already felt fatigue when he found the opening. It was covered with a filmlike substance, possibly a large leaf of some kind. Deciding to leave well enough alone, he went back down to his pallet, curled up, and in no time was asleep again.
He woke with something warm nestled next to him. The light was gone, but he recognized Fhena by her smell and realized that she was spooned against his uninjured side, with her head up in the pit of his arm. She snuffled when he moved.
“What?” she murmured.
“It’s just me,” Glim said.
“Oh.” She lifted her head.
He hesitated a moment, then positioned his arm under her, so her cheek rested on his chest. A few moments later her breath evened out again, and he lay there awake. Once again he let his mind simplify, listening to the trees, but after a bit he understood there was something else, something like music, color, and tactile sensation braiding and unbraiding, sometimes together, sometimes breathtakingly separate, but always as recognizable as a scent.
It was Fhena, dreaming next to him, connected to him by the root.
“Longer,” she begged him two days later. “Stay longer. Things are better down there. They’ve calmed down.”
“Because they’re waiting on me to tell them what to do,” he said. “If I stay gone too long, they’ll start to wonder if I’m really alive.”
“The lords will kill you,” she said. “They’ll be waiting for you.”
“They didn’t catch me before,” he replied. “They won’t catch me this time either.”
“You weren’t this weak before.”
“Nonsense,” he replied. “I feel fine-you’ve done a good job healing me.”
“Don’t go,” she said. “I know you want to stay with me.”
Glim closed his eyes, wondering what Annaig was doing, knowing he had to find out, because he had to talk to her. He had never been this confused in his life about anything. Because Fhena was right-he did want to stay with her. He didn’t feel any sexual attraction toward her-they were too different for that. What he did feel was much more compelling and thoroughgoing than lust, and it was weaving knots in his brain.
“I’ll come back tonight,” he promised. “I’ll be back.”
“You’d better,” she said.
He made his way back down the tree, to his more usual path, and in a few moments was back in the sump. It felt good to have water around him again, and for a while he let himself enjoy the feel of it, marshaling his thoughts. Wert was supposed to meet him near the bottom of the Drop, in a stand of slackweed. But what was he going to tell him? Push forward or give up? If he agreed to give himself up, could he win some concessions for the skraws?
He had even less idea what to tell Annaig, when and if he managed to see her again.
His toes and fingers were tingling oddly; it had started almost below perception, but now it was beginning to bother him. He touched them and realized that the ends were completely numb; the pain was at the first joint. A moment later it was at the second, and progressing up his limbs at a terrifying pace. He turned and began swimming as fast as he could, back the way he had come, but before he went a hundred yards, he couldn’t move his arms or legs anymore, and all he could do was scream as the agony crept into his torso, surrounding his heart. He drifted down, toward the light in the deepest part of the water, toward the ingenium.
He felt his heart stop and icicles grow in his brain. For an instant he felt the trees again, and through them a little echo of Fhena, like a butterfly.
And that was all.
NINE
“Irinja is avoiding me,” Attrebus told Sul as he tested his weight on the frozen stream. It was solid as stone. Fruth-one of the hunters assigned to help him with his “research”-gave him a funny look. For a moment he thought the fellow had overheard him, even though he was sure all of Sathil’s people were out of earshot. But then he realized the Nord just thought he was an idiot for being so tentative about the stream in such bitter cold.
“Well?” Sul asked.
“I don’t know if that’s a good sign or a bad sign.”
“She’s betrayed you,” Sul said.
“Maybe not. Maybe she’s still thinking.”
“Maybe,” Sul said. “If that’s the case, we might come back from this expedition.”
“Why would they take us out into the mountains to kill us?” Attrebus wondered. “I should think it would be easier in the castle-say, while we’re asleep.”
“No blood to clean up,” Sul said.
“Well, there is that,” Attrebus said. “But even if murder isn’t in their plans, I’m not very happy about this trip.”
“You shouldn’t have told them you were a naturalist, then,” Sul whispered. “They’re just doing what you asked them to.”
“True enough. But every second we waste here seems like an eternity.”
“I have some ideas,” Sul said.
“If they involve torturing Irinja, forget it.”
“If she knows where the sword is, probably most of them do. But leave that. I tried some minor cantations last night. The sword is in the castle, or very near it.”
“Do you know what part?”
“No. But I can try something a little riskier. There are daedra who sense enchantments much as we smell things. I can summon one of them and let it find the sword.”
“Why didn’t you do that last night?”
“Because if Sathil or anyone else in the castle has any proficiency in the arts, they’ll know a conjuring has taken place. Or someone might simply see the daedra. I was hoping we would find it some other way, but as you say, we don’t have much time to lose.”
“Tonight, then, if Irinja doesn’t tell me anything.”
“That was my plan.”
Attrebus nodded. Up ahead, Fruth beckoned them toward a ridge.
Beyond the rise, a valley spread, and beyond them mountains whose peaks vanished into the oppressively low clouds.
“Ensleth Valley,” the guide said, lifting the point of his red beard. “Good hunting here. Elk, deer, muskrey.”
“Very good,” Attrebus said, scribbling that in his book. “And those mountains?”
“Moesring Mountains,” Fruth said. “We don’t go there much.”
“What makes this valley so good for game?” Attrebus asked. “It looks just like the last one.”
“Salt,” Fruth replied. “Big salt lick along where the stream comes out. Only one on this side of the mountains. You’ll want to see that.”
“Sure,” Attrebus said. “I suppose so.”
As they were about halfway down the slope, Fruth’s head jerked up sharply toward the mountains. Attrebus followed his gaze and saw what appeared to be a white cloud rolling down it toward them at impossible speed.
Fruth’s gaze darted around, but then he gestured back upslope.
“Hurry!” he shouted.
But they had only gone a few steps before it hit them.
Attrebus had heard of avalanches, huge slides of snow coming down mountains, destroying everything in their paths. He assumed that’s what this was, and braced for it, yet what hit him wasn’t a wall of snow, but an
