by Sever Bronny
Mountains lay ahead as far as the eye could see, great behemoths with black windswept peaks that raked the sky. He consulted the map and realized Leera descended towards a massive glacier full of jagged seracs, instead of heading toward the side of another mountain that met up with this one.
“You’re going the wrong way, Leera!” he shouted. She was too far to hear him though. He began to jog towards her, the rucksack bouncing on his back.
“Leera, you’re going—” suddenly the ground beneath him gave way. He slammed against blue ice and fell straight down, eventually jamming between two sharp ice walls. Snow and ice smashed into his head from above.
“Oh …” He moaned, wincing. Everything seemed to hurt. He tasted blood in his mouth. A bit of sun bounced off the walls above, casting a light blue glow. Below him, the fall continued into darkness.
Just great—he had fallen into a hidden crevasse in the ice, one Leera miraculously missed. The ice groaned. Was it moving? The thought made his heart thump. He listened. Sure enough, the ice was rumbling and cracking below him, in that deep darkness that beckoned for his life.
“Leera, can you hear me!” he called, though his voice was weak because his chest was squished between the ice. He was wedged in so good he thought it’d take the wolven to get him out. His rucksack was underneath him, dangling on its strap, Orb of Orion, tent and everything else ready to fall into the void.
He tried to extricate himself but the movement only wedged him in further. Great, he thought. Got into a really good one now, and what timing too …
He resigned himself to wait, completely helpless.
“Augum!” came a distant voice.
Finally, he thought. Took her long enough … “I’m down here,” he said, unable to shout.
“Augum, where are you!”
“Right … here.”
“Augu—” suddenly she shrieked. A whole bunch of snow crashed onto him. He cringed, waiting to get hit by her body and fall to oblivion. Luckily, it never came. He glanced up. She had somehow managed to grab the ledge and hoist herself back up.
“Aug! Are you all right!” Her face was red, voice edged with panic.
He wanted to shout that this was her fault. If she’d only waited for him … “I’m great,” he said instead. “Just taking a break. How’re you doing?” Talking only wedged him in further somehow.
“This is no time for jokes, Aug. How are we going to get you out of there!”
He thought about it. She was right, and being angry wouldn’t help. He struggled but again wedged himself in further. Nope, he couldn’t move. There was nothing he could do. “I don’t know …”
“What!”
“I don’t know!” he repeated, but Leera only held up her hands.
“Hard to hear you, you’re going to have to speak up!” She waited for him to respond, but the pressure of the ice prevented him from speaking. “Hold on,” she said, rummaging. “Shoot, you have the rope!”
He groaned. He did have the rope. It was in his rucksack, except it was jammed beneath him.
She adjusted her position and placed a hand over her eyes. “You’re going to have to somehow get the rucksack above you then get the rope out!”
Easier said than done, he thought bitterly. He wiggled to get at the rope, but it was impossible—his arms were completely jammed up against the ice.
“Use Telekinesis!”
“Fine,” he said.
“What!”
Oh for—he closed his eyes, ignoring her, and focused his mind on the difficult task. He also tried to ignore the fact he had extremely limited experience casting Telekinesis gesture-free. First, he went through the motions in his mind. Then he opened his eyes and focused all his arcane energies on the objective. The rucksack strap slowly began to move. Leera was shouting something above, but he refused to let his concentration waver for a moment.
At last, the rucksack drifted above him, having twirled halfway around his body, before falling onto his side. The effort had pushed his arcane boundary. A dull familiar throb began at the front of his brain.
“Great job!” Leera called. “Now comes the tricky part—you’re going to have to free the rope—”
Well, obviously, he wanted to say. If she’d only waited for him, they’d have walked in a different direction and avoided this whole mess.
The process of retrieving the rope was arduous and demanded great patience. First, he had to arcanely untie the rucksack. This was difficult on its own, but then he had to open it without spilling its contents, telekinetically reach inside without looking, and lastly pull the rope out with his mind. Luckily, he knew exactly where it was located in the rucksack.
