythcombe had taken off his hat and now scrubbed his balding pate with both hands. “If I understand the nature of your talent, Laria, sensing the latent characteristics of an area can lead you to feel—even become immersed in—what happened in the past. Whatever happened here was not pleasant, so you should take care to avoid it.”
“Such things usually happen when I’m not prepared,” Laria explained. “That’s why the sword sort of snuck up on me. I wasn’t expecting anything to be there, so I didn’t guard myself. I’ll be careful. Promise.”
“If you will take care, then we would be fools not to accept your offer,” Wythcombe conceded graciously. “If you happen upon any recent memories of events in this place, pray share them. I chose this particular approach because the trail Farborn mentioned begins just across the moat from here. If someone else has been here recently, it is possible they also knew about the trail, and therefore camped in this same location.”
“Will do,” Laria agreed. “Now, Arasan, how close to the moat shall we set up camp?”
“Several long paces at least,” he replied. “But close enough that we’ll hopefully hear if anything comes creeping out with the intention of having us for dinner.”
Marking out the area for their camp was relatively easy. After all, one bit of dried, broken ground was much like the rest, and they didn’t need to worry about biting insects or stickers. Arasan had loaded Rusty with enough wood to permit a small cook fire. While he was unburdening the ever-hungry goat, Laria knelt on the ground and began her inspection.
As they had hiked, she had noticed that the dry ground had cracked into roughly hexagonal shapes. Now she used these as she might have tiles on a floor to methodically track where she had checked. When at long last Laria rocked back on her heels, Firekeeper rose from where she had been silently watching and handed her a full canteen.
“Blind Seer say you smell tired but not too worried. Is all well, then?”
Laria gave Blind Seer a nod of thanks. “Not ‘well,’ so much as sick in the manner we expected the place to be sick. The only troubling parts are closer to that moat. There’s latent power there for sure. Also, whatever is in the moat isn’t just water—not salt nor fresh. It feels as if it has a purpose. Wythcombe, could that be the ward?”
Wythcombe had been sitting with his eyes closed, his staff laid across his lap. “Quite likely so, dear girl. There are various sorts of wards: some merely give warning, some act as barriers, some can harm those who attempt to broach them without proper authorization. I know the rituals that will authorize me to cross, and am now adapting them so that the wards should let all of us pass.”
That night Laria was exhausted enough that it would have taken a thunderstorm to awaken her. Come morning, over a breakfast far less interesting than most they had eaten on their journey since it was not augmented by Firekeeper’s foraging and Blind Seer’s hunting, Wythcombe detailed his thoughts.
“Although I had planned to adapt my authorization to include all of us, the one thing I did not plan for was how excessively drained of latent mana this area would be. Most of you have been listening as I have lectured Blind Seer regarding how he can create a mana reserve. As you might expect, I routinely maintain my own such reserve. Moreover, my staff permits me to create an additional reserve. Even so, I am accustomed to augmenting these two reserves with latent mana from my surroundings—not to the extent that would cause any damage, any more than breathing in an open area removes all the vitality from the air. Nonetheless, without the assurance I can draw on that last resource, I am reluctant to drain my reserve completely.”
Arasan glanced up at the cloud-capped summit of Mount Ambition. “There’s more to it, isn’t there? You’ve been glowering at those clouds since we first sighted this place. You’re not just worried about a defensive reaction from the ward, are you?”
Wythcombe sighed. “You’re right. I’m not. However, because of the ward, I can’t analyze what is peculiar about those clouds. As Firekeeper would surely like to remind us, speculating at length won’t tell us what we could learn more easily by going and finding out. That said, I feel certain we’re going to run into difficulties, so I want to maintain some of my mana reserve to deal with whatever happens—even if that means making our crossing more difficult.”
“Difficult?” Firekeeper asked.
“The easiest alternative would be for us to cross as quickly as possible. But haste can lead to accidents. If anyone were to slip and fall, well, as Laria noted, the contents of the moat are not precisely water.”
“So we run then,” Firekeeper’s shrug was eloquent of her dismissal of this as posing any sort of difficulty.
“On a very narrow span—no wider than the trunk of a fallen tree.”
Firekeeper again shrugged. Doubtless for most of her life, such had been the only bridges she had used.
“We can—Blind Seer and I—what say the others?”
Ranz frowned. “I think I can, but not all that fast, especially wearing this pack. It throws off my balance.”
Laria nodded. “Same here.”
Arasan grinned. “Make that three—and then there is Rusty. Will he balk?”
“Not if we bribe with food,” Firekeeper said, grinning. “How is this? Blind Seer and I go, then someone put Rusty up. I will hold the lure. After he crosses, the rest of you come as your feet will let you.”
Wythcombe nodded. “As good a plan as any. I will cross last. I will begin preparations while the rest of you pack up.”
“Anything to get out of doing the dishes,” Arasan teased, but the lines around his eyes etched an expression of concern.
As she had been, Firekeeper took charge of Wythcombe’s pack. As she shrugged it on, she said, “Blind Seer say he will come last with you, Wythcombe. The first magic he knowingly learned was how to share his power with another. He will help you if needed, so you can keep some of those reserves.”
