So in the end all this mulling over the other consequences was a waste of time, Nolan told himself firmly. This was the last warm place he would sleep for some time. He should sleep. He had to repeat this message several times, with various levels of inflection and volume, but eventually has body gave in and let his mind drift into scattered images of haying season and solstice dances.
They drew quite a few stares on their way out of the village the next morning. People stopped in the streets to watch their passage beyond the village limits. Some looked somber, others fearful. No one approached them. Nolan felt the weight of the Ostmontians’ gaze all the way down into the valley, even after Kris told him she’d made them both invisible.
In contrast to the Ustengard land they’d crossed with Rhea, the valley was barely guarded. In two hours of walking they saw only one lone soldier on horseback, a messenger maybe, who kept his horse at a steady trot and had eyes only for the road ahead of him to the west. For all the grim looks of the Ostmontian villagers, through the whole morning Nolan thought that luck might have actually landed on their side.
Kris dropped her spell around them at the same time that Nolan was starting to sweat under his heavy layers. The day was clear, sunny and still; not warm by Surian standards, but the warmest they’d had in weeks. Their path up into the Twilight Mountains was steep but wide, with plenty of room for them to find footing with their snowshoes. Nolan knew that the path would grow steeper and narrower as time went on—he wasn’t about to think this would be easy-—but if the temperature didn’t drop too far and the wind didn’t pick up he thought they would have a good chance.
Their track rose and fell over several curves before truly entering the Twilight Mountains. Twice more Nolan caught site of the village they’d left behind. And then there was nothing but snow, sky and rock. After so many days in the Ostmontian forest, what struck Nolan the most was the quiet. There was no trace of birdsong, or leaves in the wind. Just the crunching of their footfalls over the snow, the white ground, and the white sky.
Within two hours after midday the sky began to darken. Just after Nolan registered that fact, the wind stirred. What started as a whisper soon became a breeze, and then a gale that cut through Nolan’s outer layers like a knife. Frost built on his eyelashes, melted against his face, trickled beneath his scarves, and gathered around his eyes once again. By the time they found a rise that broke the worst of the wind for their camp, true darkness was minutes away, and the temperature had plummeted. Nolan’s hands and feet ached with cold even after Kris managed to light the fire. He could warm his hands, his feet, or his face by the fire, but any part of him more than eight inches away from the flames immediately chilled again. Kris watched him worriedly all the while they ate their porridge. She looked fine. Her skin had long since been chapped by the wind, but she looked neither reddened nor pale from the chill.
“You’re still cold,” she said finally. “Even with the fire?”
Nolan snorted. “And you’re not. You must have fire in your blood.”
“Close enough.”
Nolan barked a laugh and suppressed a shiver. “I guess magic would do almost as well.”
Kris watched him for a few more moments. “I think I can share it, if you’ll let me.”
Nolan jerked his head up, and shivered. “Why wouldn’t I let you?”
Kris’s lips quirked. “Then take off your glove, and give me your hand.”
Nolan obeyed, and Kris closed her hands around his. Her thumb ran over the scars that still crossed over his skin. A second later warmth bloomed in Nolan’s hand and crept steadily up his arm, through his chest and into his legs, head, and free arm. It sank through Nolan’s muscles into his bones. And there it stayed, radiating gentle heat. In less than twenty seconds, every inch of Nolan’s body was as painless and comfortable as though he’d spent the day reading before an inn fireplace.
Nolan met Kris’s eyes wonderingly. “Thank you.”
The warmth in the tips of his fingers receded as soon as he withdrew his hand, but the deeper heat through his body remained.
“Are you sure though? You’ll need your strength for the climb, I don’t want you to lose it for this.”
Kris smiled slightly. “This is small magic, really, just to let normal body heat grow. If I’d known you’d take it I would have offered before. I thought it would scare you to let me put magic through you like this.”
“It’s been a long time since I was afraid of your magic, Kris.”
“I wouldn’t have tried it two months ago,” she gave her half-shrug, “but I can control it much better now.”
“I know.” Nolan cleared his throat. “I never meant to blame you.”
“I know.”
“It wasn’t fair to keep treating you—”
“Don’t. I did hurt you. Badly,” Kris frowned. “You know I don’t think this fire will keep going long when I fall asleep. And we don’t have anything to fuel it with.”
Nolan swallowed, quickly distracted. “Do you have any ideas?”
Kris shook her head grimly.
“It might be all right,” Nolan offered slowly, though worry bubbled in his gut. “We’re out of the worst of the wind here at least. And with the gear from Berrin…”
“I think you should try to sleep,” Kris suggested, just as slowly. “I’ll try to keep it going a bit longer.”
Nolan couldn’t dispute the logic in that. He shrugged into his bedroll, not daring to relinquish even one of the warm layers the healer had traded him. “Good night then.”
Sleep must have come easily, because the next thing Nolan was aware of was cold. The fire was out, and for all his layers and his blankets Nolan felt as though ice were seeping into his skin. He ducked his head deeper into his blankets to take the chill off his face, but it did little good. Shivers were building in his body. A part of his mind knew he should get up and walk to get his blood flowing, but another part of his mind knew he could get himself very lost very easily on a mountain like this in the middle of the night, even if he tried not to go far.
