by Kim Wedlock
And frozen it certainly was. Garon was already shivering. He steeled himself stubbornly, refusing to be affected. It didn't take him long to still.
But it seemed much colder than it ought to have been. Surely the snow should have been thicker. It was certainly cold enough...or was it? He resentfully had to admit that he was still disorientated, and having just ascended from summer meadows to the perpetual winter of the mountains left his perspective somewhat biased. There was no knowing if the intense cold was a result of magic or not.
But he had no such doubts over the ribbons of looping ice.
Coiled and rolling, it was as though a stream had loped through the air and been frozen immediately in place, and the cold, iridescent blue-purple light that slipped across those crystalline tongues as though water still flowed was just as suspicious. Beautiful, certainly - enchanting, even. But ominous. The allure was, as always, nothing less than disturbing.
He glanced around and caught Petra looking just as uncomfortable, her fingers indecisive in reaching for her sword, though steel would do nothing to help. He noticed a pocket of diamond dust shimmering silently in the air behind her, and then another closer to where Rathen stood, clutching the Zi'veyn which itself looked remarkable in the pure white setting. But, surely, it was nowhere near cold enough for that...
He decided to avoid stepping near those frozen clouds, just in case. It was little more than chance that he happened to turn around when he did and see Aria about to reach into one. She leapt back from it with eyes as big as saucers at his suddenly barked warning.
Garon's mind turned immediately to defence. There was unlikely to be anyone up there - even Salus - and should he be wrong, they were high enough and isolated enough to see them coming. He could afford to watch from beside a fire. And as his teeth resumed their previous chattering and the hairs on arms began to stand up beneath his sleeves, he knew he had little choice.
He was given no time to ponder over firewood, however, when a bundle dropped into the snow behind him and a sudden rush of wind forced him a step forwards. He turned and found the lead harpy as she alighted on the frozen ground. If a bird could look disgusted, her face was the perfect example. He wasted no time in lighting the logs with the tinderbox in his bag.
"Three days ago," it announced shrilly from somewhere in its throat as he sparked the firesteel, "there was an attack of flames in one of your cities. Its glow was seen from our eyries."
"We know," Petra sighed heavily, stepping up beside Garon. "Bowden."
The harpy bobbed her head, then looked off in the direction of the chasm. It couldn't be seen, but its presence loured just behind them as obviously as had the sun been stolen. "The western mountains have been rent, also. Two days ago. An earthen tribe has been obliterated. A water tribe was just missed."
"A water tribe in the mountains?"
"They most likely built around a spring," Garon replied as the wood began to smoke, and he blew the embers into life.
Her brow further knotted in concern. "The White River..."
"It still flows. But the Northrage has been cut off. The Grey River survives, by chance. The forests have not yet been affected. Green Hills still feeds from the flow of the White."
"I wonder if Hlífrún had something to do with that..."
"Perhaps," Garon said, straightening after warming his hands over the small flames for far less time than he'd have liked and stuffing them back into his uniform gloves. "Or it's just dangerously thin chance. Either way, Salus is aiming for the borders. The forests aren't an issue. It's the loss of her connection that worries her."
"They're very active," the harpy continued, speaking, they presumed, about the rest of the Arana. "Moving, scurrying. They're like busy ants rather than watchful spiders."
"How do you know it's them?"
"Because," she fixed Petra with her sharp, certain gaze, "they have an unnatural air. Can you not sense it from them?"
"They wouldn't be very effective at their job if we could..."
"What of your own safety?" Petra asked, crouching to the flames, unable to keep away for any longer. "And the ditchlings?"
"The...Arkhamas? We have...a system. We have a way of communicating so that we do not alert our attackers. We can move them into a trap the other has set up. It thins them out well enough."
"A system?"
"Trills and ruffles; whistles and rustles. The mice--the Arkhamas are more useful than they would appear, ground-ridden as they are."
Petra's lips pursed distastefully, but she held back any retort. Her temper had mellowed over the past few days.
Suddenly, the harpy spread a single wing, and the edge of a single silver feather glinted on its underside. Strangely, she reached down with her beak and plucked it. And even stranger still, it rattled. Only when she tidied her wings away with practised grace and offered it out towards them did Petra see that it was a necklace.
"The Arkhamas requested we return this to you," she said in a perfectly unchanged voice despite the clamp of her beak, and dropped it into Petra's outstretched hand.
She stared at the oval locket in unvarnished surprise, tears quickly springing to blur her sight, but she had no time to thank her before she rose into the air with a buffet of her wings and began to fly off with her kin, casting back the advice to simply 'call when they're finished'. They descended into the trees far below, and Garon wondered if they would actually hear them when they did.
He, Petra and Eyila sat in silence around the warming aura of the fire while Rathen and Anthis each busied themselves with magic and the ruin respectively. Aria leaned with arms stretched wide into a wild and relentless current of wind that blew up over the shelf, sweeping powdery snow up behind it. Her clothes billowed, and there was a tremendous look of joy on her notably pink face. They both kept a very sharp eye on her, ready to spring up and catch her, but before long the tension finally forced Petra to her feet and she turned the girl around, sending her away to 'help' Anthis instead. She was more than happy to oblige.
