Minor landed on the other side of the stone formation with a great thud, and they shot out between the shoulders of the Whitepass, turning northeast over the open heath.
The hisses and screams from the trolls haunted them through the night, but they were not pursued.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
On the Cracklemoor, every blade of grass wore a cover of thick rime. But it was not the crisp and sheltered cold of the Sylver Valley. A sour wind came howling over the bleak land, gnawing at their fingers.
Huddled down against Minor’s back, Lin tried to hide inside the chaperon hood, regretting that she had turned down the offer of a parka. The unbroken row of glowing troll eyes came unbidden every time she closed her lids, as did the horror of the bane’s work. She had never pictured it quite so loud.
In her right pocket, her bane pocket, her hand curled around Teodor’s lozenge box. Nearly empty.
She had let all the seeds go in those frantic moments by the rocks, and Rufus had lost all his when the troll caught him. Lin pressed her lips together. She should have been more careful when she divvied up the seeds, kept more for later, for the way back. Now their only chance was to avoid any more skirmishes.
The moor looked empty as far as she could see, but Lin knew better now than to trust her eyes. Any moment a Nightmare could come looming out of the dark. She wanted to ask Minor if he thought the Crackle Creek dell was far, but even with the moaning wind, she didn’t want to raise her voice. Minor seemed to know this, for he loped smoothly over tufts and tussocks, and his footfalls blended with the moor’s own creaks.
The bear was so agile here in the wild, when he had ice and snow under his paws and not a scrubbed floor. Teodor had seen it, too, on their way up to the Whitepass. “Petlings may be better at town life and finicky finger work,” he had said, “but we Wilders have feral hearts and true instincts, and the more we use them, the stronger they grow.” Arching his brows at Lin and Rufus, he had added quietly, “Not for nothing are most Frostriders of our kind.”
Minor changed his rhythm, slowing down enough to slide into a deep dell with a black, frozen stream at the bottom. The Crackle Creek, at last, and at last some good cover. Thickets of junipers and dwarf birches lined the banks, and there were even some white trees, which formed sheltering pavilions with their wintertrue leaves that sounded like bat wings when they flapped in the wind. “Cold oaks! They grow in the Winterwoods, too,” Minor said. “Their bark is great for scratching.”
Those were the first words anyone had spoken since the pass. Lin and Rufus couldn’t help but laugh. The shifty nightmare feeling of the moor seemed less oppressive here, less menacing.
“You weren’t kidding about the troll’s bane,” Rufus said. “That stuff works!”
“Are you hurt?” Lin asked. “That troll had you by the tail. . . .”
“It’s nothing.” Rufus lifted his tail forward so Lin could see, but it was not his usual dashing arc. Near the tip there were two deep scissor slices.
“Doesn’t look like nothing to me,” Lin said. “Maybe I should drag you off to see the doctor.”
“You can drag me off to see whomever you like, as long as you keep saving my fur like that.” Rufus’s voice was light, but he hugged her fiercely.
They pressed on along the icy creek until the dell broadened into a stretch of shallows with banks and beaches of white pebbles. There, Ursa Minor stopped under a tree, bending his big head this way and that, snorting deeply. “I don’t like to scare you, small ones. But there’s death on the wind.”
He turned his snout toward the western bank. “There.”
Under the thick frost they had not seen it. But on the beach lay a lifeless shape under a white cloak. Whistling through his teeth, Rufus slid down from Minor’s back and approached the shape on nimble feet. He pushed at the cloak. It creaked as it shifted. “Oh, no.”
Lin feared the worst. “Is it Isvan?”
“No. It’s a falcon messenger.”
The cloak was not a cloak after all, but a frozen wing. The falcon lay pinned to the ground with a black thorn the size of a saber through his heart. He had suffered the death of a sparrow.
“This thorn is from the Palisade,” Rufus said. “Nightmares don’t touch the Palisade.”
