IN THE MORNING THE BOYS WOKE TO BRIGHT SUN AND the soft whirr of doves’ wings in the thicket. “Did the potion work?” Raven asked eagerly. “Did you dream of the amulet?”

Thorn sat up, rubbing his eyes. “I dreamed only of Morwid, and of Ranulf and his two guards. I dreamed of the sun and moon, and then my entire dream became a pure white brightness too sharp for human eyes.” He frowned. “That part seemed important, but I don’t know what it means. I dreamed of Lira.” He glanced around the clearing. “She has not come back.”

“Not yet. Mayhap she will appear in time for breakfast.”

Thorn’s belly was tight with hunger. “We will not wait for her. I mean to find the amulet before this day is done.”

Raven was already moving about the clearing, packing up his pouch and flute and tamping down the fire.

Thorn folded his cloak and picked up his bow and quiver. “Tell me, Raven. In which direction lies the coldest clime?”

Raven clapped his hands, turned in a circle, and sniffed the sky. He pointed. “Thataway.”

Thorn nodded. “Since my dreams have proven useless, we shall find the mountain of ice and look for the ancient one.”

“We must leave some sign for Lira, so she will know which way we have gone.”

“Let her cast a spell and find us,” Thorn said, his voice thick with unshed tears. Lira had failed him. Save for Raven, he was alone in this strange country, his joy at having found his twin turned to bitter ashes. He wished he had never met her, had never known the pure happiness of finding his missing half. But he could not think now of what he had lost. There was much to be done.

They set off through the trees and walked all morning along a path that grew steeper and steeper, until at last they stood atop a hill covered with small white pebbles. In the growing chill Thorn shaded his eyes and surveyed the territory. Below lay a wide valley, and to his left, the river. To his right rose a glittering mountain, just as Lira had described it.

“If I remember rightly, the morrow marks the winter solstice,” Thorn said, adjusting his heavy pack. “If Lira’s story is true, the ancient one on the mountain will help me find the amulet.”

“The mountain looks slippery as glass,” Raven said, squinting into the sun. “Can you climb it?”

For the first time in a very long while Thorn felt himself smiling. “Old Morwid taught me. I have spent all my life climbing the cliffs near the sea cave. When I was very small, he called me haedus, ‘little goat’—for I am quick and sure-footed.”

“Come along, then, little goat,” Raven said, clapping his friend on the shoulder. “If the weather holds, we will reach the mountain before nightfall.”

 

Lira stood in the middle of an alder grove, trying not to panic. Nothing looked familiar. On her way out of camp the previous day she had passed a tumbling brook and a meadow filled with yellow flowers, but here there was nothing but brown stubble and a path leading ever downward toward a shadowed vale. As she made her way along the trail, the wind soughed in the trees. And then she heard the noisy intake of human breath. She stopped to listen, but nothing stirred. On she went.

Soon another sound, like a long exhalation of air, was followed by an anguished wail. Deep, sorrowful moans followed one after the other, filling the valley with mournful sound. The hairs on her neck stood up. “The Valley of Sighs!” she said aloud. “But which way leads out of this desolate place?”

“You do not like my little valley?”

Lira spun around. The voice, familiar to her now, came from somewhere above. She craned her neck and peered into the trees. “Baldric!”

“One and the same!” He skittered out to the edge of the tree branch and cackled. “The Valley of Sighs, oh yes indeed. Not a very happy place. But soon I will be on my way to the peaceful kingdom.”

Though certain she now possessed the missing ingredients for making the dream potion herself, Lira very much wanted to have Drucilla’s mixture back. Reaching into her pouch, she brought out a wilted bloom she had picked the day before and held it out to Baldric. “Remember how bitter the potion was, no matter how you chewed it, brewed it, or stewed it?”

He merely fixed her with a bug-eyed stare.

“Well,” Lira went on, “this flower is the missing ingredient that must be added in just the right proportion to sweeten the brew. I do not think you will find anyone interested in an incomplete mixture. Give me the potion and I will fix it.”

He laughed. “’Tis only my limbs that are twisted, not my brain, you fool! Why should I trust you?”

“My brother and I had a terrible fight,” Lira said, hoping her words sounded truthful. “Whether he recovers his potion or not is of no concern to me.”

“Oh my, oh my, oh my.” Baldric shook his head and made a tsk-tsking sound. “A family squabble, was it? What a shame. However, I have no need of your skills now, girl, for I know that flower. ’Tis common as fleas.”

“But you do not know how much to add, nor how to prepare it. Too much, or too little, added in the wrong way will produce the direst of consequences.”

