Chapter 42
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Snow like I’ve never seen continues to blanket everything, creating an unnatural quiet. A frozen waterfall cascades down Elandors Veil, with one terraced section leading into the next, beginning at the highest reaches of the mountain.
The temple at the base of the mountain is stunning—and wholly, completely impossible.
It sits in the center of the frozen waterfall, situated on an icy terrace.
The columns that make up the temple wind upward and outward, like swirling water that froze as it moved.
Everything is covered in a coating of ice so thick, I almost wonder if the temple itself is made of the stuff.
Priests wrapped in white furs watch me from the frosted windows, their faces pressed up against the fogged-up glass in morbid curiosity.
But I don’t stop at the temple.
It’s not for me.
When I step forward, there’s a faint pull. The mountain feels my presence, and it’s waiting—waiting to see if I belong in the sky.
Or if I’ll be thrown from it.
My breath comes in puffs that form droplets of ice in the air. Every step forward is soundless, swallowed by snow. My footprints are quickly covered with fresh powder, as if the gods want no witnesses to what happens here.
I climb higher and higher until the snow disappears, and I skid on the layered sheets of ice.
It catches me so unprepared that I slide backward a full body length before I slam my scythe down.
The blade cracks through the top layer with a sharp snap, anchoring me in place.
My breath is ragged now, not from the climb but from the presence.
Something is watching me.
The wind screams overhead, howling through the jagged crags like a warning—or a song, if I were foolish enough to call it that. My knuckles blanche on the scythe’s shaft. I pull myself forward inch by inch until I find my footing again, the tread of my boots crunching on cruel ice.
The path narrows into a spine of ice that winds around the face of the cliff, vanishing into a wall of mist where the waterfall freezes midair. That’s where the pull leads me.
Not to safety. Not to warmth. But into the mouth of something vast and silent and sacred.
The sky above is impossibly close now. If I reached just a little farther, I could press my palm to the clouds and feel the pulse of the gods themselves. It makes you ache for it—for the divine.
But I know better. This place doesn’t welcome. It judges. Here, it is brutally clear that the gods don’t want us. They need us. We are tools. Pawns. Weapons made flesh. And when we break, they forge new ones. No mourning. No mercy. Just another name etched into wax.
A gust tears across the narrow ridge, nearly knocking me sideways, as if the mountain heard my thoughts and disapproved.
Good. Let it be angry. I’m angry too.
The air grows thinner as I climb, sharp with the sting of altitude. My lungs burn. My ribs ache. The climb carves pieces from me, little by little, an offering to the peak. Still, I keep going, because if the gods think I’ve come to beg, they’re wrong.
I’ve come to demand.
Here, the incline goes nearly vertical, with only rock and ice as far as the eye can see.
And that’s not particularly far, because there’s a dark cluster of clouds—if I were fanciful, I would say a veil—that conceals the upper slope.
What’s beyond the clouds could be anyone’s guess, but I don’t imagine it’s a set of stairs.
A trickle of sweat slides down my face but freezes before it reaches my chin.
As I continue making my way up the mountain, putting one foot in front of another, the snowfall shifts to a nasty mix of ice and slush.
The sun lowers, quickly sliding from view behind the snow-capped Valespire Peaks that surround me.
I truly didn’t think it was possible, but the creeping darkness makes it even colder.
The wet slush gleefully soaks through my wool overcoat before it hardens to ice against my skin.
Within a few minutes, my coat, my gloves, my trousers, the pack strapped to my back, my boots, my scythe, which I’m using like an axe—all are covered in a thick layer of ice.
The unrelenting cold is agony, at least until my body goes blessedly numb. It’s a false relief, I know. A dangerous one, even. But I’m still thankful for the respite. Numbness is the only thing going for me as I claw my way upward, hanging from the side of this mountain of death.
Not for the first time in the hours I’ve been trekking up this cursed mountain, I get a tingle at the base of my neck and whip my head around to peer through the unrelenting darkness.
But each time there’s only ice and the unending pile of jagged rocks that make up Elandors Veil.
No one is stalking me through an ice storm.
There’s no one else here, I tell myself. Again.
I pull my shoulders over a ledge and heave the rest of my body up and over, rolling until my back presses against the mountain.
I take the time to run my fingers through my hair, causing the icicles that have formed in it to fall and shatter, and then I stagger to my feet.
Only, my numb body no longer responds to commands, and I tumble down an embankment, the jagged rocks slicing through my coat as I fall and fall and fall.
My heart beats a fierce rhythm when I finally slide to a stop, wedged up against an outcropping of rocks.
My breath heaves in and out, until I work up the energy to sit up and catalogue the damage.
My pack is ripped, but still functional.
My weapons are fine; no surprise there. Me, though …
I cough, and it burns. I rub my gloved fingers against the back of my head, and they come away bloody.
My skin is torn all down the backs of my arms and legs, although, I realize with a vague sense of detachment, the wounds aren’t bleeding like they should.
I’m too cold. My blood has started to slow.
There’s a fog over my brain that I can’t quite work around. Still, I’m lucid enough to know that this is not good.
It occurs to me that I might die. This night, this mountain, could very easily be the death of me.
In fact, my death is looking more and more likely with every breath—each time I struggle and fight and gasp to inhale the smallest wisp of this thin, cold air.
