CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
C HAPTER T HIRTY- T WO
Before the sun rises, Dawsyn wakes the others. They have camped beneath the outcropped boulders of the slope, huddled around a fire, but now she stomps the low flames to ashes.
They had lost light soon after finding Salem and Abertha, and though Dawsyn would have continued on in the dark, the others were slower. Abertha was weak. The winds picked up and became impossible to push against, so she agreed to stop.
But within the hour, the sun would illuminate the ground enough, and somewhere on this mountain, Ryon, Tasheem and Rivdan were waiting… wounded.
“Get your wits about you,” she says for the second time, kicking the soles of Esra’s feet. Hector and Abertha are already standing. Salem and Esra are slow to rise. They shiver and complain, pulling their furs and cloaks tighter with furrowed brows.
“Have we anything to eat?” Esra grumbles.
“Aye. Go swing that ax, Dawsyn. I can make a meal of anythin’ yeh find.”
Dawsyn frowns. “We ate last night.”
“Aye,” Salem says. “And tha’ hare din’t sit so well with me. ’Fraid it made a hasty return soon after.”
“Ugh,” Abertha grunts, regarding Salem with pinched brows.
“We don’t have time to eat, ” Dawsyn says tersely, letting the heel of the ax thump against the ground to expel her frustration. “Get off your arse and walk.”
Esra rubs his eyes. “Mother above, Dawsyn! Such vile lang–”
“Get. Up! ”
“You worry needlessly,” Esra tries to pacify. “If I’ve survived the Chasm and the big bird lady, then surely Ryon did.”
“He’s wounded,” Dawsyn spits. “So are Tasheem and Rivdan.”
“At least let a man relieve himself,” Esra scowls at her. “Hector, look away. I don’t want to leave you with a diminished impression. It is too cold for gloating.”
Dawsyn grabs Esra by the scruff and hauls him upright. It is surprisingly easy in her state of building fury. “We’re leaving,” she says between gritted teeth. “Do not slow me.”
They walk the entire day through, and each hour only intensifies her worry. She has no clue where to lead them. There are no tracks to follow. The further they go, the more impossible it seems that she will simply stumble across them. They could have been expelled anywhere on the mountain.
By nightfall, Dawsyn’s mind is made. Once they’ve found a suitable spot to rest for the evening, Dawsyn proclaims, “I’m going to fold,” and tries to quash the trepidation she feels. “It is the only chance we have of finding them.”
The others look to one another. Hector gives Dawsyn a familiar glare. One of disapproval and resignation. He often scowled just so on the Ledge when she’d rejected his offers of marriage or tried to press supplies into her hands. He knows her well enough to see when her mind is decided. “Do you know how?”
Dawsyn nods once. “I cannot go far,” she admits. “But I must try.”
“That magic is dangerous, lass,” Salem says, voice laced with concern. “Even Baltisse…” Here he gulps and turns his eyes downcast, as though the name pains him to say. “Even Baltisse were challenged by it.”
“I know,” Dawsyn sighs heavily. “But I will not lose him.”
Salem shakes his head. “He’s alive, lass. Holed up somewhere, biding his time and lettin’ his wings heal. This cold don’t touch him the way it does us.”
“Will you swear it, Salem?” she asks the older man, the first human Ryon ever befriended. “Will you swear to me that he’s alive? That he is not fading as we speak?”
Salem doesn’t offer any answer; he seals his lips into a flat line. His eyes turn pleading.
“I can feel it,” Dawsyn tells him, her hands shaking with the consuming dread of it. “I feel him fading away. I cannot explain it.”
Salem eyes the frost that coats her palms, glowing in the night. “You needn’t explain it to me,” he says. “But tha’ boy loves yeh,” he sighs. “Bloody well told me enough times. If Ryon heard yeh’d fizzled yerself out tryin’ to reach ’im, I don’t reckon he’d survive it.”
Dawsyn turns away until she can be sure her voice will be even. She swallows whatever desperate sounds her lungs wish to release. Then she admits that which her grandmother always warned her against.
“Do you think I’ll fare any better if he dies first, Salem? If he leaves me here?”
“Lass, I–”
“I will not survive him,” Dawsyn says, walking away. “I can survive many things… but I won’t survive that.”
Dawsyn leaves them standing around the fire Hector made and trudges through deep snow into the shadows. Squalls bite at her eyes and face. It finds ways to her skin through her clothing.
