"You lied," Tavis said. His voice was not as angry as it was astonished and hurt. "You lied to me." * 8* The Glacier
The nickering returned, a series of soft, chattering snorts somewhere above the rim of the icy crevasse. Brianna's talisman, dangling from a piece of rune-inscribed bark in Tavis's hand, slowly spun in the darkness and pointed toward the sound. The tip wavered there a moment, then whirled back in the direction it had been pointing earlier. The silver spear began to sweep back and forth, never holding its position more than a second.
"Phaw! We can't trust that amulet," Morten growled, keeping his voice low. He wore a fresh bandage around his neck, for the last few days of hard travel had sapped his recuperative powers so much that the wound on his throat had begun to fester. "We know where Brianna is. Let's just go get her."
Tavis did not answer. His eyes were fixed on the heavens, searching for the source of the strange nickering. He could see only a narrow wedge of purple starlit sky, for the scout and his rescue party were climbing through a lateral crevasse, an abyssal ice canyon that ran the entire length of the Needle Peak glacier. Gleaming blue walls loomed to both sides of them, impossibly high and so close together that any of the three giant-kin present could have touched both sides by extending his arms. In the bottom of the rift, cold, dead air hung heavy around their numb faces, while the frigid torrents of a tiny melt-water stream gushed over their frozen feet.
Despite the cold, Tavis's face was flushed with excitement. At dusk, Avner had climbed a few hundred feet up Needle Peak to survey the glacier. He had seen the ogres making camp not far above, at the base of a huge ice wall. Several brutes had been erecting an ice-block hut, and the youth had seen a smaller form, almost certainly Brianna, lying in the snow nearby. After hearing the boy's report, Tavis and his companions had decided to sneak up the lateral crevasse to rescue Brianna.
It had been shortly after they started the long journey up the glacier that the nickering began. The sound was soft and plaintive, so bushed that at times Tavis thought it might be nothing but the distant groans of flowing ice-until he looked down and saw Brianna's talisman swinging toward the sound.
Tavis turned to Basil and raised the wobbling amulet. "This happens each time we hear that snorting," the scout said. Although he did not say so, he recognized the sound as that of a horse-most likely Blizzard. "Why does the talisman spin?"
"His m-m-magic's f-f-failing," chattered Earl Dobbin. He and Avner were suffering more from the freezing cold than the three giant-kin. "What do you expect from a ch-charlatan?"
The scout ignored the comment and waited for Basil's reply. If it had been up to Tavis, the lord mayor would have returned to Hartsvale with the other earls who survived the ogre ambush, but Morten wouldn't hear of it. The burly firbolg did not trust Tavis or his companions and had agreed to work with them only if Dobbin came along to balance the odds. Even when Basil had pointed out that Dobbin's peers were all suffering from injuries and could use a healthy man's assistance on the journey back, Morten had insisted that the lord mayor come along.
Casting an angry glare at Dobbin, Basil said, "I assure you, I am no charlatan. The talisman is wavering for good reason."
A terrible thought occurred to Tavis. "Has Goboka vexed your rune?" the scout asked. Given that the shaman's warriors had failed to return from their ambush, the ogre would be a fool not to assume his pursuers would try for Brianna tonight. "Can he do that sort of thing?"
"A powerful shaman like him? Of course he can," Basil replied. The verbeeg paused, then smiled proudly. "That's why I didn't use a rune that would lead us to Brianna herself. I employed one that's designed to locate lost property. I doubt Goboka has thought of that."
"What nonsense are you babbling?" demanded Morten.
"Simply put, the talisman isn't pointing at Brianna," the verbeeg explained. "It's pointing at her belongings- in this case, her clothes and, I believe, at her horse." He cast his eyes toward the crevasse rim, where the soft nickering continued.
"That's ridiculous!" Earl Dobbin scoffed. "No horse could follow over the t-terrain we've c-crossed!"
"Lord Mayor, I'd think you, of all people, would know better than to underestimate Blizzard." Tavis could not quite keep from sneering as he made the observation.
"I do," the earl replied. "But Blizzard is a horse, not a mountain goat. Even she could not have-"
An alarmed whinny sounded from above, interrupting the lord mayor. Tavis looked up in time to see the black shadow of a horse leaping across the crevasse, then something clattered off the ice overhead. As the silhouette vanished from the night sky, a slender shaft of wood tumbled down the canyon walls and splashed into the icy stream. Morten grabbed the stick as it floated past.
"Ogre arrow," grunted the bodyguard.
Tavis fixed his gaze on the rim where Blizzard had been. "But no ogre," he observed, noting that there were no gleaming eyes peering over the edge. "You'd think the warrior would be curious about why Blizzard was lingering by the crevasse."
"Unless he already knew," suggested Basil.
Tavis looked down at Brianna's amulet. The silver spear had stopped wavering, its tip pointing considerably away from the route ahead. Given that they had traveled less than halfway up the icy canyon, the angle seemed much too great They still had at least a mile to go, so if the ice shelter had been built anywhere near the crevasse, the talisman should have been pointing almost straight up the gorge-at least if Brianna was inside the structure.
"You're suggesting Goboka's ice hut is meant for us?"
Basil nodded.
"For us?" asked Morten. "What for?"
"To l-lure us into his t-trap, you oaf," said Earl Dobbin. "We should t-turn back for t-tonight. We can warm ourselves by a nice f-fire and try again in the morning."
"Our chance will be gone by then," said Tavis. "Besides, if I'm right, we may be able to turn the ogres' plan against them."
"And if you're wrong?" demanded the lord mayor.
Tavis shrugged. "We'll know soon enough."
The scout resumed the journey, sloshing up the tiny stream in the bottom of the crevasse. So frigid was the brook that only its swift current prevented the water from turning solid. A thick layer of slush rolled along its icy bed, making the footing so treacherous that Tavis bad to hold on to the canyon walls to keep from falling. Nor was the going any easier where the rivulet slowed, for the eddies and pools were covered by thin blankets of ice that shattered beneath the giant-kin's great weight, and he often found himself standing up to his thighs in water so cold it made his bones ache.
Morten and Basil suffered the same discomforts as Tavis, but, for the two humans, wading up the icy stream was an even greater challenge. They stumbled about as if they had lost all feeling in their legs, and more than once Morten or Basil had to catch one of them before he pitched headlong into the frigid waters. That Earl Dobbin continued to wear his breastplate and helmet did not help matters, for the steel was covered with a thick coating of hoarfrost that added to the armor's burdensome weight.
Despite their difficulties, they made steady progress. Tavis paused every now and then to look up and see if they were being watched, but he saw no eyes-ogre or equine. The angle between the crevasse's route and the tip of Brianna's talisman steadily increased. By the time they had ascended the glacier far enough to see the dark silhouette of the ice wall looming above the rim, the silver spear pointed almost directly at the side of the canyon.
Tavis stopped and gathered the others close. "Avner, where would you say that ice hut is in relation to us?"
Despite Avner's obvious discomfort, the mere fact that the scout had condescended to ask him a question caused the boy's eyes to light. It was only the third time Tavis had spoken to him since learning how the youth had abandoned Morten and the earls to the ogre ambush.