"Follow Chap," he told Magiere. "We need to get away from the opening to someplace more sheltered."
Magiere scowled, as if all this were his fault, and glanced at Wynn slumped against the stone, breathing weakly. She carefully took Wynn by the waist and led the way with the crystal in her free hand.
Leesil heard Chap scrabbling ahead over the uneven floor, so he hoisted their few belongings. The deeper they went, the quieter it became, until the wind outside sounded far off. Along the way, Leesil noticed pockmarks of darkness high above that the crystal's light couldn't erase. There were smaller openings-cubbies, holes, and other natural cracks, perhaps even channels and smaller tunnels connected into the larger passage.But always at a height impossible to see into.
What at first seemed a cave at the passage's end, made from ancient shifting rock inside the mountain, became a series of subterranean pockets. One led to the next, ever inward below a connecting tangle of smaller cracks and fissures overhead. The air felt slightly warmer, or maybe it was just that they were out of the wind. The way narrowed, then widened, shortened then opened, over and over, until inside one tall cavern the crystal's light barely reached the stone ceiling overhead.
"It's so high," Leesil whispered, and then thought he heard something.
Cloth or some other soft substance dragged quickly across rough stone.
Every move they made echoed and warped off the walls, and Leesil couldn't be sure it wasn't just a trick of fatigue. He quick-stepped to catch Magiere's shoulder and called out to Chap.
"Here… we stop. Over by that wall there's a smooth slant of stone."
Magiere looked where he pointed and guided Wynn to their resting place. Leesil dropped their belongings beside them, but Chap remained poised at the cave's center.
The dog let out a low rumble, turning his head slowly. He scanned all around the chamber.
Something made Chap wary, and that was enough for Leesil to hesitate. He took a few steps out toward Chap, turning his own eyes upward to the hidden high places above.
"What is it?" he asked.
A long silence followed. Chap huffed three times to say he didn't know.
Leesil backed up to Magiere and Wynn, still watching all around.
Magiere had settled Wynn to lean against the horse pack. She stripped off the sage's blanket, shook away clinging snow, and laid it across the woman's legs. Leesil knelt down on Wynn's left.
"I have to look… feel your shoulder and upper arm," he said quietly, and pulled off his gloves.
Wynn didn't even nod. Perhaps she hadn't heard him.
Magiere sidled closer on Wynn's right, waiting tensely as Leesil unfastened the sage's cloak and short robe. He rubbed his hands together before his mouth, trying to warm them. As he pulled Wynn's shift open and slipped one hand in, Magiere slid her arm behind Wynn's back and held the sage tight against herself.
"Squeeze hard," she whispered, gripping Wynn's good hand."Hard as you have to."
Leesil held Wynn's left arm with his free hand as he closed his fingers around the soft skin of her small shoulder. Wynn sagged and buried her face into Magiere with a soft whimper.
For all he could tell, Wynn's shoulder was sound. She had not winced when he'd first gripped her upper arm, so it was unlikely any bones had broken or cracked. He closed up Wynn's clothing and grabbed the crystal Magiere had left atop the skulls' chest. Setting it down before his knees, heunwrapped Wynn's wrist.
Once he'd rinsed away the blood with a bit of chilled water, the teeth marks in her skin didn't look so bad. He rewrapped the bandage, put the crystal back, and shook out his cloak and Magiere's.
Leesil reclined against the pack as Wynn settled and closed her eyes. With the sage between himself and Magiere, he covered all three of them with the cloaks and blanket.
Magiere watched him with something akin to a frown on her wind-burned face. Or was it disappointment? She finally closed her eyes.
"Go to sleep," she said, and a dull flush of shame washed through Leesil.
They were all in a desperate way, and Wynn had been injured yet again.
Leesil couldn't count the times he'd cursed at Chap for every blocked passage or dead end they'd run into. But his guilt was always outmatched by what drove him.
Somewhere beyond reach, his mother waited. As he laid his head back, his gaze fell upon the small snow-dusted chest.
Dusk fell as Chane huddled in his cloak within a makeshift tent, listening to Welstiel's incessant murmurs.
"Iced stronghold… show me… where…"
Chane cocked his head.
Dark hair marked with white-patched temples gave Welstiel the distinguished look of a gentleman in his forties. But over passing moons since leaving the city ofBela in Magiere's wake, the once fastidious and immaculate Welstiel had fallen into disarray.
Disheveled locks, mud-stained boots, and a cloak beginning to tatter made it hard for Chane to see the well-traveled noble he had first met.
Chane sneered. He knew that he looked no better.
"Orb…" Welstiel muttered.
Chane tried to focus upon Welstiel's scattered words. He pulled the threadbare cloak tighter around his own shoulders.
Cold was a mortal concern to which he gave no thought, but he was starving. He longed for the heat of blood filling him up with life.Hunger grinding inside him made his thoughts wander.
Well past a moon ago, he and Welstiel had pursued Magiere and her companions through the Warlands and into the city ofVenjetz. None of them knew Welstiel followed, and they believed Chane was gone, after Magiere had beheaded him in the dank forests of eastern Droevinka. Welstiel remained undetected, but Chane was not so certain that Magiere was unaware of his return to the world.
Welstiel purchased sturdy horses, grain for feed, and a well-worn cloak for Chane from a merchant caravan they happened upon. He also procured canvas, several daggers, and a lantern. From a distance, they followed Magiere, Leesil, Chap, and Wynn through the foothills and into the base of the Broken Range where it met with the Crown Range. On the twelfth dusk within those heights, Chane was preparing for the night's travel when Welstiel mounted and turned his horse east by southeast.Away from Magiere's path.
"We follow our own way-into the Crown Range. Magiere will find us when she has finished chasing Leesil's past among the elves."
His voice had been calm, but Chane knew better. He sensed resignation in his companion. No undead could enter the forests of the elves, or so Welstiel had once claimed.
Chane heard something that made him pause, and he urged his horse up next to Welstiel's.
Voices carried down the mountainside, not quite clear enough to understand. But his vision expanded to full range, and he caught movement far above. Magiere and her companions had set up camp below a granite spire jutting up from the mountainside. As their campfire sprang to life, Chane's grip tightened on the reins.
Wynn crouched near the sputtering flames.
Now Welstiel would have him just turn away?
Anger burned against Chane's hunger at this last glimpse of Wynn, still wearing his cloak. As far as Chane knew, Welstiel had never noticed this one telltale sign.
On the last night in Venjetz, Chane had carried Wynn from Darmouth's keep to safety. Welstiel knew as much, and Chane never denied it. Wynn remained unconscious the whole time, never seeing who carried her. But the others with her-one frail but sharp-eyed noblewoman and a strange girl child-would surely have told Wynn that he had been there.
And he had covered Wynn with his cloak.
The thought of her so far from reach, beyond his protection-especially among those bigoted elves-was unbearable. But Chane did not blame Welstiel.
He blamed Magiere.
Wynn would follow that white-skinned bitch down into every netherworld of every long-forgotten religion. Chane had once tried to dissuade her and failed. Nothing he did or said would stop Wynn. Now he had no home, nothing he truly desired, and little future other than to follow Welstiel in search of the man's fantasy-this… orb.