face was broad and flat like a bulldog’s, and a shield still hung from one limp arm. The sicuna had clearly caught it by the neck, which was torn wide open. The sound Pazel had heard was the creature’s shirt of mail, lifting as the sicuna ate.
“Hrathmog,” said Vadu. “That fire was a mistake, and we must leave at once. Sicunas kill in silence, but the creature will be missed by the rest of its band, and then they will come in force.”
“Even without this danger I should have been obliged to wake you,” said Hercol. “Ildraquin has just spoken to me: Fulbreech is moving. Indeed he is rushing away, more quickly than we can climb the mountain, at least until dawn.”
They packed swiftly, fumbling with bags and bridles. No one talked, everyone was cold, dawn was still far off. All the while Pazel’s ears strained for the first sound of attackers swarming out of the night.
The next hours were miserable. Summer might be at her peak in the city they had left behind but here frost slicked the trail, and the cold wind gnawed at them. The horses were skittish but could move no faster than a walk. The sicunas fared better, gliding on their broad, soft feet, growling low as their great cat eyes probed the darkness. Jackals, or wild dogs perhaps, bayed in the north, and from somewhere on the black ridges Pazel caught the echo of drums.
The narrowed Mai gushed close at hand, invisibly. At one switchback they had to pass very near a waterfall, and the horse Pazel and Neeps rode lost its footing, dashing both boys into the frigid spray. They shed their wet coats for dry blankets, but Pazel’s teeth chattered for the rest of the night.
With the first glimmer of morning, Neeps suddenly whispered, “Ouch! Credek, Pazel, I keep meaning to ask you: what’s that thing in your pocket? Every time we hit a bump it whacks me like a piece of lead.”
“Oh, that,” said Pazel, “it is lead. Sorry, mate.” He reached back with one hand and pulled out a two-inch metal disc, sewn into a soft tube of buckskin leather. Carefully he passed it to Neeps.
“Fiffengurt’s blackjack,” said Neeps, amazed.
“He gave it to me while you and Marila were off getting married,” said Pazel. “ ‘Saved my life a dozen times, that wicked thing,’ he told me. ‘Clip a man smartly with it, and you can bring him down no matter what sort of brute he is. And you can hide it better than any knife. Never let it out of your reach, Pathkendle. It’s worth the headache, you’ll see.’ And do you know what he did, to be sure I obeyed? He sat down and stitched, by Rin. An extra pocket, just this size, in my two best breeches. How do you like that?”
“Fiffengurt’s our man,” said Neeps, returning the weapon, “but I’ll thank you to put it in your blary coat until we’re back on our feet.”
With sunrise came a little warmth. Their destination, that notch in the mountains where the river began, was suddenly much closer. All the same Hercol quickened the pace. There was no longer any hope of remaining hidden, should anyone be watching from above: near dawn they had cleared the tree line, and the wind-tortured scrub around them now barely reached their stirrups. Cables of ice braided the rocks along the river. Higher and higher they climbed, the road deserted, and all the land empty but for small, scurrying creatures in the underbrush, and here and there a ruined keep or watchtower, older than anything in the valley below.
“The thin air may go to your head,” warned Vadu. “Take care above all near a precipice.” And there were many of these: sheer falls of hundreds of feet, with the road narrowed and crumbling, and at times great rocks to weave around. Pazel had thought that nothing could compare to the terror of being aloft in a Nelluroq storm. But this fear was sharpened by helplessness: no matter how true his grip, one false step by the horse and they would die.
The horse clearly appreciated this fact as well. But alone of their animals, the poor creature seemed unused to mountains, and stamped and skittered and threw its head about, eyes wide with fear. At last the boys could stand it no longer. When the chance came they slid to the ground and led the horse by the reins.
“He’s loads better now that we’re off his back,” said Neeps.
“So am I,” said Pazel. The path was bad enough on foot, however, and around the next bend chuckled one more ice-fringed stream. The riders crossed easily, but their horse balked at the water’s edge, backing and snorting.
