“You are. You climbed everywhere on my cardigan, remember?”
“But I fell.” Rufus screwed his face up. “My tail was numb and useless, just like . . . just like now.”
“You fell once, and only because you were getting old. But you were never happier than when you rode on my shoulder. You can do this, if you try to remember that feeling. And you can hold my hand so you don’t need your tail.”
She reached out for him. Rufus stared at her hand, and at her cardigan, and Lin almost thought he would refuse. Instead he began to take proper breaths in place of shallow gasps. Carefully, very carefully, and keeping his back to the rock, he stepped aside. “Hurry.”
Lin buried Frostfang in the middle of the slab, between two whorls in the pattern. “Open!”
In place of another thunderstorm of breaking ice, there came a hush and a crackle. Like the branches of the Palisade, the ice pulled away, creating a doorway. A blue shimmer came pouring out, along with a faint chorus of music.
Rufus took two trembling steps and darted through the gate. Lin heard him take a few relieved gulps of air, and then he fell still. “Lin,” he whispered. “You have to see this.” Lin left Frostfang in the ice and stepped inside, too.
The glacial cathedral.
The room was a great chamber, where the stars shone through the cut-glass facets of the roof. Scattered snowflakes danced and whirled under the ceiling, never settling on the ground. The walls were carved with the same white scrollwork that covered the gate and the handle of Frostfang. Now and then it gave way to three-dimensional mosaics of gems and blue glass sunk into the ice, showing Winterfyrsts with globes of giant pearls.
In a corner sat a shriveled, rime-covered snow troll. It had been preserved in the intense cold, but Lin guessed it had been dead for a long time. How had it found its way up here?
The snow troll was not alone in the chamber. On a bier in the middle of the floor lay Clariselyn Winterfyrst, clasping her snow globe with slender, white fingers.
She might be sleeping, but her chest didn’t rise and fall under her pearled dress, and her skin was waxy. “She looks just like Isvan,” Rufus said, and Lin knew he didn’t mean the raven hair.
“Her snow globe should give us the answer,” she replied, crossing the floor to examine the glass ball.
There was a small flaw in the glass, no longer than a spider’s leg, but it splintered the light. Lin could hear it, a sour note in the Winterfyrst music. But in the center a little speck glimmered bravely, silver milk and golden white.
“She’s alive! We have to find a way wake her.” Lin reached out to touch Clariselyn’s arm.
“Don’t!” Rufus cried. “You’ll freeze your fingers off.”
“I won’t,” Lin said. “Clariselyn has her Ice Mask. If she can live among the warm-blooded, she can’t be dangerous to come in contact with. Besides, I’m only going to touch her dress.” Here goes nothing, she thought, and shook the Winterfyrst’s sleeve.
Ice Mask or no, her fingers still smarted. Without thinking, Lin snatched her hand away, but she immediately realized her mistake. The ice pearls woven into the fabric of the dress stuck to Lin’s skin, hard enough that she pulled Clariselyn’s arm with her.
Clinking against the ice pearls, the snow globe slipped and began to roll off her bodice.
Lin had no choice but to catch it. In the split moment before she could push it safely back onto Clariselyn, a wave of nausea flowed through her body, and she could feel a rush of electricity pass through her fingertips. Even as a streak of blood dripped down her chin, she could breathe easier.
“That was the last of it,” she said. “The last Observatory gift.”
Rufus caught her raw hands between his. “What was it?”
“I think it was Hope.”
Fresh roses bloomed on Clariselyn’s cheeks, as if she had just returned from a brisk walk in the snow. She opened her eyes, and they glowed like sapphires. Confusion leaked into them when she saw who had woken her up—a redback vole and a human girl.
“Who are you?” Her voice was low and melodious.
“My name is Rufus of Rosenquist,” Rufus said, “And this is Lin Rosenquist, my human girl.”
“A Twistrose.” Clariselyn rose from her bier. “How long have I been lying here?”
“You have been missing for seven years,” Lin said. “It’s Wanderer’s Eve. The time is nearing midnight.”