“In this valley there must be at least one who is trained in your art. I will find someone to complete the potion. And so, here I go. Turrah!”

With a gleeful chortle Baldric swung away through the trees.

Blast that little thief! Lira stared after him, hoping his goose chase would buy the time she needed. Wondering which way to go, she took out her amethyst, sat on the ground, and closed her eyes. “South or north, west or east, winds of doubt shall be now ceased. North or south, east or west, which way out will be the best?”

Lira opened her eyes. In the distance there appeared a majestic mountain, glistening like crystal. A white owl appeared, hooting and circling above her head. She picked up her pouch and hurried after it.

 

 

 

By midafternoon the air had turned bitterly cold. Eager to reach the base of the mountain before nightfall, Thorn pushed ahead through the fading light, till the snow came down upon them in a thick, blinding swirl and Raven said, “Enough.”

They made a fire and huddled inside their cloaks, too exhausted to set a snare. Raven took a handful of berries from his pouch and passed half of them to Thorn.

“I am worried about Lira,” Raven confessed, wiping berry juice from his chin. “Something has happened, else she would have caught up with us by now.”

“I fear she has no intention of finding us.” Thorn munched on the berries and fought the sorrow and hurt building inside him. He didn’t want to think Lira actually meant to find the amulet and claim Kelhadden for her own, but what else could explain her sudden absence? He sighed. “Whether my twin is friend or foe I can’t say, but I cannot dwell upon it. I must find the amulet.”

“A wise ruler thinks first of the greatest good, even at the expense of his own heart,” Raven agreed. “Still, it would be too bad to lose your twin so soon after finding her.”

“Aye.” Despite his best efforts not to cry, tears welled in Thorn’s eyes. Since meeting Lira, he had begun to dream of the day they would go home to Kelhadden. He planned to teach her all he had learned during his years in Morwid’s cave. He hoped she would teach him how to ride a horse and how to cast a circle of flame. Perhaps he would get his flute from the cave and together they would make the castle walls ring with music once again.

“You must not be hasty in your judgments,” Raven said. “Lira may yet prove herself a true friend, and a great help to you when you are king.”

Thorn studied his companion. Raven’s dark hair curled damply over his narrow forehead, giving him the look of a playful imp, but his expression was quite serious.

Thorn tossed a twig on the fire. “It is you I want for counselor, for you have proven wise and true.”

“’Tis too early to speak of such things,” Raven said. “Methinks—”

“Shhh!” Thorn grabbed Raven’s arm. “Footsteps.”

“Who goes there?” Thorn called.

When there was no answer, Thorn grabbed a branch from the fire and held it aloft like a torch. “Who is it?”

“Who is it? Who is it? Who is it?” came a voice from the darkness.

“Baldric!” Raven cried.

“One and the same!” With a rollicking laugh the trickster shuffled into the circle of firelight.

“What do you want this time?” Thorn tossed the branch onto the fire.

“What do I want? I want what everyone wants. A warm fire, a full belly, and the companionship of true friends. But the last seems always to elude us, does it not? Why, just this morn I met your twin and learned that you had gone your separate ways. So sad.”

“What do you mean?” Thorn asked.

Baldric shrugged. “It seems she wants the potion for herself, but she will not succeed unless she shows more cleverness than she did this day.” He stood warming his hands before the fire as if he had been invited. “She tried to get it back by saying it needed the addition of a certain flower, but then she had no more sense than to show me which bloom! Stupid girl!” He opened his cloak and a shower of yellow flowers tumbled onto the snow. “Common as weeds.”

Thorn picked one up and sniffed it. The musty smell reminded him of home and the Book of Ancients. He turned the flower over in his hand, studying the compact petals, wondering whether this truly was the missing part of the dream potion or merely another of Baldric’s lies.

While Baldric was gloating over his own cleverness, Raven quietly rose from the fire and took a length of rope from his knapsack. Thorn saw that his companion meant to capture Baldric.

To distract the interloper, Thorn said, “Where is Lira? Did she say where she would go?”

One silent step at a time Raven crept closer to Baldric.

“I left your twin in the Valley of Sighs, but she is clever enough to find her way—oompf!”

Thorn lunged at the boy and sent him tumbling onto the ground. Raven bent over Baldric and quickly bound his wrists.

“Let me up, you fool!” Baldric sputtered. “How dare you?”

“How dare you steal what is rightfully mine?” Thorn hauled Baldric to his feet and began turning him in a tight circle as Raven wound the rope around and around his body.

