"It is all right," she said, and even weaker, like a child on the edge of sleep, "thank you."
Chap turned a circle and curled up at Wynn's feet.
He laid his head upon his paws, trying to keep his eyes open, and watched the heights of the cavern. He never knew whether fatigue or the waning crystal finally pulled him down into darkness.
Welstiel urged his horse through the dark, keeping up with Chane amid the scattered trees of the rocky mountainside. Occasionally, Chane slowed to sniff the night breeze.
Disdain tainted Welstiel's grudging respect for Chane's hunting instincts. He had suppressed such long ago, but given their present situation, the need for life to feed upon grew desperate even for him.
Since leaving Venjetz, Chane had reverted to the resourceful companion he had been in Magiere's homeland of Droevinka, securing supplies, setting proper camps before dawn, and hunting. Even his ambition to seek out the sages had renewed. Welstiel was pleasantly relieved, at least in part.
"Are we close?" he asked quietly.
Chane did not answer. He wheeled his horse aside, sniffed the air like a wolf, and then kicked his panting mount forward.
Welstiel followed with a frown. When they pushed through thin trees tilted by decades of wind, he caught a whiff of smoke. Chane's starvation might drive him to lunge the instant they found prey, but Welstiel had other plans.
"Stop!" he whispered sharply.
"What?" Chane rasped. He reined his horse in, his long features half-feral around eyes drained of color.
"Whoever we find, I will question them first." Welstiel pulled up beside Chane. "Then you may do as you please."
The sides of Chane's upper lips drew back, but his self-control held. He pointed between two small boulder knolls.
"Through there."
Welstiel smoothed back his hair. Despite his threadbare cloak, he still had the haughty manner of a noble. It was near midnight, and as Welstiel rounded a rocky hillock he saw a small flickering campfire. Two figures sat beyond its ring of scavenged stones.
"Hallo," he called out politely.
Their faces lifted. The flames lit up the ruddy dark features of an aging Mondyalitko couple. Unbound black hair hung past the old woman's shoulders with thin streaks of gray turning white in the firelight. She was layered in motley fabrics, from her quilted jacket to her broomstick skirt. The man tensed and reached behind where he sat. Dressed in as many layers as his mate, he wore a thick sheepskin hat with flaps over his ears.
Behind them stood a lean mule tied to a small enclosed cart not nearlyso large as these wanderers usually lived in. What were they doing up here all alone? Welstiel smiled with a genteel nod and urged his horse to the clearing's edge.
"Could we share your refuge and perhaps some tea?" he asked, gesturing to a silent Chane. "We had trouble finding a place out of the wind. We can pay for the imposition."
The man stood up, an age-stained machete in his grip. His manner eased as he eyed the night visitors, who were clearly not roving bandits.
"Coin's not much good up here," he replied in Belaskian with a guttural accent."Perhaps a trade?"
"Our food supply is low," Welstiel lied, as he had no food. "But we have grain to spare for your mule."
The old man glanced at his beast, which looked like it had not eaten properly in some time. With a satisfied nod, he waved the night visitors in.
"We have spiced tea brewing. Are you lost?"
"Not yet," Welstiel answered wryly. "We are cartographers… for the sages' guild in Bela."
The old man raised one bushy gray eyebrow.
"I know… mapmakers, wandering about in the dark," Welstiel replied. "We stayed in the upper peaks too long. Our supplies dwindled faster than anticipated."
The woman snorted and reached for the blackened teapot resting in the fire's outer coals.
"Hope these sages-whatever they are-pay good coin to track ways that few ever travel."
Chane remained silent as he settled by the fire. Welstiel knew these pleasantries were difficult for him at such close range, but Chane would have to hold out a little longer.
"And what are you two doing up here in winter?" Welstiel asked.
"Stole cows from the wrong baron," the man said without the slightest shame. "We know these ways, but the baron's men don't."
This blatant honesty surprised Welstiel, and it must have shown on his face.
The old man laughed. "If you were the baron's hired men, you'd hardly have waited for an invite."
Likely true.Welstiel glanced at Chane and noticed his hands were shaking. In the camp's flickering light, Chane's skin looked dry like parchment beginning to show its age. Neither Mondyalitko took notice of Chane's odd silence.
Welstiel hurried things along. He returned to their horses, took a grain sack hanging from Chane's saddlebag, and dropped it beside the fire.
"Take what you need," he said. "At dawn, we head down for supplies."
"We thank you," the old man said with a casual shrug, though it did not hide the eager widening of his eyes.
"Our employers asked us to locate any structures or settlements," Welstiel went on. "Waystations, villages, even old ruins… any strongholds high up. Do you know of any we should seek out when we come back?"
The woman handed him a chipped mug of tea. "There's Hoar's Hollow Keep. A lonely old place trapped where the snow and ice last most year round."
Welstiel paused in midsip, then finished slowly. Locked in snow and ice.
"You're certain? How many towers does it have?"
The woman frowned, as if trying to remember."Towers? I don't know.Haven't seen it since I was a girl."
She stepped around the ring of stones and poured Chane a mug of tea. He took it but did not drink.
"Can you tell us the best route?" Welstiel asked.
You'd do better to wait for the thaw," the old man answered. "It's a ways, and at least then most of the path would be clear."
"Yes, but where?" Welstiel's grip tightened on the mug, and he struggled to relax his fingers.
"Thirty leagues… or likely more, into the Crown Range," the woman answered.
Chane let out a hissing sigh.
"Hard going, so it'll seem longer," said the man.
"Just head southeast until you reach a large ravine," his wife continued. "Like a giant gouge in the mountainside. It stretches into the range, so you can't miss it. The passage is marked by flat granite slabs. Come to think, they might not be easy to spot in the snow. Once down through the passage, you'll see your stronghold, but it'll be blocked away by winter now."
Welstiel stayed silent. It was the only way he could contain a rising relief that had waited for decades. A chance meeting with two Mondyalitko thieves put the end of his suffering in sight.
Elation faded like the vapor of hot tea in a cold breeze. Was it chance?
Perhaps his dream patron relented from years of teasing hints. Perhaps those massive coils in his slumber took a more active role in his favor.
A season had passed since he had trailed Magiere into Droevinka, the land of her birth. Before her birth, in his own living days, Welstiel had resided there. Ubad, his father's retainer, had waited there all Magiere's life for her to return within his reach. When she came and then rejected him, the mad necromancer had called out to something by a name.
il'Samar.
In hiding amid Apudalsat's dank forest, Welstiel watched dark spaces between the trees undulate with spectral black coils taller than a mounted rider.The same coils of his dreams-his own patron-or so it seemed. And it abandoned Ubad in his moment of need. Welstiel had watched as Chap tore out the old conjuror's throat.