An hour of this frustrating struggle passed, with many a near miss.
“You did it, Aug!” Leera shouted at last. “Great, we’re halfway there.”
The pounding in his head made him wince.
“Let me see if I can get it from here now!” She reached out. “Bear with me, never tried using Telekinesis so far away!”
The end of the rope finally began to snake its way up. She better not drop it—if that rope fell, he doubted he’d be able to catch it.
“Got it! Now you have to figure out a way to tie it around you!”
He had been thinking about this part. He had to use Telekinesis again to wrap the rope around himself and then make a knot. The knot would be the tricky part. He began, failing numerous times, until at last, another hour later, he managed to tie the rope awkwardly around his shoulder and waist.
“How are you doing down there?” Leera asked after a while. “You all right?”
“Yes,” he lied, having completely exhausted himself from the effort.
“What!”
He didn’t bother repeating himself.
“I’m going to dig in and start pulling,” she said. “Are you ready? Here we go!”
He winced as the rope dug into him, but he didn’t budge.
Leera cursed. “Again!”
Snow and ice slammed into his head from above, making the throbbing a hammering. All he could was close his eyes and hope a big chunk didn’t knock him out.
“I’ll see if I can use Telekinesis at the same time!” she said.
The rope bit into him for the third time. His body began to loosen slowly as he felt a force pull at him. Above, Leera groaned from the strain. He managed to get an arm loose and braced himself with it. Then he got the other one out and grabbed a handhold, righting himself.
He was free. Above, Leera collapsed, panting.
After a few gasping breaths, he shouted, “I think I can climb the rest of the way if you keep pulling!”
The pair of them struggled for the next half hour or so, until Augum at last pulled himself over the ledge with the last of his strength, wheezing for breath. Except for some bruising and a twisted ankle, he was remarkably unhurt. The two of them silently laid there in the afternoon sun, a light breeze blowing by, the sky clear of cloud.
The Obelisk
As much as Leera apologized, Augum refused to hear it. He limped on in the correct direction, ignoring her protests.
“… you might have fallen into it anyway,” she argued, keeping pace alongside. “Look, the path we’re taking isn’t far off from that crack at all.” She waited for him to respond. “So, you’re just going to ignore me the whole time now? Is that my punishment?”
“We should stop,” he muttered, trying to quit hobbling.
“Wow, he speaks! And yes, let’s do that because I’d like to take a look at that gash on your head.”
“Just … don’t.” It was a minor cut, hardly worth bothering about. He plopped down, stomach grumbling. Suppertime approached, they hadn’t even had lunch yet and had only made it halfway to the other mountain.
“I’m sorry,” she said for the umpteenth time. “I shouldn’t have wandered so far ahead. It was stupid.” She crouched in front of him and gave an exaggerated pout. “Will you forgive me? Hmm?”
He
couldn’t help but crack a grin at her silliness. “Damn it, you make it hard to be mad at you. Fine already, just … stop.”
She flashed a self-satisfied smile and returned to sitting beside him. They ate quietly, deciding to treat themselves with dried and salted salmon wrapped in thin bread, with a side of dried green peas and nuts.
Augum watched the vast expanse with wonder. He’d never been to the mountains before, but remembered etchings he’d seen in Sir Westwood’s books. The stories they told were always of heroic adventure and brave deeds, but none of them spoke of the intense cold that stiffened and numbed fingers, the long slog that burned the calves, the danger of hidden crevasses.
They were still up pretty high. Next they’ll descend into a valley, cross over to the other mountain, and travel along its edge. On the other side of that mountain, they should find the rectangle as marked on the map.
Augum removed his foot from his boot and shoved it in snow to take the swelling down. By the time they set off again, the headache had gone away and the pain in his chest subsided. They even practiced their spells a bit, at least, the quiet ones.
