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“Don’t drink any more,” I snapped. A lot of really cold water wouldn’t do him much good.

I even touched him and let my feelings run through his system. He either hadn’t drunk that much or could handle it. Still, I worried; but then, I was worrying about everything.

He took the grain cake as soon as it appeared, almost including my fingers in the first greedy bite.

“Gairloch!”

He didn’t pay much attention, but I hadn’t really expected that he would.

After dried fruit, travel bread, and the last of the white cheese, I laid out the bedroll under an overhang. The sky was clear, the stars sparkling like faraway lanterns in the blackness; a chill wind whistled down the canyon. I slept inside the bedroll.

The stream gurgled, and I slept—in a way. I dreamed that I was refereeing a fencing match between Krystal and a white knight, except that the white knight was Antonin, and he kept throwing fireballs at me, and laughing. Every time he threw a fireball, Krystal looked at me and stopped fencing, and he would slash her on her blade arm, until her arm was dripping red. The dream seemed to last all night, and I woke in cold sweats, although the dawn was filled with ice. Frost covered the grass, and a thin layer of rime ice covered even the fast-moving waters of the brook.

The season wasn’t quite winter, and in the low Westhorns it was colder than the coldest of days in Recluce, or most days in Kyphrien, I suspected.

Wheeee…Gairloch’s breath was a white cloud.

“I’m getting up.”

When I started moving, I was warm enough, though.

After giving Gairloch a little grain and letting him graze on the sparse grass, I did my own munching on the remaining dried apples from Brettel. My supplies were low, probably less than an eight-day of trail food, but one way or another, I wouldn’t need more than that.

The apples weren’t enough, and I opened the wax on the last package of cheese, a brick yellow cheese harder and less tasty than the white. The trail bread helped, but I limited what I ate and repacked the rest.

Then—carefully—I reached out with my senses to the wizards’ road. It was as deserted as the night before, with no sign of use.

Long before the sun cleared the hills behind us, Gairloch and I were riding deeper into the Westhorns, deeper along the narrow and artificial valley.

In time, having seen nothing unusual, and having sensed nothing beyond the traces of chaos on the road, we began to near the mass of chaos-energies I had first sensed the afternoon before, somewhere on the other side of an even narrower gap in the huge rock wall that, except for the path of the wizards’ road, seemed to block any westward passage.

Wheeee. Gairloch tossed his head, as if in warning.

Ahead, the pass opened wide in the morning sun, the sun that warmed my back, grassy slopes rising gently, then ending abruptly on both sides against the rock and crags that distinguished the Westhorns from the lesser mountains of Candar. The pass was avoided by almost everyone—that much was clear from the gravel and clay that held only the traces of Antonin’s passage. A few low thornberries and scrub ash bushes grew alongside the road, with its unvarying width of more than fifteen cubits.

In casting my perceptions ahead, I could sense nothing. Nothing. Not even rock, or trees.

“Hellfire…” I muttered, realizing what that meant.

Antonin couldn’t distort what I saw, but he could prevent my sensing anything at all, except for the feel of chaos itself. That meant there was something to sense.

Just for the hell of it, I would have liked to create a good solid thunderstorm, but with chaos ahead, using the energy wasn’t a good idea. Besides, while I still resented Justen’s comments about frivolity becoming chaos, I had listened. And I couldn’t think of an orderly reason for the rain. Had there been an artificially-caused drought, use of my talents to create rain might enhance order. Maybe.

Wheeee…uhhhh…wheeee…

Gairloch’s protest jerked my head back toward the road that slowly rose before us