“Midnight on Wanderer’s Eve. And you are a Twistrose, here to save us in a time of desperate need.” For a moment, Clariselyn’s face contorted. “You . . . You have come because you need me to create the Wandersnow.”
“And to free you,” Rufus added quickly. “Seven years is a long time to spend inside a glacier.” He widened his whiskers toward the shrunken remains of the snow troll. “Especially trapped in with a Nightmare.”
The Winterfyrst’s hands trembled as she regarded her snow globe. Whatever she was searching for in the light, she didn’t seem to find it. Her shoulders slumped. “I came here to carve the ice for my son’s Ice Mask. But a pack of snow trolls must have found the entrance to the ravine. They snuck up behind me and caught me by surprise. In the fray that followed, one of them pulled Frostfang out of the ice.”
“The gate closed!” Lin said. “And no one knew where to find you, because no one knew the location of the Well.”
“In my anger, I called the fury of winter down on the north. But my rage cost me dearly. It only served to conceal what tracks I had left behind.” Clariselyn stepped onto the cathedral floor in a rustle of silk. “Seven years lost because I was not clever enough to watch my back. I believed snow trolls did not climb, but these had learned to trust stairs. I will not underestimate them again.”
“I second that,” Rufus muttered, curling his tail gingerly. “There are other tribes than snow trolls on the moor. We met three of Lin’s old acquaintances from her home woods.”
“Wood troll kin? On the Cracklemoor? Then the Realms have truly changed while I sat here.” She lifted her snow globe to examine the crack. “My son was my only window to the world. His snow globe and mine are attuned to one another. I knew how to look into his, to see what he saw. For years I tried to reach him in his dreams to tell him where I was. But he heard nothing but the echoes of my voice.” Clariselyn shook her head. “Then one day I witnessed a terrible scene in his globe. That dreadful Observatory Feline . . .”
“Figenskar,” Lin said.
“Figenskar, yes. He ambushed my son in our home. Isvan barely escaped through the hidden stairwell, and he did not see the face of his attacker. I knew he and Teodor were estranged, and there was no one else who could keep him safe. So I lay down on the bier and spent all my remaining power, risking my snow globe to finally reach him, to show him the way here. Perhaps . . .” She searched their faces. “Perhaps he did not hear? Since you have come and he has not?”
Rufus scrutinized his toes, biting his fast tongue. Lin would have to try and find the right words, only she had no idea how.
But Clariselyn bent her head and whispered to her globe. “You do not need to answer, for I already know. Take me to him.”
• • •
At the gate, Clariselyn freed Frostfang from the ice, and it sprang eagerly into her hands, as if to greet an old friend. The glacier grew back, scrollwork and all. Then the Winterfyrst touched the ax to the stubs of the broken waterfall and said simply, “Stairs.”
Creaking and groaning, the waterfall grew back, icicle by icicle, except this time there was a winding staircase among the pillars.
“I don’t think Isvan knew about that particular feature,” Rufus muttered.
Clariselyn led the way down the transparent steps. Her bare feet made no sound against the ice. “Unlike the Sylver Valley, the Nightmare Mountains have true seasons. Sometimes thaw reigns in the Well, though never in the cathedral. A
nd when the waterfall is not frozen, Frostfang will conjure the steps for its bearer.”
“That must be how Isvan was trapped in the ice,” Lin said. “He fell backward into the waterfall, and it froze around him. And Frostfang couldn’t help him.”
“There were so many things I never had time to teach my son,” Clariselyn said sadly. “But it grieved me the most that he didn’t have his Ice Mask. He was always alone, even among the kind Sylverings.” She shook her head. “There were more of our people, once, more who could keep the treasure of knowing. But the power of glaciers is waning, in this world and the other.”
Ursa Minor was waiting for them when they reached the bottom. He held out Isvan’s limp body without a word. A broken sigh passed Clariselyn’s lips. Her hand hovered over Isvan’s brow for a moment. The pearls of her sleeve tinkled. She smoothed down his hair with light fingers. “Such a grown young man.”
The expression on her face made Lin’s belly turn. It reminded her of something she could not quite recall, some unnamed grief she had pushed away. Rufus shifted beside her. “We were going to take Isvan to Teodor,” he said. “We thought maybe he could do something.”
