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.“But now we are monitoring two separate quarry at once.one of which appears to travel by night.We must move farther up into the foothills, ranging lower only as needed to track them.We will need all your skills, A’harhk’nis.”“Of course, Greimasg’äh,” he answered.Hkuan’duv’s decision ended all discussion.Just past dawn, Chap watched Sgäile, Osha, and Wynn pack up the dried fish.Leesil broke camp and then joined Magiere, who was once more peering southward over the fallen tree.Chap had heard her murmuring in the night.Though Leesil tried to comfort and quiet her, Chap had slipped into her sleep-muddled mind.He tried to bury her dark dreams beneath recollections of hearth and home, of warm nights in the crowded Sea Lion Tavern, where familiar townsfolk filled the common room with chatter and clanking tankards.His efforts were fruitless.Each memory he called up was quickly obliterated by the one of perpetual ice clinging to a six-towered castle.And for an instant, he glimpsed a pale-faced figure flicker past the frost-glazed pane of a window.Now Magiere stood by the fallen tree, dressed in breeches and hauberk, with her black hair unbound and her falchion on her hip.The Chein’âs’s long dagger was tucked slantwise into the back of her thick belt.Her dark eyes shone in the morning light with a hard intensity.Sister of the dead.my child.lead on!Chap recoiled at those words rising from Magiere’s memories, back-stepping once as he pulled from her mind.That voice hissing in the darkness of her thoughts.like something on the edge of his own memories that he could not place.He shivered, and when he looked up, Magiere was watching him.Chap’s earthly instincts screamed that they should turn back.And in that faltering instant, he considered committing a sin.He remembered a law of the Fay:Whatever they might do otherwise, no one of them would ever enslave the will of any being.In part, this was why he had chosen to be “born” rather than invade the spirit of one already living.But if he wished, he could take Magiere, possess her even for a moment, and turn her from this journey.In his time with her and Leesil, he had come to respect their need for free will.So how could he take that from her now?For that matter.why did he think of enslavement as the first “sin” of the Fay?And how did these sudden fragments of his memories—and the voice of Magiere’s dreams—connect to this artifact she sought?More missing pieces that his kin had torn from him at his “birth.”Magiere reached down to stroke his head.“When we get there, I’ll know what to do,” she whispered.The others were packed up and ready to leave.Leesil stood with Sgäile, and Wynn walked with Osha, chatting away in Elvish, forgetting to enforce his practice of Belaskian.Chap turned his eyes up to the west, and the high wall of the Blade Range, seemingly distant beyond the forested foothills.He traced the jagged silhouette far southward to where the range broke against the even higher snow-capped mountains.“We’ll travel the coast as long as possible,” she said.“I’ll know when we need to turn inland.”Leesil took her hand.As the others headed down the open beach, Chap remained a little longer.He had forsaken everything to protect his charges from death and from their fates.But a chill ran beneath his thick coat, as if the worst was yet to come, and he dropped his head, feeling helpless.He tried to focus on Wynn’s light chatter to Osha about screeching seabirds wheeling high above the shore.And he loped after them across the gravelly beach.CHAPTER FOURTEENChane was still young in his undead existence and, at times, felt he knew too little of his new nature.Almost a full moon had passed, and now he and Welstiel climbed into the high, snow-choked Pock Peaks south of the Blade Range.He gave little thought to the temperature dropping lower each night, as he never truly felt the cold.As dawn approached, his fingers would not close.Chane stared at his hands, paler than ever before.“Welstiel?” he rasped.Jakeb whimpered and began biting at his fingers.Chane tried to fold his fingers against his thigh.His legs had stiffened and barely moved.Welstiel cursed under his breath and dropped heavily to his knees, digging furiously in the snow with stiffened fingers.“Set up shelter, quickly,” he ordered, but his words were half-mumbled.“What is happening to us?” Chane demanded.Sabel and Sethè wrestled with the tent’s cold-stiffened canvas as Welstiel uncovered a flat rock beneath the snow.He fumbled with his pack, but his hands were too stiff to open it [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]