SHANNIVAR woke to the sounds of hushed voices outside the tent. A horse whinnied, close by. Despite her broken sleep, she came instantly alert. Chinggis was still in her arms, soft and heavy with sleep. Careful not to disturb either her son or Zaraya, she disentangled herself, pulled on her boots, and crept outside. It was not yet dawn, barely light enough to see by. Alsanobal had just ridden into camp.
“What’s happened?” Shannivar asked, just as Zaraya emerged from the tent.
“The lake—it’s changing,” Alsanobal said. “Something’s going on—”
“The enarees?” Shannivar asked.
“When I left, it was still too dark to see much,” Alsanobal replied. “Their fires are lit again. That much I know. If they have resumed their chanting, I could not hear it above the wind. I sent Tarabey to check on them.” Tarabey, on sentry duty, would have been the first rider Alsanobal encountered.
The rest of the camp was rousing, passing Alsanobal’s news from one to the other in murmurs. Everyone looked to Shannivar. She did not know what weapons they might bring to bear against a new threat from the cloud lake. All hope—and all explanations—must come from the shamans.
She directed the best of her riders to come with her, except for Zaraya and a few others. When Zaraya protested, Shannivar pointed out that there was no one else she trusted to care for Chinggis. Zaraya cast an anguished glance at Kharemikhar but agreed to remain behind.
Before they had finished saddling their horses, Tarabey galloped into camp. “Shannivar! I bring dire news! The Rabbit clan enaree is dead, and two others are too weak to stand. That leaves only Bennorakh and the Black Marmot boy to deal with what’s moving under the ice.”
“What did he say?” one of the riders cried. “Something’s coming through the ice?”
“No, under it,” someone else answered. “But all the creatures were drowned. How could anything have survived?”
“Come quickly!” Tarabey exclaimed. “Bennorakh is asking for you!”
They pushed their mounts hard, arriving at the southwestern hilltop before the sun had cleared the eastern ridge. Two bodies wrapped in blankets lay in the shelter of a reed windscreen. Beside it, a smoldering fire gave off pungent, choking smoke.
Shannivar’s heart ached at the sight of the bodies. She had not known these men personally; they had not been part of her clan the way Bennorakh was. Their courage and their sacrifice had been no less than that of any warrior going into battle, even if their weapons were of the spirit instead of the body. She sent a silent prayer that Tabilit would welcome them with the honor they deserved.
“Bennorakh!” she called above the fitful wind blowing from the lake.
“I am here.” Leaning heavily on a younger enaree, Bennorakh emerged from behind the windscreen. He seemed to have aged a score of years overnight. His eyes were red, his cheeks haggard.
“What’s happened?”
“See for yourself, Golden Eagle Daughter.”
Dismounting, Shannivar and the others approached the edge of the hill, where a rocky outcropping formed a ledge. In the valley below, she saw that the cloud was gone and the whitened rim had expanded to cover the lake. The surface was not uniform, but rumpled in places like dirty ice. Other areas looked translucent, revealing darker shades beneath. In places, the sun gleamed on ice-slick hardness.
A rumbling, like thunder passing through solid rock, issued from the ice. A horse squealed and pranced, its hooves drumming the ground. Its rider tried to soothe it but it remained restive.
“I don’t understand.” Shannivar turned to Bennorakh. “Tarabey said something was coming through the ice, but I don’t see anything. I thought the mist creatures were drowned, that we had seen the end of their foulness.”
“Look . . . beneath the surface,” Bennorakh wheezed. The skin around his mouth went pasty gray and he swayed on his feet.
Shannivar drew herself up and gave her best imitation of Grandmother’s glare. When she was certain she held Bennorakh’s attention, she said, “I will look. You will lie down. We have already lost two of your kind. We cannot lose you, too.”
Without a syllable of protest, the enaree shuffled back to the reed mat shelter. Shannivar watched him, astonished at her victory. Then she turned her attention to the frozen lake, studying the broad gray ribbon, like a winter river swollen in flood, that cut obliquely across lighter areas. A flash like lightning was quickly followed by a darker shape, a shape that moved beneath the ice.
More flashes brightened the underside of the ice. Some bursts were so short and faint that unless Shannivar was looking directly at the place they arose, she could not be sure she’d seen them. Others were stronger, jagging over greater distances. More tremors rumbled underground.
Something had sheltered beneath the last remnant of cloud. It had hidden there while the enarees turned mist into rain and rain into an inland sea. It had gathered its strength, changing the water to solid ice. Now it hid beneath a frozen shield and the enarees were drained, their spells fading.
Toward dusk, the lights under the ice took on a ghostly luminescence. Occasionally, crackling broke the muted thunder. Something was happening in the murk of the lake, and she could do nothing about it.
She was so frustrated, she was ready to lead a charge into the valley. And do what? Shoot arrows at a lake of ice? Of all the torments of war, waiting was the worst. At least the two most weakened enarees had regained a measure of strength, or at any rate gotten no worse. They had gone down to the encampment, where they were being cared for. Bennorakh and the Black Marmot boy remained on their hilltop and continued to work their spells as best as they were able. As yet, nothing had emerged from the ice, but whether that was due to the confining power of the shamans, she did not know.
When a party of riders arrived to relieve those who had been on watch, Alsanobal advised Shannivar to go back to the camp with the others. “Eat,” he urged her. “Get some sleep.”
She set her chin. “No, I’ll watch.”
“Shannivar, you will drive yourself and everyone else mad. I’ll send word if the enarees say there is anything to be done.”
“If you stay, cousin, then so will I.”
Alsanobal looked and sounded very much like his father, Esdarash, as he said, “We are indeed cousins, and you are war-leader. But I am chieftain, and I say you will be in no fit state to lead us if you go on like this.” He lifted one eyebrow as if to say, What goes for the enaree goes for the war-leader as well.
Shannivar opened her mouth to protest, and then closed it again. He was right. She wasn’t as tired as if she’d been riding hard and fighting all day. But anxious as she was, she would not make good decisions. “You’ll send word?”
“I have said so,” he replied, but more gently, because he had already won.