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Daerith intoned another Elder song quietly in Arn’s ear, but I do not know if it was meant to strengthen a shieldmaid or soothe her rage. Her lips, bleached with cold, moved slightly as she was borne along, no doubt swearing; the woad was gone from her face and even its yellowed ghost was pale. Eol sought even in extremity to keep from making any noise at all—unsuccessfully, but sometimes a wolf-howl rose nearby and any of our small cries or mutters were lost in that music.
There was no melt as the sun began to fall from its apex. Soon it would be night again, and all I felt was relief at the prospect. It is a strange thing, to know you will not survive the coming darkness and to feel not quite resigned but almost grateful to halt all painful striving. The image of Dun Rithell—burned, blackened, broken, the outbuildings shattered and the steadings or halls along the river still sending up curls of steam-smoke from some unimaginable catastrophe—was a torment, and would not leave me.
Aeredh’s voice faltered; he came to a halt amid snow-speckled trees. He sucked in a pained breath; I tried to clear my dry throat, to say,Turn me loose, let me lie down to die in peace. The Elder tucked his chin slightly, gazing thoughtfully about us, and his face seen through my welling tears was suddenly a warped, bloated nightmare.
I was not weeping. The saltwater came unbidden as my body protested, helpless and otherwise mute. Perhaps I would have struck out in fear one final time during that terrible passage, but I was empty. Noseidhrremained to me, though sheer weariness might have freed my subtle selves to the cold wind had I decided to step outside my wretched mortal frame. Nothing remained save silent, beastlike endurance, and even that was dregs.
The Old Tongue slipped from Aeredh’s mouth, slow and unsteady. “I was sure it was…” He trailed off, raising his head to look about him as one just waking from a dream.
“Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten the way.” Daerith’s laugh held a ragged edge; Arneior’s dun hood rested against his shoulder, her coppery hair masked underneath. She kept a whiteknuckle grip upon her spear—it takes much more than winter-death to steal a shieldmaid’s weapon from her grasp—but in this extremity she also permitted the Quickwit upon her right side to wrap his fingers about it as well. His own weapon rode his back, its blade glittering no less fiercely than hers.
Eol coughed, a soft, hopeless sound. His dark head hung, and his boot-toes dragged in snow.
“No.” Aeredh looked down again, this time peering past my hood’s edge at my face. I was no help at all. Even my shivering had lost its strength. “It was summer when last I stood here, that is all.” He shifted to the southron language. “Have no fear, my lady.” His voice was a dry husk, and unutterably weary. “A short while more, and we shall be safe enough. We must climb this hill, and in the next valley—”
“Are you certain?” Gelad’s brow was furrowed, and he was gaunt. The cold strips even wolves down to bone, and they had not time to hunt. “I smell nothing but snow, my lord Elder.”
“If even a wolf could scent it, the place would not be safe.” Aeredh’s voice gained a slight measure of fresh strength, and theCrownless straightened, shifting my weight more comfortably. “How fares Eol?”
“Another night will kill him.” Efain’s tone was quiet, and sharp as a curse. The swordhilt rising over his shoulder bobbed as he shifted, taking a firmer grip upon his captain. “We should have gone to Dorael.”
“Take heart.” Aeredh set his shoulders. The strength humming through him mounted yet another notch, then still more; his eyes burned a deeper blue than the patch of cloud-feathered sky visible overhead. “We are upon the last league, my friends.”
Even so, the final hill almost defeated us all. Aeredh sang in broken snatches, or spoke in the Old Tongue; I no longer listened except to the mere sound of his voice meaning I was not alone. Once Gelad all but dropped Eol and Efain hissed a warrior’s obscenity, hauling his captain upright. The men of Naras drew into a close knot. Even the surefooted Elder slipped upon the steep snowy pitch, and each one had to help another at some point.
At the top of the slope, Aeredh counted the survivors. We had lost none in Mistwood or the Glass, which would have seemed near-miraculous to me had I been warm enough to care. Nothing seemed particularly important at that moment, my cheek resting against an Elder’s thin, snow-damp mantle. I no longer heard his voice, simply the slow powerful thumping of a heart caged in an ageless chest.
The valley below us was thickly wooded, thornvines and bushes packed between tall frowning firs and other conifers. Its far side was mostly sheer, studded with great grey boulder-warts under a carapace of ice and dusting snow. The wall rose in folds before breaking into two separate mountains, each easily twice as tall as Tarnarya of my birthplace.
Aeredh moved carefully, and so slowly it took most of the short afternoon before we reached the valley floor. But no thorn caught my mantle, and each Elder again took charge of a Secondborn to ensure no trace was left—except Arn, who was between two. Eol went over Yedras’s shoulder, and the Elder spearman did not look sour at the burden, merely resigned.
A wave of icy vine-spikes met us, but Aeredh did not halt. He moved among them, carrying me. The sun touched the westron edgeof the valley, dusk thickening along its stony bottom; I realized it was an ancient watercourse. Perhaps in spring it would be flooded to the knees of thick undergrowth bushes, but now it was merely a forgotten scrap of the winter-choked Wild.
A blank stone face met us, overgrown with yet more ice-blasted vines. Melt from above had cascaded over it as autumn turned into the season of cold sleep; the successive liquid layers spread an iron-white lacework over hard granite.
“Congratulations,” Daerith said, softly. “It’s… a wall.”
A slight murmur went through the group. Aeredh smiled grimly, and his arms tightened upon me. “I do not begrudge your lack of faith in me, Loremaster. But you should trust the Blessed more.”
“By the Blessed,” Soren breathed. “Is it… a cave-crack, there. See?”
“Aye.” Aeredh now sounded satisfied. “’Tis larger than it looks. Through the Ice Door, my friends, and at long last our journey is done.”
It was not quite so simple. There were eyes upon us even then, though they were not the Enemy’s.
The Passage Guards
The folk of Nithraen would have called him king, and asked him to take up his father’s crown. Yet the son of Aerith turned to them, not in fury but with deep pain, and swore that he would not lead so faithless a crowd. “My father did what he must for love instead of for gain,” he said, “and I shall do the same. May your new rulers bring you joy.” Then he left his home, and never returned until the coming of doom…
—The Ballad of Aerith’s Son
The crack in the hillside had been made by running water uncounted ages ago, and though it was so thin only one person could pass at a time, the chamber beyond was spacious and full of soft echoes. Aeredh turned and managed to draw us both through the aperture, though he could have easily handed me to someone upon the other side had he suffered any but himself to go first.
The floor was a great plain of river-washed stones, round and satiny; it was dim, but not the bleak darkness under Nithraen or even the gold-veined shadow of Redhill. High above another fissure, made by mountains’ slow movement instead of water, let in a gleam of failing, snowy bluish dusk. It was still cold, but not so bad as outside, and I revived a bit as Aeredh waited for our companions.
Arn drove her spear-butt hard against the stones, pushing herhelpers away and nearly buckling; instead of an Elder, Soren caught her arm.
“Easy, my lady Minnow.” The once-stocky Northerner’s black mantle hung upon him as a blanket upon a scarecrow, but a wolf’s vitality still shone in his gaze. “Do me the honor of granting some aid; my legs are not quite steady.”