She can source the mage light with ease now. It is not hard to imagine warmth, safety, love. No, it is no longer hard to imagine love.
She reaches for the sense of arms encasing her, of kisses caressing her cheek bones, her temple, her throat. It only takes a heartbeat to bring that spark to the forefront of her mind and will it to expand.
The iskra and mage magic coalesce like old friends reuniting. They balance perfectly between warmth and cold, light and dark.
To fold, she must simply imagine the place she wishes to be and let that place expand in her mind. She must imagine it unfolding before her and so it shall be. Therein lies the magic’s limitation – she cannot bring to mind a place she has not been.
Dawsyn breathes in deeply, feeling the burn of frost in the back of her throat. “Please,” she utters to the air. “Baltisse. Guide me.” She closes her eyes.
She pictures a familiar warren – one where Ryon had stashed belongings in his once-regular trips down the slopes. It is one of the only places on the mountain she can remember with any detail.
She feels the magic expand in her and then abruptly retract. The bones of her limbs condense, her chest sinks inward. Time and space fold and she feels an instant of excruciating, unbearable pain. But she manages to hold the image in her mind, and when space expands, abrupt relief rushes in.
The image within her mind becomes her surroundings. She lands on all fours with a graceless thud, her hands and knees sinking into the snow. She gasps against the protestations of her stomach, but at least manages to hold onto its contents.
It worked. The warren is before her, unchanged since their last acquaintance.
But he isn’t here.
“Fuck,” Dawsyn huffs shakily, spitting bile. She stands on unsteady legs.
No footprints mark the snow in any direction she can see. The warren entrance is piled in fresh snow. The mountain breathes fiercely down the slope and beyond her, and she knows there is no one here but her. “RYON!” she shouts anyway, though it hardly travels.
There is no reply.
Dawsyn lets her head fall back on her shoulders, closing her eyes until her breaths ease. She can feel the depletion of power like a tapped well, painstakingly refilling ounce by ounce. It will take all night to replenish. She cannot afford to burn out.
She clambers toward the warren and begins to dig out the snow covering its entrance. Her fingers are gloved and ineffectual, so she takes the axe from her shoulder straps and uses its wide blade.
When the hole is deep enough, she stomps at the edges with her boot, then lowers herself through.
“Igniss,” she says, and a weak flame unfolds in her palm. Her breath seizes in her chest at the sight of the place. She remembers those nooks in the tree’s underbelly, where Ryon’s supplies are still stashed. A knife. Burlap draw-string bags of dried food – likely fouled now. She remembers waking to the crackle of weak flames, to the same smell of fresh earth, and the imposing form of a Glacian, staring at her intently beneath hooded eyes. Wary eyes. “Relax, girl. You are safe.”
Dawsyn swallows. How little they knew of each other then.
There is a small array of kindling and dried pine needles spread across the ground, likely disturbed by an animal of some kind. She gathers them together now and expertly lights them.
She has no food. The fire will soon consume these meagre twigs. There is little left of her power, and she is tired. But she curls up beside the little flames and gathers her cloak tightly around her. She closes her eyes and sees Ryon, thick brows raised in amusement. He smirks as she taunts and threatens him, his eyes subtly drinking her in.
Dawsyn smiles back. “I’ll find you,” she murmurs aloud.
Dawsyn repeats the process for three days. She rests and folds. Rests and folds.
The exhaustion she feels after each journey begins to feel lighter, less consuming. Soon, it begins to feel like stretched muscles. She finds she can grit her teeth and push beyond it. She needs less and less time to rest in between.
She sets traps and eats whatever prey she can catch while she sleeps off the fog of fatigue. She drinks regularly and finds that her strength is not fading. Rather, she is growing stronger.
Yet, there is no triumph in it. Only failure.
She has imagined every scene of the slopes in her memory. The place where the water ran over the cliffside, the cave they sequestered Baltisse in while she recovered. The tree she pinned Ryon against when she learned he was not dead.
She has shouted Ryon’s name until her throat felt shredded, and no one has called back.
Now she cannot call to mind any other memories. Every place she knows has been drawn in her thoughts and willed into existence and she feels no closer to finding them.
“Fuck!” Dawsyn shouts and a flock of ravens disperse from their branches, fleeing the echo of her voice as it reaches their midst.
