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The night ride grew difficult as they drew closer to the foothills of the Frozen Mountains. Shortly after dark, the smooth, rolling, and low barren hills had been transformed into a rock-strewn alien landscape, which reduced their pace significantly.
Just after midnight, Ailish called a halt. When they stood on the ground, drinking water, and having a piece of smoked dar, Ailish said, “I will drive the wagon until daylight.”
Nomar looked at her through narrowed lids. “Because?”
“Because of Yar.”
“Yar ... Why?
“To see. We don’t want to break a wheel, do we? I can use Yar’s eyesight to see the ground ahead and avoid rocks.”
Nomar cocked his head to the side. “I still don’t understand.”
“He is my aoutem. When we are joined, I can see through his eyes. His night vision is ... unequaled.”
Nomar’s brows lifted in sync with his shrugging shoulders. “Then I will saddle my kraal.”
Ten minutes later, fed, watered, and ready, Nomar mounted his kraal, and Ailish sat in the front of the wagon. Yar stood next to the kraal, his eyes on the road.
“Without Yar’s scouting ahead for us, you will need to be as vigilant as possible.”
“With or without Yar, I tend to always be on my guard, My Lady.” He voice was soft, but there was a firmness framing the words.
“My apologies, Nomar, I meant no disrespect.”
Nomar smiled. “Of that I am aware, My Lady. But be assured, I am never not vigilant.”
Picking up the reins in both hands, she gave the kraal a little mental shove, and the carriage moved forward.
An hour after Ailish took over the wagon, Jalil silently said, We will not make it to the mountains by daybreak.
There is no choice. The way ahead is slow, she stated. But you know this by now.
Yes, I do. I am concerned. I sense something ... off.
In what way?
When you forced me to sleep. Fasil may have been able to break through.
I felt nothing.
Perhaps a premonition. My senses tell me we must be alert.
Ailish looked through Yar’s eyes. She saw nothing but the rocks he was showing her to avoid. Then alert we will be.
“Nomar,” she called. “Jalil has a premonition of danger. He knows not where from.”
Nomar drew back on the reins, slowing his kraal. “And?”
Ailish laughed. “And nothing. I was just passing along his warning.”
“How are you holding up?”
She couldn’t stop her smile at his question. “Good, except for the way my ... backside keeps bouncing on this piece of wood I am trying to balance upon.”
He smiled and went to the front again, riding on the opposite side of the wagon from Yar.
Inside the wagon, Jalil lay still. He expanded his senses as far as possible. A moment later he touched something. It took another few seconds to recognize the aura. He grasped the Staff, and lifting it, punched it through the fabric above and released a bolt of power.
He felt the danglore’s death as it happened.
<><><>
Irret did not react to the danglore’s death. She had expected it when she’d sent it into the wasteland to find the three. The sacrifice was important, for it told her not just where they were, but also how far. She would have the day to prepare.
Turning, she swept her eyes across the camp, and the Free Blades sleeping around the fires. Fifteen seasoned warriors who lived or died upon her commands awaited their orders. Fifteen men who killed, and did so gladly for her. She laughed, her thought pushing the laughter louder: Just let the Free Blade Nomar try to defeat fifteen men!
<><><>
They stopped only once more during the night, for Ailish to walk and ease the stiffness in her legs, and the stinging of her bottom on the wooden seat. Even in the dark, they could see the outline of the snow-crusted mountains looming ahead.
Nomar took out two pieces of dried meat and handed her one. “Controlling that thing,” he said pointing to the wagon, “takes energy. Eat.”
Without arguing, she did as he asked, and finished it off with a healthy drink of water. Then she hugged herself. “The sun will be with us in a few hours. I look forward to its warmth.”
Nomar shook his head. “Warmth I think it will not bring. In the last hour, the air has grown even colder. “These leather tunics are good, but we need the heavy capes your daughter brought for us.”
Ailish went to the back of the wagon, while Nomar looked up. It was dark, yet the perfusion of stars was like a dome of nightmoss, while the clearness of the sky emphasized the coldness of the night, and signaled even colder days ahead.
“Heavy they are,” Ailish said, her voice cutting through his thoughts. “Enna chose well. These will keep us warm.”
Nomar took one of the furred capes and slipped his arms into the slits cut for just that purpose. With the hood on his head, the warmth was quick to settle over him. “Very nice,” he agreed. “And Jalil? He came not out of the wagon.”
“No, he seeks what lays beyond our sight. He feels there is something off and will not pause in his searching.”
“Then we must be moving. We have not made good time.”
“Daylight will help.”
They rode on through the hours of dark, and when dawn passed, and the sun once again rode the sky, Ailish called another halt. “I can sit no longer on this ... thing.”