The day moved along, the sun traveling overhead and edging toward the western horizon. Great circular disks of cloud appeared high up around the peaks, creating a strange halo effect. The trees of Ravenwood had completely disappeared behind them—their entire view was now composed of mountains, valleys, and the enormous glacier, the center so cracked it appeared a giant dagger had stabbed it repeatedly.
Augum pointed at a black dot on the glacier. “What do you think that is?” He’d been watching it for a while and swore that it was moving.
“I don’t know, can’t see from this far.”
“Wish we still had the spyglass.”
They paced on, keeping an eye on it. It seemed to be going parallel to them in the same direction.
“Let’s find a place to setup for the night, then eat,” Augum said at dusk.
“Agreed.”
They continued on, but the slopes here were as smooth as the cheeks of a Henawa child. There was no shelter anywhere. No trees, no rocks, nothing.
“Let’s just stop here, I’m exhausted,” Leera said.
“What if we get hit by an avalanche?”
She glanced up at the peak, its upper third painted by the remains of the crimson sun. “Wherever we go we’re in danger of that.”
“True.”
The pair erected the tent, panting.
When they finished, Augum nodded at the dot on the glacier. “Look, he stopped too.”
“Probably also setting camp for the night.”
They crawled into the tent, making it as cozy as possible, before breaking out another delicacy—salted beef with rosemary. They also had dried apple and honeyed almonds for dessert. Mr. Goss and Mr. Okeke had done a marvelous job of finding them tasty provisions. Augum wondered how they fared back in Milham. He imagined them chatting idly before the hearth, cup of steaming tea in their hands.
After supper, they checked on the Orb of Orion. Amazingly, Mrs. Stone was there and waiting! They told her all about their day and how beautiful the view was, their ears pressed up against the orb. She admonished them for not taking sticks to poke the snow with, but overall was happy to hear they were all right.
“I would prefer Bridget, Haylee and Chaska with you, but circumstances are hardly ever ideal in such cases,” Mrs. Stone said. “Let us conduct some training.”
“Now? Here?” Augum said.
“Yes. It will not be easy, but we should be able to manage. Please take out the blue book.”
“We didn’t bring it—”
“Oh for mercy’s sake—all right, I shall simply have to talk you through it. You do recall which two spells we are going to—”
“Object Track and Object Alarm,” Augum and Leera chorused.
“Good, now let us begin with an explanation of exactly what each does—” and so there, on the side of a great mountain, so very far from the comforts of a warm hearth, with only each other and the sound of Mrs. Stone’s distant voice to keep them company, Augum and Leera learned the fundamentals of the two spells. They had been unable to cast them yet, but after a three-hour lecture, they certainly had enough to start practicing on the morrow.
Exhausted from the day, they fell asleep soon after Mrs. Stone bid them goodnight, holding hands under their nest of blankets.
The pair set off again early in the morning, munching on salted pork and journey bread as they trundled through the snow. This time they attached to each other with rope, just in case one of them fell into another crevasse. The mountains threw long pyramidal shadows across the snowy landscape. For the third day now, there was no cloud, only an ever-brightening azure sky. The wind was light but steady and bitterly cold, forcing them to keep their hoods up and mitts on as much as possible. The person on the glacier remained, probably still asleep.
“Look—birds,” he said, pointing at a small flock coming their way.
Leera stopped and stared, squinting. “You sure they’re just birds?”
He placed a hand over his eyes. The hair on the back of his neck rose and his hands went clammy. They did seem kind of big. He quickly looked around—there was absolutely nowhere to hide on this great slope. An idea occurred to him. “Let’s retrace our steps a bit and bury ourselves in the snow.”
“They’ll see us anyway.”
“Got any better ideas?”
She shrugged. “We better hurry then.”
They ran back about two hundred paces and began digging.
The flock continued coming.
“This is freezing,” he heard Leera say beside him. “Can you see them?”
