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“That, and…here, this might help…I can’t explain it well.” Em made a face, more at the lack of clarity than the icy slush. A thin line of water formed, pooled off to one side, rushed away; the trail became easier to walk. “Something I think I feel, sometimes. Places that you can go, when you’re not—not entirely mortal anymore. I think that’ll be enough; I don’t want to disturb the world much more, yet.”
“We’ll be fine.” He held out a hand; Em took it, but only playfully, hopping back up, brushing dirt away. Not a witch, Aric thought, not a warlock, not an evil sorcerer. Human, too. Marvelously so. “Let’s see what we find.”
At first, that proved to be more ice, snow, giant boulders hurled downward by storms and swift water. Broken timbers protruded from one bank, the remains of some structure; Aric caught the glint of cold sun on flat metal and found a crossbow, and then, further up, the man to whom it’d belonged.
“Caravan guard,” Em said, coming over. “There’s another one on the left.”
“Frozen through. And terrified. Look at his face.”
“They died afraid. Theo mentioned voices, in the cold. The anger.”
A prickle of unease snuck down Aric’s spine. “Can you feel anything? Magically?”
“I don’t…” Emrys hesitated. “Maybe. There’s something, but…I don’t know what, yet.”
“Keep going?”
“Someone has to, or no one will.”
They went on. The air closed in: sharp, tearing at lungs, searing eyes. The wind whispered, lonely and shrill. It howled around the frost and rime. The sound almost made words: go away, leave us, shouldn’t be here…
Emrys, at Aric’s side, paused. Glanced around.
Aric stopped too. “You hear something?”
“That or we’re both imagining things.”
“I might really wish we were.”
“Give it a minute,” Em said, “it’ll get worse,” and Aric made grumbling noises for the sake of grumbling, and stayed right at his side.
The sword made a reassuring weight at his back. He wasn’t sure what it might do against ghosts, but he felt better having it there. Emrys had brought at least three knives, likely for similar reasons.
They found the ruins of at least two of the trading wagons further up, tipped over and crumpled and half-buried. The drivers must have panicked, run from something, collided with rocks and each other. Emrys put a hand on Aric’s shoulder, without words. Aric thought briefly of the dead, here and now and also his own; he said, “No one else should die up here,” and the wind took his words and tossed them away, but Em nodded.
Rilla the Nightlady lay at the bottom of a ravine, off the trail; Aric saw her, or rather saw the shape, down the cliff, under snow. Em looked at him; Aric shook his head, because it was too far and she was beyond their help. “We can come back. Or Theo can. Once we open up the pass.”
The wind laughed, or someone did. Sly icicle mockery, whipping around rocks and sleet. The rain had begun again, cold and stinging.
“I’m not enjoying this,” Aric said.
“The question is why now. And I don’t have an answer.” Em scowled at the wind. “Will you stop for a minute, I’m trying to think.”
Don’t, whispered the chill in the air. Don’t think. Don’t search. Don’t try.
“Oh, shut up,” Em said. “It’s not going to work.”
It will.
It will, blasphemous child.
You know better than anyone how futile it is to go on.
“Terrifying,” Em retorted, deadpan. “You don’t know me very well, do you? Come out and say hello.”
Aric put a hand on his shoulder. Darkness gathered, billowed, mist shrouding the late-morning hour. “We can help you.”
You think you can help.
