Lin put her hands up. “Not so fast. We still have no idea where to find this Well.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that.” Rufus’s eyes shone in the lantern light. “You see, there aren’t many wells in Sylver. In fact, I can think of only one.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
The wind rippled in Rufus’s fur as he glided up along the river. White streaks trailed behind his skates, but before Lin could catch up, the scars absorbed back into the frozen water.
“Neat, no?” Rufus called over his shoulder. “The ice is like the snow on Eversnow Square. It’s always flawless.”
Like a mirror, Lin thought, but she didn’t look. None of the skates in the Burning Bird shed had fit her feet, so she had to make do with strap-on blades. She felt about as steady as a calf in spring. But they were still moving swiftly up the valley, much faster than they would have on foot, and with every stroke, they put more distance between themselves and Teriko, not to mention a certain chief observer. And they left no trail for them to follow.
Lin risked her balance to glance up as they sped under a bridge where the road crossed the river. She must have been unconscious when they last passed it. The Wanderer shone dazzlingly bright against the night. Lin guessed that it had traveled a little more than halfway to the Sylver Fang in the west. It would be difficult to keep track of time out here. The chiming from the belfry had reached Rufus’s hilltop camp, but Lin had little hope the sound would carry into the depths of the woods.
“This is it.” Rufus stopped in a spray of shaved ice, rustling his map. “The ridge where we crossed over from the Tinklegrove trail. It was just before the Glass Bridge, and I remember there were a lot of silver birches.” He bent down to unlace his skates. “Better get rid of these.”
Lin bent down, too, fiddling with the hard straps, when she suddenly flinched back with a yelp that flew in between the trees like a startled bird. Down in the ice she had caught a glimpse of something white: a scared face, frozen into the deep.
“What are you doing?” Rufus said. “Trying to injure yourself some more?”
“No, I . . .” Lin blinked, and the face blinked back. It was just her reflection. “I thought I saw something. It was nothing.”
“Well, remember what the doctor said. Be careful with those stitches.”
They climbed up on the bank and crossed the Caravan Road warily. From there, they chased their own footprints backward over the ridge. Though the evidence of their previous path ran before them like a dotted line in the snow, Lin had a persistent feeling that they were going the wrong way; that they ought to turn left, or double back, or strike across the next crest. The feeling swelled in waves, always accompanied by whispered commands, like a distant chanting.
“The trees want us to get lost,” Lin said. Somewhere in the far distance, a crow cawed. Rufus tightened his scarf. “I didn’t want to spook you, but yes. It’s as if the path is . . . well . . .”
“. . . twisting under our feet,” Lin finished. Just like in the Winnower legend.
After that, they kept their attention doggedly to the tracks until the prints grew very far apart. They had been running hard at this point. Lin glimpsed bright starlight between the branches up ahead. The Winnower’s clearing.
They crept up to the ring of tall trees and huddled by a big elm root to watch for a while. The well jutted up like a sliced tower. The pieces of the lid had not been disturbed. But at the end of the parallel tracks that shot out of the wood on the north end, something was missing.
“Huh,” Rufus muttered. “The sled is gone. Someone must have taken it.”
“Yes,” Lin breathed. “Someone has sniffed at our footprints, too.”
Only feet away, the impression from Lin’s body sprawled before them like a snow angel where she had fallen. A third set of footprints led from the cottage to the impression and back again.
“Whoever it is, he must still be in there,” Lin whispered.
Rufus rose slowly. “Then we’d better check the cottage first. Nightmare or no, we can’t have anyone creeping up on us while we’re halfway down a well.”
The snow creaked as they stole across the open field. Between the crooked shutters, there was no movement, and the chimney held its breath. Once more, Lin had the unpleasant notion that they were being watched. Even when they reached the cover of the timber walls, she couldn’t shake it.
Up close the cottage seemed even more miserable. The stone foundation had tumbled in places, wrestled asunder by the frost. The gaps between the warped logs were wide enough to peer through. Inside, they saw bare walls and hard-packed dirt strewn with dank rushes. But no figure, hooded or otherwise.