Laria thought Wythcombe might have argued with anyone else, but it really was very hard to argue with Blind Seer, especially when the wolf let his jaws fall open in a panting laugh that, nonetheless, held latent threat.
Wythcombe took up a position one pace shy of the edge of the moat and began chanting something of which Laria understood maybe one word out of five, and she wasn’t certain about that one. When his voice rose, signaling he was nearing the end of the incantation, he opened his hand so that his staff fell forward. Laria was about to leap and grab it when she realized that the staff was transforming before her eyes, lengthening and widening until it spanned the silvery-grey water.
Without a pause, Firekeeper—Farborn riding the crest of Wythcombe’s pack—ran forward. Her bare feet hardly seemed to touch the shaft before she was over, swinging around into a crouch with her hand extended to show the wrinkled apple she had kept hidden in one hand. Farborn launched skyward, darting back and forth to scout the immediate
vicinity.
Mesmerized by the thought of attempting to run along not just a slender log but one that seemed all too polished, Laria stood frozen. Arasan, however, had Rusty’s front hooves up on the near end of the staff almost before Firekeeper had gotten into position. He hit the goat a solid wallop on the rump, and Rusty jolted forward. He seemed inclined to balk, but Firekeeper knew her creatures. She took a large bite out of the apple, and started chewing. With an indignant bleat, Rusty trotted toward her, leaping the last few feet rather than risk the wolf-woman eating more of his apple.
Arasan had eased himself up onto the makeshift bridge as soon as Rusty was committed. He moved more slowly than had either wolf-woman or goat, choosing his steps with deliberation.
“I’ll go next,” Ranz said. He slid one booted foot onto the staff, then the other. “Come on, Laria. It’s not nearly as slick as it looks. My ice bridges were far worse.”
Your ice bridges, Laria thought as she did her best to move quickly after, weren’t nearly so narrow.
But she discovered that Ranz was right. Not only was the “log” less slick than it appeared, if she stayed toward the center, it even felt sort of flat. Nonetheless, when she felt someone—Blind Seer or Wythcombe—step on behind her, she stalled in place, fearful that shaking of their passage would knock her in.
A growl from Blind Seer urged her on. Her knees were shaking when she reached solid ground. Only then did she realize that what she had taken for the wolf growling was the rumble of not so distant thunder within the clouds shrouding the mountain top. Whereas from a distance they had looked picturesque and fluffy, from below they were ominously dark.
A warm hand drew her away from the bridge’s terminus. Laria had expected it to be Arasan in his protective teacher role, but it was Ranz. Her nascent blush vanished when he spoke.
“Firekeeper’s very worried. She thinks we’d better stay away from the moat.”
Firekeeper again. Why are men so fascinated by her?
But deep inside Laria knew her resentment was her reaction to how she’d panicked there on the bridge. She touched today’s memory ribbon, the one that held her mother’s good advice. Even though she didn’t attempt to tap the buried thoughts, she felt steadied.
Wythcombe crossed, Blind Seer close behind. As soon as the wolf’s enormous paws touched the ground, Wythcombe made a quick motion and his staff was back in his hand. He didn’t spare a breath for compliments, but tilted his head back to inspect the ominously rumbling clouds.
“That’s not going to get any better for our waiting,” he said. “Firekeeper, lead the way.”
When Firekeeper took point, Blind Seer raced to his place beside her.
“The old human managed to keep the bridge intact without needing my strength,” he told her, “but I think before we reach the top, he will need my aid—and I think he will be too proud to ask when he should.”
“Humans!” Firekeeper agreed. “Still, I am glad to know that Wythcombe will be able to keep his promise to keep the lightning from our heads. This running into the open when the skies speak goes against my earliest lessons.”
“I must go back to where I can assist Wythcombe if the need arises. Take care, beloved.”
Firekeeper rested her hand where it could course through Blind Seer’s thick fur as the blue-eyed wolf turned to lope down the trail. Then Farborn dropped to rest lightly on her shoulder.
“The winds are rising,” the merlin reported, “and the lightning makes my pinfeathers itch. I’ll use you for my perch. I will face backwards, and tell you what happens behind.”
“Good thinking,” Firekeeper replied, lightly stroking the merlin’s back. His feathers were dewed with mist. “Often I have heard others wish for eyes in the back of their heads. Now you will be mine.”
As they stepped forth, the clouds above rumbled with deep-voiced thunder the wolf-woman felt in her bones. Sand and gravel crunched underfoot but, as the thunder mounted in intensity, Firekeeper couldn’t hear even her own steps, much less those of her followers. The lack of sound made her feel weirdly isolated, and she was glad for Farborn on her shoulder, crystal claws tightly gripped into the padding, a feather-light reminder that her pack was with her.