“Silly ass.” Pazel moved behind the horse, clapping and nudging its rump, while Neeps, already across, tugged the reins with all his might. At last the beast lunged forward. Pazel gritted his teeth and waded in himself, using his hands for balance on the rocks.
“Aya!”
Something had stabbed his arm. He jerked it from the water, then shouted again in amazement. Among the stones where his hand had rested, a huge spider was wriggling away. It was nearly the size of his head, and more amazing still, perfectly transparent. Indeed he had taken it for a lump of ice, and its folded legs for icicles. The spider vanished among the rocks, and Pazel, clutching his arm, stumbled out of the water.
The pain, as it happened, was not as bad as the shock. By the time Hercol reached him, the bite on his arm felt no worse than a scratch. “But did you see it?” he said. “It was huge. It must have just nicked me, or I’d be a goner.”
The path was far too narrow for the others to approach, though Neda and Thasha looked back in alarm. Hercol studied his arm, frowning. “There is a bruise already,” he said. “I wish I had seen the creature.”
“It was a medet,” said Vadu. “A glass spider-if the boy is telling the truth, that is.”
“Of course I am!” Pazel shot back. “Do you think I could make up something like that?”
“The spiders are kept in temples across the Empire,” said Vadu, “and Spider Tellers handle them daily. I have never heard of them biting anyone.”
“That is true, Pazel,” said Bolutu. “Some new mothers even visit the temples and allow the glass spiders to crawl on their newborns. It brings good luck, and they’re never bitten, never.”
“This one bites,” said Pazel, “but it can’t have been very deep, because it doesn’t hurt much.”
Neda, turning her horse, gave Thasha an accusing look. “Can’t you make him be more careful?” she said. Thasha just stared at her, too amazed to reply.
Hercol wound a bandage about Pazel’s arm. “We will keep an eye on you,” he said. “Some poisons are quick, and others slow.”
On they stumbled, Neeps and Pazel still leading the frightened horse, and the wind stronger and colder by the minute. Pazel’s heart was racing. Hercol’s warning had unsettled him, though at the moment his arm felt almost normal.
Then they turned a final switchback and found themselves at the pass. Smoke was rising from a point just out of sight beyond the ridge; bells or windchimes sounded somewhere; and a rooster, of all things, was crowing above the wind.
A last scramble brought them to the top of the ridge. Pazel caught his breath. Straight ahead of them ran file upon file of mountain peaks, towering over the pass, their sharp summits wrapped in capes of snow. These were the mountains that had loomed like distant ghosts, that first day he’d glimpsed the mainland. They were cold and forbidding. And winding among them was an immense, dark lake.
It was crescent-shaped; they stood near one tip of the crescent, and the other, presumably, was hidden somewhere far off among the mountains. The lake was the heavy blue of a calf’s tongue. Waves tossed on its surface, breaking against the sides of the mountains, which appeared to descend into its depths; and on the narrow, pebbly shores between. Scattered along these shores were humble dwellings of mud and thatch, and docks so frail they might have been made out of the wingbones of birds. Miles offshore, boats with strange ribbed sails plied the lake.
Almost at their feet, the lake narrowed into a deep defile that looked as if it had been cut by a plow. Of course that plow was the Mai, shrunken here to a swift stream, but still managing to pierce the wall of the lake to start its journey to the sea.
“Ilvaspar, the lifeblood of Masalym,” said Vadu. “It is more than a decade since I beheld her shores.”
“It’s mucking enormous,” said Alyash.
“Twenty miles to the southwest point, where the great Ansyndra is born,” said Vadu. “Some say that a demon prince lies chained in its depths, others that it was cut by the fang of Suovala the Elderdrake. I know not. But I am glad to see that Vasparhaven survives.”
He pointed, and looking up Pazel saw an extraordinary sight. Built into the side of the cliff on the lake’s southern shore, at least a hundred feet above the surface, hung a stunning mansion. It was all of wood, painted a dark, weathered green, and there was no foundation beneath it; the whole structure rested on five massive beams