They both knew what that meant. This was done by a Sylvering, or at the very least, the weapon had been provided by one. Lin climbed down from Minor’s back, too, to examine the bandolier strapped across the falcon’s chest. The loops were empty, but Lin recognized the falcon mark burned into the leather. It matched the one on the cylinder she had found in Figenskar’s office.
“Lin.” Rufus had lifted the messenger’s other wing and uncovered a set of footprints that seemed to appear out of nowhere: deep ones, with sharp heels. Boot prints.
“Then he has taken the life of another,” Rufus said softly. “He has broken the pact. To speak ill of the rules is one thing, but to kill . . .”
But Lin had heard the nervous strain on Figenskar’s voice when he spoke of his “master.” “I think the Margrave has a stronger sway over Figenskar than the Sylver Pact.”
“But if he’s scared of him, why help him?”
“It does seem strange,” Lin said. “The Margrave must have offered him something big in return. Something Figenskar couldn’t resist.”
“Here’s a pretty thing!” Minor said, sniffing at the falcon’s feet. He stuck his muzzle into the frozen gravel and pulled something out of the ground. It was another letter cylinder. Before he was murdered, the falcon must have managed to trample it into the ground with his talons. Lin unstoppered the tube and read aloud.
Twistrose,
All the pieces are falling into place. The foot lifts, ready to crush. The wings soar, ready to strike. The heart beats, ready to rip and rend should you fail.
Do not fail.
Trust the Lights and the Gifts you have gathered. The Blood Lord is waking.
Raymonda, Queen of Soothsingers
Rufus made a harsh sound in his throat. “Trust the Lights and the Gifts you have gathered? What is that supposed to mean? How could she know that you would be here?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know what any of this means.” Lin bent down to stroke the falcon’s neck feathers. “Poor falcon messenger!”
On the eastern moor sounded the sad bellow of a rimedeer in the distance. Lin rose quickly, frowning at the shallows and the tangled birches. The nightmare terror hooked its claws into her again, because she had seen something. Along the frozen stream where they had just passed: two flashes.
Their mystery signaler was back.
“We have to hide,” she breathed. “Now!”
“Up the tree,” Rufus said. Of course. Trolls were sure of foot on boulders and mountainsides, but they preferred to keep their soles on the ground for fear the wood wouldn’t bear their weight.
They skimmed up the cracked-leather trunk, high enough to conceal themselves among the white, rustling leaves.
Rufus wrapped his arms and legs hard around a sturdy limb of the tree, spreading his whiskers askance at her. Lin hoped she had done the right thing by trusting the warning. Her hand shook slightly as she opened Teodor’s lozenge box. Only six grains left.
That very moment, there came a stomping along the creek. Snow trolls, creeping toward the shallows. Lin put a finger over her mouth, and even Minor understood that particular sign. None of them dared move.
Fabian had said snow trolls didn’t have much of an olfactory sense, yet Lin could have sworn there were shivering sniffs whenever the footsteps halted. Pale lights appeared below the tree, green and jellied. Three pairs for three trolls.
In the grunts and rumbles, there were words.
“Called we are,” said one of the trolls.
“Called to the stabbing hedge,” said another.
“Called by th
e master,” the third agreed. “But this one calls us more.”
Master? This one? What did that mean? And weren’t snow trolls supposed to be dumb?
Lin scooped the remaining silverseeds out of the box. They should be enough, if she aimed well. She waited until the trolls were gathered close around the great trunk, took her time aiming, and let the seeds go, all but one. They fell toward their targets, straight and true. Lin waited for the howls.
None came.
Could she have missed so fatally? Their only hope now was that killing one would scare the others off. Her heart pounded as she leaned far out and dropped the final seed. This time she saw it land on the back of one of the trolls, but it just bounced off the white ferns it had plastered to its back. Lin blinked. This should not be possible. A direct hit should mean death for any troll. Unless . . .
Tonight, young Rosenquist, you will find that some games are real.
“Smell her,” the first troll hissed, curling its long tongue around the words.