Something rustled and crunched behind him. A weight pressed gently against his back, wriggling to get under the same covers.
“Nolan,” Kris whispered urgently in his ear. “Nolan, take off your glove and give me your hand.”
Nolan blindly obeyed, pulling off the article with chattering teeth. Kris’s chapped hand closed over his, and she hugged it to his chest below the blankets. He could feel her head pressed against the back of his coat collar.
Again warmth bloomed through Nolan’s body until he felt so full of magic he thought he ought to glow. After two full minutes the last traces of chill eased away.
Nolan sighed gratefully. “Thank you. I think that’s all I need. I’ll be fine now.”
He felt her head shake.
“I’ll stay here. I can keep this up in my sleep for myself. I think I can do the same for both of us.”
Nolan closed his free hand over her fingertips. He felt a strange urge to kiss her hand, which was ridiculous given where they were and the layers covering his face. He settled for curling his fingers around hers.
“Thank you.”
Her hand tightened gently in response. “Good night, Nolan.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Snow turned to ice. The wind that began on their first night beyond Ustengard continued unabated through the day and night for a week, stripping raw any bit of skin left vulnerable to it. Nolan reconciled himself to a dull, aching cold that gradually worsened to be sharp and biting between dawn and Kris’s midday cure, then between midday and dusk. Despite her promises of magic in reserve, even Kris looked cold by day. At the very least, her eyelids were beginning to dry and crack from the wind’s incessant punishment.
The path before them turned rocky and narrow, but to Nolan’s amazement, it didn’t disappear, or fade below the snow. Even stranger, the path continued to wind upwards, never again descending into a valley.
They fo
und their first body in the afternoon of the second day. The man, a soldier wearing the red and blue colors of the Maraynian army, was stretched out on one side of the path with one half-clenched, ice-covered hand over his head. His blue eyes were open.
Nolan stared at the soldier with every hair on the back of his neck on end. He couldn’t take his eyes off of the man’s face. His legs didn’t seem to want to make the effort to walk past the body. Finally Kris cleared her throat.
“We’ve seen dead bodies before.”
“I know. It’s just. Not laid out, like that.” Nolan wondered how long the man had been lying here, preserved in the cold. It could have been centuries.
Kris nodded. “Come on.”
Nolan forced his legs to move and keep stepping up the path, wondering whether the Maraynian soldier had frozen to death or if something else had killed him first.
The second night, and the third, fell even earlier and colder than the days that preceded them. Nolan also had the disheartening feeling that they were making no visible progress towards the mountain’s summit. So much of their path seemed identical to the rest, with the only difference being the increasing number of bodies they passed—some gaunt from starvation, some misshapen from a fall, and others still wrapped in fur-lined bedding, clearly killed by the incessant, bone-deep cold.
They stood the star-jar before them each night while they ate. Once so brilliant he’d had to cover it in blankets to hide its light, now the star-jar didn’t even shine enough for Nolan to eat by. The pin-pricks of light from the stars grew smaller each night. By contrast, the stars overhead now blanketed all but the thinnest strip of night sky.
He noticed the change, but said nothing. Neither did Kris. Nolan couldn’t see how they could do more than they already were. Even the guilt about saving Kris was easing. Nolan felt certain that if he’d tried this climb without her he would have died within three days at the most.
The few minutes between lying down and sleeping were the only part of Nolan’s day with a shred of lightness to them. He and Kris quietly figured out that putting her back to his chest left them more comfortable, and with their hands joined Nolan could pass the night without a chill, leaving Kris free from worrying about the fire. In the moments before sleep overcame him, Nolan listened to Kris’s breathing, running his chapped and callused fingers through hers. He could feel her breathing, and know anytime in the night that Kris was there; that he was not alone.
He’d never spent so much time so close to her, or to anyone. He wondered, drowsily, what difference it would make if there weren’t quite so many layers between them. Her waist would be softer, he supposed. In other circumstances, having a girl under his arm would have left him wildly curious to explore the truth of that, but as it was, the energy of holding her hand was all that he truly thought of mustering by the time each evening arrived. In any case, he couldn’t imagine trying to explain to Kris why she should take her coat off.
Nolan learned that week that Kris smelled of sweat, which made sense, but also of something far warmer that Nolan supposed must have come from Rusam. It wasn’t a sweet smell, exactly. Just something warm, something comforting, like roasting nuts, but airier. Nolan spent a good part of those few minutes each night trying to commit the scent to memory.
By the fifth day, Nolan was certain that they were making no progress towards the Dawn Caves. Even more unsettling, he was positive now that they were passing over the same ground they’d already covered. He recognized the same blue-eyed Maraynian soldier they’d walked by three days before. Since they were only moving upwards and couldn’t possibly be that lost, the only explanation was a spell at work. A strong spell.
Kris nodded wearily when he ventured to mention this grim conclusion. “I’ve been thinking the same thing, but I don’t know why you’re surprised. There had to be a good reason why this mountain has the reputation it does. Your world must have other tall, icy mountains that don’t need stories about them thousands of miles away.”
