bigger than anything Adisla had ever imagined, an enormous barren sweep of grey and white rising out of the valley floor and disappearing into cloud at the top.
‘If I saw the world tree,’ said Adisla, holding Feileg’s hand and looking up at it, ‘this is how I think it would look.’
‘We are going into it,’ said Feileg.
‘How?’
‘We need to find a wolf trap,’ said Feileg.
Adisla thought of Vali, transformed and starving in that horrible cave. She let go of Feileg’s hand and said no more.
Feileg led the way up the mountain and Adisla’s wound began to pain her. Feileg saw her limping.
‘I can go on my own. It might be better like that.’
‘I’ll stay with you,’ said Adisla. ‘I am linked to you now. I’ll die in this wilderness without you.’
Feileg longed to hold her, to tell her how he felt about her, but he saw the resolution with which she drove herself on, her dedication to the prince, and he concentrated on picking a safe route for the climb.
The lower reaches were easy enough, snowy but not deadly cold as long as you kept moving or had fire. There was even a track winding across the mountain. Adisla had always imagined mountains as unrelenting climbs but this one had frequent breaks in the slope. They scrambled up scree or through fields of boulders, then along ridges where they seemed to go sideways rather than up. As they ascended, the path cut across slopes so steep that Adisla had to dig the butt end of the spear into the snow field to prevent herself sliding off the mountain. The light was bleak and drained of colour. Feileg stopped where the path gave out on a broad area of barren scree, a shoulder in a ridge that went up into ice. In the snowless lee of a big rock there were several pots on the ground, along with two or three bottles.
Feileg picked up a pot and sniffed it. ‘Butter,’ he said, ‘but licked clean by my brothers.’ He took up a bottle and removed the wooden bung.
‘Mead,’ he said. ‘This is as far as normal men can go without being certain of madness. It’s where offerings are left, but no one has collected them. Look!’
He pointed to the side of the track behind them. Adisla saw a dark area.
‘That was a wolf pit, to protect the offerings,’ said Feileg. ‘Men fear the witches, wolves do not. I snapped its spikes.’
‘How do they ever get anything before the wolves?’
‘They have servants, and they take it quickly,’ said Feileg.
Silently, a wolf had come to his shoulder. It nosed the ground before glancing at Feileg and going on. The animal had almost looked as if it was asking for instructions.
They went on, up, up and then down to a valley, up again and down into another valley. Here the land was barren and rocky. A river plunged almost as a waterfall off one side of the hill, tumbling into a wide pool before leading away down the mountain. The wolf with Feileg streaked across towards the pool. Just in front of it he stopped and picked something up in his mouth. Adisla and Feileg followed. The wolf had a human hand, a child’s, in its mouth.
Feileg breathed in. ‘It is near here,’ he said, ‘very near.’
They searched for two days but found nothing. There was little dry wood for the fire, food was running low and Feileg didn’t have time to catch anything — he was scouring the mountain, directing the wolves back and forth like a shepherd with his dogs. Adisla sat in the tent and tried to keep warm, resting her aching leg.
Feileg returned to the pool.
‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘The wolves can tell children go all over this mountain, but the tracks go over and over each other. They drink here and then go up there. Then they come back. Or so it seems.’
Adisla looked at the water. It was very clear and strangely not frozen. They were a good height above the valley floor, and even down there the river was solid and any pools were frozen a hard blue. This was still liquid.
‘There is no ice here,’ said Adisla.
Feileg looked at the water. That hadn’t occurred to him. He dipped his hand in. It wasn’t warm, but it was nowhere near as cold as it should have been. It was clear too, very clear.
‘Enchantment?’ he said.
‘Perhaps. Is this an entrance, do you think?’ she said.
‘Maybe one of them. There are supposed to be many, but neither I nor the wolves can find them.’
‘Will you go in?’
‘Yes.’ First he built a fire inside the Noaidi tent. Then he spent a few moments puffing and blowing beside the water, rubbing his hands and stamping his feet. Adisla wondered what he was doing and thought he looked far from confident. He went in up to his waist.
‘It is not cold,’ he said, ‘not at all.’
He went in deeper, made of few back and forth movements, tried to dive but immediately came back to the surface choking and coughing. Then he tried again, but with the same result.
‘Are you all right?’ said Adisla.
‘Yes.’ He was shaking. He steeled himself and put his face into the water. Then he did dive and didn’t appear for a couple of heartbeats. He came back up in a flurry of flapping arms and kicking legs, beating at the water with his hands and gulping down mouthfuls. Gasping, he managed to find his feet and stagger to the fire, where she cradled his shivering body in her arms as the Noaidi had done for her when she had gone over the side of the ship.
He regained his breath. ‘There is something down there, a lip on the bottom. It is possible to go underneath. I will try again.’
‘Wait a moment, you need to rest,’ she said.
She had never seen him look like this. For the first time since she had known him, the wolfman had fear in his eyes.
‘What is it?’ she said.
‘There must be other ways in.’
‘Is this a way in?’
‘There is a rope and it is secured to something. I think it’s a guide. But there will be other ways in. The boys can’t take everything in this way. It would all be soaked.’
‘This is the way in we have; why search for another?’
Feileg looked at the ground. ‘I don’t like the water,’ he said.
‘Oh Feileg,’ said Adisla. She squeezed him to her. He looked into her eyes and on impulse she rested her lips on his in a light kiss. Feileg didn’t know what to say, still less what to do.
Adisla slipped from his arms, took three big gulps of breath and dived into the pool.
48
At first Saitada had gone north by mistake, through deserted farmsteads, past houses where now only rats sheltered from the cold. She had picked up some things of use to her there — two mouldy blankets which provided some warmth, enough rags to cover her face, bind her feet and wrap the sword, and a cup in which to melt snow for water.
It had been three days before she had seen smoke from a hut, and when she had spoken the name Authun and gestured to ask if he was there, the people had laughed and pointed to the south past the Troll Wall. They thought she was a simpleton but still poured their advice into her ears. It was not safe to travel to the south. The land around those mountains was cursed. Nightmares of death and torture had come down from the slopes and now no one could stand to live there. The witches, it was said, were dying and their magic had poisoned the land. Saitada listened and said nothing more. She could understand them, though she didn’t know how.
