‘We could wander here for hours,’ said Rothe. ‘We should find somewhere to pass the night.’
‘Agreed,’ said Varryn.
They found a place, in the corner of what had been a small house, where the wind and snow did not reach. A few strips of dried meat were passed around, and they took sips of water from skins that were almost empty. They crowded together, all of them except for Varryn. He sat erect with his back against the wall.
‘I will take watch for the first part of the night,’ Rothe said to him. At first the Kyrinin did not seem to have heard, but then he gave a slight nod.
Orisian, pressed close against his sister, felt her hand reaching for his. Whether it was for his comfort or her own he did not know, but he held tight. Hunger pinched at his stomach. When he closed his eyes sleep seemed a distant hope.
Unprompted, the image of Ess’yr’s white, naked back came into his mind. He stirred uneasily. It was followed by the sight of Inurian, alone in the clearing where they had left him. Orisian had watched his mother die. He had seen her lips part and the breath rattle out from her chest for the last time, and her eyes lose in a single instant the undefined lustre of life. He imagined the light in Inurian’s slate-grey eyes going out. Unconsciously he tightened his grip upon his sister’s hand.
‘Sleep,’ whispered Anyara.
He wished he could.
In the darkness of that night the wind moaned without pause over and through the skeletal city. After a time there was no more snow. The temperature fell as the hours went by. Orisian heard Varryn rising and taking Rothe’s watchful place. The two said nothing to each other.
Dawn amidst the mists and clouds was a muted thing. The light that came was watery and lifeless. Though the wind had fallen away the sky was an ocean of grey, merging with the snow-dusted peaks and slopes. The cliffs to the west loomed over the city, watching over its corpse just as they must have observed its life. The five of them could have been alone in all the world.
Anyara flexed her arms and legs. ‘I’ll never be warm again,’ she said.
Ess’yr passed out a small handful of hazelnuts. As the others cracked them open on stones, Varryn scooped up some snow and crushed it against his face, pressing it into his eyes. They sat in a small circle, eating in silence.
‘What do we do now?’ asked Anyara eventually.
‘As Inurian said. Find the na’kyrim,’ said Orisian.
‘If she’s here at all,’ said Rothe disconsolately.
‘She is here,’ Varryn said.
‘But the word of a dying...’ Rothe caught himself and glanced at Orisian. ‘Forgive me,’ he said.
Orisian smiled weakly. ‘Inurian was sure we would find her here.’
‘We will look for sign. There will be tracks,’ said Ess’yr.
‘Why not just shout for her? She’ll hear us from miles away up here,’ suggested Anyara.
‘And others will,’ said Varryn, with an edge of contempt in his voice. The Kyrinin turned his attention to one of the ties on his hide boots, which had come loose.
Ess’yr opened a pouch at her belt and produced some browned scraps of some kind of food. She passed one to each of Orisian, Anyara and Rothe and replaced the rest in the pouch. ‘Chew, not swallow,’ she said. ‘It is huuryn root.’ Rothe eyed the unappealing chunk of wizened root in the palm of his hand. Anyara had already slipped hers into her mouth and was chewing vigorously, and after only a moment’s hesitation Orisian followed suit. The shieldman did the same with a show of reluctance. A bitter taste flooded Orisian’s mouth as soon as he bit down. It reminded him of the drink he had been given in In’hynyr’s tent, but whether it was quite the same he could not be sure. At first he felt no effects, then a strange, blurred feeling developed behind his eyes. The cold seemed to recede a little from his hands and arms and feet and his weariness was blunted. He poked the root into the side of his mouth and held it there between jaw and lip. Its sharp juices sent tingles running through his gums.
They moved methodically through the ruins. The two Kyrinin kept their eyes on the ground, and occasionally they would stoop and examine some patch of snow, rock or earth. Each time they quickly moved on. In the flat light, with the sun invisible behind banks of cloud, Orisian would have lost all sense of direction but for the towering craggy cliffs that stood above the city. Wisps of snow were trailing from the heights. Once, Orisian caught sight of a pair of great black birds flashing across the face of the cliffs. He lost them against the background of the dark rocks. There was no other sign of life.
As time went by, and the eye grew more accustomed to the patterns in the stone, some of the city that had once been here began to reveal itself. They found what must have been a bakery. Its walls were almost gone, but there was still a cracked and broken oven. They saw a stretch of roadway, a few strides of perfect paving slabs that looked as fresh as if they had never felt a foot. In another area the buildings had been reduced to nothing but a featureless field of jumbled brick and stone, much of it blackened by some ancient fire. Varryn prised a little fragment of pitted bone from the crack between two rocks.
‘Skull,’ he said. ‘Huanin.’
They covered almost half of the city without finding anything to suggest that they were not alone. The invigorating effects of the huuryn faded after a few hours and the cold exulted in its reclamation of their bodies. Strength drained away; eyes and spirits alike flagged. Even Ess’yr and Varryn grew progressively more subdued and slow. They found a place to rest. A few mouthfuls of biscuit were all there was to eat, and Ess’yr did not offer any more huuryn. Orisian was desperately thirsty, and gulped at a water pouch until Ess’yr gently pulled it away from his lips.
‘Slow, and little,’ she said.
‘Sorry,’ Orisian murmured, though there had been no reprimand in her tone.
Rothe was massaging his left calf, grinding at the flesh with his great fingers.
‘How much longer must we keep this up?’ he asked of no one in particular. ‘We could search this place for a lifetime and find nothing. We should be making fires and shouting out at the top of our lungs, as Anyara said, to draw the woman to us.’
Varryn, seated a little away from the others, made a soft noise and ran a hand through his hair but said nothing.
‘Varryn spoke truth,’ Ess’yr said. ‘Enemy might still be on our trail. And if we make noise, perhaps this woman goes away. The Fox say she is mad. She does not want visitors.’
‘It would make little difference if she did run away and hide,’ said Rothe. ‘At this rate we’ll all be ice before we find her, anyway.’
‘The boy and the girl will not die here. I have sworn.’
‘You have sworn?’ snapped Rothe in incredulity. ‘You have sworn? My life is pledged to Orisian. Neither he nor Anyara have any need of the protection of woodwights to...’
‘Enough, enough,’ said Orisian, spreading his arms out. ‘I am sure Ess’yr does not mean any insult, Rothe. And, Ess’yr, I don’t know what it is you think you have..’
He saw that neither of the Kyrinin were paying him any heed. As one, their heads had lifted and their faces become fixed masks of concentration.
‘What is it?’ Anyara asked, but Varryn silenced her with a fierce look. Beneath the fine web of tattoos there was a grim, intense expression. Ess’yr laid a hand upon her brother’s arm.
‘Sound,’ she whispered.
Rothe shifted into a crouch, grasping the hilt of his sword. Orisian fumbled for the blade at his belt, hampered by numb and clumsy fingers.
‘Where?’ hissed Rothe.
‘Coming,’ was Ess’yr’s hushed reply.
Anyara shifted on to the balls of her feet. Varryn half-turned and his fingers flashed a terse message to his sister. Ess’yr gave a grunt of assent, and picked up her spear. Varryn began to rise. Even as he came to his feet, he was crouching again, hissing through his teeth.