The orc probably couldn’t hear her, but Fern didn’t give a shit.
Fern had never trudged so thoroughly in her life.
The keenness of Zyll’s hearing was confirmed as they came upon another low wall of bells. Even in high wind, the weight of metal and the windbreak of their stone housings meant they only occasionally rang, their silvery voices easily lost amongst the mountains.
They stumbled along seemingly forever. There was little room for thought, only relentless forward motion. Their passage reminded Fern dimly of a rolling theater she’d once seen in a shop in Murk’s fortress town, cleverly painted on the outside of a cylinder of thick paper. The illustrated landscape unspooled in ceaseless repetition, lit by an interior lantern.
This was altogether less interesting, though. The terrain never changed, a world in black and white that drifted unendingly, marked only by the rise and fall of the shivering chime of bells.
Zyll’s patchwork coat seemed the only scrap of color for a thousand leagues.
Occasionally, Fern would remember to look back at Bucket’s passenger to make sure that she hadn’t slid off his side and been lost to a bank of snow, but it was an increasingly dull and distracted observation. She couldn’t hold on to dread or fear or any other sharp emotion for long.
As the light dwindled, the density and size of the flakes increased, and the temperature dropped further.
“Where the hells is this monastery?” mumbled Fern through frozen lips. Her whiskers drooped with ice. The satchel thumped against her hip, which ached at every impact.
Then, resolving from the ghostly gray, a dark, regular shape.
Her hope rose, then just as suddenly subsided as the relatively small size of the thing became apparent.
“What is it?” she shouted to Zyll.
The goblin looked back. “Camp-ling!” she cried, and made directly for it.
The structure was some sort of Tarimite way station for penitents, constructed of the same stone from which the ill-fated bridge had been quarried. Its walls curved inward halfway up, tapering to a blunted point at its apex. An arched portal flanked by a pair of bells led to a dark and icy interior.
Fern dropped Bucket’s halter and hustled inside after Zyll. A precisely shaped stone brazier marked the center of the building, scooped out into a charred bowl that the goblin was already inspecting. Flakes drifted down from an oculus in the curved ceiling, ringed with carvings of tentacles. Four severe and unwelcoming benches circled the firepit, and alcoves in the wall looked as though they had once housed statues or offerings.
“Oh, thank hells,” breathed Fern as she spied a neatly stacked pile of wood and kindling in one corner, dusted with snow.
A snort and the sharp ring of a hoof on stone drew her attention to Bucket’s head peering in the doorway.
Like a specter swimming out of twilight, Astryx appeared beside him, one forearm against his neck for support.
A wan smile.
“I guess you can finally figure out how to start that fire now,” she mumbled, before tottering to one of the benches, slowly easing herself down onto it and carefully lying back. Her eyes drifted closed. The Oathmaiden’s breath came in shallow, whistling gasps that Fern didn’t like at all.
Bucket snorted again, squeezing through the arch, then with much stamping, arranged himself alongside Astryx’s bench. Nigel sagged in his scabbard amidst the tangle of leather on the horse’s side.
“Fire,” murmured Fern, moving to step outside and search the wagon for flint and steel, before remembering that there wasn’t a wagon anymore.
No supplies.
No flint.
Nofood.
Her stomach hollowed out for more than one reason.
At a dull clatter behind her, she turned to find Zyll dropping an armload of wood into the stone brazier. The goblin stared at Fern expectantly.
The bookseller’s mind whirled as Astryx’s wheezing breaths acquired a troubling catch in them.
She dug a blank sheet of paper from her satchel and then shrugged it to the stone floor. Fern thrust out a paw. “Hand me the knife.”
Wordlessly, Zyll drew him from a red pocket and offered him haft first.