He is not dead. She feels sure of it. Whatever ties saw fit to bond the two of them would surely hurt to cut. She does not feel their severance. Ryon is not dead.
But whatever condition he might be in, it must be dire.
And she cannot find him to fix it.
Dawsyn’s jaw aches from clenching it so tightly closed. Her eyes burn from the wind. Her hands throb with chilblains, but she throws her fist into a tree trunk still. She snaps the loose bark with her knuckles and ignores the reverberations that rattle her bones.
Defeated, she slams her eyelids down and imagines the campsite where she had last parted ways with the others. Her body begins to collapse inward.
Dawsyn unfolds with a wrenching gasp into the snow. Her stomach rolls, but she has come to expect it.
Before her is the small opening to a cave against a steep cliffside.
“Dawsyn?”
She turns. Approaching her from the forest is Hector, his arms laden in stripped branches.
“You didn’t find them?”
Before she can answer, there is a clamour from within the cave, and Salem appears in its mouth.
“Dawsyn!” he calls, his face stricken. “Yer back! Thank the saints.”
Dawsyn nods, bracing for interrogation. Where are they? Where are the others? She opens her mouth to stay the questions, the band of sick dread tightening around her ribcage.
But Salem speaks again before Dawsyn can. “Come quick, lass! She’s getting worse.”
Dawsyn hesitates, her legs locking in shin-deep snow. “What?”
“It’s Abertha,” Hector tells her, reaching her side. “Her wound has fouled.”
“Wound?” Dawsyn repeats, hastening toward the cave opening. “What are you talking about?”
“A cut on her leg,” Hector answers, following. “She says she slipped in the Chasm.”
Dawsyn groans internally. Abertha hadn’t mentioned a wound. “Is she awake?”
“No,” Hector says. “Fever took her under two nights ago.”
Dawsyn’s grandmother had an adage for infection – three days to set, two days to sleep, one day to steal. Dawsyn had seen it happen in real time to a neighbour on the Ledge. Infection took three days to make itself known. By the time it did its host was not long for this world. Even the best medicine woman could not delay the death sleep.
Dawsyn crouches inside the cave.
Esra kneels beside the girl’s body. He pats her forehead with a swath of wet rags, looking horribly unsure and inept. “Dawsyn!” he says as she crawls toward him. “Where have you been? ”
Abertha’s face resembles a corpse’s already, save for the beads of sweat at her hairline and across her upper lip. She shivers intermittently, her limbs twitching. There is, at least, a snowpack tied to her calf. It leaks onto the cave floor and wets the leg of her pants.
“Two days?” Dawsyn confirms with Hector, who hovers over Dawsyn’s shoulder.
“Thereabouts,” Hector answers. “She’s weakening. We didn’t know…” his voice trails off, and he sighs. “She did not say she was hurt.”
Dawsyn gently unties the snowpack, made from whatever shirt was generously given and torn to pieces. Abertha’s lips part as Dawsyn’s fingers work, but the sound that escapes is so faint, Dawsyn cannot be sure it is one of pain or the murmurings of sleep. The girl smells of death already.
The fabric of her pants is badly stained in blood and dried puss – so much so, the fabric has melded to the wound. Dawsyn sighs.
“Must you remove it?” Hector asks. “Can you heal her first?”
Dawsyn considers. “I’d rather see the magic working, so I might know the extent of the wound, and know when to stop.”
Hector grimaces back, but nods. “Do it quick.”
Dawsyn pulls out a knife and carefully makes a cut at the hem. Then, with one swift movement, she tears the fabric, splitting it up Abertha’s calf, and separating it from the wound.
Abertha’s leg jerks, and she moans pitifully, new sweat beads forming along her brow, but the fever keeps her sedated.
The wound is… ghastly. It makes a wretched mess of her skin, mottling the flesh. The cut has yellowed with a foul-smelling excretion, while the surrounding skin remains bright red. It stretches from the inside of her knee and disappears into her boot.
Abertha’s shoes are already unlaced, but it would be madness to leave her without boots, even for a short time. The cold finds its way to the skin without provocation, which is why Dawsyn blanches to find the seam of Abertha’s boot broken – the sole peeling away. Such an easy route for the cold.
“Mother mercy.”
“What is it?” Esra asks.
