“This one’s yours,” she told him, in case he’d missed its significance. “Obsidian for sorrow. The rest we find will be something about both of us.”
“Sorrow?” commented Wolf.
“Yes,” said Aralorn. “Like the maze as a whole, the first stones can tell you more than that. They’ll show you a bit about yourself and the pattern you’re living now—if you interpret what they’re saying correctly. I’ve always mostly ignored what the maze had to say about me, but you can try it if you’d like. Touch the stone for a minute or two, and it will tell you something.”
He hesitated, then took a step sideways and leaned against it, saying as he did so, “I’m not certain this is wise. I’ve never been fond of prophecy.”
“Mmm. Remember, it’s not a prediction of things to come: It’s an assessment of who you are now. And they’re not infallible.”
After a bit, he stepped away. He didn’t say anything, so she didn’t ask him what he’d seen. She drew the rune she’d used before, and the arrow appeared on the top of the stone, sending them at a shallow angle downward.
“The next stones are less personal and intended to help predict the near future—some of the time. The language of stones is pretty limited. Mostly it will just present attributes we have or will need.”
“Not very helpful,” said Wolf, and Aralorn grinned at him.
“Not that I’ve ever noticed.”
During the next several hours, they wandered from stone to stone, finding serpentine for wit, quartz for luck, and malachite for lust (she snickered a bit at that one). They ate the salted meat and cheese Aralorn had brought with them. As the sun reached its zenith, they started down the path the malachite had chosen for them. The stone they found was amethyst, protection against evil. When they came to a second, then yet a third amethyst, Aralorn grew concerned.
“I wonder if the stones will let us through,” she said, crouching in the snow beside the melon-sized crystal. “They might not if they think that harm will enter with us.”
“Do you want me to wait here?” Wolf asked softly. “You might find this easier on your own.”
Realizing he’d taken the message incorrectly, she raised her eyebrow. “Amethyst may be protection from evil, but the stones have already appraised you and have named you sorrowful. If they had judged you as harshly as you judge yourself, we would never have come this far.”
“Then you took quite a chance not coming here alone.”
She braced both hands on her hips. “I took no chances.”
“Stubborn as a pack mule,” he said.
Since she’d heard a number of people claim that, she couldn’t disagree.
She drew another rune and saw that their path led upward, as it had for the past few stones.
“I hope this ends soon,” she grumbled. “I really don’t want to spend the night outside. It’s cold, it’s getting late, and we still have to make the trip back.”
Waiting at the top of the climb was a wolf-sized chunk of white marble.
“Judgment,” said Aralorn in satisfaction. She thought it would be the last one, but found another maze stone at the top of a twisting bramble-and-brush-filled gorge.
“Rose quartz,” murmured Wolf. “It seems we are welcome here.”
Even so, Aralorn was unsurprised when the stone pointed them down the gorge.
“I knew I should have held out for luck,” she said. “Sometimes, there are ways around the gorge.”
There was no trail. Aralorn tore the knee out of her pants and almost lost her cloak before they arrived safely at the bottom. Wolf, of course, had no difficulty at all.
They emerged from the deep undergrowth into a small grotto. From the cliffs overhead, a solidly frozen waterfall plunged into an ice-covered pool. The transformation from the dense gray vegetation to the pristine little valley was shockingly abrupt, as if they had stepped into someone’s neatly kept castle garden. Even the snow that covered the ground was evenly dispersed, unmarred by footprints.
“This is it,” announced Aralorn with satisfaction. After a moment, she nodded toward the waterfall. “I spent one summer trailing streams in this part of Lambshold, trying to find every stream anywhere near here, and never found one that came through this grotto. I even tried to back-track this one, but I never managed it. I’d look away for a moment, and the stream would be gone.”
“I could do that with a variation of the lost spell.” Wolf eyed the rushing water speculatively.
“If you say so.” She heaved a theatrical sigh. “ ‘Frustrating’ is what I called it.”
He laughed. “I’ll bet you did. Isn’t there supposed to be someone here?”
“No, this is just the end of the maze. There’s a trail over by the waterfall,” Aralorn said, and began picking her way up the path that edged the pond.
A thin layer of snow turned to a sheet of ice as they approached the waterfall. Aralorn set her feet carefully and kept moving. Wolf drew to a halt and growled.
“I know,” said Aralorn quietly, stepping behind the shimmering veil of the frozen waterfall. “Someone’s watching us. I had expected them earlier.”
The difference between the bright daylight and the shadow of the falls caused her to stop to allow her eyes to adjust. Wolf bumped into her, then slipped past, examining the stone surface of the cliff face behind the waterfall. Behind a thin sheet of ice over the rock where a few last trickles of water had frozen, there was a small tunnel in the rock.
“That goes in about ten feet and ends,” said Aralorn. “I stayed there overnight once, but it was summer.”
The far end of the narrow path behind the falls was frozen over, but a few hits with the haft of one of her knives broke a small hole, and her booted foot cleared a space large enough to climb through.
Once out from under the waterfall, their way twisted up the side of the mountain. The path was cobbled, and the smooth stones were slicker than the natural ground. Aralorn tried to walk beside the path as much as she could. The climb was thankfully short, only to the top of the falls.
Over the years, the stream that formed the waterfall had cut a deep channel between the two mountains that fed it with the runoff from the snowy peaks. The path was cut into the side of one mountain several feet above the stream, winding and twisting with the course of the water.
After walking a mile or so, the path turned abruptly away from the mountain, through a thicket of brush and into a wide valley.
Wolf could still feel the eyes watching them, though he couldn’t tell where the spy was. It was not magic that told him so much, but the keen senses of the wolf. Not scent, nor sight, nor hearing, but faint impressions gathered from all three. It distracted him as he examined the place to which Aralorn had brought them.
The valley was surrounded by steep-sided hills that reminded him of the valley in the Northlands where he’d spent the past winter, although that had been far smaller. Someone had taken a lot of time to find a place this sheltered. The stone path, now half-buried in the snow, led up a slight incline to a pair of gateposts. Other than those, the valley appeared empty. Perhaps, he thought as he followed Aralorn, the village was located over the next rise.
Then, between one step and the next, magic rose over him from the ground, momentarily paralyzing him with its strength. Defensively, he analyzed it: a blending illusion that utilized the lay of the land to hide something in the valley.
Without conscious act, he found himself holding the magic to break the spell, magic that had nothing to do with the familiar, violent forces he normally worked. This was a surge of power that took its direction from the brief alarm he’d felt at the sudden wall of magic. It flared in an attempt to twist out of his fragile hold and attack the ensorcellment before him. The effort it took to restrain it challenged his training and power both.