“Does that have more swearing in it?”
“Fuck yes. Also, fewer descriptions of the furniture. And I don’t think I can tell it in first-person, since I’ll be sort of summing it up.”
“That sounds just fine.”
“Where were we, do you remember?”
“Madger was trapped in the bell tower, with nothing but a stolen coat and Warrick’s magestone,” said Astryx without hesitation.
Fern cocked her head to peer back up at the Oathmaiden, who stared serenely ahead. “Damn. All right then. Let’s see if I remember how this goes . . . Ahem.”
Prepared for an embarrassed moment of self-consciousness, Fern was surprised to discover it didn’t arrive.
Her chin rose and her tone shifted. She wasn’t properly aware it was even happening.
“Madger leaned out of the tower, hanging on to the bell rope with one hand, staring down at the square far below. She couldn’t even see the cobblestones for all the soldiers packed into the space, some with torches, a few with bows. Suddenly, one of them shouted as they spotted her, pointing at the top of the bell tower. She could hear boots on the stairs. There was nowhere left to run. Then, while her heart hammered in her chest and she searched the top of the tower for an exit that wasn’t there, she spied a coil of spare rope in the corner . . .”
31
Fern delivered her best approximation of R. Geneviss’s timeless classic as they wended their way through the trough of the valley with the great green lake slipping noiselessly by. The reflected clouds drifted past like ghostly ships.
The world itself was preternaturally still, with only the occasional puff of snow from a peak, like frigid spring pollen, marking the passage of the winds high above. The cold scent of snow and the mineral sharpness of the lake were bright in Fern’s nostrils.
Those round, black stones advanced in an irregular squiggle along the beachward side of the path, which would have been impossible to find otherwise.
When Fern’s throat became parched from the telling and she paused to wet her lips, Astryx wordlessly passed a waterskin to her.
They continued that way for hours until they reached the eastern end of the lake, where the valley opened out into a broad, descending wedge of slope between serrated ranks of mountains that were sanded away into hills and plains below.
For the first time in weeks, they saw the snowline ahead of them like a tattered white skirt. Frosted evergreens stippled the land here and there until they swelled in number and crowded together into a mottled emerald quilt that bunched across the lowlands.
The sight was a deep relief, but it also bathed Fern in an unexpected surge of melancholy. Despite everything, she had the sense of leaving a place of reprieve, no longer held outside of time. Even as she smelled the first prickling hints of pine and the musk of cold, wet earth, she had an impulse to retreat back up the slopes. The lake valley they were departing had harbored a feeling of secret holiness that the abbey never approached.
Fern was startled when their progress stopped along with her narrative. A glance upward found the Oathmaiden surveying the lands below with an expression that seemed a perfect reflection of her own feelings.
“What gives?” piped up Breadlee. “We were just getting to a good part.”
Staysha’s pony pulled alongside Bucket, puffing foggy plumes. The dwarf narrowed her eyes suspiciously at Astryx and Fern over Zyll’s orange mop of hair. “Who wasthat? Don’t tell me you’ve got another goblin stashed in your saddlebags.”
“It’s too much to explain right now,” said Fern.
“Is it?” asked Breadlee, his voice skeptical.
“It can wait until evening,” declared Astryx. She pointed north to where a thin cataract of water skated down a black bluff and disappeared into the forest. “We’ll find the stream that waterfall feeds and pitch camp early. We won’t push hard the first day out.”
Before Staysha could protest, the Oathmaiden gently nudged Bucket’s flanks, and they got moving again.
The stream was easy enough to find, since the road passed right through it.
They wended between pines and barrow-fir that steadily increased in density, until they reached a stony shallow that they carefully picked their way across.
Fern caught fleeting glimpses of brook trout flashing above speckled stones.
Astryx led them north along the burbling water until she found a clearing within sight of the bank. The fir-tops whispered in a sinuous dance high above, and a carpet of old needles muffled the water’s song to a throaty hush.
With little conversation, they made camp. Zyll busied herself shuttling river stones for a fire ring, and to her credit, Staysha produced a small hatchet and gathered wood from a nearby deadfall.
After stringing a highline and tending to Bucket and Staysha’s pony—Persimmon, who seemed delighted to have equine company—Astryx turned to find Fern crouched by the assembled firewood.
