Benjamin Tate - Leaves of Flame

The wolves returned that night, close enough that Petraen removed his pipe and began to play, tentatively at first, then louder, as if in competition with the howls from the darkness. Boreaus built up the fire, even though they hadn’t brought much wood from the forest with them; no one halted him. Colin watched the iriaem in the distance, the hackles on his neck prickling, his hands closing on the haft of his staff, even as the group broke out in uneasy laughter behind him. He massaged the wood, felt the intricate grain beneath his palm and fingers, felt the life-force inside, but the wolves didn’t approach, and the lights that danced on the flatland never drew near. The rest of the party settled down, the Phalanx taking the watch tonight.

An hour after the iriaem faded into the distance to the east, the real aurora borealis-Aiean’s Nightdance-appeared in the skies above. Colin watched the much grander and somehow more mysterious lights at the Phalanx member’s side, neither one of them speaking.

The next morning, the entire group was somber, the somewhat relaxed attitude of the night before gone as they focused on Colin. Blades were kept within easy reach, ready to be drawn. It took a moment for Colin to realize why: they’d be reaching the glacier’s wall and no one knew what to expect.

“Let’s go,” he said, and then struck out.

No one responded, and everyone stayed close, on guard. Colin felt their wariness crawling across his back as he walked, tried to shrug it away. But he didn’t know what to expect either. He only knew that the wards he’d set in place the last time he’d been here were still active and undisturbed the last time he’d checked. Yet he still felt uneasy

The glacial wall approached slowly, looming higher and higher into the sky, cracked and ragged at the edges, like a rocky shoreline. To either side, huge chunks of ice had broken free and plummeted to the tundra below. A ridge of stone and dirt and other debris had been plowed up at the base of the cliffs, while high above they could see a layer of fresh snow, the ice an iridescent blue beneath it in the sunlight.

The cliffs reminded Colin of the stone Bluff on the plains far to the south and he shuddered. He didn’t have fond memories of the Bluff.

Near midafternoon, he noticed the Order and the Phalanx getting edgy, their unconscious defensive group tightening up, their faces tense, hands resting more and more on the handles of their cattans.

Then Petraen halted sharply and half drew his blade, crying out in warning.

“What is it?” Vaeren snapped from behind Colin, his own hand on his blade.

To the side, Eraeth and one of the Phalanx scanned the horizon where Petraen had focused, Boreaus in a half crouch… but Petraen was already relaxing. He let his blade slide back into its sheath, frowning as he shook his head and straightened.

“It’s… nothing. I thought I saw something.”

“What?” Vaeren demanded, stepping forward. “Where?”

Petraen motioned with one hand toward the base of the ice face. “Movement to the west, near that collapsed section. I caught it out of the corner of my eye. But there’s nothing there.”

Everyone considered the scattered chunks of ice he’d indicated, Boreaus rising slowly from his guarded crouch, until Colin said, “It might be the ward.”

“What do you mean?” Eraeth asked. He kept glancing toward the debris.

“We’re close enough to the ward for it to begin affecting all of you. It’s placed on the ice wall.”

“So the Well is close?” Vaeren moved forward as he spoke, out ahead of Colin, searching the wall of ice as if looking for the Well itself.

“No, but the entrance to the cavern that will take us to it is.” He moved to Vaeren’s side, but spoke to the entire group. “Stay here. You’re all already on edge, if you get any closer, it will only get worse as the ward takes hold of you. I’ll go see if it has been disturbed or tested in any way, then come back to retrieve you once I’ve taken it down.”

He didn’t wait for their response, but headed straight toward the nearest section of the glacier and what looked like a solid wall of ice. But it wasn’t solid-that was an effect of the ward. He could see the layers of the ward as he approached, the air growing colder as he passed into the shadow beneath the immense glacier, ice closing in around him. Long ago, he’d thought the Bluff was immense, but this was staggering. He could no longer see the top of the ice cliff, even leaning backward and staring straight up, but he didn’t try. He focused on the ward instead, on the illusion of solidness that he’d placed over the entrance to the cavern. Nothing seemed to have disturbed the threads of power he’d laid down at its center. The knot he’d used to tie it off was still secure.

He stood back, glanced toward where the rest of the group huddled on the open tundra watching him, then back to the walls. Grunting, he began to follow the threads that spun out from the central knot, checking each one carefully as he moved, first right, then left.

Nothing. No thread was out of place, no tie touched. As far as he could tell, no one had attempted to pass the ward, and he knew this was the only approach to the Well. He’d made certain of that before he’d left.

Reaching forward, he pulled at the knot in the center and watched the entire ward unravel, the threads relaxing and settling back into their natural shape. As they did, the ice wall in front of him shimmered and collapsed, revealing the gaping mouth of a cavern. Someone from the group behind shouted as it happened, even as Colin felt the tendrils of tension that had radiated out from the ward and set the rest of the group on edge release.

He turned and motioned Vaeren and the others forward. As Aeren and Eraeth approached, he said, “The ward was intact and untouched. No one has been here, as I said back in Caercaern. But we should check the Well itself, in case Walter or the Wraiths found another way in. There wasn’t one thirty years ago, but the glacier is moving. Something may have cracked or crumbled, opening up another entrance.”

“Are you saying the Well is inside the glacier?” Petraen asked, eyes wide.

“Not originally, but it is now.”

“How is it that the glacier didn’t destroy it?” Siobhaen asked, stepping forward up onto the ridge of debris that had been ground up from the glacier itself and looking into the dark hollow of the entrance. The winter sunlight didn’t penetrate very far, but it was enough to see that the cavern walls were smooth, as if the ice had melted and refrozen.

Behind her, both Vaeren and Eraeth motioned for the others to break out torches.

“The Well generates its own heat. When the ice began to encroach on the Well, the glacier itself melted around it.” A hissing whoosh and the stench of oil filled the air as the first torch was lit, followed by a second. Colin motioned Vaeren forward as he continued. “At first, the Well’s heat merely carved out a chasm through the ice, like a hot knife slicing through butter. But as the glacier grew and ground its way farther south, it became too large. It covered the Well, the heat carving out a hollow inside it. We’re at the end of that hollow now.”

“How do you know this?” one of the Phalanx guardsmen asked.

Colin smiled and caught the man’s eye. “I went back and watched it happen.”

They entered the tunnel, the heat-smoothed walls of ice closing up around them. Now that Vaeren knew where they had to go, he ranged out ahead of them, torch held high to light the way. The ground beneath was mostly level, like the tundra outside, covered with rock and grass that had shriveled and dried after being closed off from the sunlight. As within the Gaurraenan’s halls, Colin felt the weight of the ice above pressing down on him, although unlike the stone of the mountains, this weight sent shivers of cold down into his back. The torches blazed off the ice walls, shimmering against the smooth surface or refracting oddly where the immense weight of the glacier had caused the ice to crack or shatter as it moved. Occasionally, large chunks of ice had broken free and fallen to the ground, but nothing significant enough to block their path.