The slightest flicker of movement drew Garon's gaze towards the sheerest edge of the mountain. It took a moment of hard staring into the thin and dangerously slanted trees to see the two huge eyes staring back at him. He stiffened, becoming acutely aware of the inches' distance between his hand and his sword, but the thickly-furred, dog-like face watched him with subdued curiosity while its four feet - more like hands than paws - clung to the rough trunk and its long tail coiled about a branch for extra support. It was not alone, Garon noticed, and had spotted three more when Petra gasped beside him, having followed his gaze. But the four and any others besides did nothing but stare. They left them be in return, but kept a constant note of their location.
In the end, though, the tension of being watched so keenly and the rapidly swelling silence became too much, and that ridiculous yet persuasive voice in the depths of Garon's subconscious began goading him again. Watching the glint of the locket turning over in Petra's hands, the thoughtless words came out before he could stop them. "Why did your father train you?"
A sleek eyebrow cocked, and she looked at him with speculation. "Why?"
"Did you ask him? To follow in his--"
"No, why are you asking? You know who he is, you know he trained me for the Crucible. You know it was so I could succeed him."
"I meant...well, he's important to you."
"Whose father isn't? Yours?"
"No, he is," he replied lightly. "He's a cobbler. Taught me the importance of a good pair of boots."
A smile flickered, but it was all too brief. She turned back to the locket and ran her nail along the seam. "But you didn't answer my first question."
"I think you'll find that I did."
"No, you didn't, you brushed past it with an obvious statement. Why are you asking? In fact, what are you even doing?" Her eyes flashed with sudden venom. Her temper was mellowing, but it was still volatile. For a loathsome moment he stammered foolishly. She waited for him to present a
n answer, but he was too slow. Disappointment dropped as she scoffed and rose, the snow crunching beneath her feet as she walked away. "I am so sick of your yo-yoing."
Garon blinked, and as if his mind had vacated him for the duration of the exchange, he suddenly returned to himself and frowned in the sheerest confusion.
...What was he doing? What had he expected to achieve with such a stupid question? And why had it mattered so much?
The cold must have rattled his senses as well as his bones...
A resounding splash seized his attention and he spun to find the ribbons of ice collapsing and spreading out over the snow, their ephemeral blue-purple lights nowhere to be seen. But in that same instant came a familiar foreboding, and he turned immediately towards Eyila.
Her eyes were raging even before she spun in the snow to stare vehemently in Rathen's direction.
Garon seized her in a harmless restraint before she could launch into her irrational attack. Rathen was quick to turn and hurry to her side before Garon had the need to subdue her, the Zi'veyn once more floating between his hands.
Her eyes began to soften, then cleared, and as Rathen sagged with the effort, she caught him and cast her own spell in payment, returning a degree of his strength.
But Rathen's relief at the surrounding stillness and returning normality was fleeting.
'Just how much will silencing this magic really do?' The all too familiar question rang dubiously in his mind. If the magic was still there, what was to stop Salus from affecting it? Unless his rudimentary, half-baked instruction didn't cover the sensations of magic...if it stayed still, kept quiet, he just might miss it...
Rathen doubted it. He couldn't know how much of that chasm had been Salus's doing, but the fact that he was capable of it at all suggested that his hopes of thwarting him by such measures were futile. But what other option did he have?
...Well...perhaps there was one...
Tentatively, he turned and faced the others. Garon looked back so tightly he must have heard his thoughts. But he said it anyway. "We need to go to the Order." While Petra and Eyila gawked in shock, Garon was already shaking his head. "I know, but it looks like he really could move Turunda - or he'll completely obliterate it in the process. Turunda needs magical defences, and they need to know what--"
"No." Garon's voice was firm as stone. "Going to the Order defeats the entire purpose of having sought you out in the first place. Not to mention the very imminent fact that it would take us into Kulokhar. No, it's too dangerous. Far better--"
"He's too dangerous!"
"Far better to keep to the current plan, for now. We interfere with his plans, slow him down, while we work out a permanent solution."
"I am only one person," Rathen reminded him darkly, "only one mage. The Order numbers nearly two thousand - they could work out a permanent solution much faster than I can!"
"They don't understand the Zi'veyn like you do, nor all this magic! It would take them weeks, if not months to come to grips with it before they could even begin working on it, and they would distract each other with foolish suggestions or experimentation! You know this! And who is to say what could happen if a malcontent got his hands on it all and managed to do something with it?!"
"You can do this, Rathen," Petra said, looking at him pointedly. "And...if we did need the Order's help, we couldn't just waltz into the capital city, not with the Arana looking for us. If you need to confer with one or two of them, we'll need a plan." She held Rathen's gaze, deliberately avoiding Garon's. "If you really can't do it yourself."
"Of course he can do it," Aria announced, somewhat confused by Petra's doubt.
"Well, maybe," she pressed with a heavy sigh. "It's elven magic, an elven spell, the Zi'veyn is an elven construct. But your father...well, he's only half-elf."
Aria's young, pink face pulled into a slow, doubtful pout, and she regarded her father carefully. Her big eyes grew increasingly sceptical.