They were midway up Mount Ambition when the first bolt of lightning cracked down from the sky. Without thinking, Firekeeper flung herself flat, causing Farborn to burst into flight. She pulled herself up to her knees in time to see the lightning crash against an invisible roof overhead. As she got to her feet, she looked back and saw that rough gem atop Wythcombe’s staff was full of what looked like miniature lightning bolts. Blind Seer was walking at his teacher’s left side with Wythcombe’s hand lightly resting on his head. When the blue-eyed wolf noticed Firekeeper looking at him, his jaws parted in laughter, and she knew he’d seen her dive for the dirt.
Blind Seer is protecting me as surely as if he ran at my side, Firekeeper thought. I cannot disappoint him.
As if angry that its lightning was being kept at bay, the storm raged in earnest. The winds rose to a furious shriek, bringing with them curtains of rain. Wythcombe’s barrier kept the lightning at bay, but the rain drenched everyone and made the footing treacherous. Firekeeper struggled a few steps up the trail, but knew that if she was finding the climb nearly impossible, there was no way that anyone other than Blind Seer might manage it. Yet, without him assisting Wythcombe, the rest of them would be speared by the lightning.
The wolf-woman was turning to shout for the others to hold fast and protect Wythcombe while she went on ahead, when she saw Ranz face into the storm. The youth’s outspread hands shaped a rising curve, congealing the sheets of rain into a wall of ice that arched over to shelter them from the worst of the rainfall. Grinning maniacally, Ranz staggered forward a pace, repeating the hand motion. The ice wall extended, reinforced as more rain hit it and was frozen.
“Keep moving!” Arasan called. He looped an arm around Ranz’s torso. “I’ll feed him mana. You two”—his gesture encompassed Laria and Firekeeper— “lead the way.”
Firekeeper nodded and motioned for Laria to come ahead. She’d been about to order the young woman to drop back and provide a rear guard, but she’d seen that Rusty was determinedly picking his way behind Wythcombe, the tilt of the goat’s horns promising no good to anyone who thought to harm his human.
Although Wythcombe and Ranz’s combined magics made the climb possible, nonetheless the trail was sodden and slick. Loop after loop they mounted, protected on the sides by a snail shell of ice, warded above from lightning, all too aware of what disaster would descend when the mana was exhausted. At last they reached the cloud-shrouded peak. Ranz’s cold transformed the mist closest to him into wisps of snow, but could do little to moderate the encompassing white and grey.
Laria muttered, “I’ve felt like a bug on a tabletop for days. Now I can hardly see my hand in front of my face.”
Firekeeper snorted wordless agreement. The mist was muffling not only her sense of sight, but of smell as well. Wythcombe had blocked the lightning, but the thunder persisted, louder and angrier the closer they came to the summit. Firekeeper gripped her Fang more firmly and did her best to anticipate the next trouble. Something dark bulked within the cloud, something that loomed overhead high enough to occlude some of the lightning that filled the sky.
Wythcombe said, his voice firmer than she had thought possible, “We’re nearly to the top. Take care. There’s a chasm, but there should be a bridge.”
His words came none too soon. Firekeeper reached to grab Laria when she felt the slight dip beneath the soft sole of her boot. Laria dropped the tip of her sword’s blade to probe ahead, then to the side. Eventually the steel thudded against something other than gravel.
“This feels like planks,” Laria said. “Wood at least.”
“Ah, good. The bridge is still here,” Wythcombe sounded as pleased as if he’d made it himself. “Once we’re on that, we should be able to drop our spells, Ranz. Excellent solution, by
the way. Creative.”
Within his own private snow flurry, Ranz managed a smile, but he was very pale and leaning into Arasan’s hold. Firekeeper didn’t wait for further discussion. She slid her foot where Laria’s sword had touched wood and found solid planks beneath. Moving her arm slowly to one side, then the other, she located railings. She glanced down and wished she hadn’t, for the clouds below were mere wisps that served only to accent the extent of the drop.
“Feels firm,” she reported. “Wythcombe, I go?”
“Yes,” came the reply. “Quickly as you can until there’s room for all of us on the span. Then slow down.”
Firekeeper obeyed. She might not have Blind Seer’s nose for magic, but common sense told her that it was present. For no other reason would the clouds have parted once they were on the bridge. She could make out a few of the details—dark-brown wood, sodden but showing no sign of rot. As she stepped ahead to make way for Laria, Firekeeper felt Farborn shift as if contemplating flight.
“Bide,” she said to the merlin in Pellish. “The storm has not cleared, I think. This bridge is sheltered. If you fly, you go out into the storm once more.”
“That is so,” Wythcombe agreed. “When I have come here before, there was no such storm—believe me, I would have warned you all. However, Mount Ambition’s crest has always been shrouded in clouds so that anyone who came here, managed to cross the moat, and then make the climb would have difficulty finding the bridge. Indeed, the intention was to discourage any further investigation.”
“Then why have a path at all?” Arasan asked. He’d let go of Ranz. The young man was leaning against the bridge railing, wiping frost from his face.
“The path isn’t all that visible,” Wythcombe reminded him. “Had we not had Farborn as our scout, we would not have found it so easily. Now, while we are in cover—relatively speaking—perhaps we should have a quick bite and something to drink. Since Rusty has persisted with us, we have supplies.”
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