Her eyes widened. He rarely spoke to her like this, but he was not going to back down, not this time. Ore-Locks stopped and watched them both.
“So you think you found a way station?” Chane asked Ore-Locks. “Could it not be there for some other reason?”
Ore-Locks looked away. He never spoke to Chane anymore unless absolutely necessary.
“Perhaps it was built there as a rest stop for dwarves,” Chane went on, “or it was just a lone settlement placed well off the pass to remain hidden from foreign travelers.”
“Not likely,” Ore-Locks said. However, like Wynn, he appeared less than certain.
“So your people are the exception among all others ... and no dwarves would live any way other than the way you believe they should?”
No one answered, and Chane took a step closer to Wynn, softening his tone.
“It has taken so long to get this far, but there is nothing to be found here. It is time to move on.”
Shade huffed once in clear agreement. Wynn looked down at her and then closed her eyes.
Chane knew the crushing disappointment she must feel. They had lost the hope of a possible path leading them straight to the seatt, and now they were back to a blind search in the mountains.
Wynn opened her eyes again, looking to Ore-Locks.
“They’re right,” she said bitterly, sadly. “If we’re to find the seatt, we should head into the mountains now. Too much time has passed already.”
Chane waited for Ore-Locks to argue—and then he would handle the dwarf. But Ore-Locks only began descending the hill with a similar expression of defeat. His obsessive goal was to find the seatt, and they were making no progress here.
Shade gazed up at Chane in what appeared to be surprise, and then she trotted beside him back toward the wagon—as if rewarding him for this victory. Indeed, he felt as if he had just won an important battle. Wynn’s chances inside the range were almost nonexistent. In less than a moon, he might yet coerce her into giving up entirely.
The chances of this were certainly better now than they had been three moments ago.
Wynn drove the wagon down the pass for three more days before they completed traveling through the foothills and reached the base of the mountains. Her heart was heavy, and all along the way she’d never stopped looking for hints or clues to the elusive entrance Ore-Locks had placed in her mind.
If only it existed. If only she could find it.
Tonight, Shade lay beside her on the bench, and Chane and Ore-Locks sat in the back on opposite sides of the wagon bed, both looking forward. The base of the range’s first ridge loomed above them. In the night, Wynn could not see all the way to their tops, but Chane pointed ahead.
“The end of the pass,” he said. “We may have to leave the wagon behind.”
Wynn squinted, but he could see so much better in the dark than she could, at least from a distance. She’d known this moment was coming. They couldn’t take a wagon into the range, and, eventually, they might even have to abandon the horses. She knew firsthand the dangers of bringing horses onto narrow cliffs.
“Pull up over there,” Chane said, now pointing off to the left.
She sighed and pulled the wagon over. Chane jumped down to unharness the mare and the gelding. They would serve as packhorses now. Both were calm and gentle, and she hated the thought of eventually leaving them in the wilderness. She’d face that task when it arrived, as she had faced so many unpleasant tasks to get this far.
While Chane worked on the harness, Wynn climbed in the back with Shade to take down their makeshift tents, folding the canvas up with their blankets. If she packed things properly, the horses could still carry all the supplies that remained.
“Wynn ... ?” Ore-Locks called from somewhere.
She could not see him.
“Wynn, come up!”
He rarely used her name, and she’d never heard him sound quite so agitated—or perhaps animated. Looking around, she spotted him to her right, partway up the base of the mountain.
“What is he doing?” Chane asked.
Shade rumbled softly.
Wynn jumped from the wagon’s back and scrambled upward after Ore-Locks. Chane rasped something after her, but she couldn’t make it out. She was too busy climbing as quickly as possible, sending small stones downward with her feet. Shade dashed up after her, and then she heard Chane cursing, as he only had the horses partway unharnessed and couldn’t leave them in a tangled state.
“What?” she panted upon reaching Ore-Locks. “What is it?”
“Look,” he said.
Pulling a cold lamp crystal from her pocket, she rubbed it and held it out. The light illuminated fragments of what appeared to be cut stone lying against the slope.
Wynn’s heart began pounding from more than exertion.
“What are you doing?” Chane asked, coming up behind them. “I had to leave both horses loose down there!”
Wynn leaned slightly forward holding out the crystal. “These stones aren’t natural.”
“There,” Ore-Locks said, moving up and to the left. “More of them.”
Shade rumbled again, and Chane now appeared more unsettled than angry. Ore-Locks climbed further with surprising speed.
“And here,” he said, pointing.
Wynn hurried after him, spotting more fragments of cut stone along the way. Soon the fragments became slightly larger, and then ...
She glanced back and saw the pattern. It might never have been noticed if she hadn’t first spotted them one by one along the way. There were two lines of those barely noticeable stones with open ground in between, as if ...
“A path,” she whispered, willing herself not to hope too much. “Are we walking an ancient path?”
Ore-Locks didn’t answer. By the crystal’s light, his eyes were wide and intense as he scanned the slope. He went onward and upward, and Wynn hurried after, barely aware that Chane and Shade came behind.
“I left the horses loose,” Chane repeated.
“Then go down and tie them up,” she said without looking back.
She didn’t hear him turn back as she kept climbing after Ore-Locks.
The path began to curve and snake. Occasionally Wynn lost sight of any stones with telltale signs that they weren’t natural. Ore-Locks would wave her and the others to a stop and begin clambering over the slope, searching. Again and again, he finally straightened up and waved Wynn onward. Soon they were passing through wind-bent trees, jagged outcrops, and rougher terrain. Pauses became longer, but Ore-Locks always continued.
“How far will we climb?” Chane asked.
Again, Wynn didn’t look back. “To the end.”
Shade growled, but kept on as they made their way out onto the crumbled base of a cliff. It was covered in heavy brush that had grown so tall it reached above Chane’s head. Ore-Locks stopped, his gaze searching the rocky ground and the sheer rise of rock above them.
“I’ve lost the path,” he said. “It just leads into the brush.”
“It must go farther,” Wynn returned, peering around at the heavy brush covering the cliff’s base. “It wouldn’t just stop here unless ...”
She whirled around but pointed into the brush. “Shade, search! See what is behind there.”
Shade’s ears flattened.
Wynn didn’t understand her reluctance, but as back in the foothills, neither did the dog refuse. She trotted to the thick brush, sniffing at its scraggly branches. Ore-Locks went to try to bend some of it out of Shade’s way and looked to Chane.
“Help me.”
Chane strode over, and with one final pause, dropped down to grip handfuls of the thick brush, bending it aside so Shade might crawl through.
“I do not know what you expect to find,” he rasped. “We are wasting more time.”