A fresh jolt of horror hit me, and I winced as Adriel made another attempt to fit the unconscious gnome into his overflowing saddlebag along with our supplies. I didn’t have the nerve to ask who or what Eckoghari was.
“Stop that!” I snapped, moving toward the royal guard as Sorsha mounted her horse. “You’ll hurt him.”
“Unlikely,” Adriel grumbled. “Gnomes have notoriously thick skulls.”
“He’s still a living thing,” I protested, snatching the creature out of Adriel’s grip and approaching my own mare. As I did, an unbearably foul odor wafted up to greet me, and I nearly gagged. “Ugh, whatisthat?”
Sorsha snorted and glanced at Kaden, who was barely restraining a smirk.
“That, little huntress, is a forest gnome’s natural perfume,” he said with a chuckle, pulling himself onto his steed.
I frowned at him, though my heart lightened a bit at the sound. Kaden waslaughing— something I hadn’t heard since he’d been captured.
“Now you know why I was trying to stuff him into the saddlebag,” Adriel muttered.
Eyes watering, I held the gnome at arm’s length,dangling him by his ankle as Adriel had. His stench was absolutely putrid — a combination of rotten vegetables, animal feces, and some kind of rancid mud. Underlying all of that was the sting of whatever alcohol the creature had imbibed.
Trying very hard not to be sick, I pulled myself and the gnome astride my mare and settled him on the saddle in front of me. His head dipped forward, almost smashing into the saddle horn, and my mare let out an aggrieved snuffle as if she too were offended by his odor.
Kaden’s eyes twinkled as he watched me struggle to keep the little creature from sliding off, but when I met his gaze, he turned his head and nudged his horse with his heels.
We returned to the snow-packed trail through the trees that wound along the face of the mountain, and despite my smelly companion, I couldn’t help but stare in awe at the breathtaking mountain range that sprawled around us.
Jagged snow-dusted peaks seemed to stretch forever, haloed by great swaths of mist that blurred the outline of tall firs. Tiny creatures skittered out of our path, disappearing into the rocks, and the woods grew silent as fresh snow began to fall.
My riding companion awoke with an abrupt sneeze, swearing and blinking as he swayed in front of me.
He grumbled something in a language I didn’t understand, and when he turned in the saddle to look at me, a bitter grin twisted his lips. “What have I done to deserve such treatment, oh mortal wench?”
I didn’t bother to correct the gnome, though an unpleasant feeling crawled down my spine.
“Don’t get too comfortable,” Kaden groused at himfrom where he rode behind me. “You’re to be bait for Eckoghari.”
The little male blanched and swayed in the saddle, and I shot Kaden a dirty look. The last thing I needed was the tiny bastard trying to make a run for it and spooking my horse.
The wind howled, turning the snowflakes into projectiles that cut across my face with surprising ferocity. Yanking up the hood of my new fur-lined cloak, I gritted my teeth against the gale and imagined the roaring hearth at the Forest House.
“Treacherous mortal filth,” the gnome muttered. “Steal a male while he’s sleeping? There’s no honor in it, I tell you. No honor in it at all. Not that I’d expect anything different from you bleeding scum.”
“Shut it, or I won’t make you the bait,” Adriel snapped. “I’ll just make you the fare for safe passage.”
“You folk are all the same. Think all others are beneath you. But my kin will come for me. They’ll hunt you to the edge of this realm, split you from nose to cock, and tie you to a tree by your own entrails.”
“Your kin traded your pathetic carcass for a few trams of mushrooms,” the royal guard spat.
“I’ll pour a stiff drink and sing over your corpse as the crows pick at your flesh,” the gnome snarled.
I sighed. It was going to be a long journey to the ice caves with this little mongrel in tow.
But soon the howling wind drowned out the brute’s murderous rambling. It was hard to say which was worse: the ravings of a half-drunk gnome that smelled like the inside of a rotting carcass or the icy bite of snow peppering my skin like minuscule daggers.
As the trail narrowed, we were forced to ride single file along the treacherous switchbacks. Our horses stumbled often and periodically needed coaxing down the crumbling trail. Anytime our movements dislodged a chunk of rock and sent it careening down the mountainside, they’d throw their heads back and emit a high-pitched, nervous whinny.
After hours battling the terrain in an increasingly frigid gale, we rounded a bend to find ourselves facing a solid wall of ice that seemed to glow blue against the silver sky. The ice rose so high that the top disappeared in a swath of thick clouds, and the anemic sunlight gleamed off a small frozen lake that had formed at the base from the snowmelt.
As we made our way around edge of the lake, I realized we were not facing a solid wall of ice as I had thought, but rather twin sides of a narrow gorge, scarcely big enough for two riders to pass abreast.
My stomach clenched as we paired off to enter the canyon — Adriel and Sorsha at the front with me and Kaden behind. Walls of ice rose up sharply on either side of us, too slick and tall to even consider climbing, and the gorge itself seemed to go on forever.