“Oh, oh, oh,” cried Baldric. “Look at how cruelly he treats the weak and afflicted!”

Thorn’s eyes shone with merriment. “The weak and afflicted, Baldric? You?”

Raven made fast the knot and patted Baldric’s shoulder. “There. Methinks that will hold you till you decide to return the dream potion.”

“Never!” Baldric shouted, growing red faced as he twisted this way and that.

“As you wish,” Thorn said, settling himself before the fire again.

Raven took out his flute. “Shall I play you a tune, Baldric?”

Though Baldric’s furious stare was his only answer, Raven blew a series of notes so pure Thorn thought surely his companion’s flute must possess some kind of enchantment. And indeed, after a while Baldric drifted into sleep.

Thorn knelt in the snow beside the dwarf, searching for the stolen dream potion. If he could find Drucilla’s original mixture, he would try once more to dream of the amulet and perhaps avoid the arduous climb up the foreboding mountain.

But the potion was not to be found in the folds of Baldric’s cloak, nor in his knapsack, nor in the pouch he wore around his neck.

“He must have hidden it somewhere,” Thorn whispered to Raven.

“Or made someone a bargain for it.”

“Mayhap Lira has it and is at this moment on her way to claim the amulet.”

Raven scratched his head. “’Tis a puzzle, true enough. But here is what I propose: We still have some water from last night’s rain. Let us mix the yellow flower with the potion Lira made and see if it improves upon your dream.”

“It’s worth a try.” Thorn looked up at the sheer wall of shimmering ice so tall it seemed to pierce the clouds. Anything that might spare him the ordeal of the long climb seemed worth doing. But he was, after all, the prince; if the potion did not work, he would not shirk his duty. He must do whatever was required to find the amulet and return it to Kelhadden.

Thorn set the pot on the fire, and when the water bubbled, Raven mixed a handful of the strange yellow petals with pinches of sage, balsam, and bloodrose and dumped the concoction into the water. When it had cooled, Thorn drank it down and wrapped himself in his cloak.

“Sweet dreams,” Raven whispered. “I shall play you a soothing tune whilst you sleep.”

Though in truth the music was sweet, Thorn’s dreams were bitter as tansy. In his mind’s eye he witnessed everything bad that had happened in the world, blood-chilling cruelty and deceit, greed and murder, starvation and death, and then he glimpsed the future in all its terror and beauty, and woke in a drenching sweat despite the frigid night air.

“What happened?” Raven asked. “A visit from the witch-daughters? You are shivering, and I don’t think it’s from the cold.”

But Thorn could not speak of his harrowing dream, which even now seemed much too real. “I did not learn anything useful,” he said, wiping the sweat from his brow, “except that the potion we made last night is far too strong for mortals.” He rose and gathered his bow and the new arrows he had made. “’Tis nearly dawn and my belly is empty. Perhaps a hunt will calm my mind.”

“Wait!” Baldric shouted. “Untie me, you fools, before I piss all over myself. It has been a long night in these ropes.”

“Give us the potion first,” Thorn said.

“I do not have it,” Baldric said, desperation crowding his voice.

“But I wager you can tell us where to find it,” Raven said. He picked up the water pot and Thorn’s cup and began pouring water, ever so slowly, from one container to the other. Drip. Drip. Drip.

Baldric’s eyes bulged even more. “Oh, what torture! Stop! Stop and I will tell you where to find it.”

“Speak quickly, then,” Thorn said, his breath clouding the air. “For the sun is nearly up, and I cannot waste a single hour of this day.”

“In the elm grove near your first camp,” Baldric said on a rush of breath, “you will find a pile of stones in the shape of a cross. The potion is hidden there beneath the stones. I will take you there myself, I swear it. Now, I beg you, untie me, before it is too late!”

Raven worked the knots free, and in a trice the dwarf disappeared.

“After him!” Raven cried.

But Thorn merely slung his quiver over his shoulder. “That little thief had no intention of leading us to the potion.”

“Should we not go and get it before he moves it again?” Raven asked.

“It isn’t there. Think, Raven. All around our camp were dozens and dozens of oak trees, and not one elm to be found anywhere. No doubt Baldric meant to send us on some merry chase. I am through with dreams and spells and potions.”

Filled with new determination, Thorn drew himself up. “I will scale the mountain as planned. If the ancient one will not help me find the amulet, I will look elsewhere. I will not go back to Kelhadden without it.”

So saying, he entered the snowy wood and presently returned with a hare, which he and Raven cleaned and roasted with dispatch. Then, their hunger satisfied, they set off for the mountain.