To Light A Candle

It was an hour or two past noon. Cilarnen was riding beside Kardus near the supply carts when suddenly he heard the horns begin to blow.

“What is it? Are we being attacked?” he demanded in alarm.

“No,” Kardus said, puzzled. “It’s the signal to make camp.”

Suddenly the temperature dropped sharply, and the sky turned black.

Cilarnen looked up, alarmed.

The sky was… boiling.

There was no other way to describe it. He heard a rumble, and a sudden crash of thunder, and saw lightning flash across the sky.

A wall of wind—fierce enough to make Kardus stagger—came howling down out of the north. Oakleaf began to sidle and balk as thunder boomed again and heavy wet flakes of snow began to sheet down out of the now-black sky.

Belatedly, Cilarnen realized what the horns had meant. The promised blizzard had come now. And if they all didn’t get under cover they were going to freeze.

He swung down off Oakleaf’s back. The mule fussed and balked, but Cilarnen managed to lead him over to the wagon and tie him fast.

—«♦»—

THEY formed the supply carts into a windbreak, and fought to get the shelters up, for without shelter they would freeze, and quickly. But it was useless. The wind was too strong.

It was the Mountainfolk who realized what must be done to save them. They emptied the supply carts, flinging the contents haphazardly into the snow as the Elves struggled to unhitch the mules so that they could be brought to shelter. So great was the force of the wind that the wagons’ contents blew everywhere. Already snow was mounded against the windward side of the wagons, and no one could see more than a few feet in any direction.

Every coil of rope they found, the Mountainfolk passed to the Centaurs, who used it to link themselves together, so that none would be lost in the blinding snow.

Cilarnen found himself unceremoniously lifted—he didn’t see by whom— and tossed into one of the now- empty carts. He landed hard, and immediately tried to scramble back out again.

“Stop that, boy. Do you want to freeze? I’ve never seen a storm come up this fast—not even a Called one,” an unfamiliar voice said out of the darkness. It was one of the Mountainfolk. Others crowded in quickly, and then pulled the tarp closed over the end of the wagon.

“But, Kardus—” Cilarnen said. The wagon shuddered with the force of the wind.

“Your Centaur-friend is warm and safe in the middle of the herd,” the stranger said. “Which is more than you or I would be out there just now; they’re hardy folk. Have patience. The worst of this should blow itself out in a day or two and we can be on our way. And then, I admit, I’d like to have a word or two with whoever Called this blizzard.”

“Called?” Cilarnen said blankly.

“Of course,” the stranger said calmly. “You don’t think this came naturally, do you? This weather was supposed to come tomorrow, or the day after—and not a storm this hard, either. A Wildmage called this up, and I’d like to know why.”

As the wind howled around them, and Cilarnen buried his head under the shelter of his cold arms, he decided that he wanted to know why, too.

Very badly indeed…

—«♦»—

“I need to get back,” Kellen mumbled aloud. He was exhausted from the healing but he thought he might as well rest back at the cavern as here. Where he was supposed to be right now anyway.

“You’re exhausted,” Shalkan told him, not unkindly, as Kellen sat at the front of the unicorn’s tent, wrapped in blankets and drinking a cup of soup someone had brought him. “You’re not thinking clearly. If you insist on going tonight, wait for Ancaladar to get back. A horse won’t be able to make it even as far as the main camp in this weather—and don’t make eyes at me. Even if I were willing to take you—and I’m needed here—you’d freeze by the time I could get you there.”