“Smell the girl enemy,” the second said.
In the branches above, the girl enemy sat and held her breath. These were not snow trolls. They were Summerhill trolls. And the monsters she and Niklas had invented were not dimwitted brutes at all.
“Smell her in the tree,” said the third troll, and lifted the huge weapon it carried. An ax.
The first blow fell, making the leaves flap, and there was no longer any need to whisper. Rufus squeezed Lin’s arm. “Are those . . .”
“Yes!”
Rufus nodded toward the rim of the dell as the second blow shook the tree. “We could make a run for it!”
But Summerhill trolls were fast. They could catch and they could hunt. Lin had made sure of that with her stupid game. She shook her head. No running. They wouldn’t even make it out of the dell.
“Then, troll hunter . . .” Rufus paused for the third blow. “I hope you have a better idea.”
Lin put her hand in the right pocket of her cardigan. No bane. Why hadn’t she brought some from her troll-hunting casket? Or taken some from that tin in the Hearth of Flame? Think, she told herself. Bring your brain to the party!
Cold oak. Minor had called these trees cold oak!
She looked up. Above the next branch there was a squirrel hole. She leaped to her feet and stuck her hand in the hole. Her fingers twinged with some sort of electricity. They came out again clutching a fistful of white-capped nuts.
Not caring if she hurt herself, she dropped hard along the trunk, and when no more branches blocked her way, she threw the acorns down on the trolls. The jellied eyes grew red and winked out, and the dell filled with sizzles and wet gurgles as the troll’s bane did its damage.
When the cries had died out, Rufus climbed carefully down to the branch next to her. “Not bad, troll hunter! How did you know they were coming?”
Lin squinted back toward the river bend, where she had seen the flashes. Who had sent them? A Frostrider that Teodor didn’t know about? But if so, why didn’t he reveal himself? She pressed her lips tight. If not for the signal, they would never have had time to climb the tree.
“Because I did what the Soothsinger told me. I trusted the lights.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
They continued north, meandering across the moor, with their pockets loaded with cold oak acorns. But they neither saw nor heard more trolls. With every bend of the river, the Towerhorns grew taller and the dell grew shallower, until the banks barely reached above their necks. And at last the Crackle Creek went where they could not follow: underground.
“Where to now?” Rufus asked.
“I don’t know. This must be the Crackle Creek spring, where Lass found Frostfang. It’s as far as our plan goes.”
“Well, then we had better find . . .” Rufus fell silent. Out on the slopes there had been another flash, at the edge of the sparse forest that grew along the skirts of the mountains. “Minor,” he whispered. “Our mystery guide is over there by the trees. Can you pick up his scent?”
Minor sniffed. “The wind is right, but no. All I smell is wood. Maybe some kind of metal. But no beast or creature.”
Lin gave Rufus the triple pinch. They would be exposed out there in the open, but they had no better idea. Ducking low, they crept from shrub to shrub until they reached the thicket. Among the roots, there were patches of snow that the wind hadn’t swept away, and by a big juniper bush, Rufus found a set of very odd tracks. Deep puncture wounds in the ground.
“If it’s a troll, then it’s on stilts,” Rufus said, scratching his ear. “I can’t picture a troll on stilts. Can you?”
Lin could not. But Teodor had said the Nightmare Mountains were home to the secret fears of children. Who knew what creatures lived out here, and what legs they had?
The puncture marks wandered up the mountainside for a brief stretch, always in the cover of bushes or crags, until they ended at a steep ridge overgrown with bilberry bushes. Lin thought their guide must be an excellent mountaineer to avoid being seen on the bare slopes. But where had he gone from here?
“I can feel a draft,” Ursa Minor grumbled. He pawed at the bilberry bushes, and to everyone’s astonishment, they could be pulled aside like a curtain. Behind it was the mouth of a ravine that cut into the mountain like an ax blow, barely wide enough for them to squeeze into. A perfect hiding place, and, if you hid in the brambles along the edge, a perfect spot for an ambush.
