Below his feet, the snow which had fallen into the fissure became grey slush as the sea absorbed it.
He jerked a glance upward. “Stone and Sea!” he gasped. "Make haste!”
But the Master and Mistweave were not slow. Honninscrave threw himself flat on the ice with his head and shoulders over the rim. Mistweave braced the Master's legs; and Honninscrave reached down to take hold of the First.
In a moment, she scrambled out of the fissure, towing Pitchwife after her.
Her stem visage showed no reaction; but Pitchwife was breathing hard, and his gnarled hands trembled. “Stone and Seal” he panted again. “I am a Giant and love an eventful journey. But such happenings are not altogether to my taste.” Then a chuckle of relief came steaming between his bared teeth. “Also I am somewhat abashed. I sought to rescue my wife, yet it was she who caught my own fall.”
The First rested a hand lightly on his shoulder. “Mayhap if you were less impetuous in your rescuing- ” But as she turned to Honninscrave, her voice stiffened. “Master, it is my thought that we must bend our way somewhat northward. This ice is not safe.”
“Aye,” he growled. Ever since he had been forced to the realization that the company would have to leave Starfare's Gem, he had not been able to stifle the undertone of bitterness in his voice. "But that way is longer, and we are in haste. Northward me ice will be not so easily travelled. And this north is perilous, as you know.”
The First nodded reluctantly. After a moment, she let out a long sigh and straightened her back. “Very well,” she said. “Let us attempt the west again.”
When no one moved, she gestured Covenant and Linden back to the sleds.
Linden turned to walk beside Covenant. Her face was red with cold and severe with concentration. In a flat, quiet voice, she asked. “Why is this north perilous?”
He shook his head. “I don't know.” The scars on his right forearm itched in reaction to the First's fall and the suggestion of other hazards. “I’ve never been north of Revelstone and Coercri.” He did not want to think about nameless dangers. The cold was already too much for him. And he could not figure out how the company was going to get across the fissure.
But that problem was simply solved. While he and Linden climbed into their sleds, the First and Pitchwife leaped the gap. Then Honninscrave and Mistweave drew the sleds to the rim of the crack. There Covenant saw that the sleds were long enough to span the fissure. Honninscrave and Mistweave pushed them out over the gap: the First and Pitchwife pulled them across. When the rest of the company had passed the crack, Honninscrave and Mistweave slipped their arms into the harnesses again, and the First went on her way westward.
Now she set a slower pace, in part for caution and in part to accommodate Pitchwife's weariness. Still her speed was greater than any Covenant could have matched afoot. The ice seemed to rush jolting and skidding under the runners of the sled. But whenever she saw something she distrusted, she dropped to a walk and probed ahead with her longsword until she was sure that the ground was safe.
For the rest of the morning, her care proved unnecessary. But shortly after the company had paused for a brief meal and a few warming swallows of diamondraught, the point of her sword bit into the crust, and several hundred feet of packed snow along a thin line to the north and south fell from sight. This fissure also was easily crossed; but when the companions gained the far side, the First faced Honninscrave again and said, “It is too much. This ice grows fragile beneath us.”
The Master breathed a curse through ha frosted beard. Yet he did not demur when the leader of the Search turned toward the northwest and thicker ice.
For most of the afternoon, the floe remained fiat, snow-brushed, and unreliable. From time to time Covenant sensed that the surface was sloping upward; but the brightness of the sun on the white landscape made him unsure of what he saw. Although he sipped diamondraught at intervals, the cold sank deeper into his bones. His face felt like beaten metal. Gradually, he drifted into reveries of conflagration. Whenever he became drowsy with liquor and chill, he found himself half dreaming wild magic as if it were lovely and desirable-flame sufficient to tear down Kemper's Pitch; passion powerful enough to contend with the Worm of the World's End; venom capable of subsuming everything in its delirium. That fire was vital and seductive-and as necessary as blood. He would never be able to give it up.
But such dreams led him to places where he did not want to go. To the scream which had nearly torn out his heart when Linden had told him the truth of the venom and the Worm. And to that other fire which lay hidden at the roots of his need-to the caamora which he had always failed to find, though his soul depended on it.
Urgent with alarm, he repeatedly fought his way back from the brink of true sleep. And the last time he did so, he was surprised to see that the north was no longer blank. The First's path angled toward a ridge of tremendous ice-chunks: Piled into the sky, they reached out for the horizons, east and west. Although the sun was near setting, it was far down in the south and did not blind him, but rather shone full and faintly pink on the ridge, making the ice appear as unbreachable as a glacier.
Here the First turned toward the west again, keeping as close to the base of the ridge as possible without sacrificing a clear route for the sleds. But in her way boulders and monoliths lay like menhirs where they had rolled or fallen from the violence which had riven the ice. She was forced to slow her pace again as the difficulty of the terrain increased. Nevertheless her goal had been achieved. The surface which supported that ridge was unlikely to crack or crumble under the pressure of the company's passage.
As the sun sank, vermilion and fatal, into the west, the travellers halted for the night Pitchwife slumped to the ice and sat there with his head in his hands, too tired even to talk Covenant and Linden climbed stiffly from their sleds and walked back and forth, rubbing their arms and stamping their feet, while Mistweave and Honninscrave made camp. Honninscrave unpacked sections of heavily-tarred canvas to use as ground-sheets, then laid more blankets. Mistweave unloaded Linden's sled until he had uncovered a large flat rectangle of stone. This he set out as a base on which to build a fire, so that melting ice would not wet the wood. To no one in particular, the First announced her estimate that the company had come more than twenty leagues. Then she fell silent.
When Mistweave had a crisp blaze going, Pitchwife struggled to his feet, rubbed the frost from his face, and went to do the cooking. As he worked, he muttered indistinctly to himself as if the sound of some voice-his own if no one else's-were necessary to his courage. Shortly, he had produced a thick stew for his companions. But still the pall of the waste hung over them, and no one spoke.
After supper, Pitchwife went to sleep almost at once, hugging his ground-sheet about him. The First sat sternly beside the fire and toyed with the fagots as though she did not want to reconsider her decisions. As determined as ever to emulate the devotion of the Haruchai, Mistweave joined Cail standing watch over the company. And Honninscrave stared at nothing, met no one's eyes. His orbs were hidden under the weight of his brows, and his face looked drawn and gaunt.
Linden paced tensely near the fire as if she wanted to talk to someone. But Covenant was absorbed by his visceral yearning for the heat of white flame. The effort of denial left him nothing to say. The silence became as cold and lonely as the ice. After a time, he gathered his blankets and followed Pitchwife's example, wrapping himself tightly in his ground-sheet.