Nolan clambered for finger holds over an icy rise. “If this is a test, then how are we supposed to pass it? I don’t know what else we can do.”
Kris took the hand he offered and hoisted herself up behind him. “Keep climbing. Prove that we won’t give up.”
“We’re already doing that. And we only have a few more days.”
Kris licked her cracked lips. “How long do you think it will take to show we won’t turn back? Or die, if that’s what they’re watching for?”
Nolan shook his head. “Until the solstice? Tell me if you think of something else we can try.”
But there was nothing to do but to wait, and to watch their stores of food grow leaner, and to climb.
On the sixth day Nolan woke to find himself in territory that was entirely unfamiliar. He was sleeping within his own blankets, and Kris lay before him looking just as she had when he fell asleep, but they were lying on a gentle slope walled with ice instead of under the cover of the overhang where they had camped the night before.
Their packs were gone. Their food was gone. Their water bottles were gone. Heart pounding, Nolan gently withdrew his hand from Kris’s and stood up to look around him. The walls of ice rose at least thirty feet over Nolan’s head. A path on one side led downhill through an ice chasm, a path above them led uphill through another chasm.
“Kris, wake up.”
Kris opened her eyes, blinked, blinked again, then jolted to her feet, spinning the same circuit Nolan just had.
“Where is everything? Where are we?”
“I don’t know.”
Nolan saw her gulping as she scanned their surroundings. Finally she looked up at him with a mixture of panic and laughter on her face.
“We have no food.”
“No.”
“No climbing tools.”
“No.”
“Nothing to even hold the water I melt.”
“Right.”
Kris closed her eyes. “Up or down?”
Nolan took a deep, shuddery breath, very aware that his heart was still pounding a strong alarm in his chest. Already his mouth felt dry. “We’ve come all this way to go up. We should go up.”
Kris opened her eyes. The muscles in her face relaxed. She nodded. “Let’s go then.”
The path led circularly, slowly up through a chasm that was just wide enough for one person to walk. The ice walls echoed their footsteps back to them. They walked for three hours before they had climbed enough to let them reach over the edges of the walls. Nolan cupped his hands to let Kris step into them and climb up. Once up, she flattened herself on the level ground to give Nolan her hand to help him up.
The first thing Nolan noticed was the wind, which was stronger and colder than any Nolan had ever felt before, filling his ears with noise that rivaled a rushing river. When he stood though, it was the view that took his breath away, blocking all other thoughts from his head. Kris gasped.
Below the plateau they stood on, the ground fell away sharply. White tipped mountains extended into forested mountains that continued farther than Nolan could see. Everything was frozen, still, and pristine. The sight of a world literally at his feet was so awe inspiring, so breathtaking, that it was a full ten seconds before Nolan realized that if he were above all of that, there was only one place he could be.
He was standing on the highest peak of the Twilight Mountains. Kris took his hand in hers. Her other hand covered her smile. Tears streamed down her cheeks.
Nolan felt a smile spread over his lips. Relief and excitement quickly overcame shock.
“We made it. We’re close!” With no thought to why he scooped up Kris in his arms and spun, startling a laugh out of both of them. Her arms came around his neck, and then his lips met hers before Nolan even knew what he was doing. For the short seconds it lasted, every sense sharpened. Heat that had nothing to do with magic lit in Nolan’s hands, his lips, and where Kris’s hands touched the back of his neck.
They slowly drew back. In the
violet reaches of Kris’s eyes Nolan found only a bittersweet sadness.
“We’re close,” she breathed. “We’ll make it. We really did it.”
Nolan nodded. There were so many things to say, but none of them fit his lips at that moment. There was really nothing to say that would change anything.
“We should get going, just in case. Close might still be a day’s walk away.”
They stepped away, but stayed close beside each other as they walked away from the ledge. Where they were going was fairly clear. One large cave rose above the plateau, facing the ledge. It didn’t take a day’s walk to reach it. It probably took less than half an hour.
In the very center of the cave an old man reclined against a pile of stones as though they were a rocking chair. One small cushion lay on each side of his rocks, circling around a low wooden table set for tea. The old man wore dusky blue robes that pooled around his feet. Silver winked from the fabric at his knees and elbows. His hair was pure white and trimmed neatly at his earlobes. His clean-shaven, wrinkled face creased still more into a bright smile when he saw Nolan and Kris.
“Welcome, children.” The old man’s voice echoed slightly within the cave. He beckoned to them. “Come, come. You are past all danger. You have climbed the heights of the Twilight Mountains and found the Dawn Caves. Come! Sit! You must be weary.”
Nolan and Kris slowly crossed to him. Their boots rang upon the stone floor. The old man’s smile widened farther as they drew near. His blue eyes twinkled at them from beneath bushy eyebrows. All the same, there was a steadiness to the man, beneath the smiles and the wrinkles. “Nolan, Kris, sit,” he said happily, gesturing to the two cushions on either side of him. “There’s no need for such suspicion, children, however well you may have earned it.”
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