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By Root 839 0

began to ache from the constant glare, and she tired of looking at mountains. They stretched on ahead always, past crevasses and walls and peaks, gray barren stone and blinding white snow — grim, unrelenting, mercilessly there. Despite her gloves and warm boots, she had chilblains, and she was certain her nose was bright red from being pinched by frost. She was grateful for the sunshine, all the same; they had managed to keep up a steady pace, and were much more than halfway through the range now. In a couple of days, according to Cadvan, they would arrive in Zmarkan. Though what they were going to do once they got there, Maerad thought, overwhelmed by a bitter hopelessness, the Light only knew. Talk to the Pilanel? Their quest was an idiotic waste of time, a chase for wild geese, based on a couple of random guesses and some mumbled pieces of lore. And she would probably die for it.

As they prepared their camp that night, Maerad felt the air shift. At the same time, Cadvan turned his head alertly, as if he were a deer scenting danger, and sniffed the air. At that moment a sudden strong wind came up, blowing a scattering of gravel into the bay, and died away to a steady current of air, but now it was coming from the north, and it held a new chill. Neither of them remarked on the change, but it was colder that night than it had been, and when Maerad woke in the morning, her blanket was stiff with rime.

They started as soon as they had broken their fast, just to get the blood moving in their chilled limbs. The sun was hidden in a swathe of gray clouds that muffled all the higher peaks and rolled in thick fogs down the sides of the mountains, where they were blown into shreds by the increasing wind. Around midday the wind picked up further, and it began to sleet. Maerad and Cadvan covered their faces with their scarves and pressed on doggedly. The horses trudged along the pass, their hooves slipping on the icy trail, their tails miserably pressed between their legs, their ears flat against their skulls. As the afternoon wore on, the light grew worse and worse, and Maerad got colder and colder.

This was the most miserable day yet, and she almost cried with relief when they at last found a bay out of the wind and sleet and she saw there was firewood. It took a while to light, and Maerad was almost incandescent with impatience before Cadvan coaxed a flame out of the tinder. The horses stood against the far wall, disburdened of their packs, miserably munching oats in silence, while the Bards rubbed their frozen hands in front of the fire, trying to get some blood into them, and steam rose off their soaked clothes. They each had a dose of medhyl, and then Cadvan prepared a stew for their dinner.

The bay was hardly as cozy as a cave would have been, since it was little more than a hollow scooped into the mountainside. Stray blasts of wind threw handfuls of sleet onto the floor, where they melted and ran sizzling into the fire. But it sheltered them from the worst of the weather, which with the increasing wail of the wind was getting steadily worse. Beyond the friendly flickering of the firelight, it was impenetrably dark. Maerad sat as close to the fire as she could without actually catching fire herself and slipped into a stupor of miserable exhaustion.

“I hope this passes by tomorrow,” said Cadvan. “A bad storm could keep us holed up here for days.”

“Days?” said Maerad, starting awake. “We can’t stay here for days.”

“Well, it’s better than being blown off the side of the mountain,” he answered. “Unless that’s what you’d prefer.”

“I just want to get out of this place.” Maerad looked despairingly up at Cadvan, her eyes ringed by deep shadows, and, for a moment, she saw an expression in his eyes she had never seen before, an unguarded tenderness. But it vanished at once, and she thought she must have imagined it.

“So do I. But not at the price of my life.”

“Well, couldn’t you just calm the wind, if it’s still going tomorrow?” asked Maerad without much hope. Even tonight, Cadvan hadn’t used magery to light the fire; his miserliness