Strong hands pulled her away. As she toppled, snarls erupted into growls and the snap of jaws. Hunger rushed back, and all she could think of was her lost thôrhk. Anger grew from that unknown sorrow, and it fed the hunger rising to burn in her throat.
Magiere thrashed to get free, and then the trunk’s lid slammed shut.
Chap stood upon the chest with his jowls pulled back and his ears flattened as he growled at her.
Magiere froze, feeling Leesil’s arms tighten around her from behind. Someone began pounding on the door.
“What’s going on in there?” a voice called from the outer passage.
“Nothing,” Leesil answered in broken Numanese. “Trip ... when get up ... to go ... Sorry.”
Footsteps faded down the outer passage amid unintelligible grumbling, but Magiere hadn’t taken her eyes off Chap.
Jowls quivering over exposed teeth, he glared at her in open anger, and her hunger withered. She finally stopped resisting and became still.
“Leesil?” she asked in confusion, for it had to be him behind her.
Chap fell quiet but remained fixed upon her, and Magiere shriveled inside at the thought of what she’d almost done. Leesil released her, hurried to the door, and looked outside. He closed it quietly and then picked up the lantern to flick its shutter open as he returned.
Chap’s crystal-blue eyes appeared to grow brighter the closer Leesil brought the lantern.
Magiere remembered the night in the deep cavern below the six-towered castle, when she’d unintentionally opened the orb fully. The cavern walls, wet with moisture from the frozen land above and the deep fiery depths below, had begun to bleed water. Globules had rained inward all around the cavern and hit anything in their paths as they were sucked into and eaten by the orb’s full light.
This memory wasn’t one she called up herself.
Magiere cringed under Chap’s admonishment, called up from her own memories.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Leesil whispered. “And why are you crying?”
At the second question, Magiere quickly put a hand to her face. It was so damp from the mist that had formed around the orb that she wasn’t certain why Leesil had asked that. She looked to the chest beneath Chap’s paws. Horror replaced the unexplained sorrow and the fury that had come when she’d lost sight of the orb.
“I don’t know,” she whispered.
In the little room in the port of Berhtburh, Magiere shoved away the memory of that first terrible moment—the first of many that had followed. When Leesil murmured next to her and rolled onto his side, she froze, not wanting him to wake, not yet. Now that she’d let herself remember, let herself see the past for what it was, she didn’t want to stop. Rising quietly from the bed, she grabbed her shirt and pulled it on as she went to the window.
The faint rush of waves and the glimmer of moonlight on the ocean beyond the port pulled her back to ...
After saying farewell to Hammer-Stag and his comrades, Carrow and Tale-Pole, Magiere left Shentángize with Chap and Leesil. They followed the dwarf’s instructions and two days later found the road to the coast. Five days more and they reached a town where they were lucky enough to catch a Numan trading ship heading north up the coast.
To Magiere’s relief, Leesil had apparently decided that the event in the back room at the village had been an accident of curiosity. He didn’t mention it again, though soon enough he was seasick and wasn’t mentioning much of anything.
Chap was not so forgetful ... or forgiving.
Several times in their small cabin on the vessel, she’d reached for the orb’s chest to make certain it was still there. When she had settled back, she always found him watching her ... until she pulled her hand away and curled up, ignoring him. Worse were the times during that voyage north when she’d found herself alone with him.
Unbidden memories rose in her head about that night beneath the six-towered castle. She had opened the orb fully then, and remembering it brought her no sense of satisfaction.
Chap was not going to let her forget.
Amid the chaos of water bleeding from the cavern walls and raining inward to be swallowed in the orb’s light, each of them had experienced something different. When they later shared this, none of it matched.
Chap related through Wynn that he’d sensed the presence of a Fay. He could not determine how or why one of his kin, whom he’d disowned, had manifested at the orb’s opening.
Leesil said he’d seen the head of a huge scaled serpent or reptile, opening its jaws and bearing down above Magiere to swallow her whole. From what he’d described of that form composed of black shadow, Wynn had given it a name: a wêurm, or some immense form of dragon out of her people’s folklore.
And Magiere ... she had sensed the clear, almost overwhelming presence of an undead.
What did it mean—Fay, dragon, and undead? She didn’t want to think about it and soon avoided being alone with Chap.
Their small trading ship sailed north for more than a moon, and as it cut through the frigid water under cold winds, Magiere watched the landscape slowly change. Fewer and fewer trees dotted the shoreline, making way for barren rocky land. Snow soon crusted the squat bluffs, though it was only late summer. Days grew longer, and the nights shortened too much.
Before long all the land in sight appeared frozen.
On a bright afternoon so chill that it stung, Magiere stood alone on the deck at the prow when she saw what had to be a coastal settlement along the frosted shore.
“Last landfall before we turn south again.”
She glanced back to find the captain looking out beyond her. He was a big man, and though Numan, he wore a bearskin coat, open and flapping in the wind as if he didn’t feel the cold.
“We won’t go farther north than this,” he added.
“No farther?” she echoed, for she’d hoped to put off trekking overland a bit longer. “Why?”
“The season will soon change. The water here can freeze solid for leagues out from shore. Only Northlander longboats travel where the ice shifts and flows like water ... and can crush a larger vessel’s hull. Even some of their vessels get stuck. No farther for us—we head back after trading in White Hut.”
He pointed ahead.
Though disappointed, Magiere understood and watched the rapidly approaching settlement. It appeared small and primitive. She’d asked the captain to take them as far as possible, so he knew their journey was not over.
“It’s only a trading station,” he went on. “But you might find a guide with a sled and dog team for hire. Check with the local Northlanders, most of whom speak passable Numanese. They know the ways of working with the Wastelanders.”
“Wastelanders?”
“The Ongläk’kúlk, the natives who live out on the fringe of the white wastes.”
Magiere blinked, taking in his words. The course of the day was shifting rapidly.
She hurried below to get Leesil and Chap, and by the time they were packed and up on deck, several longboats approached from the shore. As the crew prepared to offload cargo, the captain put Magiere, Leesil, and Chap on the first boat heading back.
It might not have been a ship, but calling it a boat didn’t measure up. With two square sails furled to single cross poles on stout masts, it was narrow compared to a Numan ship but easily more than half the length of the vessel they had left.
When the longboat beached, and they climbed out around its tall and curling bowsprit, Leesil heaved an overly dramatic sigh of relief. Magiere took their packs, handed off by large Northlander rowers. Leesil finally paid attention and helped unload the chest. Magiere was at a loss when they plopped the chest at her feet and the Northlanders busily unloaded supplies acquired from the ship.