“I don’t smell anything but rime and old wood,” Rufus said, relaxing his stance.
“But the tracks say someone’s here,” Lin said.
Rufus shrugged. “My nose says otherwise. Maybe he left on the sled? Come on. Let’s search the well.”
Lin did not feel reassured. The chanting seemed more coherent in the clearing, weaving in and out of range, and in the corner of her eye, something kept shifting, like a thin fabric whisked away whenever she turned around.
Rufus placed his fingers on the rim of the well. “Doesn’t seem to bite.”
Lin circled it carefully, as if she feared just that. Slick stones, timber crossbeam, frayed rope. But there was more to it than met the eye. The breathy mutters that escaped from the shaft proved that. She crouched down. “Here!”
Near the ground, a sign had been carved. Three leaping tongues of flame.
“That’s the one from the Hall of Winter,” Rufus said. “We’re on the right track!”
“Maybe,” Lin said. “But Teodor’s table clock had the same mark, and so did the walls in Teodor’s turret. He’s no Winterfyrst. Quite the opposite, I would say.” She peered over the edge. The starlight reached only a few yards into the shaft before it was smothered.
Rufus produced a book of matches from his scarf, lit one, and tossed it in. It spun through the air for a long moment before it fizzed out in a layer of snow on the bottom. “Rats, this thing is deep.”
Deep, but apparently empty. The light from the match had revealed nothing but more stones glazed with ice. “The entrance is supposed to be secret,” Rufus said, chewing the tassels on his scarf.
“Well, we won’t know anything until we go down there and investigate,” Lin said.
“Down there?” Rufus spat out the tassels, coughing. “I mean to say, that’s a fair drop.”
Lin felt her mouth open. Rufus was scared. He, who had knocked the slipper out of the Machine, who had confronted Figenskar as if he were a difficult kitten. He was scared of heights. Before, he had loved climbing, and he liked to scratch his way to the top of her head to balance sometimes. But not after he had fallen from her shoulder. She turned away, pretending to check something in her pocket. “No way around it, I think. But one of us has to stay up here, and it has to be you.”
“Does it, now?” Rufus planted his fists on his flanks, trying to sound vexed, but his scruff betrayed him. It smoothed down with relief, and maybe a hint of shame.
Lin nodded at the rope. “It’s our only chance at getting to the bottom. You’re both stronger and heavier than me. I don’t think I could manage hauling you back up, not even with two good hands.”
Rufus frowned from the rope to the rusty crank to Lin. His mouth turned into a knot. “I see your point. But I don’t like it one moldy bit.”
He pulled the rope all the way out, tugging and straining, until he felt sure the fibers would hold. “Keep the rope under your arms,” he said, tying a big loop. “It will hurt a little, but it’s the safest way, especially with that wrist of yours.”
Lin slipped the loop over her head and threaded her arms through. She climbed up on the rim of the well, but Rufus held her back by the shoulder and shoved the matches int
o her pocket.
“You might need these to see. Oh, and we should have a signal in case you need me to pull you up fast.”
“How about I call out?”
“I guess that will do,” Rufus muttered. “It really should be me.”
“Don’t be silly. This is the only logical way.” Lin dangled her feet over the edge and pretended not to cringe at the sight of the gaping hole. “Ready?”
Rufus gripped the crank with a grim nod.
She pushed herself off the rim. The loop tightened sharply and she swung to and fro as Rufus lowered her, yank by creaking yank, into the shaft.
Darkness swallowed her. She lit two matches on the way down, but all she could see was more stones and the grainy blotches of her boots. After a while, her eyes adjusted enough to make out a slowly growing disc of gray below. The bottom.
When the crank stopped with a final tug, her feet were still about a yard above it. “A little farther,” she called. Rufus’s snout stuck out over the edge above, and there was a faint and garbled reply. Lin tried again. “I need more rope!”
