David Zindell - The Lightstone

As it was too late to begin our ascent, we made camp by the lake and settled in early for a night of good rest. We ate more venison, sweetened with some pine nuts that Liljana shook out of their cones. We watched the beavers that made their mounded homes on the lake and the geese that swam there, too.

We set out very early, almost at first light. The climb toward the pass was a steep one, with our route following a little stream that wound down from the heights, here cutting through a ravine, there spilling in clear cascades over granite escarpments.

We walked the horses higher and higher, leading them by their halters and taking care that they had good footing on the rocky terrain. By late morning, we had climbed beyond the treeline. There the slope leveled out a little but there was no end of it in sight. To our right was a vast wall of mountain, sharp as the blade of a knife. To our left, a huge pyramid of ice and granite – one of the highest that I had ever seen – turned its stark, uncaring face toward us. These great, jagged peaks seemed to bite the sky itself and tear open the entrails of heaven.

Early that afternoon, we reached the snowline, and there it grew much colder.

Clouds came up and blocked out the sun. The wind rose, too, and drove little particles of ice against the horses' flanks – and into our faces. It was so frigid that it set us to gasping and nearly stole our breath away. We gathered our cloaks around us, and all of us wished for the warmer clothing of which Kane had spoken a few nights before.

'I'm tired and I'm cold,' Maram grumbled as he led Iolo through the snow behind me. Atara and Fire followed him, and then Master Juwain and Liljana with their horses, and finally Kane and his bay. 'I can't see our way out of this miserable pass – can you?'

I listened to the sound of my boots breaking through the crusts of snow, and the horses' hooves crunching ice against rode I peered off through the clouds of spindrift whipping through the pass. It seemed to give out onto lower ground only a half mile ahead of us.

'It can't be much farther,' I said, turning back to look at Maram.

'It better not be,' he said, as he flicked the ice from his mustache. 'My feet are getting numb. And so are my fingers.'

But when we had covered this slight distance, made much longer and nearly unbearable by the thin and bitter air, we found that our way turned along the back side of the sharp ridgeline on our right. And there another long, white slope lay before us. It led up between two crests to an even higher part of the pass.

'It's too high!' Maram called out when he saw this. 'We'll have to turn back!'

Atara came up to us then, and so did the others. We all stood staring up at this distant doorway through the mountains. Liljana, who could calculate distances as readily as the nuances of people's faces, rubbed her wind-reddened hands together and said, 'We can be through it by midafternoon.'

'Perhaps,' Master Juwain said. 'But what will we find on the other side?'

He turned to Atara in hope that she might answer this question. But her eyes flashed, and I knew that she was growing weary of everyone always looking to her to read the terrain of the future. And so she smiled at him and said, 'Likely we'll find the other side of the mountain.'

'But what if we can't easily get down from there?' Maram said. 'Or what if this is really no pass at all? I don't want to spend a night this high up.'

'So, we've wood for a fire,' Kane said. 'And if the worst befalls us we can always burrow into the snow like rabbits. I think we'll survive the night' 'One night, maybe,'

Maram said.

I took his cold hand in mine and blew on his fingertips to warm them. Then I said,

'We have to take some chances Or else well wander here, and that's the worst chance of all. Now why don't we go on while we still have the strength?'

I led forth, and Altaru and 1 broke track through the snow for the others. It was very hard work, even worse for the horses, I thought, than for us. Faggots of wood were slung across their backs, weighing them down heavily. I watched the breath steam from Altaru's nostrils as he leaned his neck forward and drove his great hooves into the snow. But he made no complaint, nor did any of the other horses. I marveled at their trust in us, marching onward at our behest into a snowy waste that seemed to have no end.

A short while later it began to snow. It was not a heavy storm, nor did it feel as if it would be a long one. But the wind caught up the downy flakes and drove them like tiny spears against us. It was hard to see, with bits of ice nearly blinding our eyes.

The snow burned my nose and found its way down my neck. It piled up beneath my boots, making the work of walking upward much harder.

And so we continued our ascent for at least an hour. We all suffered from the cold in near silence, except Maram, who made deep growling sounds in his throat as if this noise might simply drive the storm away. And then the snow lightened, a little, even as we drew near the pass. But we gained no relief, for the wind suddenly rose and grew more bitter. A cloud of snow whirled about us and tore at our flesh. I began shivering and so did the others. My face burned with the sting of the snow, and my nose felt numb and stiff. My fingers were stiff, too. I could hardly feel them, hardly keep my grip on the ice-encrusted leather of Altaru's halter. I bent forward, into the wind, driving my numbed feet into the snow mounding into drifts all around us. I could hardly see; my eyes were nearly frozen shut, and I kept blinking against the biting snow, blinking and blinking as I tried to peer through this blinding white wall ahead to make out the shrouded rock forms at the lip of the pass.

It was there, perhaps a hundred yards from our much-desired objective, that many great white shapes rose up out of the storm as if from nowhere. At first it seemed that the swirls of snow had formed themselves up into ghostly beings that haunted such high places; in truth the snowdrifts themselves seemed to come alive with a will of their own. And then, with the whinnying and stamping of the horses, I saw huge, white-furred beasts descending from the walls of rock around us. And closing iffifrom behind us, too. There were at least twenty of them, and they came for us out of the storm in utter silence, with murderous intent.

'The Frost Giants!' Maram cried out. 'Run for your lives!'

But with this new enemy encircling us, there was nowhere to run, nor did any of us have the strength for flight. The Frost Giants, if such they really were, were advancing upon us with a shocking speed. Their footing through the snow seemed sure and stolid. And they were not beasts at all, I saw, but only huge men nearly eight feet tall. Although they were entirely unclothed, their shaggy white hair was so long and thick that it covered them like gowns of fur. Their furry faces were savage, with ice-blue eyes peering out from beneath browridges as thick as slabs of granite.

There was a keen intelligence in these cold orbs, and death as well. In their hands, they each gripped huge clubs: five-foot lengths of oak shod with spiked iron. A blow from one of these would break a horse's back or crumple even plate armor. What it would do to flesh and bones was too terrible to contemplate.

'Circle!' I cried out. 'Circle the horses!'

I cried out as well, to the Frost Giants, that we were not their enemies, that we wished only to cross their land in peace. But either they didn't understand what I said or didn't care.

'Oh, my Lord!' Maram shouted. 'Oh, my Lord!'

We tried to make a wall of the houses; their deadly, kicking hooves, especially Altaru's, might deter even these terrible men. From behind them, we might take up our bows and defend ourselves with a hail of arrows. But the horses were whinnying and stamping, pulling frantically at their halters and would not cooperate. And in any case, there was no time. The Frost Giants were nearly upon us, raising up their great clubs behind their heads as easily as I might have held a chicken leg.