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In time, using the one battered skillet in the sack, I melted some of the snow, taking a few sips myself but letting Gairloch have most of it.

Then I ate—what, I’m not sure, but it didn’t matter that much—and crawled back into my bedroll.

The fire was back to ashes when I woke again, and the sky was still covered with the featureless gray clouds. The wind gusted, and my head still ached and burned.

Wheeee…eeee

“…don’t like it, either…” I mumbled.

The flailing to re-establish the fire was about the same, since I had to stagger through knee-deep snow down the hedgerow to find enough branches and sticks for fuel. But I was getting somewhere.

Sitting by the fire, I ate some more, drank some more, and felt the headache subside a bit more.

Clearly, we weren’t traveling anywhere quickly, and there was no point in trying, not when the road wasn’t even visible except in the higher and more exposed places where the wind had swept the snow off in order to build waist-high drifts—if not higher—in the depressions.

While I had no schedule to meet, we had not even reached the true base of the Easthorns. Was there any chance of crossing them?

My eyes traveled to the southwest.

Surprisingly, I could see the darkness of conifers on the lower slopes, as if the mountains had received less snow than the hills beneath them.

I shivered and forced myself to eat another few mouthfuls of the travel bread. Then I told my reluctant body that it was time to loosen up. The protests were monumental, enough that I nearly lost what I had just eaten. So I leaned against Gairloch, my eyes damp in frustration.

So damned unfair…but fairness sure as hell counted for nothing.

I kept moving, if more slowly, and melted some more snow for Gairloch and gave him the rest of the grain cake. Half of Justen’s sack was for him, a division of provisions that never would have crossed my mind.

As I struggled to lift the large canvas sack of provisions back onto Gairloch, I wondered how long it would be before I could see things in advance. I mean, there was nothing special about the provisions, just that same faded and heavy gray canvas, still filled almost to overflowing and representing a goodly portion of Justen’s stocks. But, in the instants while I was trying to escape Jellico, he had packed with more forethought than I had since I landed in Freetown.

Justen—I already missed the gray wizard. Now all the choices were mine, and it had already become clear just how little I knew about the real world of Candar. At the same time, Justen hadn’t been that much better than my father, Talryn, Tamra, or the half-a-dozen others who had more knowledge than I did—and refused to share it. Each of them had given me just enough for me to know there were unanswered questions…and said it was up to me to find the answers.

Yee-ah! Yee-ah! The vulcrow was back, probably waiting for us to die, but I had a different idea.

Finally, sometime after midday, under the featureless gray clouds that obscured the time, I swung up on Gairloch and let him take his own pace through the snow. He avoided the wind-swept areas, still icy, and made his way along the side of the road.

Unlike me, he seemed to enjoy the ride.

My guts ached, and while the headache had diminished to a dull pounding, my eyes burned and my hands trembled.

Gairloch walked carefully and I hung on, occasionally sipping from the water bottle I had tucked inside my cloak, now containing half ice and half water.

Despite the gusts and the chill, I sweated and the dampness froze on my forehead, then seemed to freeze-boil away.

By mid-afternoon, as the sky darkened, the lower slopes of the Easthorns were closer and the snow was only ankle-deep. More important, it had apparently not rained first, and there was little ice on the open spots in the rutted road. Gairloch still preferred walking in the lighter snow than on the frozen clay.

The sweats had left me, as had the headache, replaced by a light-headedness and a feeling of weakness.

I kept looking for somewhere to stop, but the hills had grown