Nomar couldn’t stop his laugh from getting out. “Yes, My Lady, I truly understand. Perhaps it’s time to rest, eat, and for you to ride and me to have my ass beaten a bit.”
This time it was Ailish who couldn’t stop the laugh. “As befits a warrior who serves a queen,” she said lightly, then froze. “My apologies, Nomar,” she said immediately.
His smile flattened as his brows drew together. “Apologize? I don’t understand.”
“I ... My words were insulting. You are no servant.”
“Your words were far from an insult; more so were they that of a fellow warrior. And as are all warriors of Morvene, I am always at your service, My Queen.”
She closed her eyes for a moment. When she opened them, she said, “Thank you, Nomar.” Turning, she went to her kraal, untied him, and saddled the mount while Nomar did the same, but in reverse.
Within minutes, they were on their way again, the Frozen Mountains no longer a distant image but a reality growing larger with every passing mile.
<><><>
The late afternoon found them within a few miles of the foothills, which like a ramp to a castle, rose inexorably higher and higher. Ailish called a halt and rode back to the wagon. Nomar stepped down, stretched, and went to her.
“Rest and eat and move on, or do we make camp here?”
She glanced from him to the foothills. “Let’s talk with Jalil.”
They took Jalil from the wagon, and set him on the ground, a silk beneath him. “Stay or go?” Nomar asked after the old Master was settled.
“What think you of this place from a warrior’s perspective?”
Nomar looked around. “Making camp in the open is not what I consider good. I’m sure there are areas in the foothills that might be more secure ... but we know that not. Yet, those hills,” he said, pointing to what seemed to be a clear path up, “can hide attackers.”
“Then we go up and find a decent place to spend the night,” Ailish stated.
Nomar stared at her. “Decent?”
Ignoring him, she looked around for any dead vegetation. “I want a fire.”
“Command one to grow from nothing, for nothing is what you have to burn. This is frozen land with only rocks upon it. So, unless you want to start breaking up the wagon ...”
She shook her head slowly. “Your sense of humor has a sting, Nomar the warrior. We may yet have to break it up, but not today. With luck we will find wood to burn. But, do we eat now, or wait until we find a place to camp?”
He looked west to where the sun was lowering. “We need the energy and a little rest. We have little more than an hour of light. Let’s use it wisely. I’ll get some meat.”
She turned to Yar, about to send him an asking to scout, when the huge cat stopped in his tracks, lifted his head, and sniffed the air. So tightly joined with him was she, she felt his muscles tighten. He turned slowly, his eyes flicking everywhere. Then his muscles relaxed. Whatever had disturbed him was gone.
He took a half-dozen steps and stopped again. He stared at a small stone that lay on the ground at the foot of a short hill. He sniffed it and then moved on.
Strange, Ailish thought with a shrug, and sent her asking for him to scout. But then there had been a lot of things that were strange—no—unusual, the last few days.
Nomar returned, handed her a piece of smoked meat, and gave Jalil a water skein. Just as he took a bite of the meat, Ailish said, “Walk with me.”
They walked ten feet. Ailish stopped and turned to him. “In a few minutes we will enter the Frozen Mountains.” She stopped speaking, knelt before him, and looked into his eyes. “Nomar, I beg you to not do this. I beg you to leave us and return to your life.”
He bent just enough to reach down and slip his hands between her arms and her chest and lifted her to her feet. “You belong not on your knees, My Lady, nor should you ask this of me. I have given you my reasons and I will not—”
“—You have taken choice from me,” she said, cutting him off. “No matter what I say, I have doomed you. If you go with us, and knowing neither Jalil nor I will return, you will most likely die. If I leave you here and you follow, you will most certainly die.”
She waited for a response, but he gave her none. “And even now you continue to frustrate me. You called me your queen, yet when I say you are not to accompany us, you refuse to listen. I ask you once again, will you stay behind?”
He stared at her, his light blue eyes shaded by the falling sun, and slowly moistened his lips with his tongue. “I cannot.”
Before she could speak, he went on. “As I tried to tell you before, when Jalil restored my memories, and I learned the truth about who I was, and who I became, I realized I had but one path to follow: the path of atonement to those I harmed. And it is you who offered the only way for me to do so. Ailish ... My Lady, I do this as much for you as it is for me.”
He knelt suddenly, then lifted her hands to the sides of his head, and closed his eyes. “I know you cannot read my mind, but you can sense my thoughts. Do so now!”
She searched his face, shook her head, and pulled her hands from his head. He caught them before she could, and pressed them firmly back against his temples. “Go there.”