Clariselyn turned away, toward the tunnel out to the Cracklemoor. “Perhaps. In any case, we need to leave the Well. I will try to create an ice horse for Isvan, but the ravine would only spook it.”
• • •
“I wonder if he’s still out there,” Rufus whispered to Lin as they passed through the dark gulley. Already the weight of the Cracklemoor tugged at her, head and hand, and Rufus had to remind her. “Our mystery guide.”
They hadn’t seen any sign of him since they discovered the ravine, and they felt sure he hadn’t entered the Winterfyrst Well. As they emerged from behind the bilberry curtain and out on the Towerhorn slopes, they watched for his tracks. But there were no fresh puncture marks.
Clariselyn gazed into her snow globe. The crack had crept another inch along the surface. “I had hoped that when Isvan found me, he could use his snow globe to heal mine,” she said. “Now I do not even know if it is strong enough for the simplest of winter spells. But I will try.”
She lifted the globe toward the sky and sang. A cloud of ice leaped off the ground, shining and shimmering, growing slowly into the shape of a horse.
To Lin’s magic ears, the Winterfyrst spell resembled neither the whispered commands of carved runes nor the brutal whining of Technocraft. The music of the snow globes and of the gathering horse flowed gentle and mysterious, like light from a horned moon.
All through the evening, Rufus had never once failed to pay attention when magic took place. But now he stood with his back turned to the ice horse, staring out on the moor, chewing the tassels on his scarf. Lin stole over to him. She could see no movement on the windswept field, but she knew as well as Rufus that the trolls were out there. “What’s going on?”
“Hmmm? I just thought I smelled something. It was here a moment ago, but now . . .” He sniffed so hard his whiskers trembled. “It’s so faint. I can’t quite place it.”
“Smells like frozen heath to me.”
“No. It’s something else, something familiar. Something unpleasant . . .”
Lin turned to ask for Minor’s opinion, but the Wilder stood rocking Isvan in his arms, watching Clariselyn struggle. The horse would not fill in, it seemed. Already the crack had snaked another inch across the snow globe, and now the glow of silver milk and golden white dimmed, as if a shadow had fallen upon it.
Lin frowned. The dimness moved with the wind. She looked up, behind them.
A shadow had fallen on the snow globe, and it was the shadow of the creature that came swooping down the mountainside, faster than Lin could draw her breath. What was he doing here?
And before Lin could cry out, before Clariselyn could finish her magic, and before Rufus could remember where he had smelled that smell before, the creature reached its target.
It was a perfect attack.
He only had a fraction of a moment, but his sharp talons closed precisely around the snow globe and ripped it out of the Winterfyrst’s outstretched hands. With a triumphant caw he beat his wings and flew off, with Clariselyn’s soul and all of Sylver’s hope in his claws.
Clariselyn looked like she had been punched in the face. Her song ended in a croak, and she tottered two steps to the side. The ice horse dissolved into a wisp that blew away.
“Teriko!” Lin finally managed, but of course it was too late. Figenskar’s lieutenant was already nothing more than a scudding shadow that made the stars wink above the Cracklemoor. He aimed straight for the Whitepass.
“Well,” Rufus said darkly, “I recognized the smell at last. Parrot dung.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
All the pieces are falling into place. The foot lifts, ready to crush. The wings soar, ready to strike. Lin clutched the falcon message from the Queen of Soothsingers in her fist. Now the only missing bit was a ripped and rent heart, and her score sheet would be perfect.
Above the Cracklemoor, the Wanderer blazed strong. She had lost all sense of its position now that they could no longer use the Sylver Fang to measure it by, but she didn’t doubt that they were running out of time.
“Why did he take the snow globe?” Lin said. “Why didn’t he take me?”
Rufus spat in the snow. “I’m sure he would have if he could, but you’re too heavy for him. He wants us to follow.” He tugged at his scarf. “I’m guessing there won’t be any Wandersnow without your globe, Clariselyn?”
