“Where ... where’s Magiere?” Leesil asked weakly.
Chap did not see her inside the shelter. There were slates of dried fish laid out beside the furs. The oiled cloth on which the fish lay looked as if it had been ripped wide instead of unrolled properly. He snapped a piece of fish in his teeth and squirmed over to drop it beside Leesil’s head.
Leesil grimaced, weakly turning his face from the smell.
At that Chap took a deep breath of relief. If Leesil could be that picky, he would live.
Chap found he was still wearing the fur that Leesil had rigged for him, and he wanted to find Magiere. First he ate a piece of smoke-cured fish. It crackled as he chewed, and its cold made his teeth ache. When Leesil still refused to eat or sit up, Chap snapped up another piece. With a snarl, he dropped it on Leesil’s face.
Leesil grunted at him but grabbed the piece.
They needed water as well, but without the oil lamp’s minimal heat, any water skin would be frozen solid. Still, Chap rooted around trying to find one, if Magiere had even brought one in.
“Here,” Leesil groaned, and Chap looked up.
Leesil, still in his coat and clothes, dug weakly under the furs. He pulled out a water skin, though he could not have put it there himself. With his good hand, he pulled its stopper with his teeth and drank a little. When it came time for Chap, there was nothing in which to pour the water. Chap tilted his head back and opened his jaws, and Leesil splashed water into his mouth.
Chap finally raised a memory for Leesil of the sled laden down with all their belongings. Leesil nodded, and with labored effort they crawled outside. The sky was calm but gray, and the first thing Chap spotted was the sled.
It was a ways off, and someone had dug it out of the night’s drifts, though it was still caked in crystallized snow crust. Chap looked out along the sled’s ice-coated lines of frozen, empty dog harnesses.
Magiere stood with her back to them with the end of those lines perhaps gripped in her mittened hands. She didn’t move when Leesil weakly called out to her. When he tried to stumble toward her, Chap cut him off. Leesil looked down in confusion, and Chap barked once for no.
He turned, slowly approaching Magiere, and made it halfway along the sled lines before he heard her hiss. Even then she didn’t turn her hooded head to show her face.
Chap backed away, not taking his eyes off her until he reached the sled.
“What’s happened ... to her?” Leesil whispered.
Chap did not want to guess. Instead he raised Leesil’s memories of watching Ti’kwäg dismantle the shelter. Weak as Leesil was—and with only one usable arm—it took him a while to complete this task, and he was shaking by the time he helped Chap aboard the sled and then climbed in himself. They never had a chance to call out that they were ready before the sled lurched forward.
All that day, as Leesil slept again, Chap pondered the worst of what had taken place. He could not understand what was happening to Magiere. He kept remembering the sight of her clutching Qahhar’s head, her face half-covered in gore as black as her eyes. The leaking of the ancient undead’s fluid from her mouth begged the worst worry. She had vomited some of it up, and that meant she had swallowed it ... drunk it.
Could that be what affected her now?
Before, whenever she let her dhampir half rise, the aftermath when it receded left her exhausted, sometimes collapsing. Chap couldn’t see how she still maintained her dhampir state for this long. But she was out there pulling the sled at half the speed of a dog team.
When they stopped at dusk, she stayed out in front and would not come nearer nor look back, no matter how Leesil shouted at her. When he tried to go to her, Chap stopped him.
Chap dragged whatever he could of the shelter’s fixtures off the sled as Leesil worked with one arm to assemble them. It was not well-done, and when they crawled inside, the shelter was dark and the temperature unbearable. Leesil fumbled one-handed to light the oil lamp, as Chap watched the shelter’s entrance.
Magiere couldn’t stay out there, not even as she was. He finally howled, making Leesil jump and twist about. Long moments passed before they heard snow crunching outside under footfalls, and Chap backed up.
The canvas flap pulled aside a little under the grip of a fur-mittened hand. Dim light within the shelter exposed a white face looking in and partially dusted with frost. Some of the black stain over Magiere’s mouth and jaw remained, with spidering cracks from its having dried on her face in the frigid air.
“Get in here,” Leesil whispered.
She stared at him with her fully black eyes.
“Now, Magiere.”
She crawled inside.
“Why are you doing this?” Leesil whispered. “Let it go ... and come back.”
A sliver of white appeared on either side of Magiere’s irises. Chap thought her irises might finally be contracting, and then Magiere shuddered. She toppled where she knelt, catching herself at the last instant with both hands flattened on a fur hide on the floor. Her whole body shook as if she might collapse completely.
Leesil grabbed her shoulders.
Magiere shrieked so loudly that Chap went deaf for an instant, and she lurched, shoving Leesil off.
Leesil fell back with a yelp of pain. Before Chap could lunge in, Magiere scrambled to the shelter’s wall, turning around, and pressed up against it until the canvas bowed across her back.
Her eyes had flooded fully black again.
At the sight of Chap watching her, she ducked her head. Even as she cowered from him, wrapping her arms over her head and face, a growl shook her whole body.
Leesil struggled up to his knees and tried to go to her, and Chap cut him off again. When Leesil would not stop, Chap had to snap at his face. Leesil finally gave up and dropped where he knelt and hung his head.
Chap was at a loss. He lay down upon the shelter’s fur-covered floor and soon felt the cold from the packed snow beneath seeping into him. But he would not move, would not leave Magiere unwatched ... would not leave her to suffer alone.
The worst of it was that although he did not know how she did this, he understood why. So long as she held on to that other half of herself, she might keep going. She was the only chance they had to get the orbs—or themselves—out of the Wastes.
But when she finally let go, what would it cost her?
Worse, what would it cost if she did not—and soon? What might be the lasting effects of her having swallowed Qahhar’s black fluids?
It was another long, cold night for Chap, even after Leesil dragged over hides to cover them both and tried to push two such toward Magiere. She would not look at them.
The next morning she was gone.
Chap rose in a panic, having fallen asleep sometime in the night. He quickly roused Leesil and then bolted out of the shelter. There was Magiere, waiting with her back turned at the end of the sled’s empty dog lines.
Two more days and nights came and went, and Chap and Leesil took to struggling along on their own, decreasing the weight that Magiere had to pull. On the third day, Chap made Leesil harness him to the sled, and they both pulled as well. On the sixth night, Chap collapsed in the shelter and lay watching Magiere again.
Her breath came in ragged, grating hisses. He couldn’t tell whether they were from exhaustion or from holding on to the barest control over her dhampir half.
Chap forgot about the need to hide the orbs. He no longer tried to raise calming memories for Magiere. That was now as much of a danger to her as anything else. She’d been in this state for far too long. If—when—she finally let go, he now worried that it would kill her.