Even Orekel tried to cheer the shattered boy, offering the loan of his lucky cap.
"This little ves kept me alive more than once, son," the dwarf insisted with the shaggy fur hanging over his hands instead of his ears. "The ves—they're canny little beasts. Made me think I was somewhere I wasn't. Tried to lure me right into their den. Gnaw me down to the bone, they would've. But I got me this'un by the tail here. Squeezed it so hard it had to show me where I was. Then I ate it for my dinner and turned its skin into my lucky cap. But you're looking like you need more luck today than me, so's you wear it."
It was a sincere if inept attempt to get them moving again, and it raised the dwarf a notch in Ruari's opinion; but it did nothing for Zvain, who'd flattened his back against the cliff and refused to take another step.
"Just leave me here. I've gone as far as I can."
Ruari and Orekel tried all manner of encouragement and pleading, but it was Mahtra who found the magic words:
"If this is as far as he can go, why can't we do what he wants and leave him here? The sun's coming around. It's going to be as hot as the Sun's Fist against these rocks in a little while. Why should we all die because he doesn't want to move again?"
"She's right about the sun," Orekel said softly to Ruari, though Zvain was between them and could easily hear every word. "We got to get moving, son, or we'll fry."
They were already parched and achy from a lack of water, which Ruari could remedy with druidry. The mountains were livelier than the Sun's Fist. If they'd had a bucket, he could have filled it several times over. Without a bucket, he was hoping they'd last until he found a natural depression in the rocks. Here on the ledge, he had nothing but his cupped hands to hold the water he conjured out of the air.
"Come on, Zvain," Ruari pleaded.
Mahtra walked ahead. "I'm leaving. Finding Kakzim's more important."
Orekel shrugged. "The lady's right, son. We can't stay here." He followed Mahtra.
"Zvain—?"
The boy turned slowly away from Ruari and took a halting step in Orekel's direction.
Ruari found his hollow rock near the top of the gap. On his knees with his eyes closed and his arms outstretched, he recited the druid mnemonics for the creation of water in the presence of air and stone. The guardian aspect of this place was sharp-edged like the cliffs, and heavy like the mountains themselves. Ruari couldn't hold it the first time, and his spell did not quicken. The recitation ended with the hollow as dry and empty as it had begun. Grimly, the half-elf withdrew Pavek's knife from its sheath and made a shallow gash along his forearm. With his blood as a spark, the spell quickened and water began to collect in the hollow.
When the water was flowing steadily, Ruari sat back on his heels, letting the others drink while he recovered from the strain of druidry in an unfamiliar place.
"Magician, eh?" Orekel asked.
"Druid." Ruari offered the correct name for his sort of spellcraft.
"Don't kill no plants, do you?"
"Wind and fire, no—I'm not a defiler, nor a preserver. I'm not a wizard at all. My power comes from the land itself, all the aspects of it."
"So long as you don't suck things down to ash. Can't go taking nobody into the forest who'd turn 'em into ash."
"Don't worry."
Zvain had finished drinking. Orekel drank next, with Ruari's permission, then Ruari himself drank his fill. When he'd finished, water was still bubbling in the hollow, faster than they could drink it down. It spilled over the top and seeped across the soles of his sandals while Mahtra stood and stared.
"You better drink," Ruari advised. "I can't do that again until sundown, and we don't have anything to carry water in."
The boy and the dwarf didn't need a second invitation, but Ruari stayed on the opposite side of the hollow, his fists propped against his hips.
"After all this time, Mahtra—after all we've been through —do you truly think we're going to laugh or run away screaming?"
"You might," she replied with that smooth honesty that left more questions than answers in Ruari's mind.
The half-elf shook his head and lowered his arms. "Have it your way, then," he said and started walking. He'd gone several paces when she called out:
"Wait!"
Ruari turned around as she lowered her hands from the back of her head, bringing the mask with them. The mask was a good idea, he decided immediately. Her face was so unusual, he couldn't keep from staring. Mahtra had no nose to speak of, just two dark curves matched against each other. She didn't have much of a chin, either, or lips. Her mouth was tiny—about the right size for those red beads she liked so much—and lined with teeth he could see from where he stood. Yet for all its strangeness, Mahtra's face wasn't deformed. With her eyes and skin, an ordinary human face would have been deformed. Mahtra's face was her own.
"Different," Ruari acknowledged aloud. "Maybe different enough to warrant a mask—but it's your face—the face that belongs to the rest of you."
"Ugly," she retorted, and he saw that her mouth did not shape her voice and words.
"No—Pavek's..." He sighed and began again. "Pavek was ugly."
"Akashia said no. She said he wasn't an ugly man."
Another sigh. "Kashi said that, did she?" It was too late to consider what Kashi might have meant. "What did she say about me?"
"Nothing. Nothing at all—but we weren't talking about you."
"Take your time," he said to Mantra, rubbing his forearm, though that wasn't the part of him that hurt. "I'll wait just up here. We can let the other two get a bit ahead."
Ruari found himself a rock that gave Mahtra her privacy and him a good view of Zvain and Orekel as they continued up the gap. He took out Pavek's knife, and wondered whose black hair had been braided around the hilt. Not Kashi's. Not anyone Ruari had ever heard Pavek mention. Maybe they would have gotten their affections straightened out if they'd had the time; maybe not. One thing for certain: he'd made a fool of himself trying to capture Kashi's attention and affection when Pavek had already secured it.
Mahtra reappeared with her mask in place, and together they continued up the gap, easily catching up with Zvain and Orekel. The sun came around in the middle of the afternoon, baking their bodies into numb silence. The three lowlanders—who'd never seen a mountain up close, much less climbed one—thought the gap would never end, but it did as the sun was setting. As green faded to black, they got their first look at a verdant forest that stretched ahead of them as far as they could see.
For Ruari, the sight was a waking dream. Telhami's grove in Quraite remembered forests and offered the hope that a forest might return. This—this vastness that was everything the barren Tablelands had ceased to be, was Telhami's hopes fulfilled, Quraite's promise kept. He would have sat there staring at it all night, except the mountain cooled faster than the barrens did, and he was shivering before he knew it.
It wasn't long until they were huddled together against the rocks, trying to keep warm and not succeeding. Orekel said it was too dangerous to descend the mountain without sunlight to show them the way. There was nothing with which to build a fire and though Ruari's druidry could wring water and a bland but nutritious paste out of the cooling air, he knew no spell that would provide them with warmth.
Pavek might have known such a spell. Pavek claimed to have memorized as many of the spellcraft scrolls as he'd been able to read in the Urik city archives. But it seemed more likely that no one in the long history of the parchec tablelands had bothered to formulate a spell for heat, so they took turns in the middle of their huddle. When dawn reached over the mountain crest, it found them stiff, sore, and still weary.