James Barclay - Beyond the Mists of Katura

Gilderon nodded. ‘I understand. And are we all feeling the same unease, as if our path has been muddied and we must seek a new one if we are to help in this fight?’

Every mouth issued words of assent.

‘Then I can offer you comfort,’ said Gilderon. ‘We need answers, so it is the cart and horses we have to find. We’ll pick up their tracks in the morning, though I assume they are returning to Julatsa. Then we’ll know how many are still travelling in the mountains, and finally we must make obeisance to our master and seek forgiveness for our lack of loyalty and attention. We deserted him and we must make recompense for our error.’

Their faces brightened and he smiled, pleased they all wanted what he had desired ever since they had left Takaar.

The Senserii slept and Gilderon kept watch. The words were easy but the task was not. Easy to say they would seek Takaar’s forgiveness. But he was not as he had once been, and his reaction, when they returned, might not be one they would survive. Still, they had to try. They needed him and he needed them. Gilderon prayed he did, anyway.

They made it to the overhang with night almost full, and it was clear the weather would kill some during the night. It had closed in yet further and the snow fell in a thick mass of flakes that clung to the clothes and skin, blown on a mourning, howling wind that carried the voice of their deaths.

Hands were frozen, cut and blistered, boots were torn, and inside feet were ice and ankles swollen. Their faces, despite the coverings, were raw with the constant attrition of ice and wind, and their eyes were pained by the bright white, the only part of them wanting the blessed dark of night.

Auum tried as best he could to get the weakest of them into the centre of the group and pack others in around them to give them some warmth, but the cold seeped up through the stone on which they sat and the wind blew more snow around the sides of the wall at their backs.

They had eaten a joyless meal, a rough stew of horsemeat and some roots gathered on the way past the lake a couple of days before. For some eating was an ordeal in itself, and they had to be spoon-fed so they wouldn’t spill it on their already sodden, freezing clothes.

Auum tried to ignore the fact that he was shivering so hard he couldn’t sit down. He could barely open his mouth to talk and had taken only a few swallows of the stew, seeing others needing more sustenance than he did. It was probably an error with the cold penetrating through to his bones and on into his heart and soul. Stein had told them it would be cold, but this was a level of pain beyond anything he could have conceived.

‘Something to tell your children about,’ said Ulysan.

He was still managing to smile despite the obvious discomfort of carrying Tilman for the day. He looked utterly spent but still refused to sit down and had checked on everyone else, all one hundred and twenty of them, exactly as both Auum and Stein had.

‘I’ll have to write it down before I freeze to death,’ said Auum, a new shiver racking his body so hard it made him grunt. ‘Trouble is, my fingers are frozen and I couldn’t hold a quill.’

‘Nor do we have bark or parchment, but it was a sound plan other than that.’

Auum cast his eyes over his people. Julatsan elves were moving among the tight-packed bodies, doing what they could with warmth and healing, but it was like using a fruit knife to fell a banyan. He and Ulysan were standing at the outer edge, a few yards from a sheer drop into a chasm. Auum wondered how many bodies they might be rolling into it come morning. Perhaps there would be none left to chant the lamentations.

Auum felt a keen anger bite and it warmed his soul a little. He let it grow, take form and substance in his mind, and he realised where his anger stemmed from. He turned to the quiet huddled group, most of whom had their faces buried in their arms and their knees dragged right up, trying to eke out a modicum of comfort.

‘This cannot be it,’ he said loudly enough to cut across the whine of the wind. ‘This cannot be all we can do. It is going to get colder and colder as the night deepens, and how many of you, with your nerveless hands and your soaking clothes, think you are going to survive? I’m not certain I will.

‘The TaiGethen cannot fight this. We cannot make fires from nothing. So what has your wonderful magic got to offer, my Il-Aryn and Julatsan friends? Conjure me a log and some kindling. Conjure me a timber shelter. Do something .’

Stein stood. His lips were swollen and his face was raw and red.

‘I understand your frustration, but we are few and we cannot expend all of our strength. I could have my mages warm the stone, but the cold runs deep and the warmth will be stolen before it can be of use because we are so exposed here. We have to conserve our energy.’

‘For what? If we don’t do something, most of us will not be alive to benefit from your precious stamina come dawn.’ Auum stared at the faces of TaiGethen and Il-Aryn around him and saw either determination or surrender. He picked out Rith. ‘And you, what can you do? Takaar’s teaching of seven hundred years cannot be so feeble that you cannot warm yourselves, surely?’

‘We can’t make heat out of ice,’ said Rith. ‘It doesn’t work that way. We don’t channel mana like a Julatsan, we use the energies around us to forge what we can. We adapt what we have; we cannot create something from nothing. I’m sorry.’

‘ Sorry? ’ Auum spat out the word. ‘Is that it? Just as on the walls of Julatsa when the pressure was on and you found you could do nothing? Takaar’s precious Il-Aryn, the new power among the elves. . Yniss save us and Ix abandon you, but on this evidence I never had anything to worry about, did I?’

Rith could not hold his stare. He saw her shudder violently as she dropped her head, and he wasn’t sure if it was the cold or the onset of tears. Auum spread his arms.

‘We have suffered to bring you here. TaiGethen saved you by the lake, we saved you on the wall and we kept you alive to get here. Now it is your turn. Don’t you dare look away from me, Rith.’

Her gaze returned and there was fire in it at least.

‘We did not ask for this! We did not want war and we did not want to freeze to death on a mountainside, but you forced us here, gave us no choice but to go with you. You brought us here and now we are spent and we have no hope.’

‘None of us wanted war,’ snapped Auum. ‘But it is what we have. Either here and now, or in our lands in the days to come. I choose to fight here and I will die here if I must, but it will be by sword thrust or black fire, not because of a lack of elven spirit.’

Rith shrugged her shoulders, the shudders in her body so violent they made the gesture painful. ‘We cannot draw heat from ice. I am sorry.’

‘I do not believe you. I refuse to believe you! I have seen Takaar sink a ship. I have seen you create barriers that beat off Wytch Lord magic, and only yesterday you made the air sharp enough to behead our enemies travelling at a gallop. And you are telling me you cannot create something to keep the damn snow off my back?’

Rith’s mouth fell open and she looked at him as if he were a fresh warm morning.

‘We’ve been thinking about this all wrong,’ she said. ‘Give me a moment. Il-Aryn, gather round, I have an idea.’

Rith began to speak and Auum turned away, uninterested in the mechanics of whatever she thought she might do as long as she did it quickly. He felt a nudge at his elbow and Stein was standing there. He had a bowl in one hand and, as Auum watched, he played a flame from his palm beneath it until its contents steamed. He handed it over and produced a spoon from his cloak.