The echoes faded. No more rope was given out.
If there were any answers down here, they must be hidden beneath the snow. Kicking in the air, Lin seized the rope above her head and hauled herself up enough to slip through the loop. She hit the bottom with a dull thump, got to her knees, and began brushing away the veil of snow. Nothing but black ice.
She lit another match and turned in a slow circle. No sign of Isvan, or any secret entrance, or of the magical ice ax. But carved into the wall near the surface of the ice was another of the leaping flame signs. Time and frost had worn it down so the cuts were hardly visible. She traced the shallow grooves with her fingertip, but pulled it back when she felt a sting, like from the electric fences around the Summerhill meadows.
The match sputtered out, and Lin paused, uncertain. In the Burning Bird, the puzzle pieces had fit so neatly. But now she couldn’t stop thinking about the elegant ice and soft blue light of the Winterfyrst mansion. This well just seemed too drab and dark to be their sacred place. True, she didn’t have Frostfang, which was supposed to unlock the well, whatever that might mean. But at the very least she would have expected to find the Winterfyrst snow crystal carved into it, like on the head of Frostfang, and not the Flamewatcher mark that Teodor used.
Suddenly a scratch and a hiss rent the silence, a sound exactly like the one she had heard from Teodor’s turret on her first visit. The flame mark flared up, filling the well with the stink of burning. From the well stones came a long, deep groan. Lin hunched down and covered her head. The well didn’t plan on tumbling down on her, did it? Another groan, and a loud crack. This time it came from below.
In the brief moment before the flame mark died, she saw that the ice was riddled with cracks.
She jumped to her feet.
“Rufus! Get me up!” She pulled at the rope, trying to get back into the loop, but she couldn’t do it. Fragments of Rufus’s voice swirled down the shaft, drowning in creaks and moans.
Currents roiled beneath her, and water pumped up through the cracks. Lin had never heard of ice melting this fast. A few moments more and she would fall through, and all chance of reaching the rope—and getting out of the well—would be gone.
She wound the rope around her wrists and yelled again.
“Bring me up!”
Instead the ice crunched and gave. Lin gasped as her feet and ankles plunged into the freezing water. Instantly her legs stung with pain. Her boots soaked though and became so heavy she could barely lift them out of the water.
“Rufus!” Lin screamed. “Please, hear me!”
Finally the crank creaked up there, and the rope quivered. Another creak and she rushed a foot upward. The rope bit deep into her skin. Doctor Kott’s stitches were tearing. Creak, creak, creak. A small voice wailed above the panic, insisting that now, if the rope snapped or she let go, she would fall to her death. Lin closed her lids and told the voice to shut up, listening instead to the yammering of the crank that was bringing her back to safety.
At last, it stopped. Rufus caught her by the waist and hauled her over the edge with a hard hug. “What happened?”
“The ice at the bottom melted.” Lin didn’t know which hurt the most, her wrist or her shoulders. “I tried calling.”
“You did? The only sound I heard was a funny echo, until that sign sparked and the whole well started grumbling. I pulled you up as fast as I could.” He hugged her tight again. “Moldy heavy, you were.”
Lin snorted. “I was wet.”
“And bloody,” Rufus said, staring at her bandage in dismay. “Your wrist again.”
Lin winced at the red stripe in the gauze. “I touched another one of those Flamewatcher signs. I think it’s what caused the melting. It’s as if I set it off in some way.”
“But I’m guessing you didn’t find any Winterfyrsts or secret entrances to secret wells?”
“None and neither.”
“All right. So our theory was wrong.” Rufus tried to sound optimistic, but Lin could see the weight of disappointment in his tail. “Or maybe the entrance is invisible if we don’t have Frostfang. We’ll have to go back to Sylveros, get your wrist fixed again, and then we can sneak into the Cartography Chamber, or even ask the elders. There must be someone . . .” He straightened up, nostrils wide. “ . . . someone who knows about the . . . the . . .”
His hackles rose and he whipped around.