As an answer, Dawsyn slowly pulls the ruined boot from Abertha’s foot. The insides are well insulated with layers of hide and fur-lining, and if it weren’t for the gaping seam at the toe, it would have made a fine boot for long-wear. Dawsyn cringes. How long had she walked through the snow? What havoc has the frost wrecked on her?
“Shit,” Dawsyn breathes.
“Holy Mother,” Esra gapes.
Hector curses and backs away, as though it is catching.
Frostbite.
Two of Abertha’s toes have blackened, as though dipped in ink. The others are ominously white and bubbled in blisters, the flesh slower to die.
“Idiot,” Dawsyn mutters, though her throat closes for the girl. “Why would she say nothing?” The wound, the ruined shoe – why travel in silence rather than alert them? “Close your eyes,” Dawsyn says roughly, and presses her palms to the burning flesh of Abertha’s leg, avoiding the wound. “ Cristique. ”
Light fills the cave, and she urges magic into Abertha. Dawsyn cleans the wound first, clears the blood of infection. Then she mutters the spell to repair it and feels the power ebb. The wound begins to stitch slowly, the flesh resisting the effort to rejoin. Dawsyn can feel it pulling back but coaxes it to continue. A little longer, she thinks, feeling the fever dissipate from Abertha’s skin.
Release me, Dawsyn hears, and feels the pressure of resistance intensify.
Dawsyn lets it go. She feels the magic sprint back through her veins, thin and feeble. But the wound at Abertha’s leg is now a fresh pink scar. It is not completely healed, but Abertha’s eyes are open and searching. Her cheeks pinken delicately with the chill in the cave.
Dawsyn feels an intense pounding in her head, and her vision swims.
“Bertie?” Hector says, grasping her shoulders. “Are you well?”
Abertha looks at him, then Dawsyn. “I… Yes. I think so.”
But Dawsyn’s waning gaze has found Abertha’s toes once more, and though the white-tipped smaller toes have returned to their healthy pink, the first two remain black as coal.
“Dawsyn…Thank you,” Abertha says, leaning up on her elbows. She bends her leg to view the scar better and winces.
“Do not thank me,” Dawsyn says, sighing sadly.
Abertha frowns. “Without you, I would have died.”
“You should have told us you were cut.” Dawsyn closes her eyes against the thumping in her skull. “Surely you knew better.”
Abertha looked suddenly uncomfortable. “I saw what happened to that blonde mage in the Chasm. I didn’t want you to use your powers if you were depleted. It was only a cut.”
“A cut that can become easily fouled. As you ought to know.”
“I wasn’t aware it had fouled,” Abertha bites, oddly petulant. It strokes a long-gone memory Dawsyn can’t quite reach. Her mind is addled enough.
“And were you aware your boot had split at the sole?”
“My boot?”
Dawsyn holds it aloft. The frayed stitching dangles.
The girl looks mystified. “No. I was not aware.”
“If tha’ fever set in early, she won’t’ve felt a bloody thin’ beneath the ankle, Dawsyn,” Salem offers from somewhere behind her.
Abertha shakes her head, baffled. “I will mend it before we continue.”
“We will not be continuing for a while,” Dawsyn utters, scrubbing her face.
“What? Why?”
Dawsyn takes a breath. She grips her knees and flexes her fingers, preparing. “You are frostbitten.”
Abertha’s eyes widen, then she sits up, staring down at the deadened flesh of what was once her toes.
“Can you heal them?” Hector asks Dawsyn in a hushed voice. “Once you are rested?”
But Dawsyn healed the other toes, and if it were possible to restore dead flesh, she imagines the magic would have made its mark on the ruined ones. She turns to Hector and lets him read the answer in her eyes.
Hector’s face falls.
“Perhaps in a day or so,” Abertha offers. “Once your magic returns?”
Dawsyn looks back at Abertha and works her face into a smile. “Of course,” she says.
Abertha sighs, then chuckles incredulously. “Thank the Mother. I apologise, I am normally more vigilant. But I am grateful to you, Dawsyn, truly.”
“As I said,” Dawsyn answers, quietly taking a blade from inside her cloak. “Do not thank me.”
She waits for Abertha to grin and look away. Then she grits her teeth. “Hold her.”
Hector leaps forward, throwing his full weight over the girl’s legs.
And Dawsyn takes the knife to Abertha’s toes, pressing the blade all the way through flesh and bone until it meets the ground.