Hiding the orb from their enemies was no longer Chap’s only concern.
Magiere could never know where the orbs were hidden, and that meant that Leesil couldn’t know either.
The next two moons blurred by, as they lived on stores taken from a village left empty, until the endless white broke upon the edge of the western ocean. For the most part, all Chap remembered was cold and pressing Magiere and Leesil onward. The sun rose for shorter and shorter times, and the world had seemed harried by night, as though a creeping darkness ate away the light a little more each day.
Then somehow, ahead down the shore, lay White Hut, the trading post where they had hired Ti’kwäg. Nothing seemed to matter after that but rest, at least for Leesil and Magiere. They set up a shelter and never spoke, especially not Chap, about tomorrow or what lay ahead. One afternoon, while Magiere slept, Chap dug in Leesil’s pack.
“What are you doing?”
Chap withdrew his head with the “talking hide” gripped in his jaws, and found Leesil sitting up and watching him. Leesil had made the hide with Belaskian letters and short common words to replace the one Wynn had written up in the Old Elvish of the an’Cróan.
Chap cast Leesil a huff, muffled by the hide in his mouth, and pushed out under the shelter’s flap. He waited outside until Leesil followed, now frowning in puzzlement. Chap dropped the hide, pawed it out flat, and then nosed and pawed its letters and symbols.
Hire me a guide with a dog team.
Leesil looked physically better, but his mental state was less certain.
“A guide?” he whispered, crouching beside Chap. “I’m not taking Magiere back out there.”
Chap pawed again. I will hide the orbs. Do it now while she sleeps.
Realization flooded Leesil’s face, though he frowned in worry as he glanced back at the shelter.
Chap didn’t need to explain; Leesil was no fool. Magiere was somehow connected to the orbs. Even in their current situation, she might not let Chap go if she knew what he was about to do. Leesil had always wanted the orb—now orbs—out of their lives.
“Even if we had enough money or trade goods,” he whispered, “how could you possibly do this on your own? What are you going to do, dig a big hole and bury them like a bone?”
Chap growled at him.
“You can’t carry them ... and any outsider will know where you hide them.”
Chap would not tell Leesil how he would address this problem, and he pawed at the hide for much longer this time.
Hire someone to go inland, not north. Trade Ti’kwäg’s travel gear. No one knows it is not ours. No one will know what was lost in the journey when we turn over what remains.
Chap sighed in frustration at having to paw out so much.
Leesil sighed right back, shaking his head, but he stood up and walked off. Chap peeked back into the shelter to find Magiere still asleep.
It took longer than expected for Leesil to come back, and Chap worried that no guide might be willing, now that they had returned without Ti’kwäg. But Leesil returned in success.
Later that night, after Magiere went back to bed, Leesil called Chap outside. He shared the arrangements that he had made. Leesil could be quite cunning when properly motivated.
The next morning, Leesil suggested Magiere go with him for a walk along the shore. It was the first time he had asked anything of her since leaving the icy crags. So she agreed quickly and went off with him.
Chap remained behind on the pretense of giving them privacy. He would not be there when they returned. Magiere would have no chance to argue—or worse.
A stocky man arrived with a sled and looked none too happy at being instructed to follow the lead of a wolf bigger than any of his dogs. Grunting and straining, he took up the chest with the first orb, and then the second, hidden in wrapped furs by Leesil.
Once all was secured, Chap turned away, heading inland.
When Leesil returned and Magiere learned what had been done, it would drive a further wedge between them ... and between her and Chap. This could not be helped. Hiding the orbs from their enemies—and her—mattered more. Leesil would face even worse once he told Magiere the rest.
All that he would have to show her was Qahhar’s thôrhk. That could not be left with the orbs, in case by some slim chance they were found. And he and she were to head south along the shore to get clear of all eyes in White Hut. This way Chap could find them again later, far from any who might see him return ... alone.
Chap loped ahead of the dog team and the sled but already dreaded what would come. The next three days proved less difficult than expected. The new local guide was chattier than Ti’kwäg—only this one talked to his dogs. He talked to Chap as well, and he had a strange habit of referring to himself in the third person.
“Nawyat get you supper,” he would say.
Chap could not help liking the man, which only made what was coming, what would be necessary, worse to contemplate. With the journey under way, he did not know for how long Nawyat would follow him, and in the end he would need complete control.
On the fifth morning, he searched the landscape and saw that much had changed the farther they went inland. Snow and ice broke where the land underneath was rugged and exposed. When he spotted a large patch of dark gray rising well above the snowpack, he purposefully veered away. Nawyat could not have any clear memory of this place, if he remembered anything at all.
Chap led the dogs and guide onward for another quarter day before he stopped. At first, hearing the sled halt, he couldn’t bring himself to look at Nawyat.
“You lost now, big wolf?” the guide called out. “No lead Nawyat more?”
Chap’s every instinct wailed that what he was about to do was wrong. If this act was what he suspected, having never done so before, it was a ... sin.
When he turned, Nawyat was already walking toward him.
“What you do?” the guide asked, peering down at him with a frown that scrunched the brows of his dark-skinned face.
Drawing upon the element of Spirit within him, Chap closed his eyes. His body felt suddenly warm amid the cold. From Earth beneath his paws, and Air all around him, and Water from the snow, and Fire from the heat of his flesh, he bonded with the elements of Existence. These mingled with that of the Spirit within him—and he began to burn.
The guide would not see the blue-white vapors rising around his form like flame. Normal eyes could not see what was happening to him—only eyes like Wynn’s, with her mantic sight that separated the presence of the elements in all things.
Chap opened his eyes to look into Nawyat’s puzzled dark ones. He felt for any rising memories in the guide as something to snatch hold of. When he found them, the whole world suddenly swam like warped oil upon water.
It had been so—too—easy.
Nawyat would not know until too late—no one would.
The world appeared to double in Chap’s sight, as if he saw it from two different places. He saw through his own eyes ... and then also Nawyat’s ... and then through the guide’s eyes only.
Chap watched his own majay-hì body collapse upon the snow.
He began shaking, feeling hands, feet, arms, and only two legs, all wrapped in heavy fur and hide clothing. He dropped his eyes to look down at ... Nawyat’s hands ... his hands now.
Chap raised his gaze again, staring at his own limp form upon the snow. He tried to find any lingering memory not his own—and could not. There were only his thoughts inside the guide’s body. The world blurred before his eyes, and it took moments before he understood why.