The door to the cottage grated. Footsteps sounded on the porch, and then something turned the corner, lifting its arm toward them, crowing in its high-pitched, eerie voice.
The Winnower had come.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
The hooded figure came shuffling toward them, creaking slowly down from the porch. Rufus stepped in front of Lin, fists under chin and back straight, ready to fight. “What are you doing within the Palisade, Nightmare?”
But the Winnower reached up and pushed his hood back, and his eyes were cold mirrors.
“You,” Lin whispered.
“Yes, girl,” said Teodor. “What the Flame are you two doing here?”
“Funny,” Rufus said. He didn’t lower his fists. “We could ask you the same thing.”
“We could,” Lin said. “And why are you posing as the Winnower? Or . . .” She raised her chin, trying to appear unfazed. “Maybe you are the Winnower?”
Teodor barked, a startling, hoarse scream of impatience. “There is no Winnower! I planted that story to scare away unwelcome visitors like you! This clearing is forbidden for those who are not initiated in . . .” He paused, and Lin realized that Teodor had let his tongue run away with him. “Those who are not invited by . . .”
“The Brotherhood of Frost and Flame?”
Lin turned to Rufus, eyebrows high. With that, Rufus had revealed that at least one of them had visited Teodor’s turret. But Rufus looked so smug and the old fox so utterly shocked that she couldn’t help but smile.
It took Teodor several moments to replace the slack jaw with narrow-eyed suspicion. “Indeed. And you two are not invited. So please explain how you got here. It ought to be impossible, unless you know the rowan path.”
“We followed our own tracks,” Rufus said. “It wasn’t very hard at all.”
“Ah. I suspected you might try that. Though after your panicked flight this afternoon, I did not think you would be brave enough. But what I really want to know is how did you find the clearing the first time? These woods are enchanted to lead all trespassers back to the Caravan Road.”
“Well, we didn’t trespass. We arrived by sled,” Rufus said. “We raced down from the scargate hill to save time. It wasn’t our fault we ended up here.”
Teodor’s lids made thin slits now. “By sled. I did not see a sled when you arrived here earlier today. Where is it now, this sled of
yours?”
Rufus shrugged. “It’s gone. We thought the Winn . . . That is, we thought you took it.”
They all turned their attention to the parallel tracks that ended in the snowdrift by the well. They were barbed by sticks and twigs, but there were no footprints around it. “Maybe it was a gatherer,” Rufus offered. “A Beak that took the reins and flew away.”
Teodor made an annoyed clicking sound in his throat. “A Beak can’t carry anything that heavy. Well, I surmise that the Twistrose requires patching up again. You had better come inside.”
“I don’t like it,” Rufus hissed as they followed the old fox up on the porch.
“We don’t have much choice,” Lin whispered back, holding up her bleeding wrist. “That salve he used on my foot worked wonders.”
“Fine.” Rufus put on a fierce face. But when Teodor opened the door for them, Rufus forgot to be grim. “How is this possible,” he cried. “Where’s the miserable shed?”
The walls of the cottage were hung with bookcases and tapestries, and the ceiling painted with myriads of golden stars. A fire was lit in the black unicorn stove, filling the little house with sweet heat.
“If you know about the Brotherhood,” Teodor said, “it shouldn’t be too taxing for you to figure out.”
“Magic.” Rufus grinned. “The best kind!”
“A cloak rune.” In the rough wood of the floor, an elaborate three-tongue mark had been carved. A lilting humming drifted from it, full of words too subtle to hear. The music that filled these entire woods.
“Trespassers or no,” Teodor said. “Welcome to the Hearth of Flame.” The music stopped.
Lindelin Rosenquist.
Lin felt her name spoken behind her, the faintest whisper. She turned and found a curling twine of wood peeling from one of the timber logs of the doorway. An invisible chisel was carving her name into the beam. Rufocanus of Rosenquist sounded next, and Rufus’s name appeared below hers.
The entire doorway was riddled with names.
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