Long days and short nights blurred from one into the next.
Magiere found it easier than expected to keep up with the dog team, for they traveled mostly on frozen ground, which slowed down the sled. She’d expected to hit snow and ice sooner, and when she asked about it, Ti’kwäg scoffed. They would soon see all the snow and ice they could ever want, but he didn’t appear bothered by this.
She assumed he’d spent most of his life beyond the hardened earth, with only snow and ice under his feet and the rails of his sled. Occasionally she wondered about his past but never asked. He knew what he was doing, and that was all that mattered.
Leesil, as usual, recovered quickly from seasickness. He, too, had no trouble keeping up with the sled. Once in a while one of them rested by riding on the sled’s base. Much of the time Ti’kwäg ran beside his dogs to help tug the sled over patches of rougher ground and shout at his team in some strange guttural tongue. The dogs appeared to know exactly what he wanted from them.
Slowly the nights began growing a bit longer. Even so, they often stopped while it was still daylight, though the temperature dropped faster than the sun. Ti’kwäg had brought a thick tent made from some kind of treated animal hide. He’d packed plenty of oil that stank when burned, but the tiny flame out of a whalebone lamp kept the temperature inside the tent above freezing ... barely.
They lived on water from melted snow, smoked fish, biscuits, and a paltry amount of dried fruit that had cost more than anything else. Ti’kwäg’s only vice was his pipe.
He asked no questions about their destination and seemed content with his duties and what he’d been paid so far. All in all the arrangement worked out better than Magiere had imagined when she’d envisioned herself, Chap, and Leesil traveling over this barren land.
Only two things bothered her.
First, she felt more and more smothered by Chap’s relentless watchfulness. He never stopped eyeing her every move. And second, her longing to touch the thôrhk to the orb again kept nagging her.
Magiere couldn’t stop thinking of how it had felt to pull the spike just a little, how all of her hunger had vanished as if it had never been. She wanted to know from where that strange pull to go north she’d felt and still felt had come. It was so unlike the oppressive presence that had entered her dreams—her nightmares—to lead her to the Pock Peaks and the orb’s long-lost resting place.
The one thing that Magiere didn’t want to feel again was the sorrow.
It had been so heavy inside her when she had opened the orb the last time. That feeling hadn’t struck her when she’d opened it fully in the cavern beneath the six-towered castle. And so she didn’t speak to either Leesil or Chap of this new awareness.
She understood it less than she did anything else. It would be another reason for Chap to get in her way.
One night, after an especially long day, Chap finished his supper of dried fish first. The cold was getting to him more than it did the rest of them, for he wasn’t conditioned to it like Ti’kwäg’s dogs were. He curled up on top of a fur near the tent’s flap and closed his eyes, and soon his breathing deepened. When Leesil dragged the fur away from the tent flap, which was Chap’s preferred sentry post, the dog barely stirred. Not long after, both Leesil and Ti’kwäg bedded down, and Magiere stretched out beside Leesil.
She didn’t sleep and watched Chap. He was dead tired and fully out for once, but she waited longer until Leesil and Ti’kwäg both breathed just as deeply. Then she slipped from under the blanket, crawled off the fur she shared with Leesil, and headed silently for the tent flap.
Though the shelter’s hide was thick, it provided barely enough space for all four of them to stretch out prone. They’d always left the chest on the sled at night. Ti’kwäg had assured her that the dogs would raise an alarm should anything come near.
She hadn’t cared for this at first, but now it served her needs. A few days after leaving White Hut, she had again taken to wearing her thôrhk around her neck over the collar of her wool pullover and beneath her armor and heavy coat. As she emerged from the tent, the sun was barely below the horizon. In the dying dusk, several dogs raised their heads, but none made a sound. They knew her by now, and the sight of her going to the sled was commonplace ... though not at night.
Magiere tugged the thôrhk out from beneath her coat and hauberk. It took longer to loosen enough of the lashings to open the chest’s lid. She pulled aside the cloth’s top fold, stiff from the cold, and she exhaled vapor into the air.
Seeing the orb and just being this close to it brought her a strange contentment. This time she set the thôrhk’s knobs fully into the spike’s grooves and waited. Without even pulling on the spike, almost instantly, she felt ... something.
It was more pronounced this time.
Beneath a tinge of that strange sorrow, she felt the pull—north and to the east.
Amid those disturbing dreams that had driven her onward to initially find the orb, she’d been terrified as much as obsessed. This was different—there was no desperation or fear. Only the clear but gentle pull and ...
And the sorrow.
Slowly she pulled on the spike, but less than she had that night in the back of the common house, only enough until ...
The air began to hum. Tiny flakes of ice and snow on her glove began to grow as the wind blew wetly in her face. Sorrow welled inside her, and a growl from behind her broke through the hum.
She ignored both. It didn’t matter as for once she felt nothing of the monster inside her, as if it had died.
“Magiere!”
She barely turned her head to see Chap charging her and Leesil coming right behind.
Magiere released her tension on the thôrhk, and the orb’s hum instantly silenced. She’d barely removed the thôrhk’s knobs from the spike’s grooves when Leesil grabbed her, pinning her arms and dropping his weight into the snow. She fell, held tightly in his lap.
“What are you doing?” he shouted.
He was angry, but she didn’t answer. Chap arced in between her and the chest on the sled and actually snapped before her face.
Magiere didn’t even flinch.
Her mind was racing. This new pull was nothing like what had led her to the Pock Peaks. It was not a demand, not constant prodding, but more like ... a plea from something lost, trapped, and begging to be found. And then she remembered Leesil’s strained expression in the Pock Peaks every time she’d known to change directions slightly, to lead them right to the castle ... and the orb. He’d hated that she’d become some unwilling, driven hound sniffing out a trail even she couldn’t see or understand.
But he’d followed her. He always followed her.
“Let go of me,” she said quietly.
It took a moment before he did, though Chap didn’t back off. She stood up, looking at the still-open chest, though she couldn’t see the orb without having to get around Chap. And in the moment it wasn’t worth fighting him for that.
When she turned slowly to face Leesil, Ti’kwäg was standing outside the mouth of the tent, watching all of this with suspicion. Magiere turned her eyes on Leesil.
“We have to go northeast this time,” she whispered. “We need to head further east.”
It was fully dark, but Magiere was certain Leesil turned pale.
Magiere turned from the window of the small inn in Berhtburh when Leesil murmured in his sleep. She suddenly wanted to push down all of those memories, at least for a little while longer.