“Shhh.” Rufus bent his head. “I’ll try to hear his breathing.”
They waited for a long while in the brown scent of slumbering roots in winter. Even Ursa Minor tried to keep his big, hot snorts quiet. It was the first real silence for some time, and perhaps that was all Lin needed. Just as Rufus lifted his head in defeat, Lin heard something. But it wasn’t breathing. It was music.
Or rather, music was too tame a description of the curious sound that hooted in her ears, a haunting, wild voice that Lin could not properly name.
“I don’t hear anything, little girl,” Minor said.
“Me neither,” said Rufus. “You’re sure?”
Lin nodded. “It’s coming from the ravine. I think I’m hearing it with my magic ears.”
“All right,” Rufus said brightly, though his back was straight and tight. “As Teodor put it: Then that’s where we must go.”
Under the trailing roots, they saw no more tracks or flashes. The walls leaned closer and closer until they touched overhead, and the ravine became a tunnel. Silvery veins wove through the rock, surrounding them in an exhausted light as they moved deeper into the mountain.
“This place is funny,” Minor muttered. “A cave like this should smell like dung and old bones, but the air gets fresher the deeper we go.”
“No wonder,” Rufus said, spreading his whiskers. “There’s an opening up ahead.”
They all felt it now, a cold, sweet breeze that blew in to greet them. And as they reached the end of the tunnel, all three stopped to watch in wonder.
They were standing on the bottom of a deep, sheltered valley, enclosed by mountains curled up like a fist. A hundred feet up the mountainside, the lip of a glacier jutted out, green and opaque. Below it hung a majestic frozen waterfall that caught the light from the Wanderer, filling the tiny valley with blue, wavering light.
More than anything, the valley resembled a well.
“This must be it!” Rufus said. “The Winterfyrst Well! And in here, the Nightmares don’t rule at all!”
It was true. Within the Well, Lin could shake off the sluggish heaviness of the moor. No troll could climb down those mountainsides, she knew, and all around, the music swirled and whistled, lulling her calm.
“Look!”
Rufus had found a lonely set of footprints that crossed the snowy valley floor, headed for the waterfall. They weren’t punctures or boot tracks, but the smooth, five-pebbl
ed marks of bare feet that appeared human, except no human could walk barefoot through a frozen wilderness.
“You go on, small ones,” Ursa Minor said, frowning up at the masses of ice. “I will guard the tunnel opening so no dream beast can follow.”
They entered the Well, Rufus with his tail held high, troll wound forgotten for now. Far above, the wind gnawed at the rim of the valley, blowing a veil of snow crystals over the edge. The stars winked, momentarily erased by wisps of clouds, and the Wanderer could not be seen.
When Rufus whooped with joy, it felt like he was shouting in a place of worship. He sat beside a shining cairn at the foot of the waterfall. A snow light, with silver milk and golden white beaming out through the holes. Inside they glimpsed not a candle, but a glowing ball of glass, with a tiny shadow fluttering at its heart. It could only be Isvan’s snow globe.
Lin fell down on her knees to pick it up, but instead she cried out in pain. The cold that radiated from the globe was so severe, her fingers instantly turned blue.
Rufus pulled her back a step. “Isvan didn’t have his Ice Mask, remember,” he said in a great cloud of breath.
Lin nodded slowly. Her lips had stiffened. “I’m not sure it’s right to touch someone’s soul anyway. We should leave it here until we find him.”
The wind stirred her hair, and she heard a whisper behind her.
Find him.
She turned around, expecting to see someone standing among the ice pillars of the waterfall, but there was no one, not on the valley floor, and not on the mountain walls. “Did you hear that?”
“Hear what?” Rufus said. “More music?”
“No. Voices.”
The icicles of the waterfall twisted and wound around each other, sometimes thick as pillars, sometimes gossamer frail. Near the ground, two pillars joined in a tall archway. Lin took a step toward it.
The Twistrose Key Page 17