“Do it now,” Leesil told the guide, and Ti’kwäg turned to digging out the oil.
All Leesil could do was press his face against Chap’s.
“Wake up, you mangy mutt,” he whispered. “Don’t you die on me, you pain in the ass!”
Chap didn’t respond, but Magiere whispered with her face buried in the back of Chap’s neck, “Come back.”
It was one of the longest nights of their lives, and Leesil didn’t sleep as he hung on to his oldest friend. He never thought about the branch left in the snow until he heard a grumbling groan. The late sun’s light wasn’t even strong enough to notice through the crack of the shelter opening’s flap.
Magiere rose on one elbow, and her breath stopped as she looked down at Chap.
Chap twitched, and his forepaw poked Leesil in the stomach.
Leesil had never been so grateful for a face full of foul-smelling dog’s breath.
They had a very late start that day. It took more arguing with Ti’kwäg to get Chap bundled up and tied down in the sled’s rear. Chap didn’t make another sound and lay there quietly as Leesil pulled a fur over the dog’s head. He was exhausted from a sleepless night full of fear. Only then did he remember something left behind.
Off to the side, where the shelter had been raised, was a bulge in the new snowfall. He went to scrape the crust off his fallen pack, but what he’d seen right before Chap had collapsed kept nagging at him. Any instant Magiere, wanting to know what took him so long, would shout at him. But her shout didn’t come.
Leesil dug about in the hardening crust of last night’s thin snowfall—and there it was.
Whatever snow clung to the branch came off more easily than expected. He searched for the wooden tube and pewter cap until he found both. Quickly encasing the branch and trying not to think about it, he shoved the tube into his pack. When he stood up, he saw why Magiere hadn’t nagged him to hurry up.
She stood out beyond the dog team already tethered to the sled, and stared into the distance. Ti’kwäg watched her and more than once cast an anxious glance back at Leesil. When Leesil finally trudged toward Magiere and dropped his pack on the sled’s end, she didn’t turn to him. She continued staring ahead.
“What is it?” he asked as an uncomfortable feeling crawled up his neck.
Magiere pointed ahead.
Leesil saw nothing out there but a white, frozen wasteland.
That entire half day became a dim memory, with a strange mist floating low over the snow-crusted ice. Magiere was always out ahead as Leesil jogged beside the sled to keep an eye on Chap. After a while he gave up watching Magiere at all. It was nearly dark when Ti’kwäg barked something to his dogs, and the sled came to a stop. Leesil halted, looking for Magiere.
She was way out ahead of them and standing still, as if waiting for them to move on. Finally she returned as far as the team’s lead dog and then spun around to stare off into the distance.
Leesil checked on Chap—who merely grunted—and then stumbled out toward Magiere. He followed her gaze through the deepening dusk and at first saw nothing. The longer he looked, the more he noticed that the eastward horizon was too dark compared to the stars already appearing above it.
A black silhouette along that edge of the world blocked out any lower stars. Perhaps it was a range of ice higher than the plain. Maybe the ice met and piled up against solid ground, for they had been headed inland for too many days to count.
“Mountains,” Magiere whispered.
Leesil didn’t want to know how she knew this, and instead asked, “Is that where we’re supposed to go?”
“It’s where I have to go.”
“Not tonight,” he countered. “They’re farther off than they look on an open plain like this.”
She finally looked at him. “I want to go now.”
Had they at last reached their destination? Were those mountains nothing more than a safe place to hide the orb? He hoped so but wasn’t certain anymore. Whatever drove Magiere was different from the last time, when she’d been after the orb. This time it was something to do with the orb itself.
Leesil wanted to hack a hole in the ice, no matter how deep he had to go, and drop that cursed thing into the depths forever.
Magiere turned back for the sled without his insistence, and they spent another near-restless night. Chap fell asleep as soon as the shelter was up, and had to be awakened to eat. It was another three days before Leesil could clearly make out those mountains ahead.
Another four days passed with Magiere pressing them onward too long and too late. Their destination was always in sight and growing upon the horizon. At least the extra time let Chap fully recover. Another dawn came, and Ti’kwäg began having trouble with the dogs.
The sled too often stalled as some of the team yelped, snarled, barked, or even tried to break off or turn around. This didn’t sit well with the guide, though he always forced them onward. Leesil asked Chap whether he knew what was wrong. Chap huffed twice for no but appeared equally troubled by their behavior.
Two more days out, with Chap finally on his feet, and they were close enough that Leesil knew they should be into those mountains by the next day. The subtly rolling plain was so white that he was half-blinded and only stumbled along in following the sled like a beacon. Later he realized he hadn’t paid enough attention to Magiere out front. Too often Chap was out there on her heels and pushing himself more than he should have.
Magiere came to a sudden stop.
Leesil almost stumbled into Ti’kwäg’s back as the guide halted the sled, and Leesil tried to clear his sight.
Out beyond Magiere was a massive wall of jagged white rising into the sky. He couldn’t tell whether it was truly a range of iced-locked mountains, a fracture in the plain forced upward over centuries, or maybe the edge of a land mass coated by the frigid conditions.
But Magiere had stopped, and he didn’t believe it was simply that they couldn’t go on.
They were here ... wherever she’d been taking them. The more he tried to make out the massive wall of white barring their way, the more something on it caught his attention.
There were dark spots, not quite black, amid its craggy surface.
Leesil cupped his gaze with both hands, trying to block the plain’s glare. Those spots weren’t pocks and fractures. Some were too round, too smooth to have happened on their own—they were like half circles, like ... openings into tunnels.
Magiere still stood beyond the sled team with her back turned, and Chap began circling her in agitation with steamy air jetting in sharp pulses from his nose.
Leesil jogged out toward the pair. He heard Chap’s low, broken rumble before he closed half the distance, and he slowed. As he approached Magiere’s back, he couldn’t help looking closely at Chap.
Turning his head, and always keeping Magiere in his sight, Chap wove back and forth at Magiere’s left side. When he finally looked to Leesil ...
A sharp image rose instantly in Leesil’s head, and there was no mistaking Chap’s meaning.
Leesil saw the amulet, the one Magiere had carried herself in their early days and then given to him long ago. It had been more than a year since he’d even looked at it, for there’d been no need. Pulling off one fur mitten and feeling the cold bite his hand, he fumbled to open his coat’s neck. He jerked on the leather cord around his neck until the amulet came out to dangle before his eyes.
That plain bit of topaz set in pewter was glowing enough to see even in daylight.
It did that only when an undead was nearby.
He hadn’t felt its warmth through all the layers of clothing and armor he wore. How long had it been doing this out of his sight? He looked out to those unnatural dark spots on the ice wall and stepped closer behind Magiere in an attempt to get her attention.