We run away from the shouts of the elves, who are still lost in the woods.
We run until my leg screams. We run until the shouts are gone.
I stop. I am drained. My leg is on fire.
Betty leans against me, gasping.
I do not know this part of the mountain.
But I know where to go.
It is not a thought. It is not a memory.
It is a pull.
It is humming deep in my bones. A song under the skin of the world. It pulls west. Up.
It is warm. It is safe. It is power.
20
BETTY
My lungs are on fire, my legs are hollow, useless things that move from memory alone. The world is a white, stinging blur of snow and the agonizing, constant crunch-crunch-crunch of our footsteps.
Threk is a dying mountain beside me.
He is leaving a trail. The Worg-bite in his thigh has ripped open, and with every lurching, limping step, he paints the pristine snow with a fresh, dark smear of his blood. He is a beacon for the elves, a beacon for Larda.
My resolve, my penance, my stubborn will—it is a thin, fraying thread, about to snap.
We are just running until he catches us. We are just running until Threk collapses, and then Larda will take us, and he will...
Threk stops.
He stops so suddenly I stumble, nearly falling. "What? What is it? Are they...?"
I listen, my heart seizing, but I hear nothing. Only the high, thin whine of the wind.
Threk’s massive, brutish head is high, his nostrils flaring wide. He is sniffing the air, a deep, rumbling inhale. He is not smelling elves. He is not smelling danger.
He turns, his red eyes burning with a new, strange focus. He grabs my arm, pulling me off the barely-visible game trail we’ve been following.
"Threk, no, the path is?—"
He drags me, his strength still terrifying, even in his wounded state. He pulls me straight toward a solid, sheer rockface, one covered in a thick, glittering curtain of ice and frozen moss.
"It's a wall," I pant, confused. "There's no?—"
He shoves me.
"Threk!"
He shoves me through the curtain of ice.
I cry out, expecting to hit solid rock, but I fall. I tumble through the frozen moss, through a crack in the stone, and land on my hands and knees in darkness.
But it is not cold.
