The Seeker - Isobelle Carmody [179]
“Then I found you, lying on the ledge. At first I could not believe you were the funaga the voice had spoken of. But why else would you be there? And how could you have come there, when there was not a single footprint in all the untouched snow? Then I thought you were dead, for your skin was like ice. But your heart was beating, and you woke.”
There was a long silence in the wake of his strange tale. Outside, the storm winds howled derisively, and tiny whirlwinds of snow blew through the cave opening, falling in a white drift against the stones. The fire’s orange light danced silently upon the walls.
“Only someone insane could believe your story. Or mine,” I said softly, but my words sounded hollow. I had fallen asleep, half-dead, in the highlands and had woken completely healed, sixty days and thousands of spans distant, on the highest and loneliest of mountain peaks.
I felt a ghostly echo of the dangerous weight of pain that had pressed against the feebly erected barrier in my mind. I shuddered.
The fire crackled, and I turned my face to the glowing embers, drinking in the warmth.
“When this storm is over, we will go back to Obernewtyn,” I said.
But outside, the storm winds shrieked.
25
HOPING THE SUDDEN silence was not merely a lull, I used a stick to clear the snow and rocks from the entrance of the cave. We had lost count of time, and the firewood was nearly exhausted.
Coming out of the narrow crevice, I was cold and hungry, but I forgot physical discomfort in the dazzling sight that met my eyes. The world was blanketed in pristine white, reflecting the sunshine with painful intensity. A delicate lace of icicles hung from the ledge on which I had slept until I’d been found by Gahltha—for that, I’d decided, was a far more appropriate name for the formidable black horse than “Galta” could ever be.
Unaccountably, I remembered sitting at the Kinraide orphan home with Maruman, dreaming of the fabled world of the Snow Queen, a forbidden Oldtime tale my mother had told us.
“It is a hard trek to Obernewtyn,” Gahltha warned. “It will not be safe to go too quickly. The coldwhite will hide crevices and rocks. We will have to put our feet down carefully.”
“Life has always been a matter of putting one’s feet down carefully,” I said. Even the prospect of a long hard trek through frostbitten country with an empty belly and scant clothes could not quell my joy.
We left at once, for there were no preparations to be made. Gahltha led, forging a path; even so, my shoes and legs were quickly soaked. I was glad to walk, since the exertion kept me warmer than the dazzling sunlight could on its own.
Gahltha warned me to shade my eyes with a piece of cloth to avoid being snow-blinded.
I looked back once at the mountain in whose skirts we had sheltered. It sloped backward, outjutting rocks and drifts of snow adhering to the flat surfaces, making it look like the stern face of a very old man. The slant made it impossible to see the top, and I wondered if that was where the Ken of the Agyllians lay.
We traveled across the ice lake, and the land beyond seemed to go right to the horizon. This puzzled me until Gahltha said the distance was an illusion. We were on a large, flat plateau and would shortly reach its edge.
The wind, which had howled for days and nights, seemed to have exhausted itself, and the air was clear and still. The only sounds to break the silence were those of our footsteps and breathing. We could have been the only beings alive in all the Land. I felt as if the air were a kind of fement that one might become drunk on, and hunger increased the heady feeling. At the same time, I felt I could understand anything and everything very easily there on the roof of the world.
It was nearing dusk when we reached the edge of the plateau. I was within a single handspan of the edge before I