He stood at the edge of the basin near the northern opening, looking at something on the ground. He had an air of stillness around him and looked as if he’d found something completely unexpected and was still deciding what to do about it.
I crossed to him.
The snow at the basin's northern edge was disturbed. Not by wind. The pattern was wrong for wind, too deliberate, too directional. Footprints, but not ours. Older than ours,biggerthan ours, partially filled by the light snowfall of the past few days, yet unmistakably present. A lot of them. Coming from the north, stopping at the basin's edge, and then… nothing. No return tracks.
“They came here,” I said, tracing the markings.
“Yes.”
“And didn't leave.” I looked up at him.
Baxley looked back at me steadily. “Not this way.”
I straightened and looked back at the group.
Marson had seen us crouching. He walked over to us with Gralen at his shoulder, and the moment he looked down at the prints, his expression turned to one I hadn't seen from him before — neither the administrative calm nor the clipped efficiency — but something older than that. The look that recognized danger.
“Those aren't ours,” Gralen said. A fan of stating the obvious.
“No,” I said.
“Animal?”
“Not one I know.” I kept my eyes on Baxley.
Behind Marson, the soldiers had stopped cataloging. They were watching us the way people watch when they realize the conversation ten feet away is going to change something about their immediate future. Edran had his hand near his sword without seeming to notice he'd put it there.
“How many?” Marson asked.
I looked at the prints again. The overlapping pattern, the varying depths.
“Several? Moving together.” I paused. “Or one, many times, but I don’t think so.”
Nobody responded, and the silence that followed felt so telling — it was the kind that comes when men suddenly realize they don’t quite know what or who was here before them.
“The tunnel,” Marson said quietly.
“Most likely,” I said. “There’s nowhere else.”
I crouched and examined the nearest print. Large. Deep. Whatever had made it had been heavy or moving fast or both. The shape was wrong for a boot — too wide at the toe, too shallow at the heel.
“It doesn’t look human,” I said.
“No,” Baxley agreed. “It wouldn’t because it’s not.”
I gradually rose to my feet, glancing northward where the basin opened up to the vast landscape beyond. A wide white expanse that stretched endlessly, unmarred and smooth, under the flat gray sky. Whatever had created these tracks must have come from that direction, heading straight here. They arrived right here, stood at the edge of the basin, and then… gone down? Into the tunnel? Before we got here.
And was still down there…
The thought arrived with a particular chill that had nothing to do with the temperature.
“Nicco,” I said, not loudly.
He was already walking toward us.
I pointed at the tracks without speaking. He looked at them for a long moment, crouching the way I had, examining the print, depth, and shape. When he straightened, his face adopted its careful expression again, and his eyes shifted from the tracks to the tunnel entrance and then to me.
“How long ago?” he asked while Captain Marson and Gralen listened attentively.