He left one eye uncovered by the stinging snow. “They’re coming all right, and they are harpies. They’re going to our last spot. Now they’re headed this way.” He gently used his hand to cover the remainder of his face. A moment later, they heard the swish of wings flapping as the flock flew overhead.
He swore he heard Leera’s heart hammering as loud as his. After a long while, he chanced a peek. “They’re gone, I think.”
“Stupid things,” Leera said through chattering teeth, uncovering herself.
“Probably can’t pick up our scent through their own rotten stench.”
Leera laughed.
They resumed their march, ever watchful, but the harpies didn’t return. After warming up with some basic spells, they began practicing Object Alarm. Augum kneeled and placed both hands on the lantern, performing the necessary feat of concentration, visualization, and, in this case, setting an alarm in his head that would go off with someone’s else’s touch.
“Concutio del alarmo.” He took his hands off.
“All right, here goes,” Leera said, touching the lantern. She looked up at him. “Anything?”
“Nothing. You try.”
“Maybe you’re not using the gesture correctly.” Leera picked up the lantern and they walked some more. They strategized how to get it right before trying again. This went on for two whole leagues, taking up the entire morning, until they had paced through a shallow valley and on around the other mountain.
They broke for lunch, disappointed neither had been successful. Augum set the Orb of Orion between them in case Mrs. Stone contacted them. The glacier steadily climbed ahead, curving northward away from them like a massively wide path nestled between two great mountains. The behemoth on the right was their destination. Somewhere on it should be the black rectangle as depicted on the map. And beyond … the unknown.
“Hello?” they heard a muted voice say from the orb. “Anyone there?”
They placed their ears up against it. “We can hear you, Nana, go ahead!”
“I am in Tiberra helping evacuate villages, though I will not be able to stay long in case Lividius appears. The situation is chaotic and dangerous. I expect many casualties. Please continue with your studies and your quest. I shall attempt to check on you later today.”
“All
right, Nana, good luck!”
“Stay safe, Mrs. Stone!”
As they ate, they discussed the news and what they thought it meant. There was plenty to be concerned about, like how long could Tiberra hold out; how was the Legion going to occupy such a vast area; and were the people back in Milham still safe?
After lunch, they resumed their trek, still tethered together with rope.
“He’s moving up the glacier northward,” Augum said, hand over his eyes. “Wonder if he’s going to visit the Occi, or maybe even Bahbell.”
“Maybe we should be following him instead …”
“Let’s just stick to the plan. We should get there by nightfall.”
They continued practicing Object Alarm, figuring they’d move on to Object Track once they got the hang of it. Much to their frustration, the spell continually eluded successful casting. Meanwhile, they had crossed yet another valley and moved onto the mountain that was supposed to have the rectangle. The map yielded no further instructions beyond that last mark.
“Maybe it is the Occi village,” Augum said, glancing at the map as they rested.
Leera adjusted the rope around her waist, untangling the rucksack from it. “Or maybe it’s a sarcophagus …”
“I don’t get it.”
She blinked. “You know, black rectangle … Occi … sarcophagus …?”
“Oh. Right,” but he still didn’t get it.
She glanced around at the vast emptiness. “What a lonely place. It’s so … I don’t know, spiritual I guess, as Bridget would say.”
“Didn’t know you felt that way about things.” She’d always been practical and to the point.
She shrugged. “I’m just glad I’m here with you.”
“Me too.”
She grinned and gave him a light punch on the shoulder.
He had an urge to talk about the Star Feast and their dance together, but relented. This was a dangerous journey; best not to complicate things right now.
They sat in silence, snacking on raisins and various nuts and seeds before continuing the hike. The final hurdle lay ahead, a steep rocky incline terminating at a ledge. It seemed to circumnavigate the width of the mountain like a great ring. Overhead, the crimson sun threatened to disappear—and they hadn’t even thought about a campsite yet.