I drop my head heavily against the frozen ground at my back and close my eyes.
The snow continues to fall, and I open my cracked and bloodied lips to let the moisture in. The cold wet is a soothing balm.
My thoughts turn to my brothers. A single tear slides free from the corner of my eye but freezes before it can trail down my cheek. I’m sad that they’ll never know peace. That I failed them.
At that thought, the familiar whisperings of anger stir. It’s fuel, and it gives me the push I need. I clamber awkwardly to my knees and take a breath, as deep as I can, before I heave myself off the ground with a roar.
I will not fail Seb and Leo. I will fight for their future.
I take a stumbling step forward, and then another.
I consider pitching my tent where I stand to ride out the rest of this storm.
But even that is a dangerous move. It would get me out of the worst of the wind.
But I’m more likely to fall asleep—and never wake up—if I stop moving.
I stagger to a stop, resting against a boulder.
My eyes flutter closed. I stop shivering, and I’m almost warm. I could take a quick nap.
“No.”
I snap my eyes open and shove my body forward, driven by the sharp command in the voice.
I stop when I reach a dead end—a sheer wall of smooth ice.
I run my fingers against the ice, looking for rock, for handholds, for somewhere to set an anchor to keep climbing.
Nothing. I heave out a sob, the sound echoing in the pass I’ve found myself in.
I’ll set up my tent here. I don’t have another choice.
“No.”
That voice is so real, like someone is standing right next to me.
I turn in a full circle, looking up and down and all around.
No one. No one is here. My brow crinkles.
I’m going crazy, hearing voices in my head.
Maybe Faelon wasn’t just being dramatic.
I look up again. It’s hard to see in the darkness, even for me.
There’s no light from the night sky shining through the clouds that cover the summit.
But I’m close, so tantalizingly close, to the peak of Elandors Veil.
The Veil is pulling at me, urging me forward. Urging me upward.
A wave of dizziness slides through me, and my arms fall to my sides. They’re so heavy. Holding myself upright is one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.
But not the hardest, I resolve grimly.
I’m not going to die here. I refuse to die here, mere steps away from a new future for us all.
I keep running my hands along the smooth ice, trying to see with my hands what I can’t make out in the darkness.
It’s the waterfall, I think. My hands slide off the ice and continue in the air before sliding back across that smooth, smooth ice.
There’s a gap in the ice, like something was parting the water of the falls when it froze.
There’s a stillness beyond.
“Hello!”
Hello. Hello. Hello. Hello. Hello .
The echoes bounce backward. I hesitate before I step through. It could be a crevasse. I could easily slide through to unknown depths, my bones trapped in these cursed mountains. With Alden.
And yet …
There’s that pull urging me forward. I jam my scythe into the ice wall and take as firm a grip as I can. I take a cautious step forward, praying that I’m not stepping right off this peak. Another step, and another. The wind dies down. Another step. The snow stops falling.
A cave. It’s a cave.
“Bless you, Thayana. Bless you.” My voice is ragged, my mouth and throat dry. My broken voice echoes endlessly. Bless you. Bless you. Bless you .
I surge farther inside, using the walls of the cave to find my way. There’s warmth in here.
Impossible. It must be my body, shutting down from the cold.
I drop my pack to the ground and rip it open, digging through for the flint and steel and the small torch.
It would have been useless out in the constant wet, but in here …
I slam the flint against the torch with clumsy fingers, and with a hiss and a sputter, the flames burst to life, casting flickering shadows against the cave walls.
There, in the back of the cave, steam rises from a spring.
I moan in a relief that is so visceral it hurts.
I try to run, but I can barely get one foot to move in front of the other as I stagger into the depths of the cave.
I slide into the hot water fully clothed.
I whimper, and then I scream, the warmth returning to my body first in pins and needles and then in an excruciating stabbing, my numbed nerves reawakening in searing intensity, sending shockwaves of agony through my body.
I arch my back against the pain, but stay in the pool of spring-fed, hot water as the cold’s merciless grip fades, replaced with a searing fire.
Once the pain has eased, and the worst of the danger has passed, I slip back out of the spring, lunging for my pack and the flask of laomai Elowen packed for me.
A hissing sound catches my attention, and I notice steam rising from a crack in the ground near my feet.
Vaguely, I wonder if anyone knows Elandors Veil is a volcano. I don’t think it was ever mentioned.
Once the fog starts to clear, my survival lessons start to jab at the edges of my thoughts. Find or make shelter. Done . A hysterical giggle leaves my mouth and then bounces back and around me.
Get out of wet clothes. I strip, and drip my soaking wet clothes against the warm, almost uncomfortably hot rocks that line the cave.
Treat injuries. I grab the aldersigh paste that all Altor carry with them and apply it to my now-bleeding wounds. They start to heal almost immediately.
Make a fire. Thoroughly unnecessary.
Eat. Drink. I pull a frozen hunk of dried meat from my pack and start to gnaw on it, but by this point my eyes are starting to close. I need to eat, but sleep is calling to me, like the cave did. It is an enticement. A seduction. My hand slides down to the ground, the meat falls from my grasp.
I let my eyes slip closed, the heavy weight of sleep pulling me under, into the darkness.
“Yes. Sleep. I’m here.”