Rathen growled and snapped away from them, muttering defeatedly beneath his breath.
"I think we're done here," Petra declared with a look about the ordinary ruin, and ignored Garon's subtle look of approval to locate Anthis crouching on the far side of the barrows' altar, examining some mark or other very closely. His head popped up somewhat dejectedly when she called him away, and though he said 'one moment' three or four times, she ended up having to trudge over and drag him away by the blanket he'd wrapped about himself when the harpies finally answered Garon's doubtful call.
They left the watchful, dog-faced creatures behind them, who hadn't once strayed from the trees, and descended the mountain in another jarring yet astonishing flight. Once again they were all dropped unceremoniously to the ground, and the harpies left without farewell.
"They're rather rude, aren't they?" Petra observed tartly, watching them vanish above the trees as she climbed back to her feet and dusted herself off.
"Is it rudeness?" Anthis pondered. "They're not people..."
"They set Eyila down gently enough. It's all deliberate."
But Garon's attention was still on the mountains. His eyes narrowed. "Ferna." The others searched out over the meadows from the edge of the forest, but he ignored them in his pique. "They've left us at the opposite end of the forest - the next site was south of White Barrows. They've just added four days to our journey!"
"Let it pass, Garon," Rathen sighed, rubbing his head which had begun to throb half way through the bracing flight, "it can't be helped. It is what it is."
He looked up towards the sky. It was growing darker, but it remained impossible to determine the hour. "I doubt we'll make any progress today, anyway. We should move into the trees and find somewhere to camp. We have the cover of the dells, we should use it."
He was quite right, though Garon still took a moment to consider it before agreeing. But as they trekked into the forest, Rathen found himself having to restrain his pace. He was tired and eager to rest despite Eyila's help, but he felt some sensation in his soul that reached out for something more than sleep alone. The forest exuded such comfort and care; hidden from prying eyes, shielded from the elements, but also wilfully hospitable. It was as if he was back in the warmth and familiarity of the Scowles, but here, the trees themselves seemed to welcome him.
Rathen found a wondrous peace that night while the others fretted over the howl of wolves and the shift of vengeful shadows moving in to kill them for their interference. In fact, the possibility of the Arana's presence hadn't occurred to him at all until it was pointed out the next morning. It cast a rather unpleasant pallor over breakfast.
Confusion chased it off, however, when Garon announced that they were to continue west and into Ferna despite their goal lying somewhere in the mountains to the south-east. "After what the harpies have told us," he explained as they looked at him as though he'd gone mad, "we need to know what the people are saying. But above them, I want to contact the Hall and see what truths they can shed on the matter. We've been out of touch for too long; we need to find out what's been happening."
"We're close by," Anthis mused, "we may as well make use of it. We're fine for supplies, though."
"Good - then wait outside. The fewer of us in there, the less chance we have of catching anyone's eye."
"Or worse," Rathen muttered. The quality of Salus's surveillance spell had grown in hindsight to trouble him.
They were on the move by mid-morning, only too happy to put the mountains and their meddling behind them, and made quickly for the city of Ferna. They avoided the road, though it ran flat and parallel a short distance over the hills, and soon spotted the immense grey walls from across the rolling meadows. As they drew nearer and Anthis launched into an enthusiastic and largely undesired history lesson, it was clear that they'd been modified from their original build untold centuries ago; aside from certain reinforcement, the uppermost third was a few shades lighter than the rest, its stone masoned far more meticulously and laid far more precisely, and projected out nea
r the top to form a suitable parapet complete with bartizans and battlements. Once merely the boundary of a thriving elven city - short post-magic, Anthis assured them - and defence against beasts when it needed to be, now it was an impetuous guarantee against siege and attack - if not perhaps an open invitation to try.
But despite the needless tampering with the walls, the city itself was still a sight to behold. The best view came of course from the road, but the river approach was far from blind, and above those menacing walls, rising with the slope of the land, stood a mass of drystone arches and domes with lines that flowed like water; homes and halls, parks and baths, bell and aviary towers, crowned as a whole by a vaulted temple and its two stone sentinels, each clad in thick, chiselled armour. More modest than Tarun or Kulokhar, without a trace of onyx, gold or silver to be seen, and yet no less impressive - and its every building was still in use to that day.
It was just past another clouded noon when Garon broke away and the rest stopped beneath a towering overhang at the edge of the river. The water ran pitifully low, but it made for a perfect place to hide while they waited, and was far enough from the walls that no one would happen to spot them, especially while the festivities outside the gates occupied everyone's attention, citizen, guard and wayfarer alike.
Unfortunately, it also occupied Aria's attention; sat atop the overhang, hidden among the bushes that surrounded the vast old willow, she stared longingly towards the gathering, watching the flags and the flames waving in the breeze, infused with lively music and the aroma of seasonal toasted spices. Rathen kept a close eye on her though he ignored her every wistful sigh, each one a little stronger than the last for his benefit, until finally she gave up and spoke. Rathen shook his head immediately.
"It's all right," said Petra, "I'll take her. There's a ridge a little ways on, she'll have a safe view of the fire-breathers from there. It's a solid hiding spot."