Clariselyn gazed down at the shards of Isvan’s snow globe, at the red fingerprints Lin had left there when she tried to piece them together. “No, I . . . No.”
“Then we have to try and catch him. Except I don’t see how.”
“I can carry you,” Minor said. “I can run really fast.”
“I know you can,” Lin said. “But with four passengers on your back and the Whitepass crawling with trolls? We don’t have any silvercone seeds left. This time we will be coming from the open. We won’t even have the element of surprise on our side.”
Minor didn’t answer. Instead there came a snapping of twigs and rustling of branches from the woods.
Lin’s pulse picked up. Just what they needed. More trolls.
“Get back into the ravine!” she hissed, filling her hand with acorns from her pocket.
“Wait!” Rufus took a step forward. “There! Between the junipers!”
A small, but bright light. The signaler!
“Hello?” Lin called. “Is someone there?”
“Please!” Rufus cried. “We want to thank you for saving us. Come out!”
And it did, crashing out through the bushes, picking its way over tufts and stones on long, black legs that punctured the ground with every step. For a sickening moment, Lin thought it was some sort of giant spider. But then she saw that its body was made of flat burnished wood and that the limbs were solid cast iron, except for the fourth leg, which ended in a stiffer bit of gray steel. Like a peg leg. Or a spare part!
“It’s our sled,” she murmured to Rufus. “Our hilltop sled!”
For the last few yards, as if to prove that Lin was right, the sled stretched out its legs and curled them up in elaborate spirals at the ends, until they became runners. It skidded to a stop right in front of Rufus. He stared at it, wide-eyed. “This is our mystery guide? A sled?”
The sled shook its small lantern, and the dim light flashed bright.
“Well, this explains how it vanished from the Winnower’s clearing, and why it doesn’t smell like a creature.” Rufus scratched his ear. “What does it want? No, I take that back. A better question is how can it want something? It’s a sled!”
“That isn’t just a sled, young Rufus.” Clariselyn spoke in a hushed tone, as if in the presence of a dangerous animal. “It’s a caravan sled. And it just might sav
e our hides. There is no faster creature on this side of the wall.”
“It travels with the caravans?” Rufus’s ears pricked up.
“It is the caravans. Without it and the others of its kind, there would be no trade across the Nightmare Mountains. They are just too dangerous. But a caravan sled can climb any mountain and race down any hill, and it can fight off Nightmares as well as any Frostrider. It is fiercely loyal and very picky about the company it keeps. I believe this one has set its heart on you two.”
“It has?”
“I would say so, or it would not have aided you. You must have done something to impress it somewhere along the way.”
“The spare part!” A delighted grin spread on Rufus’s face. “The sled was broken, but I thought it was so beautiful, so I had someone make a new runner tip and brought it up on the hill.”
Clariselyn nodded. “That would win its favor, and rightly so. But I will also say this: Caravan sleds have magical otopathy. They can tell when someone has the potential for powerful magic.” She clutched the shards of Isvan’s snow globe to her chest. “I do not know how this one came to be separated from its caravan, but we must be thankful for the hand of fortune. Ask it if it will help you catch the Beak.”
“Caravan sled,” Rufus said, “I know you’ve already helped us tonight. Without you we would never have found Teodor at the Hearth of Flame, and we would never have found the weak spot in the troll barricade or escaped those trolls in the Crackle Creek dell, and we would never have found the entrance to the Winterfyrst Well. But now we need to ask for your help once more. Will you take us back to Sylveros?”
The sled edged forward, and the reins fell from its back and landed at Rufus’s feet. They were a snarled, midnight blue mess. He lifted them up, picking at the knots with quick fingers. “How do I do this?”
“Ask it, Rufocanus,” Clariselyn said. “Caravan sleds can speak with their riders.”
Rufus climbed onto the seat. His eyes widened. “It does talk to me,” he said. “Not words exactly, just images and feelings, but . . .” He drew a startled breath. “It’s so old! And there are bergfolk children in there! A witch trapped them in the wood and cut down the tree, and oh, no! Its caravan was swarmed by trolls! It was the only one who escaped, but it was so tired it crashed into a mountain and broke . . .”
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