She did. Two minutes later, she drew her hands away. Tears drenched her cheeks, her legs trembled, and she almost fell to the frozen ground. She shook her head to clear the visions his thoughts had produced. Harsh the visions were, showing the deaths he had caused, the lives he’d taken, and what had been taken from him. “Your wife,” she whispered, still unable to hold back the tears.
She reached down, drew him to her, and pressed his head to her stomach. She held him against her for several long minutes. When she released him, she drew him to his feet. Without wiping her tears, she nodded. “With us you ride. It is my honor to have you.”
They returned to the wagon, both wrapped in their own silence. Wisely, Jalil said nothing, either aloud or silently, for his senses told him what happened and how delicate was the moment.
“It is getting late. If we go,” Nomar said. “it must be now.”
Closing her eyes, Ailish held her hand up in a wait gesture. A moment later she opened her eyes. “Yar returns. He is uneasy, but all seems normal ... I don’t know how to describe it ... wary perhaps.”
Nomar looked over his shoulder just as the big cat came into sight. “If a hunter such as Yar is wary, then we best be the same. And staying here would not be a choice either. Yar must find us a safe place within the foothills. Safe enough to defend if necessary.”
<><><>
It was just before sundown, when Yar found a somewhat level area at the crest of a rising foothill. When they reached it, Nomar dismounted and walked the area, looking down at where they’d come from, and then all around. He saw nothing but hills and uneven frozen ground.
“I feel no wariness from Yar,” Ailish told him.
“As good a place as any,” Nomar declared, went to the wagon, and unhooked it from the kraal. “I would gather wood, if there was any,” he said with a laugh. “A fire would be nice.”
“Warmth do you crave?” asked Jalil when Nomar set him on the cushions from the wagon Ailish had placed on the ground.
“Warmth would be nice.”
Jalil grunted a laugh. “Fire I can create, but even should I do so, it cannot warm anyone, for it would be but an illusion. Science, my friend Nomar. Science is magic! Magic is science. Without wood or some other material, fire there cannot be.”
“I don’t understand.”
Jalil gave one of his strange smiles. “What is magic?” He did not wait for the answer which would not come. “Magic is but another way of accessing science. In fact, science itself is magic.”
Before Jalil could say more, Ailish intervened, “Let us talk of science and magic after the kraals and Yar are fed and watered and we sit to a cold meal, yes?”
Nomar nodded. A half hour later, after Ailish and Nomar sat by Jalil, eating dar meat, Nomar said, “You told me you know the route to where you go. Did you bring the map?”
“The map is where it belongs, in my head.”
“That does none of us any good should you be unable to speak.”
“True,” Jalil agreed. “But that is where it resides. I could not bring the real map with me on the ship. It would have revealed my intentions.”
Ailish leaned toward him. “Share it with us.” She then silently asked, Is there a reason why you cannot?
He looked only at Nomar. “I can only share through your minds. For Ailish, I know this will not be a problem. For you, I know not, although your mind has been opened before.”
Nomar shrugged. “Will it kill me? Will it change me?”
“Kill you, no, unless I deem it so. Change you? I know not. It should not, yet ...”
Nomar closed his eyes. He reached out and took Ailish’s hand. When her fingers curled around his, he nodded. “A risk I will take.”
Protect him as best you can. This experience will be ... different for him.
“Are you ready?”
Nomar exhaled. “I am.”
Jalil closed his eyes. He pressed one hand to Nomar’s chest, and took Ailish’s free hand in his.
Seconds after Jalil fell silent, a force pushed into Nomar’s mind. A revolving wheel of colors spun through his head, followed by what seemed to be a hand. The only thing he was aware of, amidst the rampaging colors, was the pressure of Ailish’s hand on his.
Everything went dark. So black and empty a place was it that he feared he would never see light again. And then, as if it were on a table before him, a map of Nevaeh and of the Frozen Mountains appeared.
It took only a few seconds for him to see the route as clearly as if it were written and laying openly before him. A moment later he opened his eyes.
He blinked. His eyes locked on Jalil. “I feel no different. Yet, I do.”
He turned to Ailish and offered a half-smile.
Ailish’s breath caught when she gazed at his face. See it do you? she asked Jalil.
I saw it when it happened.
Perhaps there will be no mirrors where we go.
Nomar frowned. Then he shook his head. “You and Jalil. You are talking without words.”
Ailish’s mouth dropped open. “How know you this?”
He shook his head. “I sense it. I have been ...” He paused, looked from one to the other again, and said, “changed.”
Ailish nodded. “If you sense our mind talk, yes. But there is more.”
He frowned. “More?”
She smiled. “What think you of green?”
“I don’t understand.”
Smiling, she tilted her head to the side and said, “You will.”
