Soon Leesil forgot what it had felt like to sleep without his coat in that warm little dome of ice. He remembered only being cold and chewing dried fish that had frozen to other pieces inside its bag. Ti’kwäg often broke their supper apart with a heavy hunting knife and seared it over the whalebone lamp’s small flame. He began rationing their oil even more.
One night, as Ti’kwäg and Magiere began binding and bending the wooden rods to support the hide shelter, Leesil noticed Chap, exhausted and shaking visibly, standing near the sled. The sight made him angry. He longed to do something to help his oldest friend, but, aside from the tiny amount of heating oil Ti’kwäg allowed them to burn, they had nothing else to fuel a true fire.
Leesil dropped to his knees in the snow. In frustration he began rummaging through his pack. There had to be something to burn, anything to put a little extra heat into the shelter. He found a few pieces of spare clothing, a thin rope, a grappling hook ... and then his hand closed over something slender and solid at the pack’s bottom.
Pulling it out, Leesil studied the strange object in his hand. He’d almost forgotten it was there among his meager belongings.
The narrow wooden tube, barely wider than his thumb, had no seams at all, as if it had been fashioned from a single piece of wood. It was rounded at its bottom end, and its open top was sealed with an unadorned pewter cap. The whole of it was barely as long as his forearm, and what it held inside ...
Back in the Elven Territories of the an’Cróan, Magiere had been placed on trial before the council of the clan elders. Most Aged Father had denounced her as an undead. To speak on her behalf, Leesil had to prove he was an an’Cróan and accepted by their ancestors regardless of his mixed blood. He’d allowed Sgäile to lead him to their ancestral burial grounds for his name-taking, a custom observed by all an’Cróan in their early years before adulthood. From whatever the young elves experienced in that place, they took a new name, though they never shared the true experience with anyone. Well, most didn’t. Amid the burial ground’s clearing stood a tree like no other Leesil had ever heard of, let alone seen.
Roise Chârmune, as they called it, was barkless though alive. It glowed tawny all over, shimmering in the dark. The ancestors not only accepted Leesil, they had given him a name ... put it on him ... before he even understood what it meant. He’d tried never to think of it since he’d left that land.
Leshiârelaohk—Sorrow-Tear’s Champion.
Among the ghosts—the an’Cróan’s first ancestors—in that place had been one woman, an elder among those who had first journeyed across the world to that land. And her name was, had been, Leshiâra—Sorrow-Tear.
All those ghosts had tried to put some fate, like a curse, upon Leesil. He neither wanted nor accepted it. They believed he would play a destined role as her champion, whatever that meant. Leesil had no intention of championing anyone but Magiere. But that wasn’t all they’d done to him—given him.
He gripped the tube’s cap, and his fur-covered hand slipped twice before he could get the stopper out. He dropped the cap and tilted the tube until its narrow contents slipped out into his hand. This item was the proof he’d needed when he returned to Magiere’s trial. He’d been accepted by the ancestors and had the right to testify before the council of clan elders. He had taken this thing from the very hand of a translucent ghost, one warrior among those ancestors. The branch had been tawny and barkless, glistening and glowing, and as alive as the central tree from which it had come.
Leesil turned even colder in the near dark of the Wastes as he looked upon it.
The branch had turned to gray, dried, dead wood.
After Magiere was released, at last acquitted of Most Aged Father’s charges against her, Leesil had forgotten all about the branch. He’d wanted nothing to do with it until Sgäile had returned it to him in this new case on their journey to seek the orb in the Pock Peaks.
Leesil hadn’t wanted it back as a reminder of what those ghosts tried to do to him with a name. Sgäile had appeared offended, hurt, so Leesil had simply shoved the branch and its case into his pack. He’d never even looked at it again until now.
All the branch offered now was a slim chance to give Chap a moment of warmth. If Leesil could use a little oil to ignite it, perhaps along with the tube, they might trap a little extra heat in the tent. He looked up, about to call to Chap, but his grip faltered.
The branch slipped from his mitten and he tried to grab it but dropped the tube as well. His hand was so numb that he was too late. The grayed, dead branch toppled into the snow. Cursing to himself, he reached down for it.
Snow around the branch appeared to melt a little, or at least its moisture somehow spread over the gray wood. As he blinked, the branch began to change, and he drew his hand back.
Gray receded under the spread of a tint. Soon it appeared to swell a little. The last mark of death vanished from the branch, as did any stain of moisture. It became the glistening, tawny, living thing that he had first gripped in the an’Cróan burial ground of their first ancestors.
How could it have changed back to what it had been? And only upon touching the snow—frozen water.
“Chap?”
Leesil barely heard Magiere’s call, and then it came more loudly in panic.
“Chap!”
Leesil looked over his shoulder. Chap lay limp on the crusted snow; the flap of fur from the hide tied around his torso hid his head.
Leaving the branch behind, Leesil scrambled up into a run. He crashed down on his knees beside Chap’s limp form before Magiere even got there, and ripped back the flap of fur covering Chap’s head. The dog’s eyes were closed, and worst of all, he was no longer shivering.
“What’s wrong?” Magiere half shouted behind Leesil.
Leesil shoved his arms under Chap and heaved the dog up. When he tried to stand, he almost fell under Chap’s sagging weight. Magiere braced him from behind and tried to help grip Chap.
“No!” Leesil ordered. “Get the bedding out ... now!”
He made a stumbling run for the shelter before she could say another word. All he could think of was something he’d seen in his youth, in the Warlands. On occasion, in deep winter, some fool or unfortunate child had fallen into the lake that surrounded his master’s keep. The victim’s body temperature needed to be raised as quickly as possible.
Leesil hit his knees again at the shelter’s mouth and didn’t wait for a startled Ti’kwäg to move. He struggled to shove Chap into the shelter and was already stripping off his outer clothing by the time Magiere crawled in with an armload of skins and furs.
“Lay some of those out,” he said. “Use most to shield him from the snow beneath.”
When she had two furs spread, Leesil stripped the fur off Chap and flopped the dog atop the bedding. He snatched the knife Magiere had used to gouge holes for the shelter’s poles, and he slashed the straps of his hauberk. After removing his hauberk, he took off his wool pullover and even his shirt.
Magiere watched in confusion, but the instant Leesil grabbed three more furs at once and crawled over Chap, she began pulling off her own coat and armor. Neither of them even noticed Ti’kwäg watching her, looking her up and down as more pale skin was exposed.
Leesil pulled Chap in against himself, and the dog’s paws were almost as painfully cold as the snow outside. Chap didn’t move at all.
Ti’kwäg stared in astonishment at what Leesil was doing ... for a dog. Magiere dropped to her knees, half-naked, and burrowed in on Chap’s other side. Leesil pulled the remaining furs over all of them.
“Get some heat in here!” he snarled at Ti’kwäg.
Leesil stuck his face against Chap’s muzzle and gained the barest relief when he felt the dog’s weak breaths.