“All of these beautiful evergreens. Gone.” Elden winced and placed a hand on his heart when he thought I wouldn’t notice. Sweat beaded upon his brow and his skin grew pale. His sickness was spreading.
We had to get to the heart of Winterthorn. I didn’t have to lower my stockings to tell my own wound had spread up well past my thigh. It hurt, causing radiating pain, but I was definitely the better out of the two of us. The thought did not give me any comfort. We both took a sip of our potions. The effect was not as it had been before. A stronger ache remained behind, reminding me of all we stood to lose. The blight did indeed strengthen the closer we drew to the source.
“The shade monsters are drawn to the noise of their prey, to the heat of their bodies. Here.” Elden handed me a small bundle of spices from his saddle bags. “We must steep this in boiling water for three minutes.”
“How are we going to boil water out here?” I gestured around us to the frozen wasteland.
“Magic to make magic.” Elden’s eyes flashed with a pang, but he smiled through it. His white hair had fallen from his braids in the night, but he still managed to look incredibly handsome in a mussed sort of way. “Jel concocted this tea to make us invisible to the beast. It takes away our sounds, masks our scents, and makes our body heat match the surrounding temperature. I hope that will be enough.”
“You hope?” I asked incredulously.
Elden rifled through his bag and brought out a single wooden stick. He smiled triumphantly, causing my heart to skitter. “You practically built our entire journey on hope. Do not lose that virtue now when we are so close.”
I deflated. It was easy to have hope and faith in a vague idea, but when my life was on the line? Let’s just say that took a whole new skill set.
Elden held up the stick and inspected it as if some secret lay inside. When had he collected it? It was quite small and ordinary looking.
“We’re going to make a fire with this one stick?” I raised an eyebrow.
Elden smiled. “This is no ordinary stick.”
He broke the wood in half and rubbed the pieces together quickly. In a flash of light, a fire was born.
“That was oddly satisfying to watch,” I marveled. “But why haven’t we been drinking this new potion all along? Who knows where the beast may be lurking?”
“Jel was only able to finish this one dose for each of us before we left. The effects will last half a day at most.”
Dread pooled in my stomach, but I got to work. I pulled out my saucepan and filled it with several icicles. Within minutes, the icicle water heated to a rolling boil. So fast. We steeped Jel’s packet of magical herbs, counting out three minutes exactly. I grabbed several more icicles to stir the tea and cool it before we drank.
The hot tea burned on the way down, sending warmth radiating outward to my toes. Then the warmth turned strange, as if my body were cooling to the temperature of the frozen outside. I felt it, and yet I wasn’t cold, not truly. It was a tingling all over my skin, like my foot had fallen asleep and I was trying to wake it.
“That’s strange,” I said to Elden, but my voice came out muffled, as if I had cotton balls in my ears.
Elden blinked at me, then said a few words that I could not hear.
“What?”
Elden frowned and pulled out a small ball of clay and broke it in half. He handed one to me and gestured to my ear. He placed a clay ball in his own ear. I followed suit.
“Now can you hear me?” Elden’s deep rumbling voice sounded directly into my ear, sending chills spiraling down my side.
Heat filled my cheeks. “Yes, and you can hear me?”
Elden nodded. “This compound makes it so that anyone else sharing the same substance can hear the other. We will be silent to everyone and everything else.”
“Genius.” I gaped at the unique substance in Elden’s ear. Jel was a pretty good gardener to have around.
Elden lifted his small pack onto his back with considerable effort and pulled out a long sword from the saddle of his horse. It was made in the elegant curving style of the elves, with runes etched onto the blade. Elden caught my eye as I attempted to get any meaning from the strange lettering.
“This was my grandfather’s sword, passed down from father to son. I inherited this sword after my father…after my father fell into shadow. I will use it as a first line of defense against the beast until I can touch it and transform to match his strength.”
The thought of fighting the beast off with a sword was frightening enough without even imagining having to touch the creature.
“In defense of love and family.” Elden indicated the runes on the blade. “Are you ready?”
Winterthorn’s looming edifice was impossible to ignore now as we crested the final summit. I swallowed down the fear that built within me, so much like the fire that ignited between the two sticks earlier. “As ready as I’ll ever be.”
25
